Even at my ripe (over-ripe?) age I am still surprised at how many intelligent people remain so bemused with socialist ideology that, to use a common metaphor, despite a whole herd of elephants occupying their sitting rooms, they still cannot see the blindingly obvious, that is, that the state runs nothing particularly well, indeed, mostly it runs things very badly. Even the most myopic cannot fail to see that from the 18th c. onwards nothing distributed goods and services faster, better and cheaper than the 'invisible hand' of the free market. During the 20th c., a number of nations, in their different ways, attempted to put into practice sundry variations on the socialist theme. They all, to a greater or lesser extent failed, some of them horribly, and today almost all of them have given it up as a dead loss, not least because the dead were their only monument! Of course, fervent socialists always claim that their particular brand of socialism has not yet been tried and that previous efforts failed because of errors in the ideological analysis of conditions. They may be right - but would you bet the deeds of your house on the latest off-spring of a generation of race-horses all of whom failed miserably even to finish the course let alone win anything? Of course, we can all make mistakes from time to time, but on this particular choice in life, it is not as though there was nothing else to turn to and that socialism of some kind was the only way to conduct our economic processes. The herd of elephants that remain happily grazing and getting fatter before our very eyes are free market elephants. You can see them, measure them, study them, read about them in newspapers and watch them on the TV. Old communist die-hards in China finally saw the 'bleedin' obvious' and made the 'Great Leap Forward' (or whatever they called their embarrassing change of mind and heart) and now appear to be driving the world economy. The old, LSE-educated socialists of India have at last died off and their younger, more entrepreneurial successors have returned to doing what they are best at, buying and selling, not in their local bazaars, but in the global economy. My guess is, that India will last longer and go further than China in the race to establish themselves as global powers. And yet ... and yet ... still the magical mantras and incantations of socialism, in general, and Marxism, in particular, continue to be chanted by the true believers like so many blind Hare Krishnas. Truly, as any priest or Commissar will tell you, faith is a wonderful thing!
I intend to delve a little deeper into a few examples over the coming days, but not over the weekend because I am returning to Nottingham - dread prospect!
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