The essay I was talking of was George Orwell’s Lion and the Unicorn. The objective demonstration of socialism being better than capitalism was, according to him, provided by the fact that Nazis were doing so well in the war. (The essay was written in 1942).
Funny isn’t it?
Very funny especially considering that the full form of Nazi is National Socialist Workers Party of Germany.
Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” was the first book to point out the similarities. It came out in 1944, barely two years after the Orwell essay.
And this is Orwell’s comment on the Road to Serfdom. (Got from the amazon.com link provided in my first comment)
“In the negative part of Professor Hayek’s thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often–at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough–that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of.”–George Orwell, Collected Essays
If the essay came out two years before Road to Serfdom, then obviously Hayek couldn’t have been the first to point out the similarities 🙂
But the serious point is that RtS did a good job (I hear. I haven’t read) not just of pointing out the similarities, but also of explaining how Central Planning inevitably leads to a totalitarian state if it is seriously implemented.
Orwell clearly did not believe in the inevitability when he wrote the essay. He was in fact advocating democratic socialism. Of course, Orwell was a reasonable man, brutally honest with himself. But even he couldn’t believe in the inevitability even when it was pointed out to him. He clearly thought that there had to be some way of combining Central Planning with democracy.
So I don’t blame Nehru, a much dumber man, for not seeing this. I just can’t see any greatness in him. But he continued to not see the obvious even after the horrors of Stalin’s rule were revealed, even after it was clear that his own policies were going bust, even when he found that other capitalist economies were doing much better and not collapsing as his theory would predict. This kind of makes one wonder how much of an idiot he was.
Orwell pointed out the differences not the similarities between socialism and nazism — with the veiled hint that there was a link between nazism and capitalism.
Is the Wizard of Oz really a wizard?
Socialism is to National Socialism what Democracy is to Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
DPRK is also known as North Korea.
I feel that the discussion here is mixing up socialism and communism.
Nazism was an extreme form of fascism.
Fascism is the belief that people are i total service of the state.
Communism is the belief that the state is in total service of the people.
They are totally opposite philosophies. But in practice there are a lot of similarities(as pointed out by Hayek)
Hilter started out on a mission to protect the corporates from worker dissent.
I haven’t read the essay. I will go through it.
Thanks again.
So I don’t blame Nehru, a much dumber man, for not seeing this.
I don’t know RR, sometimes when I read stuff abt them, I get overwhelmed by a blinding anger, disgust, and even hatred at those Nehru-Gandhi-CPI angels. And you know the icing? The very poor people these angels fucked so royally, keep portraits of them, and worship them. Even Sonia Gandhi, a mere successor of them exalted angels, adorns the walls of houses in many a village in North India.
It takes me considerable willpower not to puke.
Why would anybody be angry at Gandhi? Because he gave up his lucrative job as a lawyer to fight for the rights of Indians in South Africa?
Or is it because he came back to India to fight the greatest colonial power of the time? Gandhi started out at a time when the British empire was at its zenith. Nobody could even imagine the demise of this empire at that time.
Nehru came from a rich family. He had his schooling in the best public school of Britain, the Great Power of the time. He gave up his comfortable existence and a chance to make more money working as a barrister. Instead he fought for our independence. Is that a cause for anger?
What is it that drove these men to take such risks with their lives? Have you ever considered how scary it must be to be in a colonial jail? This was long before any Human Rights Convention was devised. How about getting lathicharged? How about the threat of a massacre as it happened in Jallianwalla Bagh?
It takes courage and conviction to give up so much and take enormous risks for something that benefitted everyone. Surely they and countless others deserve some praise.
Excellently written essay even though I don’t fully agree with the content.
Hitler was defeated but the British managed to defeat themselves too. So Orwell got it right that the British as they were couldn’t defend and then fight back alone. In the end, the real victors of that war were the USA and the USSR.
Britain became a shell of itself after the war and has never recovered. What George Orwell gives is a recipe for defeating the Nazis. But it is only a recipe for fighting a war. What he calls for is war-mobilisation. But after the war people might want to go back to the old ways. So his socialism wouldn’t have endured.
Suffice to say nationalisation did take place(not much of a success) and India did secede. But it happened in a manner that he never envisaged. Moreover, the essay was written in 1942 when the outcome of the war was not sure. I see a man in panic calling for revolution to prosecute a war.
