Lev Navrozov
Friday, Jan. 10, 2003

On Christmas Day, I saw on TV Channel 13 the celebration by the Cato Institute of its 25th anniversary, and I heard that ritual phrase about the forthcoming victory of "capitalism" over "socialism." Where? In Iraq? My God! At the close of 2002 they were still playing with these verbal monstrosities.

The word "capitalist" appeared before the word "capitalism" – late in the 18th century – and meant a "moneyed man" who did not deposit his money in a bank to receive interest on the capital, but put it into a factory to get a higher rate of interest on the capital and live on it happily ever after in pleasant and sinful idleness.

A landowner worked hard to obtain a good harvest, but if he became a capitalist he received cash at the expense of the capital, that is, the factory workmen. A Russian poet who died in 1837 and had never heard of Marx wrote about a landlord becoming a capitalist:

But not for long is his ordeal
The capital nips any ideal.

Actually, private enterprise is as old as history, and had existed before the words "capital" and "interest" (off the capital) appeared. Individuals and corporations engaged in private enterprise do not lead the same life of pleasant and sinful idleness as do those who live off their capital in a bank. The word "capital," misused by those who had never been engaged in private enterprise and had been confusing it with bank deposition, has been misleading hundreds of millions of people for over two centuries.

The word "capitalism," implying injustice, brought forth the word "socialism," implying the correction of this injustice. The word was coined by Auguste Comte and picked up by Marx.

What is "socialism"? In 1921 Lenin permitted private enterprise, and it flourished for several years after his death, into the early 1930s. Was Lenin's dictatorship softer or more lenient as a result, if compared with the Soviet dictatorship of the 1960s when the private enterprise of the 1920s was an odd relic of the past?

Lenin regarded "dictator" as a word good enough to be applied to himself, and this is how he defined his dictatorship scientifically:

The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing else but completely unlimited power, restrained by no laws or rules whatsoever, and relying directly on violence.

Nor is there any evidence that the private enterprise that Hitler preserved in Germany softened his dictatorship. The plots to assassinate him were hatched among the military, while the private enterprise faithfully produced armaments. That private enterprise helped Hitler to come to power is now beyond doubt.

Stalin abolished Lenin's private enterprise by the mid-1930s because he believed that it would divert resources to consumer needs. His economy was duly called "state capitalism." Then Stalin did not like the name and changed it to "socialism." So, "socialism" = "state capitalism" + ruthless absolutism or dictatorship.

If Hitler's Germany had defeated Soviet Russia and Tojo's Japan had defeated China, whereupon Germany and Japan established world domination, this could have been defined as the victory of "capitalism" over "socialism," but mankind (and, in particular, even Russia and China) would not have been better off.

Just like Lenin, the owners of China have permitted private enterprise. If Lenin had established world domination through his "world proletarian revolution," who would have cared whether it was the global victory of "socialism" over "capitalism" or vice versa? The same applies to the owners of China except that they are after world domination not through Lenin's world revolution, but through weapons able to destroy the enemy's means of retaliation.

In Soviet Russia, "socialism" was a magic word. Everything in Soviet Russia (including "state capitalism") was "socialism," and the word "capitalism" could not apply to anything Soviet after the mid-1930s. Of course, economically, "socialism" was said to be the most efficient, creative and advanced system, destined to replace "capitalism" all over the world.

Substitute in the paragraph above the word "capitalism" for the word "socialism" and you will have a common American conformity. Bertrand Russell, who disliked both socialism and Christianity, used to say that "socialism is a Christian heresy." But God forbid saying in the United States that Social Security, social benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidized housing and welfare are elements of a Christian heresy, called socialism by Bertrand Russell.

Just as with the word "capitalism" in Soviet Russia, the word "socialism" is still the name of the enemy and cannot be applied to anything American!

Sometimes the fear of "socialism" goes very far indeed. On Barry Farber's show about 20 years ago, I was explaining the advantages of the metric system, which had begun to be developed under the French kings, was introduced by Napoleon and became universal, though the United States is still lagging behind in this respect. An indignant caller demanded that I stop my Soviet propaganda of socialism in measures and weights.

The assumption that private enterprise is always the most efficient, creative and advanced should be taken with a grain of salt. Hitler lost the war in Russia because he did not enter the defenseless Moscow in 1941, while with every following year, the Soviet weapons produced by government enterprises ("state capitalism") were better and better than the German weapons produced by German private enterprise with its world-famous corporations, such as Krupp. The Kalashnikov assault rifle is still used – half a century after the Soviet government enterprises produced it!

As for civilian life, I cannot, within this scope, present an analysis of U.S. private enterprise, but here is one glance around as I go out of our apartment house in Riverdale (an upper-middle-class area). The utility poles carrying electric wires along the street are not wooden cylinders, impregnated against rotting and dug in vertically, but raw tree trunks, leaning in different directions and kept from falling by makeshift devices. Since they are not impregnated and hence rot, every tree trunk is stuck with thousands of staples, normally used for paper and supposed to keep together the rotting layers of wood. The ancient Chinese would have envied the amount of time (and money) put into the job.

I could write a 400-page doctorate: "Our Riverdale Street as a Product of Private Enterprise." But I will make only one more remark. As elsewhere in New York, the sidewalks of our street are not asphalted, but laid out with concrete slabs, evidently in imitation of noble flagstones in ancient Rome and in Europe before the advent of vulgar asphalt.

But while flagstones were made to fit perfectly, the concrete slabs imitating them are not level with one another. As a result, recently two tenants of our apartment house fell and one broke his knee, while the other put his shoulder out of joint. The courts did not accept their injury cases since unevenly laid slabs are ... Here we fall silent because the legal argument was so sophisticated that I am afraid to mar it while retelling it in lay terms.

The moral is that "capitalism" (private enterprise) should not be treated with that religious awe with which "socialism" ("state capitalism") was treated in Soviet Russia.

My NewsMax.com columns have been accompanied by my proposal to publishers to send them by slow-mail the 130-page beginning of my book, "Out of Moscow and Into New York: A Life in the Geostrategically Lobotomized West in the Age of Terrorism and Post-Nuclear Superweapons."

Though the proposal was addressed to publishers, hundreds of readers sent me e-mails expressing their appreciation of my columns and requesting that I send them my book, or at least the beginning of it. I have decided to meet their wishes by posting on my Web site my book in weekly installments. Those interested, please let me know (navlev@cloud9.net) and you will be informed by e-mail as to the link to my Web site.

My one-hour interview with Harold Channer will be shown on "Conversations with Harold Channer" on Monday, Jan. 13, at 1 p.m. on Channel 34 of the Time/Warner and Channel 107 of the RCN cable television systems in Manhattan. It will also be streamed on the Internet at the time of cable casting at www.mnn.org – click on Channel 34 at the site.

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