by Caleb Nelson
Communists have a very particular philosophy of value. They believe that material things have intrinsic value that should be determined by one group and imposed on everyone else. Businessman and author Garrett Gunderson explained the results of such a view, saying, “In our normal everyday relationships, imposing our value determinations on other people is a form of subtle tyranny; when it becomes a full-blown economic theory, supported by the force of government, it literally becomes a machine for oppression, destruction, and death.”[229]
Communists value things not people. That idea is exactly backwards from the true principle that people have value, things do not.
Marxists believe that people lie, cheat, steal, and kill because they don’t have enough “stuff.” If we could only give them food, clothing, houses, and whatever else they “need” (according to economic determinism), then they wouldn’t do all those bad things. Things are important, they proclaim. If everybody only had enough stuff, then we would all live in harmony. To quote Marx again, “Man’s ideas . . . [change] with every change in the conditions of material existence.” He believed we could get people to be good if we gave them things, rather than trying to help them become good and allowing them to obtain the things they desire.
The strange thing is most Communists like to say they value people and that it is the greedy capitalists who only love money and “things.” Such materialism, however, is an explicit foundational tenet of Communism. On the other hand, you might hear a smart capitalist realtor say something like, “Houses don’t write checks; people do.” That realtor recognizes the fact that the value isn’t in the house—it’s in the person that values the house.
Answer this question quickly as a test: How much is your house worth?
Are you sure? How much would your house be worth in a different city? On a road near a dog food plant? In a different state? How about in the middle of the Sahara Desert? It changes, doesn’t it? The value is not intrinsically in the house. Most people recognize this principle implicitly, but fail to identify it in words. If your house were intrinsically worth $100,000, then how could its value change with location or over time? The only time the question, “How much is something worth?” is a useful question to ask is when it includes the caveat, “To whom and for what?”
The correct answer to the question “How much is my house worth?” is “Nothing!” It has no value unless a there is a person to value it for a specific purpose. What good would that pile of bricks and lumber you call your house be on the moon? The words value and worth can be changed to be use and utility.
Suppose I have a candy bar. I offer to sell it to you for $1. You agree, and we make the exchange. How much was the candy bar worth?
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“A dollar!”
That is exactly wrong.
We don’t exchange a value for an equal value. There would be no point; we would just keep what we had in the first place. Why would you go to the trouble of the business transaction if you didn’t want one thing more than the other? You exercised a preference, a choice. I preferred to have the dollar more than the candy bar. So what was the candy bar worth to me? Less than $1. How much less? You don’t know. All you can infer from this is that if I preferred the dollar to the candy bar, then I valued the candy bar less. It could have been one cent less or ninety cents less.
Now, how much was the candy bar worth to you? More than $1. We know this because you also exercised a choice and preferred to have the candy bar more than the dollar.
This equation applies to non-monetary values as well. Suppose you decide to buy a lemonade from a little girl on the sidewalk for $1. You don’t value the watery lemonade more than a dollar, but you do value the feeling of helping the little girl be successful in her initiative and work. Even when engaged in charity we receive more in value than we paid.
Marx and Engels would disagree with this idea. They claimed that the value was in the object and that it was valued at whatever it cost to make it. As Engels put it in The Principles of Communism, “Price . . . is . . . always equal to its cost of production.”
[230] He believed that if anyone valued anything differently than its intrinsic value, then they were either being exploited and deceived, or they were the ones doing the exploiting.
It is tyrannical to say the candy bar has a “correct” value and price—that would be forcing your values on others.
“You must like this candy bar!”
“But I don’t like chocolate!”
You deny the right of the parties involved to decide how much they value it themselves.
Communism was partially the result of this idea that things have a certain value that must be enforced. It follows that if things have an intrinsic value, then to make everybody happy we have to make sure they all have enough of those valuable things. If we can’t provide them ourselves, it becomes our moral duty to take it from those who have “too much” and give it to those that don’t.
Communists believe that resources are finite and that their intrinsic value should be asserted through price controls and centralized redistribution of resources so that people don’t get exploited by high prices. Such a belief violates the principle that people must be allowed to choose their own value determinations. Communism denies basic human individuality and worth. They also deny that a worker’s time can be any more or less valuable than the time of someone else with different experience or skills. Everyone must be paid the same, no matter the job, in a Communist world.
What good is a pile of gold to a starving man in the desert? What good is a pile of paper money if an earthquake has shut down all the grocery stores and you have no food storage? Of what value is a house that no one wants to live in or utilize?
