When History Repeats Itself
Demand rose; supply fell. Workers found it increasingly difficult to acquire the basic necessities of life; hardship was widespread. The central government that produced the economic disaster refused to acknowledge culpability, instead, it “doubled down” on its crippling economic policies and looked for scapegoats to blame for its failures.
While this scenario aptly describes the current energy crisis in Joe Biden’s America, it is a reference to the 1930s agricultural crisis in the Ukraine in the U.S.S.R, when Joe Stalin’s farm collectivization plan failed, forcing millions into abject poverty and starvation.
It is no coincidence that these events parallel each other despite being separated by nearly a century. Both were the result of ideologically-driven centrally-planned economies, and both reflected the tyranny and increasing paranoia of a governing elite that chose not to respond flexibly to “facts on the ground.”
In the 1930s, Stalin’s policies reflected the Bolshevik belief that eviscerating the bourgeois middle class was the path towards achieving a utopian future, and staunchly opposed any resistance to its vision. Stalin insisted that the Ukraine (and other grain producing areas in the U.S.S.R.) increase its output so that it could be used to foster international trade, while Ukrainians starved. When this policy failed, millions died. Determined to avoid any personal responsibility, Stalin blamed the “greed” of the kulak agricultural middle class for failing to produce more grain because it derived no benefit for its efforts.
The parallels with the Biden regime are clear, and they underscore the importance of attending to historical precedent. The current Progressive Democratic Party shares much in common with the Russian Bolsheviks, including an insistence on utopian outcomes (The Green New Deal) a willingness to distort truth to fit a pre-conceived narrative, and a desire and willingness to punish any opposition. America’s oil producers and local gas station owners can be likened to the kulak class, in their reticence to produce more oil or to lower prices at the pump, to appease a government that is openly opposed to their existence. How far the Biden administration, like Stalin, is willing to coerce these groups is uncertain, but thankfully the United States still has laws that can be expected to resist efforts at undermining the private sector.
It should be evident that the Biden regime’s great American experiment has failed, just as all previous efforts at undermining individual entrepreneurship have. Centrally-planned economies have repeatedly failed in the past and there is no empiric evidence to suggest that they will fare any better today, or in the future. The great C.S. Lewis, prescient and enviably lucid, summed it up best as follows: “The loftier the pretensions of power, the more meddlesome, inhuman, and oppressive it will be.…All political power is at best a necessary evil; but it is least evil when its sanctions are most modest and commonplace, when it claims no more than to be useful or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives.”
Simply put, heaven protect us from the “transformational” plans of tyrannical leaders.