In the Soviet Union about 1980 there was a giant warehouse containing hundreds of thousands of empty plastic circles, each about a yard across and containing about a quarter of an inch of solid material at the edge.
History does not record whether these hoops were finally destroyed, or whether, like so many Soviet-produced products, the warehouse is still standing there, collapsing in the open air and being overgrown with weeds.
Those hoops were put into the Five-Year Plan because Hula Hoops had become popular in America for a short time, tens of millions of them sold.
Marxism says that a socialist economy will plan how much of each good will be produced. What it cannot say is WHICH goods will be produced.
The ideal communist society which Marxism predicts as the end of its Scientific Historical Process is very similar to the Eden Adam and Eve habited in the Old Testament and which I described in “The Serpent Had a Point”. (URL)
A Marxist economy produces what market economies produce. When market economies put out millions of hula hoops, the socialist planners put millions of hula hoops into their Plan.
This is only an extreme example of a basic rule. Like the Garden of Eden, communism at its most ideal is sterile. It produces only what has been produced before. Things like the hula hoop or the automobile are not developed.
Like other religions, Marxism gives us a static Ideal.
We are regularly reminded that Moslem theocracies still live in the past. We know that the Papal States, before Italy annexed them in 1870, were stagnant and oppressive to an extent only matched by Czarist Russia.
What we are NOT told is that the USSR, under the Marxist theocracy, was unbelievably stagnant for three hundred million WHITE people at a time when consumer technology in the rest of the white world was moving steadily forward.
Hundreds of millions of white people did not produce one single new consumer product in the entire Communist period. In fact, despite the cheapest white labor on earth, they did not produce one single COMPETITIVE consumer product, old or new.
In other words, no one else seems to put Marxist theocracy right there in the category it belongs, with all the OTHER theocratic states of history.
#1 by BGLass on 06/21/2011 - 9:24 am
Definitely, you can’t know if people will want or like something, or find it useful— until you make it and present it, then see if they like it. It’s like going on a date. You can do a survey first, (like the date can seem smart or cute or whatever) but even then, you don’t really know until it’s a real question in front of you and you’re having dinner.
Just like those mercury laced light bulbs that have people stockpiling the old kind. They were presented and everyone said no, so now maybe they will go for it if with “incentives” or just outlawing anything else or having lots of t.v. shows on the issue, but often even that won’t help. Sometimes that’s how they wind up with the “black market,” so the old light bulbs people really want still get sold, somehow. These light bulbs have become sort of a metaphor for the whole thing.
We have tons of examples and yet people still say it is a “free market.” Or maybe it’s not… but they are “for a free market.” Like “conservatives” say that on the “conservative” t.v. channels. But isn’t that like saying one is for “world peace.” It’s just kind of silly. Like, in what universe?
Why don’t people who say “I’m for a free market!” just feel dumb— unless they understand there isn’t one. Imo, that’s a difference between Fox and Ron Paul. RP knows there is no free market now. Fox lineup toes the line on “it’s a free market and people are in the way, sort of, and if they just move a little everything will be great.” Any election can ‘restore the republic.”
#2 by Dave on 06/21/2011 - 11:16 am
Intellectuals never accept the stupefying ignorance of the general public and the fact it is a permanent condition.
The portion of the public that is capable of being articulate dominates the portion that is incapable of being articulate. It doesn’t matter that the portion that is articulate is STUPIFYINGLY articulate.
Throw in a dollop of desperation and that’s how we got communism.
But the thing that must be understood it was all orchestrated by Mommy Professor. To get communism all that was required was all the Mommy Professor’s running things in England and the USA, plus all the Mommy Professor’s running things in Germany and France, plus all the Mommy Professor’s in Russia.
Today, Mommy Professor in addition to orchestrating racial catastrophe in all white countries, is currently orchestrating catastrophic defeats for the West in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has orchestrated total breakdown and anarchy in Juarez and throughout most of Mexico, is orchestrating chaos in the Ivory Coast and incipient chaos throughout vast swaths of North Africa, and the list goes on and on.
Mommy Professor’s chaos is nothing new. But Mommy Professor IS THE PROBLEM. Mommy Professor IS THE PROBLEM. Mommy Professor IS THE PROBLEM.
Always has been. Is today.
#3 by Simmons on 06/21/2011 - 1:02 pm
Bob Whitaker asked of the commie mommies why a wall was needed, that cult fell. Buckley spent a lifetime quibbling the details of theology, no results except for his pocketbook.
The cult falls before the question.