Individual people are the only things that have value, and the only reason “things” can ever be considered valuable. Value is in the minds of people; the people are the creators of the value.
AN EXERCISE IN COMMUNISM
Let us imagine an application of the Communist creed, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and see if we can identify some fundamental flaws in it, especially when confronted with human nature.
In a well-known example, imagine you are a high school teacher and announce to your class a new grading rule—the new law of your classroom. You explain to them that to get a passing grade they need a 75. So, if any of them earn a 95, you will take off 20 points and give it to someone who earned 55.
Which students would think this was a grand idea? The brighter, hard-working students or the less studious ones?
In the long run, none of them would like it. Here’s what would happen:
First, the highly productive students would lose all incentive to produce. Why strive to make a great grade if part of it is taken and given to someone else?
Second, the less productive students wouldn’t have to produce at all, at least for a while. This would continue until the high producers had sunk or been driven to the level of the low producers—having nothing left to offer.
At that point, in order to even survive, the “authority,” that means you, would have to begin a system of forced labor and punishments against even the low producers. The entire class can’t be allowed to fail. Something must be done.
These same unintended consequences would occur in any setting—industrial, commercial, or even in your own home. When the principle of self-interest as a primary motivating factor is removed, punished, or even just ignored, all production collapses.
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Communism’s premise is fundamentally flawed and its methods are evil. If human nature was motivated and served by self-sacrificial (i.e. altruistic) concern for the welfare of others, then the brutal and bloody agenda of communism would be unnecessary. Because self-interest is the inseparable motivation of every rational individual, Communism can never achieve its ends; it is an impossible dream (more of a nightmare).
Author C. Bradley Thompson delivered this scathing summar
y of his analysis of Marxism which deserves to be quoted at length:
“There is nothing noble or attractive about Marxian socialism. Marxism is, by definition, totalitarian and genocidal by motive, design, practice, and result. The political goal of communism is to annihilate freedom in all realms of life—economic, social, and intellectual.
“By philosophic design, Marxism in power must always use force to achieve its ends. Any government that expropriates and redistributes private property, any government that seeks to control the economy, any government that violates the rights of its citizens on a daily basis, any government that seeks to reconstitute human nature will and must use force as a matter of course. Thus the theory of socialism necessitates the use of coercive force in practice . . .
“Marxism is a philosophy of malevolence and hatred. It is, from beginning to end, a criminal activity. It begins with theft (literally) and ends with murder (literally) . . .
“In conclusion, we must say this about Marxism: first, it is the single worst blight to have affected human life over the course of man’s entire history; and second, those who advocate it represent the very definition of human evil and must be openly judged and condemned accordingly.”
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PART 3: SOCIALISM
“We must move as a . . . loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline . . . We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good.”
[233] - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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Socialism is characterized by state ownership of land and all means of production and distribution of resources. It comes in many varieties and degrees, and they all have the same basic premises and philosophy. The varieties differ only in application and method.
All Communists are also socialists. But not all socialists are Communists. Both share the same collectivist roots in theory, but historically differ in two important aspects in actual practice.
First, the socialists have maintained from the beginning that centralized control of all land and industry can be achieved by peaceful legislation. Communists hold out for revolution—violent, if necessary. As Marx said, Communists “openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions.”
[234] Socialists aim to change society through evolution, Communists through revolution.
Second, the endgame of the socialists is state control as the means to “common” control of industry and property. Communists believe state control is only a transitory phase on the way to decentralized control by all of mankind communally, without the force of an organized government.
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda specialist, recognized the implicit collectivism found at the heart of socialism. “To be a socialist,” he said, “is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”
[235] William Walling, a socialist journalist who cofounded the NAACP, observed in 1912 that socialism was not created for how man is, but for how socialists think man ought to be, saying, “It remains for the Socialist movement to supply the principles and the force required to create a new type of man and society.”
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Note: Unless someone is a self-proclaimed Communist or Socialist and understands all the implications that such a thing entails, it is usually counter-productive to label that person as such. A more productive, honest, and accurate appraisal would involve labeling some of their ideas as socialistic or Communistic, followed by an explanation of why that is. Label only the ideas, unless the individual has already labeled himself. Using terms people don’t understand often comes across as inflammatory buzz-words in their minds. For example, a President or Mayor or Senator might not claim to be or consider himself a socialist. However, if we are clear on our concepts, we can identify certain policies of theirs as socialistic simply by reference to the definition of socialism. We might ask ourselves, for instance, does national health insurance constitute a distribution of resources by the State? If so, then it is, by definition, a socialistic measure.
