The Stupidity of Richard Wolff Save for later Reblog
Richard Wolff is a very stupid man. Dishonest too. Be that as it may be, almost the entire Democratic lineup of Presidential hopefuls is lining their rhetoric up with this guys’ brand of socialism, from this Marxist Communist. Even now, after communism failed long ago, he hangs on to old bullshit beliefs, about communism.
Why do I say he is stupid? And dishonest? Let me make my case:
Wolff says in this interview that China is run by the “Communist party”, when in reality, China is not at all communist………….He’s misleading if not downright lying. The actual background brief story: The Chinese long ago tried communism, it failed miserably. Millions died under communism in China. So then the communist leaders in China looked around the world. They saw that immigrant Chinese communities in foreign countries, were doing very well, economically. Much better than the Chinese under communism, in China. Places where the local capitalist Chinese were doing extremely well: Hong Kong, Vancouver, San Francisco, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore….the Chinese in all these places are richer than whites, richer than the other locals. Chinese take to capitalism like ducks to water. The Chinese communist leaders knew this was happening. They knew communism in China was failing. China was poor. The same Chinese people in other places, under capitalism, those Chinese were all rich. So, being clever and open minded, China itself tried capitalism, and it worked hot damn.
Lying Marxist communist dummies like Wolff don’t want to admit that truth, so they tell everyone China is run by the “Communist Party”. So Richard Wolff is peddling a lie and a myth, saying that China is “communist”. He knows better. He is a liar.
The truth: Economic capitalism has grown quicker under capitalist rules in China, these past 50 years, than any other time in human history. Think about this in scientific terms? In science, you get an idea. Then you test it. It fails, or it succeeds. That’s how you judge things.
In China, capitalism worked…hot damn. In China capitalism led to the fastest decrease in human poverty in recorded history….by far. It worked. Hot damn. The Chinese are actually a lot better than whites, at capitalism. (the same thing is true in the United States, I’ve seen data since the late 1970s that Chinese in America, even back then, made more money than white people. They are natural business people)
So the Wolf narrative that it is still communism running China is laughable stupidity, with no intellectual depth…..not an ounce of truth in it. Wolff is a liar. China is communist in name only. The man has not faced up to reality: communism lost. It was tested. It failed. His beliefs about communism are garbage. The very garbage embraced by radical left wing Democrats now. Everything Wolff believed in is stupid and a failure and he lost. He won’t accept reality….like the Democrats.
To which I say to Democrats: tough shit.
Fortunately the “communist” men in China are better and more honest, than Wolff: The old “communists” in China knew communism was failing, so they tested capitalism, in a few selected cities first, within China, found it worked, then slowly they changed their minds, brought in capitalism to China, full barrel. The only thing the old communist Chinese kept, was the name “communism”…..every other economic rule changed. (but they did keep their authoritarianism)
Communism is not exactly socialism, but it’s it’s fraternal twin brother. Democrats have never disavowed it. A deeper question relevant to this election, since the Democrat twits don’t want to let socialism go:
Why did communism fail?
Once you accept the lack of individual property, which is essential to communism, once you do not allow private businesses, like in capitalism, then in communism you are presented with a very practical problem: who decides what everyone should do? If it is not up to the individual, it has to be up to the state, since the state owns everything. This mean whoever works for the state decides what you do, what gets organized, who works with who and who does what, what the goals should be. In capitalism, because you have individual freedom, individual choice, then individuals self-organize for themselves….into companies….to create things. They set up their own goals, organize themselves.
Well it turns out that self-organization works better than planned organization from above. This reminds me of the creation vs. evolution argument. In classical creationism, God organizes everything, designs everything, creates everything directly. That all sounds sensible, till you examine that in detail, when it becomes ludicrous…..and untrue. Evolution is true, not creationism. In evolution, basic rules and natural laws operate in the background, but nature itself is free and self-organizing. This gives rise to new forms. That’s how you got here. This process tries many new things on it’s own. This means things evolve over time. They adapt to the local environment. They self-organize….just like a capitalist economy….. evolution works in a similar way….spontaneously, given a few key rules put in place. It turns out, spontaneous self-organization is one of the key fundamentals to reality….in both nature and economics. Don’t ask me why it is so, because I have no idea. However, it is true, far as I know, or at least the world appears to function that way.
Communism is just creationist economics. Just garbage.
One thing people observing communism have noticed: When the state owns everything, nothing is organized properly. Why is that? Likely the reason self organization works better is that closer you are to something, the more you know about it. Conversely, the further you are from something, the less you know about it. And it makes sense that the best decisions are generally made by people who know the most about something.
For instance, suppose you are trying to decide what to do with your life. If the state wants to make decisions for you as an individual about what to do with your life, the truth is they are entirely incompetent at doing so. Why is that? Because they know so little about you. Now suppose one brother had to make a decision for another brother, about what he should do with his life. Even a brother would be entirely incompetent at making such decisions for his brother about what to do with his life, even though he would know thousands of times more about his brother, than some bureaucrat who never met either of you.
