Stalin With a Smile

The would-be Soviets are now selling slavery with a smile. "The full buffet is free, if you just vote for me" goes the siren song of the "democratic" socialists. Don't believe it.

People generally recognize the most obvious difference between free-market capitalism and communism: the economic one. That makes sense because both are primarily descriptions of economic systems rather than social organizing principles, even though they inevitably produce very different societies.

What receives far less attention is that the real divide is not merely economic. It is behavioral.

In a free-market capitalist system, people are encouraged to act. They are encouraged to solve problems, create value, take risks, and improve their circumstances by improving the circumstances of others. In a communist system, people are conditioned to avoid problems while the state promises to shield them from those problems in exchange for power, control, and dependence.

Virtually every promise the committed communist makes revolves around avoiding something. Healthcare becomes free. Education, housing and transportation all become free. The collective will provide. The state will take care of it. Your highest freedom, they argue, is freedom from concern itself.

Communists do not merely believe in transferring wealth. They believe in transferring misery as well.

The dangerous seduction of communism has always been the promise of getting something for nothing because someone else will pay for it.

But there is always a cost. Not even communists can break the laws of economics.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, a free house, a free education, or free transportation. The bill is simply paid in a different currency.

They give you things in exchange for your liberty.

For decades, I have used a simple example. Communists promise free housing, free education, and free transportation to the gullible. The housing may be free, but you will live where they tell you to live and under conditions they control. Education may be free, but you will be trained in what the state needs rather than what you wish to learn. The transportation may be free, but it will operate according to their schedules and destinations, not yours. You move when they say move, where they say go, and if they decide they do not want you to go somewhere, then you do not go.

The irony is that the same human differences exist under both systems. The raw materials feeding every economy—people—do not change.

There are high performers and low performers. There are smart people and stupid people. There are also stupid smart people and smart stupid people. There are people willing to risk everything to build the next SpaceX, and there are people who believe they are owed a better life simply because they possess a pulse and can fog a mirror.

Human nature remains stubbornly consistent, the difference lies in how those differences are treated.

In a free-market capitalist system, people are generally free to maximize their talents and pursue happiness as they see fit. Not everyone will become an Elon Musk, nor should they expect to. But they are free to try. Success and failure are distributed unevenly because human abilities, ambitions, decisions, and circumstances are distributed unevenly.

There is one thing neither system can accomplish.

Neither can transform lazy, unmotivated people into driven, productive people simply by decree.

So how does communism deliver its promise of equality?

First, it quietly changes the definition. Equality becomes equity. Opportunity becomes outcome. The focus shifts from creating conditions in which people can succeed to managing the results after the fact.

The future becomes subordinate to the present.

Under such a system, the driven and productive are constrained by the least productive. Taller blades of grass are not celebrated; they are cut down. Excellence becomes suspect because excellence produces differences, and differences are incompatible with the promise of equal outcomes.

This does not mean scientists, engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs cease to exist. It means that their achievements cease to belong fully to them. At some point, their innovation, competence, and productivity become the property of the collective.

SpaceX provides a useful example. The Soviet Union proved long ago that communist societies could produce talented scientists and rocket engineers. They reached space before we did. The question was never whether they could build rockets.

The question was whether they could create a system capable of continuously improving them.

There is a reason it took a private company to make access to space increasingly routine and dramatically less expensive while both NASA and the Soviet space bureaucracy struggled under the weight of institutional inertia. Innovation thrives when rewards are tied to performance, risk, and success. It stagnates when innovation becomes just another government department.

But it is all a trap.

Human nature includes the desire to achieve, build, compete, and improve. To suppress that desire requires coercion.

In the past, coerced collectivism was sold by gun-toting revolutionaries. Today it is marketed by smiling politicians, credentialed experts, and slick salesmen promising security, comfort, and freedom from responsibility.

Only the sales pitch has changed. Human nature has not.