Seventy years before the Wall, Richter’s dystopian novel, Pictures of the Socialistic Future, boldly predicted that victorious German socialism would inspire a mass exodus — and that the socialists would respond by banning emigration, and punishing violators with deadly force. FULL ARTICLE by Bryan Caplan
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/13027/the-writing-on-the-wall/
The Writing on the Wall
Previous post: The End of Men
Next post: The New State Cookshops
{ 39 comments }
“By 1961, however, the descendents [sic] of the radical wing of the Social Democratic Party had built the Berlin Wall — and were shooting anyone who tried to flee their ‘Workers’ Paradise.’ A movement founded to liberate the worker turned its guns on the very people it vowed to save.”
Would you believe there are still prominent socialists who deny this?
“Many failed to see the truth until the Berlin Wall went up. By then, alas, it was too late.”
And, so it will be here in the USA.
Except, Germany is “Socialist” now by ”austrian’ standards, and people are dying to get there.
Also, the Nazis outlawed and killed German socialists, and the Russian Stalinists did the same when they occupied Germany.
So, basically this argument only makes sense if you redefine the words for your own purposes, and then after having dfone so, ignore any evidence that contradicts your hypothesis.
“the Nazis outlawed and killed German socialists”"Nazi” is short for National Socialism. They didn’t kill socialists, they killed communists. A meaningless distinction to me (I know, I know, socialists are supposedly kinder, gentler communists), but one that Hitler found very important. It was a question of loyalty — not any particular quibbles over the power of the state.
Cornelius, Nazi is short for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
Hayek explains in Road to Serfdom book why Nazis, and Communists didn’t get along, and it was largely because they were vying for the same people.
Basically, Nazis are only not socialists if you like playing linguistic games that somehow hide the fact that they exerted significant control over their economy and indeed espoused many socialist tenets, because such would contradict leftist moonshine. Yeah. BTW who is running to go to Germany? Certainly not me.
Except, Germany is “Socialist” now by ”austrian’ standards, and people are dying to get there.
Mises would have called contemporary Germany a “hampered market economy,” not “socialism.”
It is socialism. They have a massive bureaucracy that uses prices to regulate what people consume. If they want people to use something less, they raise its price, if more, they decrease it. Consistent with the way socialists use prices. They also have a massive welfare state, supported by high taxes.
And unlike in the US, where extreme right winger politics are tolerated, in Germany, the leaders of such movements are jailed, the trials are low key, almost secret, and there are no written transcripts kept. They have also progressively increased the jail time that right wing politicians can get. There is no balance in their politics.
Can you imagine, being spied on by the CIA for belonging to the wrong political party? That can happen in Germany and it is legal. By American standards it is certainly not a free society.
What I’m referring to: http://mises.org/humanaction/chap27sec2.asp
Is this the same Bryan Caplan who has the essay explaning that he is not an Austrian economist, because he does not care what color sweater he picks? And he is on an Austrian economics website?!?!
Calm down.
Bryan Caplan of the “Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist” fame? Good! Not that I’d agree with his reasons for refusing Austrian Econ, but it’s nice to see him being part of the debate. Perhaps we can later get some pieces by Antal E. Fekete too.
caplan doesn’t fall in the crank category, unlike fekete and his real bills nonsense.
re caplan, he lost me shortly in the process, when he threw away the individual’s will as demonstrated by his/her/its actual action, and proceeds in broad strokes to calculate-in all the wishes, desires and whatnot, sim-city style. it’s still portrayed so in his autobio (first link above), so while I agree he’s not a crank, there are issues I have with his worldview.
re fekete:
.
Ok, let’s have a business. Man sells some goods, issues an invoice, which is marked by another individual as accepted (“will pay. billy.”). The other party is known to have good karma and is expected to settle with specie in term.
.
Is it nonsense to expect the invoice itself to trade just slightly below par? Or in other words, how much funds could the first man get right now, if he pledged the proceeds from the invoice as collateral? The premium should be significantly lower than when he’d borrow without any guarantee, right?.
.
Once there’s enough invoices flying around, what stops people from passing them further on, creating markets for it, and, as per the Mises’s regression theorem, finally bringing these specific papers up to monetary status? Not by any fiat, but simply by accepting them freely as medium of exchange, because they wish so.
