economics

Socialism vs. Communism

July 22, 2026 by tornado Leave a Comment

Often, when comparing policies of socialist governments, or proposed ideals of the Democratic Party here, which is increasingly influenced by the radical extremist organization, “Democratic Socialists of America,” one will encounter a reactionary, reflexive, overly defensive statement to the effect of, “Socialism is not communism!”

That is glib sloganeering, and also, exceedingly misleading or disingenuous.

A few points…
1. Marxism: They’re branches of the same ideological tree (Marxist theory). In Marxist theory, socialism is the transitional phase to communism. Socialism involves state control of production, nominally for workers (“from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution”), while full communism is the classless, stateless endgame (“to each according to his needs”) with no private property. Lenin, Marx and others explicitly framed it this way. There is a reason the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had its name.

Socialism isn’t communism the same way adolescence isn’t adulthood — it’s the stepping stone. History shows the “transition” rarely ends…just slows or gets temporarily distracted, without some form of true revolution or outside military intervention.

2. Shared core, regardless of semantic games: Rejection of private property and markets — both nominal systems advocate public/collective ownership of the means of production (factories, land, computing, energy, other resources) over private enterprise. Communism goes further (no private property at all, often via revolution), while socialism allows some private ownership but with heavy state regulation/redistribution. In other words, distinctions that are semantically correct but functionally meaningless!

That’s because socialism and communism differ in degree, not kind. Both subordinate individual liberties to collective control. So-called “Democratic socialists” still push expansive government ownership and planning (look up the latest DSA platform*). This historically concentrates great power and money into centralized bureaucracies. Human nature is to abuse great power and control over unearned treasury largesse.

3. Historical track record: Socialism often leads to or masks authoritarian communism. Regimes like the USSR, China, Cuba, and Venezuela called themselves explicitly socialist, while pursuing communist goals (e.g., “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” as I noted above; Chinese Communist Party’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics”). Even the Nazis were socialist; it was firmly amid their name (National Socialist Party), and like many others, including their war opposition in the USSR, their “socialist” experiments involved one-party rule, suppression of dissent, and economic centralization. Two sides of the same tyrannical coin!

Yet logically, failures of “real socialism” are frequently dismissed as “not true socialism,” which is a classical No True Scotsman fallacy, and as such, easily exposed as invalid rhetoric. Every major 20th-century communist state and the German Nazis started as or claimed to be socialist. Body count: tens of millions (famines, purges, gulags, Holocaust). The supposed distinctions didn’t save the victims.

4. Convergent incentives and outcomes: Without market prices and private property, both struggle with calculation problems (Mises/Hayek critique), leading to shortages, inefficiency, and coercion. So-called “Democratic socialism” often slides toward more controls when voluntary cooperation falters. That occurs when citizens realize that: a) they have lost liberty, b) they are poorer, and/or c) their bureaucratic overlords are corrupt and untrustworthy (a feature common to all forms of governance, but rampant in collectivist states).

Nordic models (often cited) pose as pseudo-capitalist welfare states with free markets, strong property rights, and high economic freedom — generally, not socialist ownership of production. However, socialism nominally sells the compassionate halfway house. Reality: it inherits communism’s knowledge and incentive problems, just with slower erosion of freedoms and prosperity.

5. Rhetorical sleight-of-hand: The phrase is often used to distance “nice” policies (welfare, regulation) from authoritarian failures. But classical socialism (e.g., nationalization) goes well beyond that. “Socialism is not communism” is a semantically crafted PR slogan, a parlor trick with words, not reality on the ground. When it expands state control over energy, healthcare, housing, or speech, it follows the same logic: bureaucratic elites deciding “the greater good” over voluntary exchange.

