Why People Love Socialism

Why has socialism become such a rooted ideology in the west? Why has it infiltrated and subverted almost all aspects of our society from Hollywood and pop culture to mainstream media to our universities?

I remember specifically asking myself that same question a couple years ago when German leftists were protesting capitalism. Leftists protesting capitalism isn't unusual but the reason this day is seared in my mind is because that same day that leftist Germans living in a capitalist country were violently protesting capitalism, Venezuelans living in a socialist country were violently protesting against socialism.

The insanity of that paradox was that capitalism afforded the German anti-capitalism protesters everything from smartphones to fashionable clothes to a comfortable home to endless choices of places to purchase goods to affordable food and life opportunities most people on the planet can only dream about, while the anti-socialism Venezuelan protesters who were actually living under socialism were protesting because they had none of those things.

I thought if those desperate Venezuelans protesting against socialism were aware of the Germans protesting against capitalism in Germany that day, they would have shaken their heads and seen them as spoiled, know nothing brats. And since recent surveys show millennials prefer socialism over capitalism I'd say spoiled, no-nothing brats is a pretty spot on description of a whole lot of people in the west, or let's just call them willfully obtuse.

Now, there isn't just one reason that someone in a first-world western country buys into socialism but I notice that all of the reasons stem from rejecting the traditional wisdom of our past, and by rejecting the traditional wisdom of our past I mean upholding societal norms and values in our cultural and societal understandings that there's a way things are. There's a way we do things and it works.

Traditional wisdom and raising children went out the window with the self-esteem movement and I think that's a good place to start in answering why westerners are now so attracted to socialism.

The self-esteem movement is the nationwide effort to make all children feel special whether in the classroom or on the ball field. Not just special but also equal by engulfing them in a world where there is no competition and there are no winner and losers. The premise of the self-esteem movements is that since successful people have high self-esteem if we teach self-esteem we'll get successful people. Sounds good, right? But that's not how it works.

Traditional wisdom says self-esteem, like respect, has to be earned as confidence comes through developing your abilities. So, I would say that successful people have high self esteem because they are successful not the other way around. And I have to mention that in my book you don't have to be a successful CEO to be a successful person. A successful person is a responsible, self-reliant adult of good character.

When you praise children lavishly for easy things why should they want to do hard things?

Psychology professor Carol Dweck from Columbia University recently published findings that show that the kind of praise found in self-esteem courses may actually hurt children's performance. Fifth graders were given an easy puzzle to solve then told how smart they are. Another group wasn't told they were smart; only that they tried hard. Then both groups were given a much harder test and everyone did poorly on the harder test. What happens next is surprising.

The kids were asked to take more tests. Kids who were praised for trying were eager to try more. Some actually asked to take work home. But those who were told they were smart were reluctant to face further challenges. They could not handle setbacks.

That's why it's not good to tell children they are brilliant all the time. It gets the, caught up in being brilliant rather than learning. Kids need honest feedback and they need to learn that excellence comes from effort. If you're never told what your weaknesses are how will you improve on them? Protecting kids from failure is the worst kind of false kindness.

Perhaps the most unexpected surprise about the self-esteem movement, some experts say, is that it may actually be dangerous. For years we've been told that kids in trouble who act out violently suffer from low self-esteem, but new research suggests the self-esteem advocates have it backward. Violence may be the result of artificially high self-esteem. People who have this inflated, high grandiose view of themselves, when other people criticize them they're likely to lash out becoming angry and aggressive.

You don't get successful people when kids are never criticized and when praise is not tied to performance. You get entitled narcissists who can't perform normally in the real world. When you shatter the delusion of grandeur of someone who thinks the world revolves around them by challenging their world view, they not only get nasty but resentful, one of the worst emotional states.

And guess what that opens them up to? The ideology of resentment; leftism, socialism. That ideology will reaffirm everything they learned from the self-esteem movement, that they're special and unique snowflakes and that if they failed something it's someone else's fault because there's not supposed to be any losers.

No child gets to hear those character building words; you lost. What they hear instead is you were the last winner.

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Another thing that conditions kids to be leftist is the introduction of neo-marxism into our educations system. As early as grade school kids are taught the virtues of multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and internationalism instead of nationalism.

Everyone is taught about the Nazi atrocities in high school, but how many kids are being taught about the Ukrainian famine which killed 6-7 million and that was the direct result of socialism?

