Year: 2011

On the surface, three stories in today’s New York Times seem completely unrelated, but all reflect the underlying theme of our epoch: the politics of selfishness.  In each story, someone or some group acts in its own selfish best interests, disregarding the interests of the nation. 

Let’s start with the simplest example of selfishly acting in one’s own interest: “N.R.A. Sues Over Bulk Gun Sales Rule.” The beginning of the first paragraph says it all: “The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a new federal regulation requiring gun merchants along the border with Mexico to report bulk sales of certain semiautomatic rifles…” The NRA calls it “a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to pursue their gun control agenda…”

Obviously, it’s in the best interests of the NRA and the two gun dealers it represents in its lawsuit to be able to sell as many guns as they like to whomever they like with no restraints whatsoever.  But the greater security of the United States and our neighboring ally Mexico is at stake.  The Obama Administration is trying to stop drug cartels from loading up on weapons for their wars against each other, the police and innocent victims.  The sales that the Obama Administration is trying to prevent shouldn’t be made, and the NRA knows it.  But they are too selfish to care.

Moving on now to a story on the Times front page symbolizing the last shoe dropping in a national rip-off of historic dimensions. This time, the headline conveys the essence of the story: “Even Marked-up, Luxury Goods Fly Off Shelves.”  In this article, we learn that the rich “are again buying designer clothing, luxury cars and about anything that catches their fancy. Luxury goods stores, which fared much worse than other retailers in the recession, are more than recovering — they are zooming.”

The article focuses on luxury shoes, one pair costing $2,495, up from $1,575 in 2008.  I understand that a good custom-made pair made of shoes for a diabetic or someone with foot abnormalities can cost $500 or $600.  But when the cost of footwear exceeds $2,000, much if not most of the cost comes from the perceived added value, aka the sizzle— the brand name, sense of exclusivity, treatment by the sales staff.

And where are the ultra-wealthy getting the extra bucks to spend on these frivolities?  It’s from the low tax rates on their incomes and wealth, which have increased the federal deficit and impeded job creation since they were enacted in the Bush II years. 

The way the wealthy got their most recent infusion of extra cash reminds me of an old soft-shoe dance routine.  The first shoes on the ground were the cuts to federal spending at the beginning of the year and the Republicans’ recent price for raising the debt ceiling.  The final step is this giddy spending binge described in the Times. 

Studies show that tax policy has led to a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class over the last 30 years.  Other studies show that nations decline when wealth is transferred up the economic ladder.  Surveys show that the will of the people is to raise taxes on the wealthy and continue and grow government job-creation and social safety net programs.  But these facts mean nothing to the ultra-wealthy and their many elected factotums.  Again, they’re just too selfish to care.

Speaking of factotums, what do you think of the good little soldier Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta balking at cuts to our bloated military budget?  Again, let’s let the Times article, titled “Pentagon Sounds Alarm on Threat of Budget Cuts,” tell the story: “Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and top Pentagon officials said that large cuts to the Pentagon budget — which has more than doubled since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — would imperil the nation’s security.” With Osama bin Laden out of the way and no really large or powerful enemy at hand (except perhaps North Korea and our own ally, Pakistan), do we really need to be spending twice as much as before 9/11?  These numbers, by the way, don’t include any of the trillions of dollars that we have diddled away fighting goalless and useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Panetta is a long-time Democratic operative who goes where he’s needed.  His past positions have included Head of the CIA and White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton.  Surely he knows that federal government spending created the Clinton boom years and a budget surplus (before the housing bubble).  And where did the Clinton Administration get the money?  It came from raising income taxes and cutting defense budgets.  It was called the “peace dividend,” and it worked.

Panetta knows these facts, but instead of acting in the country’s best interest, he protects his turf and the military contracts of private companies that spend millions of dollars a year in lobbying and contributing to the campaigns of elected officials.  Panetta, the Defense Department and the contractors collectively pursue their own best interests, no matter what it means to the country they are supposed to be protecting.

The commonly stated theory behind the almost criminally selfish acts described in these articles is that if everyone in society seeks his or her own best interests, society as a whole will thrive.  This bunk is a misunderstanding of out-of-context statements by the Scottish 18th century economist Adam Smith, but it justifies the predatory behavior of the wealthy and the powerful.  And it won’t stop until we stop electing politicians that place the interests of the wealthy above those of the other 95% of us.

