North Korea’s chronic food shortages are about to get a lot worse, according to the United Nations. The World Food Program “projects that North Korea’s food shortages will be double last year’s deficit,” reported the Los Angeles Times last Thursday. Massive flooding and worsening relations with neighboring food donors, including South Korea, are to blame, at least in part. Cash-strapped North Korea cannot afford higher food prices as the cost of rice hits record levels. Moreover, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has taken a hard-line stand against the North’s excesses and will not send food shipments to North Korea unless they are requested. “But few analysts expect [North Korea] to ask for help,” according to the Times. “They believe if they ask for food aid it will show their weakness and they are probably right, so they have decided to just take the blow,” said a North Korean expert at Seoul’s Kookmin University. Following in the footsteps of many compassionate Communist leaders, Kim Jong Il may simply let some peasants starve. Pass the caviar please.
A country that can produce nuclear weapons and purchase and maintain 1,624 warplanes, 6,560 armored vehicles, 21,400 artillery pieces, 2,000 tanks, and arm 700,000 soldiers should be able to afford to feed its people. However, North Korea is no ordinary country, but operates a centrally controlled economy dominated by a brutal dictatorship. In other words, North Korea demonstrates the typical pathologies of Communism. Hardship is just a normal part of the package.
Ordinary citizens in communist countries have lived at or close to penuriousness since the October Revolution. Lenin’s early efforts to collectivize Russian farms produced a near catastrophe. In his excellent Moscow 1941, Rodric Braithwaite, in chapter 2, Forging Utopia, confirms ”the supply of food began to fail altogether and the workers prepared to strike. In 1921 Lenin bowed to reality and introduced a New Economic Policy,” implementing small-scale capitalism. ”Moscow’s economy began to perk up almost immediately” but Russians were still dealing with chronic food shortages when Germany attacked in 1941. At least they had Vodka.
The same sad stories of communist failure and decimation of the masses has been retold numerous times, in East Germany, Cuba, Romania, Cambodia, Vietnam, et al, and Communist China before that country’s adoption of capitalism. Without fail, the application of communist principles has resulted in mass suffering unmatched even by Hitler’s excesses. In The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, author Stephane Courtois and several other writers document the chilling fact that Communist governments were responsible — through forced starvation, prison labor camps, and outright execution — for the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century. Their own people. 65 million in China. 25 million in the Soviet Union. 1.7 million in Cambodia, out of a population of less than 10 million. A few thousand dead North Koreans won’t even register an honorable mention.
Communism always fails, and always will, because of its basic misunderstanding of human nature. Karl Marx believed that the overthrow of a capitalist/democratic system would be followed by a brief period of “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” an interval necessary to cleanse the nation of imperialist evil and set in place communist economic, social and political structures. Once the nation was properly organized and re-focused, the Utopian communist state would evolve, and the Marxist dream of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” would materialize.
The reality of Communist takeovers has been altogether different from the theory, characterized by intense power struggles, brutal elimination of enemies, and consolidation of power. Marx failed to foresee these eventualities because of his, and communism’s, staunch atheism, rejecting, along with everything else Christian, the doctrine of the depravity of mankind. Marx believed the flaws of mankind were rooted in economic injustice, and such deficiencies would be corrected once the proper economic systems were operating. In fact, though mankind’s sin can be manifested in economic relationships, it is not grounded there. Communism’s failure to apprehend mankind’s predilection toward self-centered, self-aggrandizing behavior rendered communism completely vulnerable to the machinations of hideous men. The ascendancy of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others is built into the communist system, and will be repeated whenever communism is tried.
The American founding fathers, conversely, were Calvinists nearly to a man, and therefore knew well mankind’s propensity toward domination and exploitation. Moreover, the founders had experienced European monarchies and all their evils. Our constitutional system of limited government and checks and balances was put in place to combat the very perversity inherent in communist real-world applications. The consolidation of American political power over the last 75 years is evidence of the universality of power-lust. That American democracy and freedom has withstood the great pull toward oligarchy testifies of the founder’s wisdom.
Americans longing to see religion stripped away from all forms of government do not know what they are asking for.
Another great stumbling block standing in the way of Communist success is that system’s reliance on a centrally controlled economy. The desire for central control is bound up in mankind’s desire for domination, and therefore communism’s failure to understand human nature leads to its economic as well as political demise. Wealth is created by the efficient use of scarce resources, an achievement beyond the reach of planners wrestling with a system involving millions of workers and requiring thousands of daily decisions. Soviet economic history is replete with horror stories of over-production, under-production, misallocation of every imaginable resource, and rampant corruption resulting in the ultimate collapse of the economic system. Untold and unnecessary suffering accompanied the experiment. You’ve got to hand it to the Chinese. They could at least grasp the obvious and switch to capitalism before all was lost.
Ironically, the selfishness of mankind is central to capitalism’s success. Human beings respond well to incentives. Hard work and innovation are the hallmark of capitalistic societies precisely because of potential rewards. Allowing people to keep what they earn ultimately benefits everyone as production and efficiency increase. All this is anathema to communism, a fact accounting for the legendary poor performance of communist workers.
Communism’s final oversight regarding human nature is bound up in Patrick Henry’s immortal declaration, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” The desire to be free is deep and abiding, one that will discard the shackles of communism, or any other tyranny, sooner or later.
The only thing surprising about food shortages in North Korea is that anyone is surprised by the news. Communism is a failure, period. The sooner the world is rid of it, the better.