When kids are not encouraged to think for themselves like in some universities today, they don't even consider the basics like you don't judge the morality of a system based on the sales pitch but on the results. Their lack of thinking for themselves is why so many people don't even consider that when they add the human factor too; from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs, it becomes contribute as little as possible and take as much as you can, which is summed up in an old Soviet joke. They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work

What they often miss is that because capitalism requires property rights it makes your labor your property which you're free to sell to the highest bidder. In a socialist system where private property and profit are illegal, you're reduced to a slave.

Another reason people are attracted to socialism is not only have they never experienced it, they've never even really thought about it or have been taught about it and what they have been taught they learned from Marxist professors, and that's why a Che Guevara or a hammer and sickle is edgy and cool to them. They have no clue what it really represents.

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The current situation in Venezuela, at least on mainstream media, looks like a bleak forecast of what socialism brings to a nation, but to hear their story straight from the people would seem to indicate they are for socialism. or at least Maduro. This video by The Real New Network the presentation seems as unbiased as can be but I'll let you decide.

In Caracas, Ordinary Venezuelans Speak to The Real News About Venezuela's Crisis

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So is socialism working for those people? They seemed to have everything they need at least on the surface and for now. They sound like they overwhelmingly voted for Madero. So, why is their currency inflating so much? Let's see. Everyone gets housing, education, food, healthcare, electricity, water. Let's print a bunch of money to pay for it and---oh, yeah, inflation.

Hyperinflation comes when the supply of paper money in an economy outstrips demand for goods and services causing the value of the currency to fall. Venezuela turned to increase its money supply because it had no other means of paying its debts. Combined with high government spending to pay for all the things the people need.

Chavez and his administration implemented social programs called the Bolivarian missions that were supposed to improve living conditions for the poor by redistributing the wealth and reforming the way land was used. They were trying to promote economic democratization through the establishment of worker-owned cooperatives.

In 12-years he was able to reduce unemployment (14.5% to 7.8%), the poverty rate (50% to 31.9%), and extreme poverty rate (19.9% to 8.6%). Unfortunately, this prosperity came at a high financial cost. The social programs were good for the people but bad for the economy. Chavez spent more money on these social programs then the country could really afford. Public spending accounted for more than 52% of GDP for 2012. They also borrowed money from other countries to keep the programs going making their foreign debt climb to over $106 billion dollars.

Of course, people are going to vote for you if you give them free stuff and it's no wonder so many of their citizens love their leader.

Since over half the GDP of the country comes from oil when oil prices are good Venezuela does good but when oil prices are down, which started in 2014, Venezuela does bad and there is no way to subsidize all those government programs for its people. Maduro dealt with the budget gap the way similar countries have done in the past when they had no other way to pay their debts; print money.

This set the wheels in motion for hyperinflation. The budget gap was closed by printing money and they could fund the programs, but hyperinflation reduced the savings of individuals and made productive business investment nearly impossible.

We can't rule out the very real possibility, as some of the people in the video mentioned, that the US is influencing the elections to further its own interests and access to Venezuela's vast oil reserves and cooperative political allies.

Anyone from Venezuela who would comment below about how people in Venezuela think and feel about what's going on down there I would thankfully appreciate it. My questions would be, is there a feeling of basic needs being taken care of for the majority of the population and is there a feeling of economic opportunities for bettering your life? Do Venezuelans feel the US and other countries should not try to influence their elections and let them decide their own decisions? Are their people loyal to Maduro because he's the son of Chavez? Is their a segment of the population that feels differently?

This video on the Jimmy Dore Show shows a Canadian reporter who went down to Venezuela and saw a different story we get from mainstream media in the US. It gets really interesting around 4-minutes in.

Canadian Reporter In Venezuela Contradicts U.S. News Coverage

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I showed these two videos with totally opposing slants to emphasize the importance of thinking for yourself. Only by gathering more information from multiple sources that don't necessarily align with one's own beliefs can one begin to make an informed decision about anything, but one can't do that without critically thinking for themselves.

Which bring us back to the effects of the self-esteem movement influencing our children, this video of Liliana Stern who is Professor of Economics at Auburn University is worth watching. She talks about her impressions of her American students from her perspective of growing up in the USSR. It gets really interesting about 10 minutes in.

