Full Socialism vs. Full Stomachs

November 1, 2019 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Lord Acton famously noted that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

I need to develop something similar about socialism. Based on the statism spectrum, it could be something like “socialism deprives and absolute socialism deprives absolutely.”

In other words, the bigger the government, the worse the results.

And when the government controls everything, the consequences can be catastrophic. Horrifyingly catastrophic, as Marian Tupy explains.

America’s college-educated youth…are too young to remember the Cold War and few study history. It is, therefore, timely to remind the millennials of what socialism wrought – especially in some of the world’s poorest countries. Those of us who remember the early 1980s will always remember the images of starving Ethiopian children. …these were the innocent victims of the Derg – a group of Marxist militants who took over the Ethiopian government… Between 1983 and 1985, some 400,000 people starved to death. …in 1999, Robert Mugabe, the 92-year-old Marxist dictator who came to power in 1980, embarked on a catastrophic “land reform” program. The program saw the nationalization of privately-held farmland and the expulsion of non-African farmers and businessmen. The result was a collapse of agricultural output, the second highest hyperinflation in recorded history that peaked at 89.7 sextillion or 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 percent per year and an unemployment rate of 94 percent. Thousands of Zimbabweans died of hunger and disease despite massive international help.

It turns out that governments have played big roles in some of the worst famines in recent memory.

Benjamin Zycher’s table of the greatest famines of the 20th century. …six out of the 10 worst famines happened in socialist countries. Other famines, including those in Nigeria, Somalia and Bangladesh, were partly a result of war and partly a result of a government’s economic mismanagement.

Here’s a table with some of the grim totals. Unsurprisingly, Pol Pot’s Cambodia is at the top of the list.

In some cases, such as Cambodia and Ukraine, starvation was a policy choice by evil communist governments (are there any other kinds?).

In other cases, the total state control of economic life produced famine as a byproduct.
In either case, Marian has a suggestion for some of today’s vapid millennials

Wherever it has been tried, from the Soviet Union in 1917 to Venezuela in 2015, socialism has failed. Socialists have promised a utopia marked by equality and abundance. Instead, they have delivered tyranny and starvation. Young Americans should keep that in mind.

And if they forget, here’s an excellent cartoon from Pat Cross that may be easier to remember (h/t: Mark Perry).

P.S. The table looks at starvation in the 20th century. Let’s not forget that people currently are dying of malnutrition in the socialist hellhole of Venezuela (the lucky ones raid zoos and eat household pets for food).