Last week, a conservative friend asked me how I liked living in Sweden under Comrade Obama. I sighed. Somehow or another, it has become accepted that Sweden is a frightening socialist state and that life there would be horrible. I am here to defend Sweden, a nation I have never visited.
Sweden is a monarchy, a governmental structure very far from socialism and from the American ideal that all people are created equal. Marx, of course, believed that his radical socialist ideal started with the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, which pretty much eliminates a monarchy. The United States was founded on the principle that people did not need a king because they could rule themselves. We might think that the trappings of a monarchy are pretty and that their personal lives are fascinating, but is anyone really excited about the prospects of Prince Charles replacing Barack Obama?
Marx’s version of socialism, Communism, failed everywhere it was tried. No one seriously advocates Communism anymore. Socialism is more complicated, but it is not what Barack Obama or anyone else in U.S. government advocates. (By the way, “The Communist Manifesto” is in the public domain, in English, and it is short. There is no excuse for not reading it. Frederich von Hayek would be good to read, too, but his books have a lot more pages.) (more…)
Among the many, many problems with Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, perhaps the most basic is his apparent inability to distinguish between economic and political systems. His conclusion – one he repeated at length on Bill Maher’s show last week – is that we need to “abolish capitalism and replace it with democracy.” It’s a populist idea, to be sure, intended to rouse the (liberal, upper-middle-class) rabble to head directly from the theater to the local Home Depot for torches and pitchforks. But no matter what Moore actually meant – and what he meant is that we need to limit the overwhelming influence that corporations and financial elites currently wield over American life – his message is inevitably lost (at least amongst his decently educated audience) in his nonsensical juxtaposition of capitalism and democracy as mutually exclusive.