Dr. Liliana Stern on Growing Up in the USSR

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What I took from this video is the notion that many of her college students, in her opinion, are not prepared to deal with life's challenges and would rather outsource responsibility to the government, a ripe mindset for a socialist government to flourish in the US.

What I would say to Americans that like socialism and would support it there I would say you don't need the government to dictate how to live your life, how much money you should make, how your family should be raised, or how much you should pay in taxes.

The Master and Slave Morality

The nineteenth-century philosopher Nietzsche talked about something he called the master and slave morality which I think related to this topic is at worst some food for thought.

In Nietzsche's view the master morality is the yes-saying attitude and represents the strong, the free, the go-getters, the vigorous, the self-reliant, the purposeful, the assertive, the explorers, the risk-takers, the brave, the open-minded, the truthful, the trusting, and the master morality judges itself and determines its own values and does not need approval.

On the other hand, the slave morality, or herd morality, is the nay-saying attitude, the weak, those who feel victimized, the passive, those afraid of risks and self-reliance.

Unlike the master morality, the slave morality cannot set its own values so they require flattery, a good opinion of themselves, and praise. The weak are afraid and envious of the strong and they not only feel frustrated but secretly hate themselves and because of this self-hatred the weak develop a rationalization that tells them that they are morally superior because they are on the side of the weak, humble, passive, victimized, oppressed people who they see as like themselves.

This leads them to see the strong, the aggressive, the assertive, the independent, the physically and materially successful become the enemy. This feeling of moral superiority they feel resembles racism in the way they similarly encourage feelings of superiority over others.

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Like the children described in the study earlier in this post, who were caught up in being brilliant rather than learning, the weak feel such frustration they feel compelled to lash out and because physical confrontation is not particularly feasible for the weak they use what weapons they can like words.

For example, racist, which to the weak means someone who wins and argument against a liberal when it really means a person who shows or feels or showing discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another. Two different things.

This low self-esteem when challenged, like in the experiment mentioned with students, is more likely to cause them to lash out becoming angry and aggressive. They find the strong to be their enemy and this hate for them leads to the compulsion to destroy. Their words they use don't have to be true or logical because their purpose is only to deconstruct, to destroy what the strong have constructed.

Like a child who can't build a sandcastle themselves who then destroys the sandcastle of a child who can. This is the only way they know how to achieve equality.

Western civilization and capitalism represent the strong and to destroy it they attack the West's sense of its own morality, the pride people have in their achievements, and they undermine its core principles. The combination of resentment, bitterness, envy, and rage, creates a psychological compulsion that allows them to ignore contradictions because what really matters is that they are harming their enemy, the strong. Therefore the goal of the weak is to apply its herd morality universally.

Nietzsche saw the rise in the slave morality and gave reasons for why we need to abandon it. He said the problem with slave morality by the weak by the creativity of their resentment, seek to make everyone equal; equally weak that is. He concluded that slave morality needs to be abandoned because it's unnatural and leads to the weakening of humanity. It's simply incompatible with the natural innate drive for self-improvement that everyone has.

You see this everywhere today. People choosing the ideology of victimhood over self-improvement. I know it's simplistic, but another reason socialist ideologies are so popular is because it takes away the burden of personal responsibility. When someone believes that every failure is someone else's fault it brings out some of the worst elements of human nature in them, like envy, resentment, and hate, and of course, leftism welcomes those elements with open arms.

The whole idea of socialism is dependent on a large segment of the population feeling they are oppressed to move them to take from the wealthy and redistribute wealth to the poor and that needs disenfranchised people for it to take shape. When enough people feel poor any leader who comes along promising them free stuff they really need will get their vote, and while it may solve many problems in the short term, in the long run, if the government can't afford to pay for it they will run into the same problems every country that has tried it runs into, hyperinflation of the currency and stagnation of the economy.

Will our civilization end badly with the rise of the popularity of socialism in western society? I don't know. Maybe we'll correct our course naturally. Maybe it will take something more drastic or maybe like Rome, we'll crumble and fall followed by a thousand years of darkness.

I don't know but there may be something we can do now that may make a difference. We can be a little less materialistic and remember what's really important in life. We can pass on to our children traditional wisdom like nothing satisfies a person more than obtaining something they honestly earned, and most of all we can teach them about their heritage, about who they are why they should be proud of their nation, history, and culture and that tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.

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