English: A communist star (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By J.T. Young
Once its biggest self-celebration, May Day now signals Mayday for global communism. Just a half century ago, it seemed irrepressible, now communism is just reprehensible, with the relevance of a renaissance festival. Ironically, it is the Left who most want to forget... before the lesson behind communism's demise can be more broadly applied.
In the 1960s, the whole world seemed to be going communist. It held half of Europe, much of Africa, almost all of Asia, and seemingly the entire world's intelligentsia. Only "benighted" pockets held out. Fifty years later, the situation has reversed - now communism is closeted away.
Save for a crackpot dictator in North Korea and a mid-twentieth century relic in Cuba, there are few places unabashedly embracing its doctrines. While it still holds nominal title to the world's largest country, it does so only in blatant self-contradiction. China's communist rulers have held onto the government, but only by letting go of the economy. And where communism and capitalism exist side-by-side, there is no longer a question which will win.
Where once world domination was its avowed goal, now isolation from the world is its only hope. Cuba is literally an island and North Korea a figurative one. Where once it grabbed headlines from illusory accomplishments, it now takes a petty tyrant's saber-rattling tantrums to garner attention.
For communists, it was not supposed to be thus. Communism imagined and sold itself as the apogee of economic development. In Khrushchev's words, they were going to "bury" us. According to Marx's theory, communism was supposed to arise from capitalism's insurmountable contradictions and be their inevitable resolution - the highest and final state of economic development.
Yet the reverse of Marxist theory has played out in world history. Communism, where it has been installed, has been in the least developed nations - seized upon in mistaken hope that it would yield the growth they lacked. Instead, it only retarded what little they had.
Far from resolving conflicts, it owes its existence to them. It has never been peacefully embraced, but always imposed. Communists have adapted their theories to justify this as the necessity of stamping out capitalism's vestiges. Yet oppression has never gone away - even after claiming capitalism's demise.
Oppression never left because it never could - precisely because communism seeks to enforce an inefficient economic model. It can only survive by suppressing the contradiction. It survives only as long as its suppression continues and its inherited resources hold out. The quintessential caricature of the corrupt capitalist - the lazy scion of inherited wealth, dissipated in undeserved opulence - is actually the real picture of the communist state.
If it is fortunate enough to rule over resources, it uses (and abuses) them, for a time, to sustain itself. But when these are gone, and they always are alarmingly quickly, communism crashes with them.
The reason is simple: Communism cannot create wealth in a sustainable manner. While capitalism invigorates, communism enervates. This is why it not only cannot have capitalism within it - because the contrast is too great and too obvious - but even contiguous to it. In both cases, communism's victims will seek to escape from it. Within communism, they will patronize the pockets of capitalism. Outside its borders, they will run to it.
It is noteworthy and telling that never in numbers have people sought to escape capitalism for communism. The misguided few who have, almost invariably soon sought to leave. Those who stayed found themselves literally trapped or effectively so - by being such pariahs in the broader world that they had nowhere else to go.
Today, not satisfied with having destroyed its avowed enemy, capitalism continues to outflank those who believe they can harness it for statist purposes. The welfare states, which thought they could take possession of increasing amounts of capitalism's generated wealth and redistribute it more effectively and efficiently, now find themselves on the road to bankruptcy.
Once again, if not trapped, capital and capitalist alike flee, now having an entire world in which to seek refuge.
These lessons now are so apparent as to be inarguable. For this reason, today's Left would prefer the topic dropped entirely. The Left, who once embraced, would like it to be relegated to history as soon and as quietly as possible. They would because they want the broader implications of capitalism's victory to be equally unseen.
Mankind's laws are subject to the state that enforces them. The laws of economics are not - any more than are the laws of gravity. Newton could equally well have sought to affix his fallen apple to the tree. Only with progressively greater effort can the laws of gravity or economics be prevented from exerting themselves. Even when successful, the laws are not overcome, just denied - the negation is only temporary and the defeat, inevitable.
But even 25 years ago, the Left still were debating and imagining they were winning - long after communism's citizens knew the truth, the West's intellectuals did not. With them and communism's rotten remnants, Reagan and Thatcher debated. And more importantly, stood firm.
They did so because they knew they were right. To both, the question was not if they would win, but when. Unquestionably they accelerated communism's downfall - mercifully shortening the misery of millions. However, they did not cause it. Communism itself, and capitalism, caused it. Reagan and Thatcher would say no less.
This truth applies well beyond communism's collapse. The further we go from capitalism, the sooner we come to economic failure. Begun at communism's center, now like widening ripples, it moves out in waves. The effects of contradicting capitalism can be muted, but they cannot be eliminated.
There is a positive message to take away from communism's slavery. Communism and the attempts to restrict capitalism are bound to fail. It will come sooner or later, but come it will. As evidence just recall: On May 1, the communists used to sing The Internationale, today they sound the international distress signal: Mayday.
Young served in the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and as a congressional staff member from 1987 to 2000.
