Le principe de la répartition des richesses était réduit par Marx à cette formule parfaitement creuse : « À chacun selon ses besoins »1, source de chicaneries et d’ergotages sans fin si par malheur on avait tenté de la mettre en pratique, heureusement cela ne s’était jamais produit, dans les pays communistes pas davantage que dans les autres, l’argent allait à l’argent et accompagnait le pouvoir, tel était le dernier mot de l’organisation sociale.
[ For Marx, the principle of wealth distribution was reduced to this entirely hollow formula: “To each according to his needs”1, an endless source of carping and quibbling if by some misfortune someone tried to put it into practice. Luckily that had never happened, no more in the communist countries than anywhere else; money went to money and kept company with power, that was the final word in social organization. ]
– Michel Houellebecq, Sérotonine, [Serotonin]
“Communism is a utopia!”, “Communists failed, but at least their intentions were good!”, “The Soviet Union was not real communism!”, “We have never had real communism!”, “Socialism was not efficient, sure, but…”, “Communism is good as long as it’s voluntary/democratic/etc.”, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
We’ve all heard those a million times. Communists and socialists concede something, but you’re supposed to concede that communism is still a noble idea, an ideal to keep striving for, a worthy experiment to keep attempting, again and again, no matter the cost2.
We disagree on all counts: communism and socialism must be rejected in extenso. Communism is a rotten idea that failed because it had to fail. If “real” communism was never realized, then “luckily that had never happened”. The intermediate steps were bad enough already.
We are being sold this cartoon-version of communism as something maybe slightly less wealth-generating than capitalism, less consumerist, but more egalitarian, less stressful, with more happiness and solidarity, if not in past practice then certainly possible in theory. No excessive abundance, but concern for the environment (lie). No greed or needless riches, but peaceful stability and job security (all lies). If we adoped socialism, ok, sure, you couldn’t get the latest iPhone 17, maybe, but everyone would get a slightly slower iPhone 16 — not the dark reality of millions starving to death in the streets, or being worked to death in gulags, or sharing a collective apartment with twenty other people, with no phone at all, not a little bit poorer but a billion times poorer.
Communism and socialism are frauds, but not only that: they are fraudulent promises of something which itself is a fraud: worse than a simple fraud, communism is a sophisticated one, a fraud on at least four distinct levels.
Communism and socialism
But what is socialism?
[Socialism:] a policy which aims at constructing a society in which the means of production are socialized.
[Socialism:] not an alternative to capitalism; an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.
– Ludwig von Mises
Socialist regimes adopted a somewhat twisted version of Marx’s slogan:
Труд в СССР является обязанностью и делом чести каждого способного к труду гражданина по принципу: «кто не работает, тот не ест».
В СССР осуществляется принцип социализма: «от каждого по его способности, каждому - по его труду».
[ In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honor for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”
The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” ]
Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1936, Article 12
Forced to work and not allowed to leave the country or even, in the Soviet Union, the region: A new form of serfdom.
Si, en définitive, j’avais à trouver une formule générale pour exprimer ce que m’apparaît le socialisme dans son ensemble, je dirais que c’est une nouvelle formule de la servitude.
[ Were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it is simply a new system of serfdom. ]
– Tocqueville, Œuvres complètes, IX, p. 541 [ Tocqueville’s Critique of Socialism ], 1848
Marx himself, in the same spirit of “from each according to his ability”, demanded mandatory work for all:
- Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
– Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
A somewhat euphemistic translation really, the German original is clearer:
- Gleicher Arbeitszwang für alle, Errichtung industrieller Armeen, besonders für den Ackerbau.
– Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
Communism is defined here as the forced-labor-for-all alleged Marxist utopia (or dystopia, you decide) that communists strive to achieve. Socialism is the regime they establish in order to, supposedly, achieve it at some point.
Socialists wish to establish a socialist regime (in which the means of production are socialized), not necessarily with the aim of the communist utopia (or dystopia), when not simply a synonym for communists.