.
As always, asking in good faith, please correct me where I’m wrong. And sorry for delay in the debate, my fault, should’ve checked back sooner.
.
Freedom is a problem for those who hold power. They must root out Liberty. The masses support the state and give up Freedom from fear of the unknown. We don’t trust the free market because it is free. We have no control. We accept government because we vote for our masters and the successful ones tell us they are working for us and that running things is too hard for us. But all the arguments for government boil down to this: freedom is the problem. Government programs fail because people are free to not participate or they just disobey the dictates of our alleged representatives. Mao and Stalin never admitted, if they realized or not, that there are universal principles of human action that law cannot override. They think that the profit motive is an ideology. They fail to understand that self interest is a scientific observation, like apples falling from trees. We brush teeth, bathe, go to work, do what we are told because it is better than the alternative. But government is evil, oppressive, destructive, the enemy of Property, Life and Liberty by its nature. It either collapses under its own weight or the people get fed up and alter or abolish it. In the last century with the rise of democracy as an ideal, we have seen leaders admit defeat such as in Russia and South Africa. However, we need to understand human action to know how to replace our failed states with potentially successful ones.
A “political” system of Chieftaincies (e.g. Commonwealth of Iceland) or more likely (since the indoctrinated NEED direction) túatha
I never expected to see an article by Bryan Caplan here, what a pleasant surprise.
Hayek WAS aware that socialism was born bad.
He points out that the first socialist was a totalitarian, and the first socialists understood the need for totalitarian measures.
I just saw a german movie called “the tunnel” about how they dug tunnels from west to east berlin. Illegal emmigration is a crazy concept to wrap your head around. You see these people enforcing it and as an american your instinct is to just get yourself killed insulting one of the officers to their face or something but there was no point to doing that over there. NO one to pick up the slack behind you because everyone has been stripped of their humanity by the state. Crazy too considering they had been nazis just a few decades before.
The allure of socialism is complicated. I am reminded of two things. first from rod Drehers “crunchy cons” about how the conveyer belt thing to move cows to where they are to be slaughtered was changed from a straight ahead path tp a curved one so the cows could see what was up ahead or see ahead much at all to have time to wonder what was on the horizon.
The second is one I come back to alot which is Susant Sontags “illness as metaphor” where in the early 20th century TB had this romantic assocation with it, like wonderful bohemian artistic people died beautiful TB deaths, and people with cancer were seen as peple who were afraid to live and love (this was many decades before smoking threw a wrench into that analogy). socialism is romantic, conservatism isn’t at least superficially or this is how it is presented. liberals care, conservatives are cold and indifferent. it’s a trick of course but it’s the perception and perhaps why nazis have this horrible uspeakable reputation while communists, who were as far as the average person in ww2 was concerned just as bad or worse, gets a different handling.
Lester, you mean of course, from East TO West Berlin?
“Nazis have this horrible unspeakable reputation while communists…”
True, but then the Soviets were ‘allies’ of the West during the Second World War and were also victors over the Nazis, so to the victors go the spoils of writing their own version of History.
Even today, Russia (and even Japan, while not a victor) has not really owned up to their wartime behavior, as has Germany.
This lack of reconciling with one’s own history leaves residues in a society that prevents that society from reaching a holistic, healthy functioning state. Nor can such a state reach a full reciprocal working relationship with its neighbors.
In such a maladjusted society there will always be unrecognized and unreconciled tensions and disorders that manifest within its members, much like they do in any individual, where that individual has not acknowledged past wrongdoing to him- or herself.
Please also refer to “The Ghost in the Machine” at http://blog.mises.org/12972/chairman-greenspan-a-fiat-mind-for-a-fiat-age/comment-page-1/
Therein in one post, I refer to “The Ghost in the Machine” as the unacknowledged evil within the working assumptions of all central banks (although I use the egregious case of Alan Greenspan as my most obvious recent manifestation). This unrecognized and unacknowledged evil is known to all Austrians, as the Fiat Money-enabled, Fractional-banking system enhanced, Bubble-Blowing mentality of a central bank that is supposed to “smooth” the Business Cycle — some “smoothing”. So long as The FED refuses to examine its own recent behavior from an Austrian frame of reference, it will continue to (inadvertently) live a very maladjusted existence and will continue to do evil.
