"Capitalism Has Won"

"Socialism has been a great tragedy this century."

Robert Heilbroner (1919 - 2005)

The American economist Heilbroner was a committed socialist and OFTEN brought up by liberals as the "voice of economic reason" whenever anyone needed a good socialist sound bite or article written.

Most famous for his 1953 book, The Worldly Philosphers, which I studied in my Economic Thought class in college, he compares and unabashedly makes equals Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes.

They are NOT equals.

However, over the decades he became increasingly aware that socialist thought creates no wealth, produces little and deprives the good life from the masses living under its control. He realized that it reduces freedom, necessarily, as an economy's "masters" are forced to implement laws and programs to CONTROL its people to MAKE them conform.

People naturally yearn for freedom, especially in an economic sense, and will act accordingly. This freedom, of action and of thought, cannot be allowed in socialist arenas. We call such freedoms "unalienable rights."

In fact, in 1999, he wrote a seventh edition to his famous book, in which he included for the first time a final chapter entitled "The End of Worldly Philosophy?", in which he offers a grim view of the then, and still current, state of socialist economics. He said, "capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure." He went on to compliment Milton Friedman, Freidrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises for their economic thought and contributions toward free market economics and their insistence of the free market's superiority.

In 1992 he wrote, "democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anti-capitalist." That is quite the admission from a seasoned believer!

Well, HOW CAN democratic liberties be allowed sway in a socialist economy? Freedom and control don't mix! Gorbachev figured that one out real quick!

And in a 1989 "New Yorker Magazine" article, "Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won...Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism."

We know this. Then why, why, do these people in our vaunted "administration" think to try this all over again? How come they think that this time, this time, it will work?

WELL, THEY DON'T. THEY KNOW IT DOESN'T WORK. THEY ARE IN THIS GAME FOR THE CONTROL. PURE AND SIMPLE. THEY WANT TO BE "LEADERS!"

WHAT'S THE GERMAN WORD FOR "LEADER?"