In the early 20th century, history could have gone anyway.
The fact that the USA entered the war. If the USA hadn’t entered the war, the result could have been different. Orwell talks about that.
80% of German casualities were sustained on the Eastern Front with the Soviet Union under Stalin. The Soviets suffered a casuality of around 27 million dead. Moreover the USA helped the Soviets in the war effort. Both nations successfully mobilised for war but taking a central leadership.
Another example of how history might have taken a turn for the worse is that there was a coup plotted by big-money interest to overthrow Roosevelt in the 1930s. It was the personal integrity of one man that saved America from another civil war.
Here are the links I have used:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/arts/21WAR.html?ex=1392786000&en=dc1975817ed2ae27&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Butler.html
I will end my contribution here.
Yum Yum: Gandhi and Nehru deserve praise because they “sacrificed” their riches to do what they felt was “good”?
Let’s take the case of a paedophile millionare who is arrested.
He “sacrificed” all his money to do what he felt was good! Don’t you want to praise him and exalt him?
No?
But hey – he is less cuplable in my eyes.
The paedophile only messed up the life of a few children doing what he felt good.
Gandhi and Nehru fucked up millions and even generations of children as well as adults; by imposing their morals and ideals and dumbness upon the peoples.
Sometimes, I wonder if with so many people like you, whether India deserved her Nehrus and Gandhis.
You wouldn’t say this if you were languishing in a colonial jail. Nor would you be so cocky if you found yourself surrounded by armed shooters while you desperately try to save yourself by jumping into a well as it happened in Jallianwalla Bagh.
A paedophile does what something that gratifies himself. There is no benefit for others. Rather he takes away the childhood of his victims.
All Indians cherish their freedom. India is democratic and has one of the most credible elections in the world. To enjoy the benefits of the freedom struggle while denigrating the ones who fought for is pure ingratitude. On the other hand you could be an emigrant who no longer needs to have a stake in events on the ground in India.
Perhaps you miss the chance to the Raj which would have provided you a chance to say ‘salaam’ to your colonial master.
The ideals and morals were chosen by us and events beyond their control. Gandhi wanted a different kind of economy. It was never implemented. Nehru would have liked India to be a pacifist nation. It didn’t happen. A whole raft of Nehruvian policies could not be implemented because of opposition from various interests in the society. Nobody is perfect and our leaders weren’t perfect either.
Your comparison of the leaders of our independence movement with the most vile of criminals shows your moral deficit. I never knew there were self-hating Indians.
Remember it is one thing to criticize. Nobody is beyond criticism. Criticism can be constructive.
It is another thing to hate blindly and be foul-mouthed.
To enjoy the benefits of the freedom struggle while denigrating the ones who fought for is pure ingratitude…. It is another thing to hate blindly and be foul-mouthed.
All of us have a moral code. Some live by it. But some make others live by it. Some others make a cult out of it, that wearing the label of the follower of the code is a goal in itself. Reason and rationality are sacrificed as with any cult, but the particular moral code is considered so paramount that the people, the followers, do not notice. They relish their degradation – both of their own moral code, and of their reason – and they exalt their degraders, as proper cult followers should. They relish this, for the moral code they have adopted exalts sacrifice, exalts self-effasement and degradation, exalts the superiority of the moral code/ethics to reason as a part of its very definition. A moral code – that is supposed to tell right from wrong – that supposes itself to be right as an axiom cannot really be that sound can it? What use is a moral-high-ground relative to such ethics absolved of reason?
Gandhi and Nehru were selfish bastards who imposed their self-effacing immoral code upon the people.
I hate many things, but I do sorely hate such a reason-absolved cult-follower calling others blind! Maybe I should just be amused.
Maybe I should start a kick-to-the-nuts moral code. All people who join get a free kick to the nuts from me. I do this without expecting anything in return, that’s how good I am. And I define receiving this kick to be superior to anything, to be very “moral”. Hey – at least I am less cruel, and shall inflict less harm than some others I know. Feel free to put my portraits on your walls, and worship me.