For those looking for actions of their own to stem this tide of selfishness, I suggest that you do not support any official who does not explicitly advocate raising income taxes on those earning more than $250,000 and on most capital gains.  We should also be insisting that candidates support moves that strengthen unions and public schools, rebuild our infrastructure of roads and invest in alternative fuel technologies and mass transit.  But at this point, raising taxes on the wealthy has to be the litmus test.

Congress has now passed and the President signed the anti-growth, anti-jobs program that resulted from Republicans blackmailing the country about raising the debt ceiling.  And lo and behold!—the stock market tumbles and the rumblings about losing our Triple A credit rating increase.  Do you think maybe large institutional investors know a little something about the impact on any economy of reduced government spending?

Now here comes the happy face crowd to tell us that it won’t be such a big deal if the U.S. bond rating deteriorates a little.  So far, most of the stories diminishing the impact of a lower rating say that interest rates will only go up a little bit.  As usual, the New York Times is leading the mainstream news media, with an article by Eric Dash on the first page of today’s business section titled “AAA Rating Is a Rarity in Business.”

The premise of the Times article is that most businesses don’t have AAA ratings and they get along just fine.  Paying the slightly higher interest rate of a slightly lower credit rating opens up new business opportunities for the companies.  The article quotes the analogy of a senior bond manager from a company that sells bonds: “It’s like going from a Rolls Royce to a Mercedes—not from a Rolls Royce to a Yugo.”  The article goes so far as to claim that many companies see the gold-plated AAA rating as a “financial straightjacket,” because maintaining it means they have less access to funds.

The failure of logic in the salesman’s analogy and Dash’s broader article is to compare a government to a business.  First of all, a business can cease to operate, but if a government ceases to operate for any other reason than annexation by another government, then anarchy soon ensues: no security force, no emergency services, no judicial system, no infrastructure repair. 

Furthermore, no business has the size of the United States economy and no business represents so large a share of the world’s economy.  It’s not even close.  When a company sees its credit rating drop a little, it pays slightly higher interest rates, which means goods and services for which it borrows money cost more.  But when the interest rates rise on a country’s bonds, every one of the country’s businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals borrowing money will find themselves paying more.  Because most businesses borrow for cash flow or capital needs, the prices that consumers pay for goods and services go up.  Even a quarter of a percentage point boost in government bonds can constrain an economy.

As illogical as the happy face argument about losing the AAA rating is, another comparison Dash makes in the Times version of this canard is odious:

“Just as many consumers relied on their credit cards to finance a higher standard of living, companies took on more debt to reap bigger returns.”

As an anti Dom Irrera might say, he means it in a good way.  To support the idea that lowering your credit rating leads to good things for countries as well as companies, Dash invokes the idea of consumers living and spending beyond their means.  Haven’t many consumers faced hard times these past few years because they spent beyond their means with money they borrowed on severely overvalued houses?  A good business borrows for one of two reasons only: 1) To invest in expansion, product development and renovation; 2) To meet short-term cash flow needs.  The analogy for consumers is to borrow for education.  The business equivalent of “spending beyond your means” is to borrow money to pay key executives more money.  We all know some big companies did that and still do, but we wouldn’t consider it a good business practice. 

What I find so objectionable is to advocate that it’s okay for people to finance their high life with debt.  It makes sense, though, that in a Pollyannaish and Panglossian article about the possibility of the United States losing its status as the very least risky investment in recorded history, the writer would find space for a subtle reminder that taking on debt to consume is a good thing.  After all, in our society the primary goal in life and path to happiness is to spend, spend, spend, spend!!

Consider these numbers:

• Approximately 2,225 people killed a day on average: That’s the number Stalin killed if we accept Robert Conquest’s high estimate of 20 million total Stalin victims over his rule of approximately 25 years.
• Approximately 6,000 people killed per day on average: That’s the number we get if we accept Timothy Snyder’s estimate of the number of people the Nazis slaughtered and arbitrarily say that it all occurred during World War II (which raises the average per day).
• Approximately 30,000 a day: That’s the number of people who died in Mao’s Great Famine, caused by the Great Leap Forward, between 1958 and 1961 if we take the high estimate of 32 million; the low estimate, by the way, is 18 million.

Two more numbers: One act on one day—the dropping of a rudimentary atom bomb— killed 140,000 at Hiroshima.  Three days later, another atom bomb killed 80,000 at Nagasaki.  Virtually all the victims were civilians: children, mothers, elementary school teachers, factory workers, hair stylists, florists, senior citizens.

It’s both horrifying and shameful to contemplate that “the land of the free” debased itself by magnifying the barbarism of Hitler, Stalin and Mao in two one-day orgies of mass killing. 

