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Catastrophic results indeed.

We relegated socialism to the “dustbin of history,” but socialism never actually died and in many ways it has actually gained influence. I am always very surprised to hear people say that socialist ideas went out of fashion after the Fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the USSR. No they didn't!

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Wide Dissatisfaction with Capitalism
— Twenty Years after Fall of Berlin Wall

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC World Service global poll finds that
dissatisfaction with free market capitalism is widespread, with an average of only 11%
across 27 countries saying that it works well and that greater regulation is not a good idea.

In only two countries do more than one in five feel that capitalism works well as it stands—
the US (25%) and Pakistan (21%).

The most common view is that free market capitalism has problems that can be addressed
through regulation and reform—a view held by an average of 51% of more than 29,000
people polled by GlobeScan/PIPA.

An average of 23% feel that capitalism is fatally flawed, and a new economic system is
needed—including 43% in France, 38% in Mexico, 35% in Brazil and 31% in Ukraine.

Furthermore, majorities would like their government to be more active in owning or directly
controlling their country’s major industries in 15 of the 27 countries. This view is particularly
widely held in countries of the former Soviet states of Russia (77%), and Ukraine (75%), but
also Brazil (64%), Indonesia (65%), and France (57%).

Majorities support governments distributing wealth more evenly in 22 of the 27 countries —
on average two out of three (67%) across all countries.

In 17 of the 27 countries most want to see government doing more to regulate business—on average 56%.

The poll also asked about whether the breakup of the Soviet Union was a good thing or not.
While an average of 54% say it was a good thing, this is the majority view in only 15 of the
countries polled. An average of 22% say it was mainly a bad thing, while 24% do not know.
Among former Warsaw Pact countries, most Russians (61%) and Ukrainians (54%) believe
the breakup of the Soviet Union was a bad thing. In contrast, four in five Poles (80%) and
nearly two-thirds of Czechs feel the disintegration of the USSR was a good thing (63%).

The results are drawn from a survey of 29,033 adult citizens across 27 countries, conducted
for BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan, together with the
Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland. GlobeScan
coordinated fieldwork between 19 June and 13 October 2009

GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller says: “It appears that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
may not have been the crushing victory for free-market capitalism that it seemed at the
time—particularly after the events of the last 12 months.”




Graphs of the results for Europe at large


Views on Free Market Capitalism
dark blue: is fatally flawed and a different economic system is needed;
light blue: has problems that can be addressed through regulation and reform
orange: works well and increased regulation will make it less efficient


Views on How Active a Role Government Should Play in Regulating Businesses
dark blue: more active role;
light blue: same role as present;
orange: less active role


Views on How Active a Role Government Should Play in Distributing Wealth More Evenly
dark blue: more active role;
light blue: same role as at present;
orange: less active role


Views on How Active a Role Government Should Play in Owning or Directly Controlling Major Industries
dark blue: more active role
light blue: same role as present;
orange: less active role


Views on the Disintegration of the Soviet Union
dark blue: mainly a good thing;
orange: mainly a bad thing




Source: http://www.globescan...09_berlin_wall/

The fall of USSR and two decades of globalization did not extinguish socialist hopes. The tactics changed, but the goals remained. Proponents of socialism traded in revolution for the gradualism of the Fabian socialists who encouraged use of democratic institutions to achieve socialist goals. They replaced political radicals like Lenin and Castro with the cultural Marxism of Theodor Adorno or Antonio Gramsci, who called for a “long march through the institutions” of Western culture. We are seeing the fruit of their efforts: socialist visions of family, religion, art, community, commerce, and politics pervade the culture.

Even the question "Views on Free Market Capitalism" is deeply flawded: we are not living in a free market capitalist system! So asking people what they think of free market capitalism as if it was the current system is wrong. I am not suggesting that Europeans live in socialist states. That would trivialize the suffering of those who lived behind the Iron Curtain. Rather, I am suggesting that socialist ideas have transformed the way many of us think about a host of important things. Ideas considered radical only 75 years ago are now considered quite normal and even respectable.

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As Lew Rockwell writes it down in an article about the results of this BBC poll:

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As for the opinion poll, we have no idea just how intensely these views are held or even what they mean. What, for example, is capitalism? Do people even know? Michael Moore doesn't know, else he wouldn't be calling bailouts for elite, Fed-connected financial firms a form of capitalism. Many other people reduce the term capitalism to: "the system of economics in the U.S." It is no more complicated than that. This is despite the reality that the U.S. has a comprehensive planning apparatus in place that is directly responsible for all our current economic troubles.

[...]

What matters is not words but ideas.

[...]

All of which leaves true capitalism – a product of the voluntary society and the sum total of all the exchanges and cooperative acts of people all over the world – with few actual intellectual defenders. They are growing, but the educational work we need to do is daunting, and we are facing the most powerful forces in the world.

There is nothing new in this. In the history of the world, freedom is the exception, not the rule. It must be fought for anew in every generation. Its enemies are everywhere, but the leading enemy is ignorance. For this reason, the main weapon we have at our disposal is education.

Education includes explaining that socialism is an unworkable idea. There is nothing better than Ludwig von Mises's 1922 book Socialism, a comprehensive presentation of the fallacy of the socialist idea. Another essential work is the Black Book of Communism. Here we have a wake-up call that shows that the dream of socialism is actually a bloody nightmare.

Then there is the issue of the positive case for capitalism. One can do no better than Mises's own Human Action, which is not likely to ever be surpassed as a treatise on the free economy. True, it is not for everyone. And that's fine. There are many primers out there too.

The fashion for socialism and the opposition to capitalism should alarm every lover of freedom the world over. We have our jobs cut out for us, but with numbers this bad, it is not difficult to make a difference. Every blow you can land for free markets helps protect freedom from its enemies.

Source: http://www.lewrockwe...cialism134.html