Daniel Sutter: A birthday of note
May 5th was the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, the economist who devised socialism. Last November was the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the first attempt to implement Marx’s ideas. During the 20th Century, millions of revolutionaries fought for communism, and today polls show that perhaps half of Millennials identify as socialists. What is the enduring appeal of Marx’s ideas? I think this is best seen in his famous slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This sentiment is quite reasonable, and is how healthy families operate: parents support their young children, and then children care for aging parents. But is it a good way to organize society? Society is thousands of times more complicated, and extends far beyond familial bounds. Questions immediately arise: Who determines need and ability? How much must the able contribute? And, How much will the needy receive? A socialist government answers these questions. Consequently, socialism must intrude on individuals. Determining whether an operation is truly necessary or if diet and exercise could suffice, for example, requires a medical and personal history. Must a would-be artist become an engineer because a test revealed their aptitude and society needs engineers? Such details make Marx’s slogan seem less appealing. Another tension emerges when people fail to live up to Marx’s slogan. A person with great ability, for example, would have to contribute more, with rewards based only on their need. Working 80 or 100 hours a week as a doctor for the same standard of living as a person working 40 hours a week might not seem like a great deal. Historian Robert Conquest in his book Harvest of Sorrow about famine in Ukraine under Stalin describes what happens when people fail the doctrine. Communist party officials, angry when output fell with the collectivization of agriculture, blamed wealthy farmers, known as kulaks, for hoarding and wrecking collectivization. With the power of government at their disposal, anger toward the kulaks turned violent. Many nations adopting communism experienced mass state-sponsored violence. The Victims of Communism Foundation memorializes the more than 100 million victims of these regimes. The vast majority of these deaths were due to power-hungry leaders; socialism was tried to varying degrees in Britain, France, and India without government murder. But violence against persons seen as thwarting a noble plan can easily be justified as a means to an end. Another famous economist, Adam Smith, offered a different take on society. Smith understood the power of voluntary cooperation through markets and observed, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard of their own interest.” Markets harness self-interest to serve peoples’ needs. Many consider Smith’s vision as morally inferior to Marx’s, perhaps because it relies on self-interest instead of sacrifice. This, I think, is unfortunate. Viewing other people as means to our own ends has, unfortunately, been far too common in human history. The Pharaohs of Egypt built the pyramids using other humans as slaves, showing them as much respect as the stones used in construction. Government planners, Professor Smith noted, often view people as just pieces to be moved around a chess board at will. Markets make people deal with others voluntarily. We cannot treat the butcher, brewer, or baker as means to our ends. Instead, we must recognize them as humans, and offer them something they value for their assistance. Self-interest has proven a more effective basis for organizing an economy than sacrifice. Economic freedom in England and the Netherlands enabled the Industrial Revolution and modern prosperity. When people stop enslaving each other, we unleash the unbelievable power of mutual self-interest. Communist nations, by contrast, stagnated; China’s economic takeoff occurred with the introduction of private property. Socialism is making a comeback. Organizing the economy to meet peoples’ needs seems noble and wise. Humanity’s needs, however, can be more successfully and sustainably met through voluntary agreement among people. ••• Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and host of Econversations on TrojanVision. The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Troy University.
Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who defied U.S. for 50 years, dies at 90
Former President Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 U.S. presidents during his half-century rule, has died at age 90. With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at 10:29 p.m. Friday. He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: “Toward victory, always!” Castro’s reign over the island-nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Florida was marked by the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling U.S. trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died 10 years after ill health forced him to hand power over to Raul. Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, at age 32, the youngest leader in Latin America. For decades, he served as an inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa. His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastrointestinal ailment forced him to hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and then permanently. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped. “Socialism or death” remained Castro’s rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving this island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity. He survived long enough to see Raul Castro negotiate an opening with U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 17, 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence. Obama made a historic visit to Havana in March 2016. Carlos Rodriguez, 15, was sitting in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood when he heard that Fidel Castro had died. “Fidel? Fidel?” he said, slapping his head in shock. “That’s not what I was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn’t seem true.” “It’s a tragedy,” said 22-year-old nurse Dayan Montalvo. “We all grew up with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard.” Fidel Castro Ruz was born Aug. 13, 1926, in eastern Cuba’s sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father worked first recruiting labor for U.S. sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own. Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed and Fidel and his brother Raul went to prison. Fidel turned his trial defense into a manifesto that he smuggled out of jail, famously declaring, “History will absolve me.” Freed under a pardon, Castro fled to Mexico and organized a rebel band that returned in 1956, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba on a yacht named Granma. After losing most of his group in a bungled landing, he rallied support in Cuba’s eastern Sierra Maestra mountains. Three years later, tens of thousands spilled into the streets of Havana to celebrate Batista’s downfall and catch a glimpse of Castro as his rebel caravan arrived in the capital on Jan. 8, 1959. The U.S. was among the first to formally recognize his government, cautiously trusting Castro’s early assurances he merely wanted to restore democracy, not install socialism. Within months, Castro was imposing radical economic reforms. Members of the old government went before summary courts, and at least 582 were shot by firing squads over two years. Independent newspapers were closed and in the early years, homosexuals were herded into camps for “re-education.” In 1964, Castro acknowledged holding 15,000 political prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled, including Castro’s daughter Alina Fernandez Revuelta and his younger sister Juana. Still, the revolution thrilled millions in Cuba and across Latin America who saw it as an example of how the seemingly arrogant Yankees could be defied. And many on the island were happy to see the seizure of property of the landed class, the expulsion of American gangsters and the closure of their casinos. Castro’s speeches, lasting up to six hours, became the soundtrack of Cuban life and his 269-minute speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 1960 set the world body’s record for length that still stood more than five decades later. As Castro moved into the Soviet bloc, Washington began working to oust him, cutting U.S. purchases of sugar, the island’s economic mainstay. Castro, in turn, confiscated $1 billion in U.S. assets. The American government imposed a trade embargo, banning virtually all U.S. exports to the island except for food and medicine, and it severed diplomatic ties on Jan. 3, 1961. On April 16 of that year, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist, and the next day, about 1,400 Cuban exiles stormed the beach at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s south coast. But the CIA-backed invasion failed. The debacle forced the U.S. to give up on the idea of invading Cuba, but that didn’t stop Washington and Castro’s exiled enemies from trying to do him in. By Cuban count, he was the target of more than 630 assassination plots by militant Cuban exiles or the U.S. government. The biggest crisis of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow exploded on Oct. 22, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and imposed a naval blockade of the island. Humankind held its