On an information scale of proximity and distance or nearness, bureaucrats are far removed in information distance, from any one of the millions of people they govern and their economic activity, which is a complex thing that requires a lot of proximate, close by information. That makes decision making at a distance hard, due to lack of information….the bureaucrats are not close enough to the situation, to the people and thing they are trying to make decisions on….to know what they are doing and what is the best thing to do. That’s why governments seldom run businesses well….information distance is a killer.
Information distance killed communism. Communism assumes too much, assumes that distant bureaucrats are the best deciders about you and your life and your economic decisions and everyone else’s economic decisions. Bureaucrats running your business seems naive or stupid, to say the least. A wise man once said, “What is central to you, is peripheral to all others”….I find this statement to be true.
All this relates to information theory: Who has information, how can things be decided, how much information does anyone have about anything, who is best to make a decision about anything? We need to figure this sort of thing out in our own lives and in economic theory. Everyone faces this in their own personal lives, if you look carefully. Communism does this badly. Communists were very unrealistic about information and information flows in society and economic decision making. They actually believed some idiot bureaucrat in Moscow could make economic decisions for the whole country and all the people in it. Ludicrous. Information doesn’t work that way. That’s why communism is a failure. Good information flows are essential to make an economic system work….or an individual business work, or your own life work. Economics in part, is about how to organize patterns of information in society, to produce outputs and goods and services for people. That all requires the best information flows possible. This requires the best people in the best position to do so, to make the economic decisions. Generally this works best, when everyone is free to make their own decisions and organize their own lives and to create businesses. That’s what the evidence shows, works best, in the real world.
So unrealistic assumptions about the nature of the knowledge of limitations on information is inherent in communism. Capitalism is much more realistic on this. It generally assumes people should be free, which means it implicitly assumes that it really has no idea what is the best thing for the ordinary individual to do with their lives. That’s wise. That principle is true and has profound implications for social and economic organization. Capitalism assumes it should not be telling people what to do, in making decisions about economic behavior. Implicit in this assumption is a deeper assumption, that the leaders in a capitalist country really have severe limitations on how much they should be telling people what to do with their economic lives….because the leaders have very little knowledge about individual lives. That’s why human freedom, fundamental to capitalism, is necessary and is more true and more workable than communist ideas of the state deciding everything. Human freedom is superior to communism because it’s more realistic in economics, it’s more realistic about the limitations of human knowledge, it’s more realistic about the limitations of human knowledge when it comes to economic organization, motivation and decision making. Human freedom is more realistic about information flows. It allows information to flow in ways that are more productive. By allowing human freedom, we allow the right people to be more likely to make the economic decisions necessary for a functioning production of goods and services. Capitalism seems much more realistic than communism, for this. Just like in nature, where things self organize, capitalism is much more grounded closer to the underlying patterns of the natural world, including evolution. That’s why communism by comparison, is stupid. Richard Wolff level stupid. Still stupid after all these years. Communism is based on untruths about reality, untruths about human beings, untruths about how the world itself works in it’s natural laws, at the root of it.
So communism, by not allowing human freedom, takes away the possibility of spontaneous self-organization, but it is still faced with the very practical problem of how to organize work and plan and get things done to produce things, for a functioning economy. So….how to do that? The only alternative appears to be the elites must enforce economic order and goals upon everyone. That’s what happened in the Soviet past. On a practical level, this means the military must enforce work and goals and behaviors, enforce the choices of the elites. Since people won’t and can’t spontaneously self-organize under communism, they were not allowed to do it spontaneously using their free will, this means coercion must be used. It’s implicit in communism. Coercion and force. Where there is no freedom to chose and do and organize, things still need to be done, so force and coercion must be brought in. That’s why communism leads to dictatorship. So the “Central Planners” in Russia decided what everyone must do. This ended in having to force people into work camps, at the point of a gun, to force productive work because, left on their own, with no motivation…since communist theory takes away the profit motive…. people decided to do very little. “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.”
The problem for the communist leaders was, having taken away individual motivation and choice means the communist leaders still needed the economy to work. The only other way, once they have removed individual choice, is the barrel of a gun…..brute force. Left wingers are all about sticking a gun in your face, because that’s where there philosophy leads, because it’s unworkable and force must be brought in at some point. That’s why all the Democrat candidates are so dangerous. They still believe too much in state power, too little in individual freedom. I know where such beliefs lead: to a barrel of a gun, in your face. Beto knows this. That’s why he is coming for your guns. So communism, based on unrealistic and fairy tale “kind and generous and compassionate” sounding principles, because it is impractical, must eventually be enforced by a gun. Communism and freedom don’t work. Only the barrel of a gun and communism work together. How to make communism work? It can’t really work. Not well. You can only make it half work, by killing people. That’s why Democrats want your guns.
