From our Bureau of Telling It Like It Is with help from our History of Nightmares Desk
Daily Wire has published a wonderful interview with Swedish historian Johan Norberg, author of several eye-opening books, including “In Defense of Global Capitalism” and “Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future,” among others.
Norberg has also made a documentary film, “Sweden, Lessons for America?” that is available on Amazon and iTunes (rent or buy), and YouTube (free)..
In this interview, Norberg analyzes the flawed philosophy of socialism –which ignores the reality of human nature –and recounts the real history of socialism in Sweden (which is not at all what Bernie says it is). He also issues warnings about the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders and what his Democratic socialism would do to the United States.
In this must-read interview, Norberg exposes the utter failure of socialism everywhere, and explains why it doesn’t even work in voluntary experiments, and why it must always, ALWAYS, end up creating a repressive totalitarian state.
Below is a a small fragment of the interview. Read the whole first interview HERE and the second interview HERE. Then share both of them with as many people as possible.
From Daily Wire:
DW: In your opinion of socialism as a philosophical concept, and as a form of government?
NORBERG: Lots of people say that the ideas of socialism are wonderful, it’s just that the means were too brutal and awful, and the means corrupted the ends in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Therefore, it collapsed. I would say it is the other way around. It’s the complete opposite. The problem is that socialism goes against human nature. It is the total opposite of any kind of system of human morality, and that’s why they always end up with walls and barbed wire and machine guns because that’s the only way to force people to do it. We know this because we’ve seen so many different experiments with socialism – even libertarian voluntary forms of socialism, like the kibbutz in Israel for example, and they were done by idealists.
No one was forced to work collectively. From each according to his ability, to each according to their needs – but it didn’t even work there. What happened was that people didn’t want that regimentation, that kind of collective ownership. People began to demand to do things in different ways and own stuff. They began to realize that when everything was in common, they began to waste stuff. People kept the light up and the heat during night when they didn’t need it because they didn’t have to pay market prices. People took their pets to the dining room because food was free. So people began to demand this kind of freedom, and when it came to work, what happened was that as one of the kibbutzim pioneers said, “It became a paradise for parasites” because if you don’t get your wage according to what you’ve done, the effort you put into it, why bother? Why do you ever work at all, in that case?
People of talent then began to leave the kibbutz.
