By Peter Pavarini
I was prompted to write this blog by the following “message to the world” posted by a Cuban-American rapper on Instagram the other day:
“For all the Cubans out there and everything going on in Cuba right now: you are the ones that will motivate the world, inspire the world, for them to see what it really is to live and die for freedom”.
Not being a rap fan, I had no idea who Armando Christian Perez (aka “Pitbull”) was. In fact, before I heard the rap artist’s plea to bigwigs like Jeff Bezos, I didn’t know that the world’s richest man had been adopted at age four by a Cuban immigrant named Miguel Bezos.
It was sadly ironic, therefore, to hear Joe Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas – another man of Cuban heritage, discourage Cuban refugees from coming to the United States in the aftermath of the nationwide protests that have beset the island nation.[i] To soften the blow, Secretary Mayorkas assured any Cuban refugees who had a “well-founded fear of persecution or torture” they would be referred to other countries for “resettlement”.[ii] To my surprise, the Biden administration had found a way to use Trump’s much-maligned “Remain in Mexico” policy to keep out future Republicans.[iii]
Young America’s Love Affair with Socialism and Communism
This uncanny sequence of news stories got me thinking about the love affair young Americans have been having with socialism and communism as of late.[iv]
Surely, no one seeking to escape Cuba’s 62-year Communist nightmare wants to come to the U.S. to witness firsthand the Democratic Party’s flirtation with Marxism. Knowing the misery of an impoverished, totalitarian state, anyone who claims to be willing “to live and die for freedom”, as Pitbull says, must consider America (despite all of its warts) to be a reasonable alternative to the hellhole they are fleeing. Why then do Gen Z Americans continue to see our country so differently?
Last fall, just before the election, a poll conducted by You.Gov reported that Gen Z’s approval of socialism had increased to 49% (up from 40% in 2019), and 30% of those surveyed among ages 16 to 23 said they viewed Marxism favorably. In another You.Gov poll reported in Axios on October 28, 2019, 70% of these young people said they would be willing to vote for someone who claimed to be a socialist. Further, 74% of Gen Z Americans said they didn’t believe there was any link between Marxism and totalitarianism.[v]
A Profound Ignorance of History
Before you dismiss these numbers as the fever dreams of immature minds, there are other indications that the entire U.S. population has moved away from its historic support for capitalism toward something more akin to a European-style economic system. Seventy-eight percent of all Americans now say the divide between rich and poor has become a serious issue, and 49% are in favor of a “complete change in our economic system”.
Many voices on the Right attribute these trends to a misunderstanding of both socialism and communism, and to a great extent that’s true. Gone are the days when high school civics teachers used to explain the differences between socialism, communism and capitalism like this:
Socialism: You have two cows. Give one cow to your neighbor.
Communism: You have two cows. Give both cows to the government, and they may give you some of the milk.
Fascism: You have two cows. You give all of the milk to the government, and the government sells it.
Nazism: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes both cows.
Anarchism: You have two cows. Keep both of the cows, shoot the government agent and steal another cow.
Capitalism: You have two cows. Sell one cow and buy a bull.[vi]
But more than simply being ignorant of economic history, most young Americans don’t seem to understand that the prosperity they believe they are entitled to has never been achieved without free markets and relatively limited government.
A Brief History of Marxism’s Failures
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, most people assumed that communism died along with it. That’s wrong. China may have opened itself to some elements of capitalism (e.g., global trade, a stock market), but its government never surrendered its authoritarian ways. Indeed, for most Chinese, that country became even more repressive. Similarly, Russia evolved into an economic system that enriched a few oligarchs but retained many of the totalitarian features of the former Soviet Union. Lesser states like Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela may be among the few which clung to vintage communism, but Marxist ideology continued to be spread globally by academic and international institutions.