I was reminded of what I believe are the two most shameful moments in recorded human history when I saw “Hiroshima Ground Zero 1945,” an exhibit now showing at the International Photography Center in midtown Manhattan.  The exhibit displays some of the 1,100 photographs that the U.S. government had 7 photographers take of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the war.  The government ordered the photos as visual evidence for a report on the impact of atomic bombing and the changes to buildings and civil defense procedures needed to prepare for a future attack. 

In the exhibit we see only destroyed infrastructure: schools, homes, factories.  But each photo seems to whisper the pain of the dead and injured.  The collective impact of these lifeless photos reminds us that certain acts are so horrific that the act itself puts those who committed it in the wrong, no matter how just the cause or rational the reason.

Those who try to justify the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki argue that more Americans would have died winding down the war if we had pursued more conventional options. Their argument falls apart, though, when you consider that the Japanese were already pressing for surrender and remember that at the time the U.S. was engaged in a massive program of conventional bombing of the island nation.

The trump card in the debate is the inhumane nature of the act itself.  Even if we were to believe that the U.S. government was not fully aware of the destructive power of the atom bomb before Hiroshima, they certainly knew of it immediately afterwards and should have stopped any plans for Nagasaki.  As many historians have noted, the real reason to drop the bombs was to show the Soviet communists that we had the power to level their country.  For these somewhat suspect geopolitical ends, we as a nation resorted to savage butchery of our fellow human beings.

The construction and deployment of the atom bombs involved many people, but only one man made the decision to drop them, and that was President Harry S. Truman.  By doing so, he should have guaranteed himself a dishonored place along side Hitler, Stalin and Mao as one of the worst villains in history.  Instead, he is generally rated as one of our greatest presidents.  For example, among 17 recent surveys, Truman rates on average as the 7th greatest U.S. president.  But I rank him dead last, by virtue of his decision to use the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and then continue to develop even more vicious weapons during peacetime.

In a few days we are going to celebrate the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.  There are many things we can do to commemorate the day.  We can attend a rally, sign a petition to dismantle all nuclear weapons, contribute to organizations lobbying to end nuclear weapons and write our elected officials about the issue.  But let’s not forget to curse Harry Truman for defiling our country with the sin of mass murder and making a mockery of our public ideals. 

And let’s also not forget to feel a personal sense of shame.  Even if most of us were not alive at the time, it is still our country and our history, and that makes it our moral responsibility to remember and to ask the rest of the world for forgiveness.

As our befuddled and recalcitrant Congress and President move us ever closer to the abyss of default, we are beginning to hear the Administration’s payment plan if the debt ceiling is not raised by next Tuesday, August 2. 

All we know for sure as of this writing is that the Administration plans to pay bondholders before everyone else.  The mainstream news media is assuring us that no matter who does not get paid—employees, social security recipients, contractors—that that bond holders must be paid off. 

To be sure, if we don’t pay foreign holders of our debt such as the Chinese government, we will ruin our financial rating, interest rates will soar and our reputation across the globe will take the kind of hit associated with starting useless wars, as what happened in 2003 when we invaded Iraq for no real reason.

We need to keep in mind that one of the biggest holders of U.S. debt is the Social Security Trust Fund.  In a sense, the Trust fund holds bonds collectively for everyone who pays Social Security taxes, and not to pay this debt is no different from reneging on interest and principal payments on T-bills.  Besides putting millions of senior citizens at risk, not paying or postponing Social Security payments will likely have the same impact on credit ratings, interest rates and world markets, plus foment social unrest at home.

From the reports I’ve read, the Administration seems to be using a blunt instrument to chisel out a plan.  Perhaps it should consider taking a more surgical approach by not looking at classes of creditors, but instead going into each class and making rational priorities.  For example, some bondholders are foreign persons or entities and others are American.

Here then is my modest proposal for disbursing what government funds we will have available is the debt ceiling is not raised.  It’s going to be easier to list who should not be paid:

• Do not pay the salaries of any federal government employee who makes more than $125,000 per year (or drop it to $100,000). 
• Do not pay the salaries or benefits of any elected U.S. official, including president, vice president, congressional representatives and senators.
• Do not pay any military contractor, but continue paying the salaries of soldiers (making less than $125,000 or $100,000).
• Do not pay the interest or principal to any American citizen or company that holds bonds, or to any foreign entity that is controlled by Americans.  The idea here is that foreign creditors must take precedence to limit the damage to both the U.S. economy and global economy.
• Do not pay agricultural subsidies.

