Joy Behar: “Isn’t it socialism when the government helps you?”

Sunny Hostin: “Yeah, and the fire department’s gotta come, and the police.  I mean, socialism!”

                                                                                                                            --The View, Sept. 29, 2022

So discussed the hosts on the women's talk show, The View.

Actually no, Joy and Sunny, that’s not what socialism is. 

Behar and Hostin stated these clueless AOC-level views during a recent discussion in which various members of The View exposed what the “inclusive” party, the compassionate “liberals,” really are by making fun of the people who are dying and losing their livelihoods after Hurricane Ian in Florida.  Very classy!

If one wants a real definition of socialism, as opposed to what one hears at the ninth grade lunch table or on The View, it would be something like this: 

Socialism is a social organization in which the government as opposed to private individuals, “own the means of production”.  In a socialist country the government owns the car companies, the health care industry, the news media, the farms, the energy companies, etc.  By contrast, in capitalist countries, these are owned by a private individual or consortium of private individuals.

Since, in a socialist system, there is ultimately only one car company, namely, the government, which is generally directed, so to speak, by “party” officials who know nothing about cars, there is no real competition and, therefore, no incentive to make car buyers happy.  The same is true of the energy industry, the food industry, the medical industry, and so on.  As a consequence, service is slow and the quality of the product is poor.  For example, in contrast with the sleek comfortable American cars of the time like the Mustang, the old Soviet bloc cars looked like cramped bread boxes on rickety clanking wheels.  There is an old joke:

Question:  What is long and grey, slow moving, and eats cabbage?

Answer:  A Soviet meat queue. 

That pretty much sums it the problem.  As a consequence, in 1989 the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” collapsed under the weight of its corrupt, inefficient, bureaucracy, and there had been millions of dead people who got in the way of the glorious socialist revolution.

It would appear from Behar’s ignorant remarks that socialists (including the fake ones on U.S. television) do not really want the peasants to know what capitalism or socialism really are, namely that capitalism is about the individual freedom to bring one’s ideas to success and benefit both the capitalist and his/her customers while socialism is about government control of the economy and its people.  It is quite easy and personally profitable for pampered American princesses to get rich taking paychecks from their privately owned capitalist corporate media companies while they make it harder for poor people to improve their lot in life by gaslighting them with false caricatures of capitalism and deceptive romantic portraits of socialism. 

Consider the case of Humberto Lopez.  After his father passed away Lopez came legally to the United States at age 12, speaking no English, after a very rough start in life in Mexico.  Lopez is now, after working his way up through a number menial jobs, is Chairman of the Board of HSL Properties, Inc., and Independent Director of Pinnacle West Capital and earns about $433,000 a year. 

It is capitalism, not socialism, that it enables people like Lopez through their own individual initiative, to better their lot in life.  Lopez himself puts it this way: “The American dream is still attainable in as long as we have capitalism [but] big government … [is] … making it harder and harder.”  No socialist government made Lopez rich.  Indeed, Lopez knows that the truth is the reverse.  Socialism, like all big government, holds people down and oppresses them!

Even Karl Marx understood the enormous power of capitalism to create wealth and raise people and cultures to a superior level.  

In the Communist Manifesto Marx explains that

The bourgeoisie [capitalist] … has accomplished wonders, far surpassing Egyptian Pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic Cathedrals… [D]uring its rule of scarce of one hundred years, [it] has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than… all preceding generations together… In place of the old seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have … [a] universal interdependence of nations ... National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness becomes … impossible ... [so] there arises a world literature.  ... The [capitalist] … draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilization.  … [I]t forces the barbarian’s intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. ...  [It] has thus rescued [many people] from the idiocy of rural life.

The foremost opponent of capitalism, Karl Marx, sees that capitalism is a far greater wealth-creator than anyone had even imagined!  

Capitalism fosters the development of magnificent architecture and engineering works.  Capitalism fosters the interdependence of nations thereby breaking down national narrow-mindedness.  Capitalism fosters the development of world literature that unites all the peoples of the world in a common culture.  Capitalism forces narrow-minded nations to end their obstinate hatred of foreigners.  Capitalism even rescues a large population from the “idiocy” of hardscrabble rural subsistence life.  Capitalism is just awful, isn’t it! 

Naturally the virtue-signaling socialists on The View want to get rid of it, or, more precisely, pretend they want to get rid of it, in favor of some childish socialist dream.  By this grand pretense, they can have both the benefit of capitalism (they get the money) but they also get to preen themselves as heroic social justice revolutionaries as well.

If one teaches the dismal transparently false doctrine to people that in capitalism a small group of evil men rig the system against them, one creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.  One thereby gives people, who will decide that there is no point even in trying to do what Lopez and many poor people have done, a splendid excuse for personal failure, which ensures that many of them will remain in poverty. 

Great work Joy and Sunny!  Indeed, that may be the socialist’s real aim.  By telling people it is not worth trying to improve their lot in life in free markets like Lopez did, socialists help the Left expand its poor angry membership, thereby, helping themselves to additional wealth and power.  That doesn’t help poor people.  It hurts them.   But it does help the various virtue-signaling television pseudo-socialists who are on the capitalist media’s payroll.

It is ironic that socialism, or more precisely, deceptive romantic dreams of socialism, sell very well in capitalist markets to people who have been taught to feel guilty for their good fortune.  People make this deceptive sales pitch this on television shows.  People teach it to impressionable children in our educational system.  Unscrupulous or clueless politicians can even make a personal fortune by preaching socialism to the voters. 

Congratulations Bernie!  Pushing socialism in American’s capitalist free market has been great for Joy, who has, according to reports, acquired millions of evil capitalist dollars because the audience loves the childish bickering (which keeps the money rolling in).  And as a bonus, she can “virtue-signal” about how much she cares (about whatever).  It is just too bad that such self-serving behavior hurts both the country and the poor who buy her deceptive self-serving sales pitch.

Image: Graham Hills, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0