Social-democrats and “democratic socialists”(sometimes called simply “socialists” depending on the country and language), usually wish to establish a somewhat moderate, mixed-economy socialist regime (in which some of the means of production are socialized, not necessarily all of them), and do so through democratic means (and/or while maintaining an otherwise democratic regime), without establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, at least not immediately.3
Socialism is a double fraud
Hence, Nikita Khrushchev, member of a communist party, leader of a socialist state, could proclaim:
Исторические рамки проекта Программы – 20 лет. Почему мы остановились именно на этом сроке? В ходе обсуждения проекта Программы некоторые товарищи спрашивали: не слишком ли большое время отводится для осуществления этой задачи? Нет, товарищи. Для того, чтобы подготовить обще ство к принципам коммунизма, надо добиться гигантского раз вИтия производительных сил, создать изобилие материальных и духовных благ. А для этого нужно определенное время. Чаша коммунизма – это чаша изобилия, она всегда должна быть полна до красв. Каждый должен вносить в нее свой вклад и каждый из нее черпать. Было бы непоправимой ошибкой декретировать введение коммунизма, когда не со зрели все необходимые условия. Если бы мы объявили, что вводим коммунизм в условиях, когда чаша еще далеко не nолна, то пришлось бы черпать не по потребностям. Мы бы только скомпрометировали идеи коммунизма, подорвали ини циативу трудящихся и задержали движение к коммунизму. Мы руководствуемся строго научными расчетами. А расчеты показывают, что за 20 лет мы построим в основном коммунистическое общество. (Продолжительные аплодисменты).
[ The historical framework of the Program project is 20 years. Why did we stop at this time? During the discussion of the draft Program, some comrades asked: is not too much time allotted for the implementation of this task? No, comrades. In order to prepare society for the principles of communism, it is necessary to achieve a gigantic development of the productive forces, to create an abundance of material and spiritual goods. And this takes some time. The cup of communism is a cup of abundance, it must always be full to the brim. Everyone should contribute to it and everyone should draw from it. It would be an irreparable mistake to decree the introduction of communism when all the necessary conditions are not ripe. If we announced that we were introducing communism in conditions when the cup was still far from full, then we would have to draw on things that were not necessary. We would only compromise the ideas of communism, undermine the initiative of the working people and delay the movement towards communism. We are guided by strictly scientific calculations. And calculations show that in 20 years we will build a mostly communist society. (Prolonged applause.) ]
— Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1961
Communist-established socialism is not just a fraud, it’s a double fraud. Of course, by 1981, communism had not been achieved, and less than 10 years later the whole socialist system would collapse entirely under the weight of its own corruption and contradictions. That’s the first fraud. The second fraud is that the system it establishes in-between is itself horrible, not only because it goes nowhere towards achieving the communist goal, but in and of itself, as a dictatorship failing miserably at providing even basic economic needs while trampling on everyone’s basic human rights as well.
Whatever the flaws of capitalism or accusations against it, socialism replaces it with something much, much worse4, and promises communism without ever having the slightest hope of reaching it.
And what’s more, it is necessarily so. The fraud goes deep and socialism is fraudulent on all levels: practical and theoretical, philosophical and economic, the whole collectivist idea is a fraud whereas its destruction of Law should scare anyone with the slightest concern for human rights.
Communism was the regime for the privileged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man.
– Margaret Thatcher, The Path To Power
By 1968, even Czech communists (two months before the Soviet invasion) started to openly notice that socialism was a fraud: even the workers were much better off under capitalism! How could this be?5 The alleged communist utopia was such a far-away prospect that Czech comics even joked about it, despite censorship6.
Chavismo is what happens when socialism succeeds, not when it fails: repression, poverty, corruption, and looting by elites. The “promises to lift millions out of poverty” are a scam to take total power, then the real program is unveiled.
Communism is a quadruple fraud
La supériorité du capitalisme sur le communisme, c’est qu’il n’a pas été nécessaire de l’inventer.
[ The superiority of capitalism over communism is that it was not necessary to invent it. ]
– Coluche
Socialism is a double fraud, it never achieves communism, instead establishing a corrupt, inegalitarian system of exploitation much worse than capitalism. But what if it did? Well, communism itself wouldn’t work either, nor could it work or should work.
Sorry, communist “idealists”: your dream is not only a nightmare, but an impossible nightmare, an idiotic nightmare, a nightmare in which everything is a lie. It’s not a utopia, it’s a dystopia. To the socialist double fraud, it adds two more frauds, making it a quadruple one: it’s logically inconsistent, impossible to establish or to function in practice in any reasonable manner, and not a desirable or ethical system either.
The root issue are the concepts, or anti-concepts, of needs and abilities: who decides what is a need? Who measures what your ability is? Ayn Rand illustrated this very well with the Twentieth Century Motor Company, the one John Galt works for before quitting, where workers get together to decide who needs what instead of getting fixed wages and managing their own budget.