This plan won’t stop the inevitable stock market plunge, and it won’t stop the leap in interest rates that’s going to occur.  But I think it will limit the human damage, and make sure that those who suffer the most are the ones who have been taking the most out of the system. 

Whatever the plan, not paying our obligations will plunge our economy into a death spiral that will be hard to stop or contain.  But Congress can’t seem to focus on that likely outcome, which should override any ideological imperative.

At this point, our best hope is that our President summons up the courage to declare a state of emergency and unilaterally raise the debt ceiling to a level that postpones the next debt ceiling crisis until after the election.  

As reported in today’s New York Times, we now have three plans to reduce the deficit as a condition of raising the debt ceiling: 1) The McConnell-Reid Outline; 2) “Gang of 6” Plan; and 3) The Tea Party Plan (AKA “cut, cap and balance.”).  

These three plans present us with the quintessential American consumer decision—choosing between three things that are the same thing. 

Think of having to choose between Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Burger King for dinner.  Think of that monumental decision between two cola-flavored, sugar-enhanced carbonated drinks, Coke or Pepsi.  Or think of the rows of souvenir and gift shops at destination malls that all sell the same mugs, little statues and tee-shirts that say, “I went to ___ and all I got was this ___ tee-shirt.”   Or try differentiating between the offerings of two Big Box stores that sell the same items.  Our selections in these cases typically come down to elements not central to the food or nutritional experience—branding, colors, location, family traditions, attraction to a jingle or to a commercialized character.  But the products are essentially the same.

In the same way, all of these deficit-reducing plans depend too much on cutting the budget and all minimize or neglect our pressing need to increase taxes.  None of these plans focus on creating jobs or building the economy.  None do a thing to stem the tide towards a nation of increasing wealth polarization.  One of the primary reasons that our wealthiest people now have a greater share of the entire wealth and salary pie than 30 years ago and everyone else has less is that we have suffered under a consistent regime of low taxes on the wealthy and the curtailment of government services and investment.  None of these plans change that trend.

But among the three plans, you can find minor differences that pundits and politicians can use to say that one or another is more left-leaning and another (the Tea Party plan) is more right-wing.  Thus, by selecting one plan or a combination of aspects of all three plans, we can say that:

1. We have made a real choice
2. We have achieved a compromise
3. Everyone is moving towards the center.

But it’s all Orwellian constructs that mask the real truth: The decision will have been between three right-wing plans, none of which represents the will of the people to raise taxes on the wealthy and protect seniors and the unemployed (as reflected in numerous recent surveys).  

Do you want your Model T in blue or in green?

Imagine, if you will, leftists and rightists in a tug of war match.  The goal of tug of war is to pull your opponents over a line. You pull one way and the other side pulls the other way.  The line never moves.  But if you were to move the line, you would move the territory over which the match is fought.  What politicians, think tanks, policy groups and the news media have done over the past three decades is slowly but inexorably nudge the line ever more rightward.

Our leaders should offer us real choices instead of the equivalent of three versions of calorie-laden greasy hamburger covered in artificial goop with a side of greasy fries.

Of course, the farcical part of this debate over deficit-reduction programs is the very fact that it’s linked to raising the debt ceiling.  It’s as if we have an immediate need for a glass of water or to find a restroom, and someone is making us spend precious time deciding between burger joints for lunch.

It must be “Get Michele Bachmann” Week, what with the succession of rumors, innuendos and news swirling about her over the past few days, including:

• She believes that black farmers against whom the U.S. government practiced discrimination do not deserve compensatory payments.
• Her husband’s Christian counseling clinics have therapies that try to “straighten out” gays.
• People on her staff pushed around a reporter who was asking Michele tough questions.
• She has debilitating migraine headaches
• Her husband may be a closeted gay.

Someone or some group is clearly out to dampen the head of steam that Bachmann has built up in the early campaign for the Republican nomination for President.

The list I put together above is a kind of SAT question, because one of the items does not belong.  The common element among the others is that they all matter to an evaluation of Bachmann’s credentials as a candidate.

It’s the migraines that do not matter, and should never have been mentioned by responsible reporters.  What is particularly despicable about bringing up this minor health issue is that so much of the news media carried the story without attribution or source.

But yes, it matters that Bachmann is against righting an illegal policy of discrimination.  And yes it matters that her husband runs what is essentially an anti-gay program, because it reflects her own oft-stated antipathy towards GLBT persons.  And it matters (but maybe less than one might think) if she is using the same kind of goon tactics to enforce discipline at her rallies that Bush II used in 2000 and 2008 (and which I know for a fact that Robert Kennedy used in primary campaigns in 1968).

