Socialism is Loot and Plunder by a Ruling Clique

The news out of Cuba and South Africa has been pretty gruesome this last week, what with anti-regime riots in Cuba and general looting in the ANC’s South Africa.

But Communist Cuba has been for over half a century the darling of our socialist friends, and South Africa has been the darling of our anti-racist friends. How could it be that these darling regimes are staring into the abyss, with no food and no medicines when all the good people were agreed that they were the wave of the future?

It all makes sense when you accept my maxim that all government is force plus loot and plunder.

But, I realized, my maxim violates the Einstein principle to make things as simple as possible but no simpler. It seems to me that there is a difference between the loot and plunder practiced by our beloved ruling class here in the USA and the loot and plunder practiced by the Castro family. The key question is who gets a share of the loot and plunder. Rather obviously, in Cuba, very few people get to share in the loot. Beyond the Castro family, I suppose that the drug lords in and out of the Cuban armed forces need to be included in the handout. In South Africa, it seems that the ANC politicians are in cahoots with the billionaires. In Chávez’s Venezuela, it has been necessary to deal in the armed forces, although we are told that “Children of Venezuela’s elite including ex-leader Hugo Chavez’s daughter flaunt wealth.”

But what about the US? It seems to me that the recipients of loot and plunder are more broadly based than in the avowedly socialist countries. Here the recipients of loot and plunder seem to include the corporate elite, the politicians and their families, the educated class, and the vote-bank oppressed peoples. Here the Average Joe still gets his Social Security and the Average Jane still gets her Medicare, but that may change, because Whiteness.

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