If I’m too wordy for you on this, here’s a bullet list from commentator Michael Smith for shorter attention spans:

“Democratic socialism” is an oxymoron.
• Central planning requires centralized power. Someone must decide what gets produced, by whom, and for whom.
• No planner possesses enough knowledge. Economic information is dispersed among millions of individuals and cannot be effectively centralized.
• Planning replaces voluntary choices with political decisions. Resource allocation becomes a matter of government judgment rather than market exchange.
• Democracy struggles to sustain comprehensive planning. Citizens rarely agree on the countless tradeoffs required, leading to political conflict.
• Conflict drives greater coercion. As voluntary cooperation breaks down, government increasingly relies on regulation, mandates, and enforcement.
• Economic control becomes political control. A government that directs livelihoods inevitably gains leverage over individual behavior.
• Liberty erodes incrementally. Each planning failure invites additional intervention, concentrating more power in the state.
• The destination is authoritarianism, not because it is intended, but because it becomes necessary to preserve the planned system.
I agree with F.A. Hayek:
Democracy can elect a socialist government, but a fully socialist economy cannot remain genuinely democratic for long because comprehensive economic planning requires a concentration of power incompatible with individual liberty and limited government.”
— Michael Smith

There’s your (lower-case) libertarian lesson on socialism and communism for the year. It would be wise to heed!

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* Footnote:
The DSA’s new platform is as authoritarian/Communist as can be, while avoiding the C word. Truly batshit crazy, horrifying, dystopian, far-left extremism, including:
1. Forbid bills (payment invoice) for any person
2. Government-run food, transportation, housing, medicine, and nationalization of large corporations and essential industries (Communism!)
3. The drafting of a “new Constitution”
4. Defunding the Department of War/Defense
5. Slavery “reparations”
6. Unlimited free abortion and “gender-affirming care” for all, including minor children with underdeveloped brains;
7. Taxpayers cover all student debt and unlimited “free” higher education for all (payable only through top-down coercion, of course);
8. Taking “steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison system”
9. Ending all deportations, providing amnesty for all illegal immigrants, and allowing unlimited migration to America (fully open borders)
10. Abolishing the Presidency, Supreme Court, and Senate (in effect, destroying the Constitution)

I’m not going to give their site clicks by linking here, but the DSA platform is not hard to find for those morbidly interested.

Eliminate the Federal Minimum Wage!

August 19, 2025 by tornado Leave a Comment

The Federal minimum wage should disappear, this very day. People (including judges) supporting a Federal minimum wage of any sort don’t understand three things: running businesses, economics in general, and the Constitution. To help with that, I’ll address each, in order:

1. Others have addressed the problems it poses for job creation, especially small, local businesses. It also leads to job destruction by automation. Besides, the robot drive-thru Jack in the Box eventually uses will give me a hot, better-quality burger, more consistently, without spitting or coughing on it, nor inattentively staring at a cellular telephone and ignoring me, nor copping an attitude at having to (horrors) do its job. Minimum wage raises drag on businesses in somewhat indirect yet costly ways (time spent/wasted on updating compliance protocols and documentation). Worst, they will kill jobs. Do you want that? Perhaps for some jobs, like Burger King, that would be a positive for the customer, but not for the employees laid off.

2. Aside from supply and demand fundamentals, when you make things cost more, for whatever reason (higher fuel prices, higher rents, or yes, costlier food and services due to mandated wage increases) that disproportionately hurts the poor. Though money printing is the biggest contributor to inflation, higher minimum wages have that effect as well. ECON 101 here! Federal min wage also is one-size-fits-all, which is obviously a fallacy. One size doesn’t fit all. Las Cruces isn’t Seattle. Lawton isn’t Key West. Sioux Falls isn’t Brooklyn. If a critical mass of citizens in a city or county desire a minimum wage, against free-market fundamentals, then the vox populus should be enacted on the local level. At least that way it’s unambiguously federally constitutional.

3. For years, I have challenged people to show me where the Constitution specifically authorizes wage control as a federal power. Nobody has been able to yet. If you think you can, please do. Here it is, go for it! I’ve lived in Missouri, so…show me.
Answer: It doesn’t. Therefore, by the algorithmic flowchart that is the Tenth amendment, that is supposed to be a state and local function. Which is good and right, because cost of living and so many other factors in wages vary by state and locality. That’s the real world, not a distant, detached ivory tower.