Yazad, we can split the difference here. From the essay etc. it is clear what Orwell meant. He meant:
1) Central Planning + Totalitarianism + Inequality = Fascism
2) Central Planning + Totalitarianism + Attempts to achieve equality = Communism
3) Central Planning + Democratic Control + Equality = Socialism
He used Fascism as a demonstration that Central Planning works, but he clearly preferred the third option. From the quote that you’ve provided, it seems that he knew that his preferred option is difficult to achieve, but he must have still believed that it is possible (at least in Britain which had a long democratic tradition) or else he wouldn’t have advocated it. Hayek did a good job of explaining why Combination 3 is not possible at all. This is in addition to explaining why Central Planning does not work.
@seven_times_six
There are faults with everyone. As I said there is always grounds for criticism. I don’t completely agree with everything about Nehru and Gandhi. But you just want to abuse leaders who are better-known than you. Perhaps you get a “kick” from making such statements. They make you feel big.
You absolutist condemnations are empty of any content. Vague and generalised assertions have no worth. It is no use conversing with people who see the world in black and white. The real marker of a cult is an absolutist outlook on issues. Those who agree are inside the cult and those who don’t outside and wrong to be there. Looking at people and events from a narrow perspective as prescribed by ones code is another trait of a cultist. I take a broad perspective including the political, social and economic situation. Hence I have a benign view of Nehru and Gandhi. Can the same be said about you?
Btw I didn’t degrade you. I just showed up your empty school-boy insults.
And no thanks, internet “kicks” are not my style.
@ravikiran that is a good simple explanation of what Orwell wrote. He also defines capitalism.
Since I see Hayek fans and perhaps libertarians Here is what Adam Smith Institute and the UK government were upto in Andhra Pradesh.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/05/18/this-is-what-we-paid-for/
yum yum: No wonder you’re anaemic (and given your nickname, hungry?) – if you derive your informational nutrition from batty ol moonbat!
I agree I was a bit caustic in my earlier comments but that was only to stress the points that
1. Nehru-Gandhi did what they did as evangelists of their warped moral code.
2. I have as much (or maybe more) contempt for their moral code as I have for a paedophile’s moral code.
And hey – moral code here seems too “narrow” for you? I meant it to encompass all of the social, economic and political spheres, that I do not have space to cover here. Allege that it is too broad and you’d have more of an argument!!
seven_times_six,
Again all rhetoric and no substance.
‘Batty ol moonbat’ eh? Why not try refuting the substance of his article rather than taking to ad hominem attacks. Ad hominem attacks are the weakest form of argument. A sort of non-argument.
Here are some excerpts:
_”“Vision 2020”, is one of those documents whose summary says one thing and whose contents quite another.(1) It begins, for example, by insisting that education and healthcare must be made available to everyone. Only later do you discover that the state’s hospitals and universities are to be privatised and funded by “user charges”.”_
Privatise universities and hospitals. okie dokie!
_”3) and replace small investors, who “lack motivation”, with “large corporations”.”_
Is that libertarian? or even free-marketism? Since when did small investors lack motivation?
Now it gets reallly interesting:
_”This means a state subsidy for Formula 1 of pounds50million to pounds75m a year.”_
Oh a state subsidy for Formula 1. Privatise universities and hospitals and build Formula 1 racetracks. Oh what happened to the dislike for subsidies? What happened to free-trade?
All this at a time when Andhra farmers were committing suicide.
Want to try arguing with that?
That is what substance is about not name-calling and vacuous repetition of “moral code.”
yum yum! Time for some real brain food?
I wonder what Adam Smith Institute was advicing.
The Romans had “bread and circus” for the masses.
So I guess for the people of Andhra Pradesh it was “rice and formula 1.”
But the people pressed Delete!
“Libertarianism” and “free trade”? No. A scam!
Keep eating the big mac these guys offer. With that you get ‘formula 1!’ Nourishing!!
yum yum: you accuse others of non-arguments and yet insist that I read and respond to non-arguments of batty ol moonbat?
ok. let’s take the “privatization of hospitals”. Did you happen to read – other than in moonbat’s feverish ravings – about this anywhere?
No? Perhaps the complete truth is that the govt encouraged private hospitals with subsidized user charges.
What’s wrong with that?
Encouragement of private schools with public aid is something that has been fairly successful in Maharashtra at the very least. The state of fully public schools with public management [called corporation schools] are so deplorable that it doesn’t even merit comparison.