And because she and her husband are so publicly outspoken against gays and gay marriage, the fact that hubby may be a secret same-sexer is pertinent.  Let me be clear: I see nothing wrong with Mr. Bachmann being gay, nor with the Bachmanns’ hiding his sexual orientation while Mrs. B runs for office.  There is nothing wrong with private hypocrisy.  What I object to is their hurtful public hypocrisy. 

Of course, that is, if Marcus Bachmann really does have a sexual attraction to men.

So far, all the articles about Mr. B’s sexual proclivities focus on three things:

• His apparent gay mannerisms, e.g., his vocal intonations, how he walks and how he dances.
• The bantering by comedians John Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld about Mr. B’s possible gayness a week ago on Stewart’s show.
• References to something called “gaydar,” which is a neologism of gay and radar and describes someone’s ability to sense if someone else is or is not gay.

In other words, no one has come out of the closet to say he is or was Marcus Bachmann’s secret lover.  Mr. B has not been caught with a wide stance or soliciting anyone.  There is no record of gay porno on his smart phone or laptop. 

All the news media are doing are repeating unfounded Twitter and Internet rumors and jokes from a late-night TV show.  The editors and publishers of the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Daily Beast and other mainstream news media covering these rumors should be ashamed of themselves.  If any evidence emerges, by all means the Bachmanns’ past statements make hubby’s sexual orientation fair game.  But without evidence, just shut up!!

Make no mistake about it, Bachmann must be stopped: Not only is she unqualified, but she is a known liar.  Her policies would take even more from the poor and middle class to give to the wealthy, while dismantling social and civil freedoms that we Americans sometimes take for granted. 

But if we stop her by lying about her we stoop to her level and debase ourselves the same way that we as a country were debased when the Bush II administration stooped to the level of the terrorists by implementing a worldwide campaign of torture.

Hallelujah!  Finally some very good news: the Institute of Medicine, which advises the U.S. government on health issues, has recommended that healthcare plans provide contraception free to women, including the accident-erasing Plan B pill.  

The news should cheer three groups: women in general, those who oppose abortions and those who want to lower healthcare costs.

The figures cited by the study tell the whole story: Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and about 40 percent of unintended pregnancies end in abortion.  The study concludes that greater use of contraception would reduce the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion.  

The Family Research Council, a Christian conservative lobbying group, immediately came out against the idea of mandating free birth-control coverage.  Its reasoning exudes the politics of selfishness: people who don’t support contraception shouldn’t have to subsidize its use by others.  

But don’t people who believe in negative population growth have to subsidize those with large families? And don’t nonsmokers subsidize smokers?  Don’t physically fit people subsidize the obese?  The decision to have a lot of kids, smoke cigarettes or eat your way into obesity are lifestyle and values decisions the medical costs of which are socialized.  Why should it be any different when it comes to contraception for women? And if you don’t think the decision not to get pregnant isn’t a medical matter, then spend some time in a maternity ward.

You can’t have health insurance without one group subsidizing another.  That’s what health insurance is about: the collectivization of risk to insure that everyone in the group gets what they need. 

One of the most important unknown trends in health care coverage in the recent past revisits one of Ben Franklin’s favorite expressions: “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  Insurers have been slowly making preventive care entirely free, with neither co-pay nor co-insurance.  The idea is that annual physicals, pap smears and mammograms enable physicians to catch ailments early and to counsel patients on lifestyle changes.  Offering free-of-charge birth control falls into the same category, because it prevents unwanted pregnancies and abortions, both of which cost the medical system much more and endanger women more than condoms, diaphragms or pills.

Let’s remember that the Institute for Medicine is not recommending that we require women to use contraceptives, only to make them more affordable. 

With one simple change to health insurance plans, then, we can give women more freedom to control their lives and their bodies; please groups who oppose abortion by cutting the numbers of this legal procedure significantly; and help to reduce future healthcare costs. 

It sounds like a win-win-win for everyone, except for those who want to regulate the sex lives of others for moral reasons (and those few illogical souls who equate contraception with abortion).  Fortunately for all of us, though, we live in an open society in which sexual matters are not—or at least should not be—subject to government interference except to protect the young or to prevent violence or coercion.

My writing mind wants to escape for a little bit from the farcical circus in Washington, as our elected officials play chicken with our debt-fueled economy.  So come with me to the more refined world of historical assessment.

