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12/10/2004: "Sher’s History of Con-munism"

Yesterday marked the beginning of a new epoch in political science, the formal identification of a new species of socio-political organization! While biologists identify many new species every day, the situation in political science is much different. You just don’t get entirely new categories. Consider that during over the last three hundred years there have only be four: Liberalism (18th century), Communism (19th century), and Fascism (20th Century). Imperialism has been around since the beginning of civilization, of course, so it’s hardly a surprise that the new addition, Con-munism, shares many of its characteristics. Con-munism is, after all, virtually defined by its retrogression to approaches lost to the “dust-bin of history,” as put by one of the Founding Fathers of Con-munism. Speaking of Reagan, he will forever be remembered as the Con-munism’s first great leader. He served the same role as Lenin for Communism, the visionary who first established the new socio-political system in a country. The role of Marx, the theoretician on which the new system was built, is played for Con-munism by Laffer. Laffer was the originator of the Das Capital of Con-munism, Supply Side Economics. Like Communism, Con-munism is fundamentally based on a romantic but flawed premise. Communism’s romantic notion is “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” The flaw in Communism is that a huge proportion of society’s output is motivated by individuals who exceed minimum job requirements in the hope of additional pay and reward. In other words, people work for more than their basic needs. The romantic notion in supply side economics is that by cutting taxes you can increase tax revenues. The flaw is that it’s idiotic. This has not discouraged the proponents of Con-munism, considering the tremendous wealth that can be generated (at least in the short run) by keeping the benefits of liberalism without having to actually pay for them. This is where the “con” in Con-munism comes in. The Con-munist movement, like Communism once did, has a huge infrastructure of institutes and think tanks that churn out a daily flood of disinformation. Finally, we need to note that Communism had one other historical figure with an analogous role to Con-munism. We’re talking about Stalin, Lenin’s successor, who took the basic concepts of Communism and pushed them to absolute extremes. Indeed, it’s generally understood that Stalin’s extremes reflected a degree of insanity that set the stage for the final collapse of the system under Gorbachev. So who are the counterparts on Con-munism? Well, we can expect a Gorbachev figure right about the time the baby boomers are fully retired and the younger generation of workers are squeezed by huge tax increases to continue benefits for the connected boomers, to pay interest on a much larger debt, and to redeem the social security trust fund bonds taken out during the years of surplus with the program. In other words, we’ll see the Gorbachev figure when intergenerational war breaks out. And who is the insane Stalin figure? Do I need to spell it out?