Leftist thoughts and passions

A key quality of leftist intellectuals is their total denial of reality. In their struggle for a “just world,” they skillfully use the rhetoric of Big Brother (not the one from television, but the one from Orwell’s novel “1984”), easily managing to mislead their audience, calling freedom slavery, war peace, and ignorance bliss. They are obviously following the precepts of their fellow socialist Joseph Goebbels, counting on the fact that a lie repeated many times will become the truth.

The reason for these reflections is yet another product of leftist journalistic thought in our country. We are talking about the recently published article by Alexander Simov, in which he tries to refute the "right-wing" economists who "hiss in the morning blocks" of television and try to deceive the entire Bulgarian people that they now live better than before November 10th.

"Well, yes, but no. How sad it is to be a right-wing economist in Bulgaria! You constantly explain to these losers that they live ten times better than before 1989, that they should pray every day in front of the portrait of Ludwig von Mises, and they still roar - we are poor, we are unhappy!" - the author is sarcastically indignant.

It is indeed sad to have right-wing (not to mention liberal or libertarian) understandings in Bulgaria, especially when you see how supposedly right-wing parties constantly propose left-wing reforms. The remark regarding Mises (a famous economist, a prominent representative of the Austrian School of Economics) is interesting. Apparently, Simov believes that Bulgaria's problems stem from the ideas of individual and economic freedom, the protection of private property, free markets, stable non-inflationary (or perhaps even left to the free market) currency policy and state non-intervention in the economy, which are the foundation of the Austrian School. But is this really so and is there any reason for the left-wing intellectual wing in our country to blame right-wing economists for anything? Of course not! If politicians had ever listened to pro-market economists, Bulgaria might not be in the queue in the European Union today. But as we know, neither Vladimir Karolev, nor Krasen Stanchev, nor Georgi Ganev ever held the post of Prime Minister.

But what are the leftist arguments against the dark forces of evil (i.e., pro-market ideas) anyway? Of course, they are completely voluntaristic, but presented with the necessary proletarian pathos of the undemanding reader, they can seem quite valid.

First of all, the left-wing intelligentsia fiercely claims that life today is much harder, poverty much greater, and inequality – downright unbearable. According to Simov, Georgi Ganev’s opinion that today’s standard of living is significantly higher than before 1989 is an absolute lie.

"What speaks of a higher standard of living, according to him? What about the fact that today one could buy many more color TVs, refrigerators and cars." - left-wing thought somehow cannot accept this as an argument. The fact that goods are everywhere around us in abundance, that stores are crowded and compete to continue a more tempting promotion, that all brands of cars are a stone's throw away, both new and second-hand, bothers socialists quite a lot. It is sad for them to swallow the fact that in their system all these goods are severely limited and scarce. But "sour grapes" remain an argument, so the abundance of affordable goods does not seem to be enough to convince a sworn socialist that his life is better now than before. But what does he need then? Very simply - for him it is enough that no one else has more than him, that no one is richer than him, that no one is more successful than him. Of course, all this, dressed up in the mantra of "social justice."

We read further:

"In Bulgaria, those who succeed are those who are ready to spend hours quoting Ayn Rand or writing mind-boggling articles on positive psychology, but have never earned anything other than a government contract." - it seems that, in addition to Mises, Ayn Rand is also the main ideologist of Bulgarian poverty. It also seems that according to socialists in Bulgaria, one can get rich only by citing philosophical works and public contracts. However, public contracts have nothing to do with the free market and capitalism that they hate so much; on the contrary - they are an expression of the state's social policy, of "care" for people (that is, the abuse of other people's property). Socialists also do not accept that in Bulgaria quite a few people manage to get rich with honest business. In fact, one of the best developing sectors in our country - the IT sector, works entirely on the principle of the free market and private initiative without state intervention.

"The dull and melancholic Bulgarians do not want to come to terms with an economy that only produces waitresses, strippers and call center employees, but again and again they dream of their country with at least some enterprises," Simov continues with his characteristic sarcasm.

Another lie from the left is that the market economy only produced waitresses and strippers, and the real economy was that of heavy industry. But we can't blame Simov here, he himself has admitted more than once that he is not an economist and doesn't understand economics.

So let's explain to him: the market economy produces the kind of people the market needs. And the market needs specialists who produce the goods consumers want (including Simov himself). And they are not just waitresses and strippers, but a fairly wide range of professionals.

Simov's position that the free market produced "only waitresses, strippers and call center workers" is ironically refuted by socialist Venezuela. Today, in addition to thousands of starving and miserable people, it also produces an enormous number of prostitutes and strippers, since this is one of the few ways to get dollars, which are traded extremely expensively on the valuable market. Namely, the black market in the country is the only place where one can get many essential goods, which - thanks to the miraculous socialism to which Simov wants to return us - are missing from the stores.

To the horror of socialists, however, the market economy also produces inequality. This is an indisputable fact. But even small children know that inequality in itself is not a bad thing. People are neither born nor die equal – some are more capable than others, some are more hardworking than others, some are lazier than others. The market economy gives everyone an equal opportunity to produce goods and get rich from it, and the inequality characteristic of it is an expression of precisely this – those who have produced more goods are much richer than those who have not.

But socialists have never sought wealth. Their goal is equality – an even distribution of poverty that creates a semblance of justice and prosperity.

The economy of today's Bulgaria is in significantly better shape than it was in 1989. According to World Bank data, today we have a GDP of about $56 billion compared to $20 billion in 1989 - it seems that the economy is doing much better without the smoking chimneys dreamed of by the socialists.

Another well-known fact is that the great industry of socialist Bulgaria went bankrupt not once, but three times (and once more in 1996). The failure, of course, is a completely natural consequence of the impossibility of carrying out economic calculations under socialist conditions. The result of this was that Bulgaria fell far behind the relatively freer part of the world - while free countries were accumulating capital and wealth, the central planners in our country were playing with the TKZS, the APC and five-year plans. It is difficult to catch up with such a lag. It is also worth remembering that it was the Socialist Party (with which the author is on friendly terms) that was the main participant in the socio-economic processes in Bulgaria after November 10. It was the refusal of the left-wing authorities to accept the ideas of economists defending free markets that led to the head-on collision of voluntarism with market reality in 1996, which in itself managed to cause a solid amount of poverty (hyperinflation destroyed the little savings that people had managed to accumulate).

But the most serious consequence of today's failures is the wasted human capital during the 50 years of socialism. Generations of Bulgarians grew up and were educated in an anti-market environment, exalting poverty into a cult and condemning wealth, with non-existent private ownership of the means of production, with the understanding that "merchant" is a dirty word, and a tractor driver is a more prestigious profession than a doctor. The communist government in Bulgaria managed to liquidate normal values and replace them with false ones, crawling out of the works of Marx and Engels.

This topic could be talked about and written about for a long time (in fact, there are already quite a few books on the market that anyone can read if they want to). But we can best summarize the situation with a quote from Margaret Thatcher (which seems to meet Sim's criteria for #psychoright):

"Socialists and communists are the most shameless people in the world. After creating so many problems, they try to shift the blame onto us for the difficulties that arise in solving those same problems."

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