Castro’s Gone: Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

Fidel Castro is dead. Good riddance to bad rubbish. The world is a better place with him gone. Unfortunately, the world is nowhere near finished with his toxic ideas.

“Socialism or death” remained Castro’s rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving the Cuban island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity, as even MSNBC concedes.

What is socialism? Contrary to the views of some Bernie Sanders supporters, socialism does not refer to “being nice” or to social media like Facebook and Twitter. In theory, socialism means government ownership of the means of production. In practice, socialism means equal despair and stagnation for all, except for the socialist rulers themselves.

Advocates of socialism in America would do well to consult Castro’s own description of socialism over the years.

“Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away,” said Castro. And he thought it’s a good thing. Even today, in America, politicians boast they’re spending other people’s money wisely, even though we all know they’re simply throwing it away.

“I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.” Which when translated means: “I know how to spend other people’s money better than the people to whom the money belongs. Instead of an economic system based on private property, supply and demand, consumer desires and individual merit, we will have an economic system based on … ME. MY demands, MY wants, MY priorities and MY needs.”

This is what passes for enlightened and progressive in the media, Hollywood and academic circles where intellectual sycophants posing as important elites tell us that while Castro may have been rough around the edges, at least he had the right ideals. No, socialism has exactly the wrong ideals. Private property, individual rights and the removal of force from human relationships are the hallmarks of genuine capitalism; government control, government edicts and widespread impoverishment (other than for the politically connected) are the hallmarks of socialism, to whatever degree it’s attempted. Castro went all the way, and showed us what undiluted socialism looks like.

“My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious,” said Castro. Name me one socialist — just one — who willingly left the United States to live in a socialist paradise such as Fidel Castro’s Cuba, particularly for reasons of better economic opportunity or comfort. It never happens. Why is that? If socialism is morally and economically superior to America’s hated capitalism, then why does everybody want to come here? Why won’t any of the Hollywood, political and economic elites who pay homage to Castro’s ideas just simply leave?

“A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past,” said Castro. Revolution refers to change. Socialism is not change. The American Revolution was change, because it accomplished something never achieved before (or since) in human history: upholding of the rights of individual sovereignty over one’s own life.

Socialism is not progressive. It’s a reversion to the laws of barbarism, to the laws of the jungle and to the primitive attitudes and psychologically tiny  mentality of group-think. That’s why every time it’s tried or imposed, socialism leads to death, destruction, despair, division and ultimately collapse.

The world is indeed a better place without Fidel Castro. But it will only become a great place when his tribalist, brutal and primitive ideas of socialism are gone for good.