I am appalled that people take a successful example of private enterprise and cast it as an evil, a failure and what not.
Google is your friend. You can use it to read only ravings of those like Nehru and Moonbat. Or you can use it to expand your moral code. (Ok I put that last phrase in just to rankle you! 🙂
Monbiot quoted the “Vision 2020.” Why don’t you try reading it rather than bringing in a little experiment from Maharastra which transfers funds from the government to the people with a new middleman.
Privatising hospitals and schools while Britain is pouring ever more money into its public sector National Health Service(NHS.)
I guess poor countries don’t deserve state hospitals.
Britain can continue with Public schools but not Andhra Pradesh.
Public health and education are the basis of the high standard of livings in Scandanavia. It can be done and has been done successfully. France has the best healthcare system in the world. It is fully under the public sector.
The public health sector is the emblem of Canada and a stark contrast to the US.
If public schools are not working in Maharashtra it is because of bad people in the management. Such people are there in private sector as well. Can you refute the fact that in many private schools there is management encouraged copying during exams? Can you refute the fact that it is the private sector that leaks entrance exam papers? Can you refute the fact that many or most private colleges take capitation fee and admit students not necessarily on merit?
Money becomes the object of desire and scoundrels don’t care if the law is broken to make the money. The fact is scoundrels are everywhere whether it is the public sector or the private sector.
To abolish/restrict/sell massive public services that serve the poor, creating social changes and then invest money in Formula 1. This must be the famed “good governance.”
“Rice and Formula 1”
“Rice and Formula 1”
Let the games begin!! Who cares about healthcare and education!!
Btw India has one of the lowest public investment in healthcare as percentage of GDP. It is worse than many military-obsessed dictatorships. But they want to further reduce this miniscule public involvement.
“Rice and Formula 1”
yum yum: all your arguments have been answered elsewhere, they are the very basic arguments against corrupt state institutions, and how inefficiency and corruption is a natural end-product for such institutions.
I shall give a brief window, but for more
complete arguments I encourage you to read up at
the very least the articles in this blog and CafeHayek etc.
I don’t know if you’re based in India but even the left in India [except the loony CPI fringe] agrees that public education and health is a sieve that needs to be repaired before more water is poured into it.
Have you been to corporation schools and hospitals? they are cesspools of inefficiency, corruption and pathetic quality.
And no I dont think much can be done – after all this is the obvious result of an absence of any incentives, and need for competition.
Vision 2020 asks for/encourages private participation in education esp. higher technical education. And my “frivolous” example in Maharashtra indicates how successful such an initiative can be rather than opening mud-grade schools that nobody goes to!!!
The examples you give of highly advanced nations having large socialist mechanisms like NHS:
where do you think money for that is going to come from? The people. And how do you think people are going to give that money? Not by magic. But by producing. Efficiently. Govt does not have a magical wand to produce money – that is the socialist’s worst misconception. It has to come from people who produce. And by diverting money away from facilitating productivity, you
end up killing the Golden Goose.
In case it doesn’t get through, in a sentence, I am saying that even if one wants free education and health for all, one HAS to go the uber-capitalist way. And Vision 2020 doesn’t even go that far.
When I look at people like you, Yum Yum, who actually take something that can do good for the nation – like the Vision 2020 proposal/document –
I wonder if India thoroughly deserves her plight, and that nothing can be done to improve things.
I mean, if most people in the nation WANT to be third-rate, who am I to wish otherwise?
“User-charges” is the new buzzword for development. Hospitals and schools will be handed over to the private sector, the efficient-by-nature private sector then runs it with the people paying government handouts(vochers etc) for the services they receive. Neat!!
They have something like that in the US. But it is a primitive form of what is being proposed. The new proposal go way beyond that.
There has always been corporate welfare. Nothing wrong in mobilizing corporates if it is for achieving social ends. If the corporates make money of social projects, good for them. But one wouldn’t trust the government to get the best deal. The corporates will make more than their fair share. Pork-barrel schemes like building highways and bridges transfer money to corporates and are more of job-creation excercises.
But how many roads and bridges can be built? In Japan, they have been giving handouts to the corporations to build roads and bridges all over the place. Hundreds of roads and bridges are strewn all over the place catching sunshine and rain and nothing else. The Japanese are already resisting more handouts that destroy their beauty of their land.
