Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quoted by Michael Terheyden at Catholic.org:

“To a large extent, this impending crisis is the end result of a pragmatic, materialistic philosophy which rejects God and absolute morality. It also embraces moral relativism and scoffs at the concepts of good and evil, which are considered old fashioned and laughable. It is a fundamental change in the way that we view the world and ourselves. This philosophy also forms the foundation for Marxism, communism and socialism, which are all violent and opposed to democracy and liberty.

For instance, Solzhenitsyn says Karl Marx wrote that democracy should be more feared than monarchy and that political liberty is worse than abject slavery. Marx and Engels frequently said that once they got in power, terror would be necessary. Solzhenitsyn quotes them as saying, “After achieving power, we’ll be considered monsters, but we couldn’t care less.”

Whereas this crisis was manifested in Russia under the guise of communism, it is now manifesting itself in the West under the guise of socialism. Solzhenitsyn believes socialism is a myth. He calls it a misty phantom that provides the illusion of quenching people’s thirst for justice. It is believed to be some sort of ultramodern structure that can serve as an alternative to capitalism, but it does not have a single or precise definition. He says socialism is like an emotional impulse that defies logic. Its devotees do not study it or subject it to critical analysis, yet they defend it with a passionate lack of reason.

Many do not believe that what happened in Russia can happen in the United States, but we are not impervious to calamity. Solzhenitsyn lists some of the warning signs in Russia just before the crisis hit. Thirty-five years ago when he wrote this book, he saw these same signs in Europe. Although America is years behind Europe, we can see almost all of these signs in the United States today.

The complete list of signs Solzhenitsyn mentions in his book is as follows: “Adults deferring to the opinion of their children; the younger generation carried away by shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable; journalists refusing to take responsibility for the words they squander so easily; universal sympathy for revolutionary extremists; people with serious objections unable or unwilling to voice them; the majority passively obsessed by a feeling of doom; feeble governments; societies whose defensive reactions have become paralyzed; spiritual confusion leading to political upheaval.”

Solzhenitsyn says that these signs mean the crisis is near. In the final pages of his book, he pleads for Europeans to heed his warning, but he could just as easily be speaking to Americans today. He writes, “We the oppressed people of Russia, the oppressed people of Eastern Europe, watch with anguish the tragic enfeeblement of Europe. We offer you the experience of our suffering; we would like you to accept it without having to pay the monstrous price of death and slavery that we had to pay.”

Comment:

Appeals to emotion prevail in political debate today. Austrians are of course at a tremendous disadvantage because of this.  Economics that leaves aside emotional grand-standing and concerns itself methodically with displaying the causes and effects of things cannot hope to easily defeat economics couched in terms of people’s self-interest.  Thus spending on infrastructure must be good, because it will “create jobs”. But for how long? How lasting? And at what cost elsewhere? To create, by fiat, jobs in one section of the economy must be to remove, as a consequence investment that should have gone elsewhere and deprive another sector or even a new sector that might have transformed production, as the internet did. All these subtleties are lost, when the appeal is to the newly displaced workers, the young student with no prospects, the mother looking for work. Who can argue with hunger? OccupyWallStreet cannot be blamed if its adherents vote for their pockets, which are empty.  But the ones who promises to fill those pockets is the one to watch. For as surely as he isn’t dipping into his own for the money, he is dipping into others’.

But when you are fearful and hungry, emotion and food go a long way. Logic no where. Socialism laid its groundwork well, over more than a century, and argument alone will not undo it.