Consequently, many Americans on the younger end of the age spectrum who have yet to achieve the economic security attained by the parents and grandparents believe it’s worth giving up some of their personal freedom for a little more economic security. Saddled with college debt and unable to break out of living paycheck to paycheck, guaranteed minimum income, free healthcare and subsidized childcare seems like a good bargain – at least in the short term. They intentionally ignore modern examples of socialism’s failures, like the long food lines in Venezuela, the thousands starving in North Korea, and Cubans still willing to flee their homeland in makeshift rafts. Socialism hasn’t changed nor, despite Bernie Sanders’ claims, has it been perfected. It remains the same flawed doctrine it has always been. While it promises equality and security, it can only deliver on those promises by diminishing everyone’s standard of living – except, of course, for those elites in the governing class.
Only Capitalism Creates Prosperity
Despite its imperfections, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has created the most prosperity for the greatest number of people without regard to cultural and geographic conditions. More than anyone in those societies, the poor and the working classes have benefited from capitalism’s powerful system of incentives which promotes innovation, hard work and efficiency. The incidental disparity of wealth created by capitalism (by far its biggest criticism) is not the goal of the free market but a byproduct of its ability to increase a society’s overall productivity. Arguably, the inequities of a capitalistic system are more readily addressed by taxation and social programs than through a socialist government’s redistribution of wealth and income.
As in a constitutional republic, capitalism requires a moral foundation for it to work. Due to the erosion of Judeo-Christian values in modern America, changed assumptions about what is acceptable behavior have exposed capitalism’s susceptibility to abuse. In particular, greed fueled by crony capitalism and the concentration of political power in the elites have given critics reasons to argue that the American economic system is irrevocably broken. Marxist propaganda like “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” has begun to resonate with a greater number of people. But, generally speaking, the people attracted to that philosophy have only known a society which equips its children with $1,000 iPhones, pays people not to work even when they can (and should), and does everything a government can do to penalize success instead of failure.
A Telling Contradiction
Notwithstanding the clamor for more government spending by the Left, the same YouGov poll mentioned above also contains this internal contradiction:
“Americans increasingly distrust the government to take care of their interests, with 87% saying they trust themselves over the government and their community (a 7% increase from 2019). This is especially the case in younger generations, with only 6% of Gen Z and 5% of Millennials trusting the government to take care of their interests, down 8% and 11% from 2019, respectively.”[vii]
How can young Americans distrust their government to look after their interests yet endorse socialism? Wouldn’t socialism require them to let the government redistribute wealth, centrally plan and control all economic activity and determine their standard of living? Obviously, this exposes a major disconnect in thinking attributable to the jaundiced view of the U.S. young people have acquired from their schooling, their peer group and the media.
A Clarion Call for Freedom
Predictably, the most ardent Leftists, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders and the core of the Black Lives Matter movement, will continue to blame America for every injustice. However, the cry of Cubans and other people oppressed by Marxism has been heard throughout the world. To save our own country, freedom-loving Americans must do everything to heed their call.
[i] M. Wilner, “Homeland security chief warns Cubans and Haitians not to come to U.S. by sea”, Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2021. Mayorkas was born in Havana, Cuba in 1959 and fled to the U.S. with his family shortly after Fidel Castro’s rise to power. https://en.wikipedia.org
[ii] N.Y. Post, July 13, 2021.
[iii] Humberto Fontova, a Latin American expert who escaped Fidel Castro’s regime in 1961, believes Mayorkas is playing politics. He says: “Cuban-Americans voted for Trump at the highest rate of any ethnic group. 72% of Cuban-Americans voted for Trump. That’s a higher percentage than even Southern whites, so naturally the Democrats don’t want to let these people in.”
[iv] B. Johnson, “Half of Gen Z supports Marxism/socialism. Here’s why,” Acton Institute Powerblog, October 23, 2020.
[v] A more thorough discussion of these survey results (from a socialist perspective) appears in D. Fitzgerald, G. Black, “Support for socialism jumps by nearly 10 percent among US youth amin pandemic depression”, World Socialist Web Site, October 22, 2020.
[vi] “The Class in Political Isms”. Chicago Daily Tribune. December 3, 1938. p.12, col.3.
[vii] B. Johnson, supra.
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