Sometimes, socialist ideas and practices can creep into our ideas and actions if we haven’t developed the ability to think by principle. Economic destruction always results. Chelsea Nelson tells of how this happened at one of her first jobs:
When I was eighteen, I got a job at a café-type eatery. It was a small place, but the boss was excited because he had bought into this new franchise that he was sure would pay off big and make him rich pretty quick. My job was to stand behind the counter, greet customers as they entered, then take their order, roll out a crepe, fill it, fold it, ring it up, and hand it over.
The grand opening was a great success, and word of this place seemed to spread. We were busy from morning to night. I really enjoyed it! There were rules about everything, of course, like how many strips of chicken we were allowed to put in, and how much milk to make the perfect foam in the cappuccino. But the boss seemed like a pretty nice guy and encouraged us to have fun, communicate, and build a “team atmosphere.”
Soon, the other girls that worked there discovered that I was a little more outgoing than they were. Nothing wrong with that, of course; it just meant that they preferred me closer to the door because I wasn’t afraid to yell out a friendly, “Hello!” whenever a customer came wandering in. We had been told it was part of our job to welcome every person who came into the café.
I had noticed, through trial and error, that this was the best way to greet people. A simple “Hi!” often got lost in the noise, and a more formal, “Welcome!” seemed to put people off. Before long, I was being offered tips on a regular basis. At first, I was surprised at the offers, but am not one to turn down gratitude for my smiles. I made sure it was okay with the boss, who was pleased as punch when I asked him, and then accepted the tips.
I began to get more tips. Other girls asked me to teach them how to get tips, which I did. A few of them started getting tips, though by now I had a few regulars and the girls were still pretty shy.
One day we get called into a meeting and I am told that I am not allowed to greet the guests with “Hello” anymore, because the boss felt it was too formal. I already knew “Hi” didn’t work so I tried out “Howdy” as it almost always brought a smile to the incoming faces. Not three days later, I was taken aside and told that I couldn’t say “Howdy” because he didn’t want people to become confused that they had walked into a BBQ joint. So I asked what he wanted me to say. He told me to say “Hi.” I did what I was told and two days later he was upset because he felt I wasn’t making the customers welcome in his café. I explained that “Hi” got lost in the noise and asked what he’d like me to say. He threw up his hands and said he didn’t care as long as I didn’t hog all the greetings.
That same day he seemed to notice that I was walking away from a shift with three times as many tips as any other girl. The next morning he instituted a “tip jar” where all tips would be split—equally—between everyone who worked the entire day (including him, though he didn’t work with the customers). He told us it was because we were a team and he didn’t want anyone to feel bad.
The change was quick and drastic. The tip jar went out and when a customer would offer me a tip I’d indicate the jar and invariably a puzzled look came onto their face. They’d look at the other girls who had not helped them and say, “How do I know you are going to get this?”
“We’ll split it equally at the end of the night.” I’d answer. “We’re a team.”
They’d smile at me like I was perhaps a little slow and say, “You were the only one who waited on me. I hope you don’t mind, but if this tip isn’t going to go just to you, I’d rather not leave it.”
The smile I’d return would show them I understood all too well and I’d reply, “I understand completely. Thank you for your gratitude.”
They’
d look a little sad and a little impressed and put the tip back in their wallet. My regulars rarely came back.
Four days after this, my boss told me I wasn’t allowed to tell customers that the tips would be split. And we were to put fewer strips of chicken in the wraps. But the prices were going to remain the same. He thought it would make him more money and maybe they’d order more because the first one wouldn’t fill them up like it used to.
I quit about a week later, and the café closed shortly thereafter as well. I see tip jars at many registers nowadays, and the employees are resigned to that situation. If someone does a good job, they all get to split it at the end of the night; I rarely see any money at all in those tip jars.
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As Chelsea discovered, socialist ideas don’t have to just be about the government, but can creep down into very seemingly small aspects of our lives.
Many people point to the Scandinavian countries as examples of how socialism “works.” Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden openly blamed high taxes and welfare state policies for the problems of his nation’s economy, “At the beginning of the 1970’s Sweden also had the fourth highest GDP per capita measured in purchasing power parity. Sweden was blooming.” Thanks to Swedish socialism, Reinfeldt said, the wealth that “took a hundred years to build was dismantled in twenty-five years.” “Growth fell off. Unemployment rose. The quality of welfare declined.”
[238] This is from the country touted as a “success” in socialism. To claim these countries are proof of the validity of socialist theory is to ignore the myriad of suppressed freedoms of the populace and to view a slow decay as “living.”