Like the obviously more evil and far more deadly Nazi and Communist regimes that preceded The FED in 20th century history (some might argue with me on that), the Greenspan FED was arguably the most interventionist and most harmful central bank regime America has ever had to suffer through — and I include in my assessment the harmful FED regimes of the 1920-s and 1930-s.
actually no. in the movie which I understand to be based on historical fact the eastern berlin citizen escaped via sewers to west berlin and he and a few others purchased property on the border and in secrecy dug over a period of years as the wall began to be built.here’s a little review I wrote of it if you’re interested http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,115439.msg339419.html#msg339419
Thank you lester — good review. And thanks for correcting my misapprehension.
Sounds very interesting. I tend to prefer the long and ‘boring’ movies over the shorter and more ‘exciting’ — give me ‘your’ movie over Godzilla (American version) and Independence Day, any day! Special effects tend to ruin good story lines.
Cheers, Hans
There are some really interesting movies coming out of germany lately with strong pro capitalist messages. I have no idea why
Thank you lester —- I hope you saw my comment below for the movie named “The Lives of Others”?
It was intended for you also —- though I did not post it to this thread.
One thing about “Walls” is that some people rather carelessly neglect to make distinctions between walls that are intended to keep people out and those that are intended to keep people in.
I thought of this when I read your review of the movie (and watched the preview clip) you recommended called The Tunnel (Der Tunnel).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251447/
I have read many very disturbing comments from otherwise intelligent people who make no moral distinction at all between the 2 types. They essentially use moral equivalence between say the Berlin Wall and the wall being built between America and Mexico.
One type of wall is like those around prisons, concentration camps, and insane asylums. The other is more like the security wall around a sensitive national security site, harmful industrial site, or Fort Knox.
Such writers and commentators forget, or neglect to mention, that you were shot if you tried to LEAVE East Berlin. In the case of the American wall, not only are you not shot, but that wall is not for keeping people inside by force — other than for keeping them inside Mexico, which I guess they are trying to escape from — is this the reason that Mexican politicians are hyper-sensitive about this new “wall”?. Does this suggest that Mexico is like one big prison or concentration camp (at least for the honest, hard-working, non-criminal, non-drug-running Mexicans?).
Here is an example from http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/border.html
(I’d ask Mr. Martinez exactly what he means by saying it is worse than the Berlin Wall — unless he thinks Mexico is thereby made a ‘prison’ by implication?)
Another example from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6090060.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_equivalence
The same writing is on the wall, or on the side of the road, for all Western nations.
We are deluding ourselves if we don’t think we are all on that same road, some further along (Germany, Sweden) than others (U.K., U.S.A.).
The roadside billboards are WARNINGS for us to read, if we care to.
These signs are telling us exactly what Eugen Richter warned us about.
Government has a way of slowly, cripplingly and creepingly, expanding like a BLOB, becoming more involved in our daily lives, more socialistic, day by day.
We are seemingly helpless and ignorant, like the proverbial frog who dies in a pot of water slowly raised from a temperate to boiling temperature, or like a man who dies of a thousand paper cuts.
We go along to get along and just continue down the same road seemingly oblivious to what the destination holds for us.
When we get there, we’ll all likely ask “What the…? How the heck did we get here?”
Please see
http://mises.org/daily/4481
and
http://blog.mises.org/12992/refusing-to-be-counted/
More from the GMU crowd, please (well, maybe not Tyler Cowen). Yes, I have problems with why he is not an Austrian, but generally Bryan Caplan is pretty good. Russ Roberts is also great. I love his podcasts, and after the Hayek rap, he would be a great addition to Mises.org. There are differences, to be sure, but together you can only be stronger.
I read Richter’s “Pictures” some months ago and I was very impressed, not only with the uncanny accuracy of the work (especially the way the ‘right-socialists’ and other deviationists were quickly ostracized), but also for the quality of the prose.
“More from the GMU crowd, please (well, maybe not Tyler Cowen).”
Haha, come on, don’t you want to hear the Austrian case for the Welfare state?