Voluntary communism is still bad
And note that Ayn Rand’s example in Atlas Shrugged was a voluntarily implemented “communism” in a private company, not the brutal, expropriating, genocidal Soviet one which she addressed in We The Living. Another example of such “voluntary communism” often mentioned is the kibbutz:
Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are part of a breed of socialists who argue that this time will be different. Socialism never failed, they insist: only the walls, barbed wire and jackboots did. So what they plan for Britain, while radical, is bound to work! True, it’s more radical than anything done in any European country today. Comparisons with Venezuela or Cuba or Soviet Russia are unfair, they say. [...] So in the kibbutz, as in everywhere with socialism, the problem was not that brutal means corrupted beautiful ends. It was that those ends were not compatible with human nature in the first place.
Johan Norberg, “The rise – and disastrous fall – of the kibbutz”, The Spectator, November 30, 2019
Being voluntary doesn’t make it escape the impossibility of interpersonal utility comparisons, nor the economic calculation problem identified by Ludwig von Mises a century ago. Nothing to do with voluntary nature or not; it’s just a system that cannot produce any sort of relevant, non-hierarchical human organization beyond a tiny, tight group, on a primitive level, for a short time before inevitable conflicts and inefficiencies arise. And no, families are not examples of working “communism,” just as charity or Christmas gifts aren’t: none of these models introduce the egalitarian needs-abilities based-model that communism implies, nor aim to define the whole of social organization.
Yes, libertarians will argue that being voluntary makes it not a crime and therefore acceptable — just as shooting yourself in the foot is not as bad as mass murder, except in this case children are involved and the life expectancy of billions of people is at stake.
Communism is perpetual poverty
For communism is also a hopelessly outdated model, devised for primitive subsistence societies, by silly communists with no knowledge, no imagination, no ambition for mankind:
Sowie nämlich die Arbeit verteilt zu werden anfängt, hat Jeder einen bestimmten ausschließlichen Kreis der Tätigkeit, der ihm aufgedrängt wird, aus dem er nicht heraus kann; er ist Jäger, Fischer oder Hirt oder kritischer Kritiker und muß es bleiben, wenn er nicht die Mittel zum Leben verlieren will - während in der kommunistischen Gesellschaft, wo Jeder nicht einen ausschließlichen Kreis der Tätigkeit hat, sondern sich in jedem beliebigen Zweige ausbilden kann, die Gesellschaft die allgemeine Produktion regelt und mir eben dadurch möglich macht, heute dies, morgen jenes zu tun, morgens zu jagen, nachmittags zu fischen, abends Viehzucht zu treiben, nach dem Essen zu kritisieren, wie ich gerade Lust habe, ohne je Jäger, Fischer, Hirt oder Kritiker zu werden.
[ For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. ]
– Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie [ The German Ideology ], 1845
Relevant here is that there’s a reason these primitive systems rejecting the specialization of labor never held for long: they can work in a tiny, close-knit community, for some time, producing specific basic, simple goods, such as the kibbutzim doing collective farming, but even that with very limited efficiency as we’ve seen. Collectivized farming in the Soviet Union was notoriously extremely inefficient.
In fact, not only was this already an absurd thing to say for Marx and Engels in the industrializing society of the mid-19th century, it wasn’t even true for the primitive societies of hunter-gatherers. Yes, even hunting or fishing requires specialized skills. Did Marx ever have a real job, any job?
And now, today, in the 21st century? Feeding billions of people by coordinating the actions of billions of individual actors with no relationship to each other? Doubling life expectancy from 40 in Marx’s time to 80 now (and we’re just getting started)? Producing high-tech innovation, highly-specific medical research or years-long investment and complex production involving hundreds of extremely specific, specialized products? Of course not.
I “need” an MRI today, let’s hope someone had the “ability” to invest millions in designing one twenty years ago? I “need” chocolate today, let’s hope someone on the other side of the world had the “ability” to plant cocoa 5 years ago, and someone else had the “ability” to design and operate a cargo ship to get it to me, etc, etc. See Leonard E. Read’s classic: “I, Pencil”. Only global capitalism can achieve that, and even discussing a communist alternative to a free market trading system coordinating the production of billions should be recognized as preposterous by now.
Communism has no redeeming qualities
Whether it’s called socialism or communism, whether it’s voluntary or not, it’s a fraud on multiple levels. There is no need to give those ideologies credit for anything when criticizing their deadly consequences. They should instead be rejected entirely and definitely thrown in the dustbin of history.