Communist economic theory said if someone has more wealth than someone else, it was because they stole it from their neighbor. That was the only allowed explanation for variations in wealth. So when they noticed some farmer had extra grain, and because of the extra success, this farmer could afford to hire someone to help them farm, they rounded up those farmers with the extra grain. Who were those farmers they rounded up? They were the only ones who knew how to farm, the competent ones, they stole what the farmers produced, often shooting the farmers. They told the farmers “the only reason you have more grain than me is you stole it”. That wasn’t true. Most had more grain because they were competent. But the communists didn’t believe in competence. Capitalism does. Communists and SJWs and feminists say “everyone must be equal”. So the communists shot the competent useful farmers who knew what they were doing…… The Ukraine is one of the most fertile farm lands in the entire world. Once communism was applied there, it went so badly that millions died of starvation, in the midst of the most abundant human resources for growing food, in the planet. Insane. Imagine being in the middle of a modern supermarket where you normally shop, fully stocked with food. Then imagine you starving to death in that supermarket, due to stupid rules. Now you understand communism.
Marx was a loser. A very impractical man. Never ran a Popsicle stand, in his life. He concocted an untested social fantasy, sort of a theory of how to get to Heaven on earth. Well, we tested it….just like science tests ideas. It turned out, based on testing,….. that communism, it was so very very stupid it has been abandoned by everyone, except die hard idiots like Wolf….and Democrats hoping you will vote for them to become our President.
Solzhenitsyn said that communist thinking led to 100 million deaths, over the whole Soviet Union. Some estimates are as low as 30 million deaths, of forced labor deaths under communist organization rules. Whatever the real number is, when you base an economic system on false ideas of human nature, false ideas on how the world works, you end up in butchery and savagery…..the same pattern happened in Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s regime. There are too many corpses stacked up, everywhere it was tested, for me to believe in such communist nonsense.
I prefer to accept evidence, over my own delusions and idealistic dreams.
The only upside to communism is it’s moral element. Communism should be looked at as a moral goal, the way statements in the Bible can be thought of as moral goals, rather than practical economics. Communism, it’s not a practical economic system, it produces very little, compared to capitalism. Most of what was produced in the Soviet Union was done by forced labor camps, working people to death, in the cold.
When you assume communism is true and you play out it’s principles in real life, you do away with human freedom and choice. That destroys everything. Everything must fit your pre-conceived ideas, your narrative, your ideology. You become like a radical religious fundamentalist. Solzhenitsyn said that in order for communism to be put into practice, it has to be enforced by a gun, so here is what the Russian government had to do: They had to do away with free speech and distort and lie about reality constantly, because reality, the evidence, would not fit their narrative, their communist ideology, when individuals started to notice the reasons it doesn’t work. Since communism starts with the assumption that it is true and works, but since the only way to try it is to force people to follow your ill-defined ideas of communism, then when it plays out in the real world and clearly does not work spontaneously, then when people speak up and complain that it doesn’t work, the only way to keep the system going is to suppress the truth, suppress freedom of speech and continually promote lies about how great communism is….in the face of all the evidence that it sucks.. So then you end up with a system based on lies, denying free speech, blinding yourself to reality, for an idea that does not work in real life. And everyone knows it. Everyone agrees to lie to each other. It’s a mad, mad world they created: It’s like being in a room full of people you notice are assholes. Then you look up and say: Aren’t we all wonderful?”….And everyone responds “Yes, I agree….we are wonderful!”…..To which I say: no…I believe in telling the truth.
Speak the truth, plainly and bravely. When someone is an asshole, tell them simply “You are an asshole.”
Richard Wolff is an asshole. He knows all his Marxist bullshit doesn’t work. It’s the only thing he knows how to do, bullshit about an economic fantasy that is proven not to work, so having no real skills other than bullshit, he keeps peddling destructive lies, disregarding the evidence and the horror show brought on by communism. That’s why he’s an asshole.
Jordan Peterson tears into communism, doing away with all the illusions so many fools have about it. Best Peterson comments on communism are between thirty minutes and forty two minutes.
The funny thing in all this is that, in the long run, if humans play their cards right, a form of communism will come in, anyhow. But it will come in, via capitalism and science and technological improvement….not by delusional theories about economics and human beings. In a couple of decades, most people who are interested in technological change, they predict that automation will do away with tens of millions of jobs in the United States. Tens of millions. Not including family dependent on those jobs. Some form of wealth redistribution will take care of these people….in other words a type of communism. So obviously, we are in the beginning stages of some form of technological communism….. But before you jump for joy, I predict this will be much more practically hard, than most people imagine and will produce problems we only can barely dream of…..not the least of which is, Mouse Utopias don’t work. Nature will destroy our dreams, in the end. But I’m getting ahead of my own story….
I still believe the Biblical vision will always be true: To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.”
I don’t believe the curse on humans is going away. Pain and toil are human constants. Life is suffering, punctuated with brief joy. Life sucks. Then you die…..Our lives will get better in some ways, with better technology. In other ways, it will just mean a new set of problems….
Remember this, when you see the Democrat morons, on TV….hoping for your vote.

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