Excellent article. Come to think of it, isn’t this the way Obama’s America is heading?
Richter’s novel is fascinating and well worth the $12 if you can’t find the free PDF. If you’re a moviegoer, fund it by skipping a trip to the theater. You’ll find that the drama of Pictures of the Socialistic Future is not only wrenching but also more intelligent than the flummery you’re likely to see on a silver screen or, for that matter, on your television.
Of course, Caplan’s outtakes from the book are all informative, but they don’t grip one as they do when encountered while reading the story. Richter makes you feel the strangling vines of socialistic authoritarianism creep and crawl around your feet and legs as no essay can. And it’s mercifully short, unlike, say, Atlas Shrugged.
On a related note, the title in German is Sozialdemokratische Zukunftsbilder.
You can find the German version in PDF and other formats at http://www.archive.org/details/sozialdemokrati00bebegoog.
in east germany the stasi remained largely unpunished and in position of high influence. there’s even a feeling of nostalgia for the good old days…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6899929.ece
“The Stasi and its informers accumulated, in the 40 years of its existence (1949 to 1989), more written records (largely the stolen biographies of its own people) than in all of German history since the Middle Ages.”
socialism and paper, the greatest love affair of all time.
To newson and to lester:
Thank you again for your comments.
You MUST see (if you have not already) one of the FINEST movies ever made IMHO of Human Nature and the Nature of The State and how the two interact — is this The ‘Socialism’ whereto we are all headed, so incrementally so as to be unaware of it?
The movie I so highly recommend is “The Lives of Others” (German, 2006, written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck).
No question, one of the Top 100 Movies of ALL TIME.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003697/
You will also IMO learn more about yourself and your own frailties than you might care to admit.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/
yes, seen the movie, and yes, it was good. but too romantic a view was taken – the real tragedy is how little remorse has been shown, and how self-deception and denial is still the norm. do a search on “anna funder”, author of “stasiland”, and you’ll see that “the lives of others”, and the epiphany within are sadly much too rosy.
Not a great fan of Caplan, I must admit, and not because he is not an Austrian, but mostly because of his work. His article on Communism at econlib is quite weak, for example.
I have some problems with his story about the three explanations of socialism. As far as I know Hayek said that the worse rise to the top because the actions that have to be taken in a socialist regime can only be taken by very bad people. So it is consistent with Ritcher’s version of “born bad”. I’ve reread that chapter form The Road to Serfdom just to make sure.
In my reading, all states that have survived for any length of time that are commonly referred to as ‘socialist’ or even ‘communist’ are actually ‘fascist’ or ‘state capitalist.’ Socialism and communism (used interchangeably approximately up to the Stalinist period, when ‘socialism in one state’ became the eternal path to ever-fleeting communist utopia) both presuppose the obliteration of private property and capital, something that centralized economies find very difficult to do. Whether such centralized economies need to compensate the uneven productivity of workers accordingly, allow each worker his own dacha or small farm, trade commodities for capital exchange, create industrial credits, and so forth, capital in one form or another survives. The question becomes: Who determines what is done with property and capital? If it is the state, it is state capitalism. If it is the individual, it is freedom. Since state capitalism in practice tends to coincide with the political elites’ desire to control all aspects of people’s lives, state capitalist countries tend to be fascist. Socialism and communism are ideal-types far removed from historical reality and have never existed for any appreciable length of time in practice. While sober scholars would believe this to be a detraction suggestive of the theoretical limitations of such collectivist ideals, true believers and pragmatic meddlers argue that it is cause to continue experimenting until socialism or communism is imposed over the objections of human nature and reality.
You stumbled at one one main point. It was not the political style it was the sociopath the destroyed the first applications of socialism in the modern era. It also is the sociopath that is destroying capitalism. It was also the sociopath that founded monarchy. So remove the sociopath and human society will achieve a long term stable society that promotes health attitudes and social and environmental balance.
There is a test that will detect the sociopath, a medical infallible test that will detect the lack of empathy and conscience. lets be honest Stalinism and Maoism and communism are not socialism and no sociopath capitalist lies will ever make it that way.
totalitarian ans socialism are contradictory
Comments on this entry are closed.