Moreover once built these highways belong to the government.
How about getting handouts and also taking control of the assets?
Here comes the public-private partnership initiatives.
Talk about public-private first became fashionable in Britain. Public assets like hospitals and schools are sold to the private sector who are supposed to run it efficiently. Once sold, the new owners will get handouts for “upgradation.”
Any good real-estate agent will tell you that he would clean up the house, make small repairs and repaint the house before selling it, hoping to get a good price.
But here hospitals and schools built with public investment over decades standing on prime real-estate land is sold away in the name of efficiency and on the top of it money for “upgradation.” The margins should be good in this.
Then there is that almost guaranteed income from “user-charges.” Basically government handouts routed through people. As the “user-charges” rise the hospital makes bigger profits. Who pays? The taxpayer who is already divested of the assets and now has to pay through the nose for services.
This means here corporations owned by a few get handouts and also get control of assets once owned by an entity that represented all. This ‘corporate welfare plus’, the next generation of corporate welfare.
Why in India? Maybe because there is some serious resistance to this concept in Britain. The people in Scotland are resisting even minor changes. Who knows if this would succeed?
{robably why they want to conduct experiments on this concept in the Third World. They must have thought poor people wouldn’t have any real voice. Being illiterate and ignorant they wouldn’t know what hit them when these policies were implemented. How would I know? I don’t blame the former Andhra CM.
But the poor people in Andhra Pradesh pressed ‘delete.’
No more “Rice and Formula 1.”
Maybe they can try this experiment somewhere else. Hmm!! Where would that be??? Britain?
I do not consider the private sector evil. The private sector can bring new perspectives, new methods etc. It always good to have several entities working in any field. They are quite efficient. But I do not consider the private sector inherently efficent. The act of privatization need not make state-owned entities efficient as if by magic. There are successes and failures. There is a room for reforming public sector. The American healthcare system is a mixture of private service and public/private funding. It provides choice but is also expensive. But the American is not as capital efficient as some other state-run systems elsewhere. Americans get less bang for their bucks. On the other hand, French state-run system is one of the best. Ultimately, it is matter of choice. Some people want choice and are ready to pay for it. Others want cheaper, egalatarian options and want to pool resources and are ready give up some choice. Europeans want cheap, egalatarian options and Americans generally love choice. Each should get what they want. In case of India, there should have been public discussions and a popular mandate for the changes. There never was and I don’t think there ever will be.
I would go for the substance of what somebody says. Not if he/she is Monbiot, Nehru, Friedman or Hayek. Who cares what they are like? If what they offer is good, practical and beneficial, there is nothing wrong in trying it. Throw away the bad, take along the good. It is better than drinking the snake oil these people sell in the name of “libertarianism”, “free trade”, “efficiency” etc.
seven_times_six,
I totally agree with you mate! Actually I was saying just that above. We all deserve what we want. It’s only fair. Isn’t that what democracy is about? People get what they want.
You sure like Vision 2020 but the people of AP don’t. They are the ones to decide if they want Formula 1 or not. It seems they don’t. DELETE!!
I do understand your “moral code.” I guess I must have one too. Don’t know. I am not very self-aware. I never wanted anybody to live by any code less so my own.
You must have your own reasons for criticizing Nehru and Gandhi. You have not fleshed them out. But I am sure you have them. I am not sure if I would find them valid. We all have out opinions. I think I was too condemning intially.
I would ask some simple questions. Are corporations or private commercial establishments libertarian by nature? Couldn’t they be creations of the State?
Would corporations advance the cause of liberty?
Corporations are not going away. Almost everyone works in them. But these are simple questions.
To European historians of early 20th century, it was well known that the initial recruits to Nazism came from the ranks of the socialists. Orwell’s essay further buttresses the point. Nazim/Fascism and Communism are two sides of the same coin. However, such is the propaganistic genius of the Marxists today they define themselves as the polar opposites of fascists.
Nazism attracted a lot of people. The German elite and indeed a large section of the European and American elite were happy with the rise of Nazism as an antidote for Marxism. But the first people to point out the dangers from Nazism were socialists. All this is in the Orwell essay.
Basically, power like shit attracts all the flies.