I read a lot of history, and one trend I have noticed since the turn of the century is the move towards considering Stalin to have been as bad as Hitler.  Writers of history as varied as Lubomyr Luciuk, Timothy Snyder, Adam Hochschild, Anne Applebaum and Miron Dolot all build the case against Stalin by illuminating the vast numbers that he had killed, executed by starvation, worked to death, tortured and imprisoned over 30 years.  Robert Conquest, a British academic historian, puts the estimate of total Stalin victims at 20 million; Timothy Snyder says Hitler killed 12 million, tops, but says that’s more than Stalin killed.  On the anecdotal side, I had a brief conversation on the subject with two of my many well-read friends recently, and both thought Stalin was at least as bad as Hitler.

This post is definitely not about rehabilitating Stalin’s reputation.  An attempt to decide whether Stalin or Hitler was a criminal of a higher, more horrific magnitude is the ghoulish equivalent of arguing about whether Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays was a better baseball player.

What I want to do is make another comparison that may put a different light on the bloody history of the past century: I want to compare Stalin to the British Empire.  I’m going to steal the argument from Chris Harman, specifically pages 477-478 of his A People’s History of the World, which Howard Zinn said does for world history what Zinn himself did for U.S. history in A People’s History of the United States: give the story of the people, not of the ruling elite.

Here are the similarities that Harman finds between how Stalin used murder and terror to advance the Soviet economy in imitation of what the British did over a timeframe lasting some 250 years; some of the examples are mine:

• The British industrial system drove peasants from the land through enclosing it and clearing them off, thus freeing large landowners to collect more property; Stalin smashed peasant control of the land through “collectivization.”
• British capitalism accumulated wealth through slavery; Stalin herded millions of people into slave camps.
• Britain pillaged Ireland, India and Africa; Stalin deported entire peoples thousands of miles and committed genocide against the Ukrainians.
• The British industrial revolution denied workers the most elementary rights and made people work 14-16 hours a day; Stalin abolished independent unions and shot down strikers.

In theory, then, the only difference between Stalin and the Brits is that it took Britain 250 or more years to become a fully industrialized nation (or as Harman states, “complete its primitive accumulation”), whereas Stalin did it in two decades.  The “brutality and barbarity was more concentrated,” as Harman puts it.

But what about the body count? How could the land of celebrity princesses and the Beatles have killed as many people as that butcher Stalin?  We start our British body count with the 3 million who died in the Bengal famine of 1943, caused by British war-time policies and the 10 million Africans that the British enslaved and brought to the new world before 1820.  We haven’t even mentioned oppression of its own peasants and striking workers, the little nastiness in Ireland, its 19th century version of the Afghanistan War, the opium wars and trade in China, and the 150-year Raj regime in the Indian subcontinent.

We could be so bold as to ask: what reflects more poorly on mankind—a nation succumbing to a totalitarian nutcase for 30 years or generations of a ruling elite committing and condoning atrocities for more than two and a half centuries?  This British ruling elite was predisposed to these atrocities by its belief that the victims were inferior, an easy supposition after a millennium of believing that certain people, i.e., the royalty and nobility, were inherently better than others.  Of course, we in the anti-royalist United States also built our capitalist empire on the blood and backs of people we thought were inferior to us.

Comparing Stalin to Hitler fits cozily into the unfettered free market, capitalist ideology of the current age.  We can point to Stalin and conclude that communism, and by implication, socialism, do not work and lead to violence against masses of people.

But when you compare the Soviets to the British, you should quickly recognize that what Stalin implemented was a state-directed totalitarian capitalism.  Our current capitalist ideology demands that we call what Stalin did socialism, but that’s just name-calling. 

The big take-way from our reading of history should be that any economic or political system can be used to oppress one group of people for the benefit of a lucky few, and that that oppression often involves mass murder, torture and slavery. That fact doesn’t in and of itself make for a wholesale indictment of either representative capitalism or democratic socialism.

Those who claim that every social welfare program is a move towards socialism hope to instill the fear of Stalin into us with every medical program for children or extension of unemployment benefits.  These free market purists forget (or are too ignorant to know) that capitalist systems have matched Soviet atrocities. 

They also don’t realize that they are proposing to follow the same pattern as the British and Stalin did, which, to review, is to accumulate capital by taking it away from a lot of little people and giving it to a few people to use, control or to pocket, as is the case of the current U.S. regime of historically low taxes for the wealthy while government benefits to the poor, aged, disabled and needy are cut to shreds.