Making Economic Sense
Making
Economic Sense
by Murray Rothbard
(Contents
by Publication Date)
Chapter 100
The Freedom Revolution
It is truly sobering these days to turn from a
contemplation of American politics to world
affairs. Among the hot issues in the United States has been the piteous
complaint about the
"martyrdom" of Jim Wright, Tony Coelho, and John Tower to the insidious
advance of
"excessive" ethics. If we tighten up ethics and crack down on graft and
conflict of interest, the
cry goes, how will we attract good people into government? The short
answer, of course, is that
we will indeed attract fewer crooks and grafters, but one wonders why
this is something to
complain about.
And then in the midst of this petty argle-bargle at
home comes truly amazing, wrenching,
and soul-stirring news from abroad.
For we are privileged to be living in the midst of a
"revolutionary moment" in world history. History usually proceeds at a
glacial pace, so glacial
that often no institutional or political changes seem to be occurring
at all. And then, wham! A
piling up of a large number of other minor grievances and tensions
reaches a certain point, and
there is an explosion of radical social change. Changes begin to occur
at so rapid a pace that old
markets quickly dissolve. Social and political life shifts with
blinding speed from stagnation to
escalation and volatility. This is what it must have been like living
through the French
Revolution.
I refer, of course, to the accelerating,
revolutionary implosion of socialism-communism
throughout the world. That is, to the freedom revolution. Political
positions of leading actors
change radically, almost from month to month. In Poland, General
Jaruzelski, only a few years
ago the hated symbol of repression, threatens to resign unless his
colleagues in the communist
government accede to free elections and to the pact with Solidarity. On
the other hand, in China,
Deng Hsiao-ping, the architect of market reform ten years ago, became
the mass murderer of
unarmed Chinese people because he refuses to add personal and political
freedom to economic
reform, to add glasnost to this perestroika.
Every day there is news that inspires and amazes.
In Poland, the sweep by Solidarity of
every contested race, and the defeat of unopposed Communist leaders by
the simple, democratic
device--unfortunately unavailable here--of crossing their names off the
ballot. In Russia, they
publish Solzhenitsyn, and a member of the elected Congress of Deputies
gets on nationwide TV
and denounces the KGB in the harshest possible terms--to a standing
ovation. The KGB leader
humbly promises to shape up.
In the Baltic states, not only are all
groups, from top Communists down--calling for
independence from Soviet Russia, but also the Estonians come out for a
free market, strictly
limited government, and private property rights. In Hungary, numerous
political parties spring
up, most of them angrily rejecting the very concept of socialism.
In the "socialist bloc" covering virtually half the
world, there are no socialists left. What
all groups are trying to do is to dismantle socialism and government
controls as rapidly as
possible; even the ruling
elites certainly in Poland and Hungary--are trying to
desocialize with as little pain to themselves as possible. In Hungary,
for example, the ruling
nomenklatura is trying to arrange
desocialization so that they will emerge as among
the leading
capitalists on the old principle of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
We are also seeing the complete vindication of the
point that Hayek shook the world with
in the Road to Serfdom. Writing during World War
II when socialism seemed inevitable
everywhere, Hayek warned that, in the long run, political and economic
freedom go hand in
hand. In particular, that "democratic socialism" is a contradiction in
terms. A socialist economy
will inevitably be dictatorial.
It is clear now to everyone that political and
economic freedom are inseparable. The
Chinese tragedy has come about because the ruling elite thought that
they could enjoy the
benefits of economic freedom while depriving its citizens of freedom of
speech or press or
political assembly. The terrible massacre of June 4th at Tiananmen
Square stemmed from the
desire by Deng and his associates to flout that contradiction, to have
their cake and eat it too.
The unarmed Chinese masses in Beijing met their
fate because they made the great
mistake of trusting their government. They kept repeating again and
again: "The People's Army
cannot fire on the people." They ached for freedom, but they still
remained seduced by the
Communist con-game that the "government is the people." Every Chinese
has now had the
terrible lesson of the blood of thousands of brave young innocents
engraved in their hearts: "The
government is never the people," even if it calls
itself "the people's government."
It has been reported that when the tanks of the
butchers of the notorious 27th Army
entered Tiananmen Square and crushed the Statue of Liberty, that a
hundred unarmed students
locked arms, faced the tanks, and sang the "Internationale" as the
tanks sprayed them with
bullets, and, as they fell, they were succeeded by another hundred who
did the same thing, and
met the same fate.
Western leftists, however, cannot take any comfort
from the contents of the song. For the
"Internationale" is a stirring call for the oppressed masses to rise up
against the tyrants of the
ruling elite. The famous first stanza, which is all the students were
undoubtedly able to
sing, holds a crucial warning for the Chinese or for any other
Communist elite that refuses to get
out of the way of the freedom movement now shaking the socialist world:
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world's in birth.
No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise, ye slaves; no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations,
We have been naught, we shall be all.
Who can doubt, any more, that "justice thunders
condemnation" of Deng and Mao and
Pol Pot and Stalin and all the rest? And that the "new foundations" and
"the better world in
birth" is freedom?
Previous Page * Next Page