The first attempt at a federal minimum wage, in FDR’s 1933 “National Industrial Recovery Act,” rightly was struck down by SCOTUS as unconstitutional. The only reason we have one now is FDR’s also unconstitutional court-packing attempt in the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. That directly and properly failed, but under ambient desperation of an economic depression, effectively intimidated the SCOTUS into accepting what were, and remain, literally unconstitutional Federal “New Deal” interference in labor issues.

In fact, almost all New Deal and New Deal-inspired “reforms” were (and remain) unconstitutional; however, too much of American society has become hooked on their dependency drug of social aid and governmental intrusion that there’s no political courage to roll them back. Those who place the burden of social “welfare” on the federal level count on the resulting inertia of addictive dependency to perpetuate their grand schemes. Never mind the damage. And so here we are, deeper in the national debt crisis than ever.

National Debt: Not Just a “Problem” — A Crisis

April 15, 2023 by tornado Leave a Comment

Here is a chart (click to enlarge!), tracking interest paid by the government on the national debt, since 1990. This fraction of the federal budget also is growing. That’s because the national debt is getting bigger. For other purposes, it may, but for this, it really doesn’t matter which supposed “side” of the debt-bloating duopoly you prefer. Administrations (purple, my addition) and Congresses of both parties have been in place during debt-growth periods, and therefore, increases in interest payments.

Ignore and/or mock those who claim the national debt is not a problem. They are naive, unknowing, shallow, woefully and likely willfully ignorant of basic economics, and are not to be taken seriously.

Why federal debt not just a problem…but a crisis? Among a vast many other things, the proportion of the budget taken up by interest payment balloons, all other aspects get crowded out. As the fraction of the budget that goes to interest gets larger, less and less money will be left over for every other Federal budget aspect. Hard choices must be made. Austerity must be undertaken. That ultimately includes your favorite budget programs, and mine.

Austerity doesn’t win votes, so the can keeps getting kicked, money keeps being printed, inflationary times raise interest rates, the national debt grows larger (raising interest payments even when rates stay the same or fall), and this budget parasite swells up still further.

It’s a vicious cycle that media is almost wholly ignoring. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t involve Hollywood celebrities, British royalty, the “transgender” fad, prosecution of politicians, failure to prosecute politicians, famous pro athletes, whiny Tik Tok influencers, or other titillating clickbait that passes for “journalism” now. And it’s over 30 trillion times more important than all that put together.

The time will come, maybe in my lifetime but certainly in my children’s, when:
* Republicans’ favorite spending targets — military programs, home-district pork, the secret state, endless overseas wars — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* Democrats’ favorite spending targets — social-entitlement programs, home-district pork, the secret state, endless overseas wars — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* Bipartisan-supported beneficial and popular functions of government that take up very small budget fractions — air-traffic control, meat inspections, railroad safety, natural-disaster response, national parks, and yes, dangerous-weather forecasting — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* We cannot afford even basic defense of the nation from foreign attack or takeover. Then what (besides the need to learn Mandarin)?

Those times are coming. Maybe in two decades, maybe in five. When they do, however, and the government no longer can afford to fulfill whatever you think or the Constitution directly mandates is its function, this republic is lost, forever.

I used to wonder why the end-times prophecies of Revelation never mentioned nor even hinted at an overseas superpower akin to what the U.S. has been, far from the Middle East. Between our own malignant moral and cultural decrepitude, and the upcoming fiscal implosion of debt-interest dominance of the budget that self-destroys the nation as anything relevant or powerful on the world stage, now I know.

There are solutions — painful, sacrificial, all-encompassing ones that yes, involve intense austerity — but as long as politicians pander to their bases and want votes, and the populace/lemmings don’t question things in a critical mass big enough to matter, we’ll keep marching toward the cliffs in ignorance of the fall that awaits.

Pray for your children and grandchildren. Even without an asteroid, no matter what happens with climate, regardless of anything going on abroad: tough times are on the way, the likes of which this nation has never experienced.