Collectivism, Socialism, Communism: High roads to low standards of living?

Written by Ronald Kitching

Wednesday, 19 September 2007

Collectivism, Socialism, Communism are all one and the same philosophy.

 Applied by the State, that philosophy without exception, always lowers the living standards of the masses.

Living standards for the average person today is far superior to what it was 100 years ago and of a quality now, that could not have been dreamed of by Emperors and Potentates 200 years ago.

The dramatic improvements have been brought about solely by the Classical Liberal philosophy, leading to the free market society, which Karl Marx christened Capitalism.

Envying the super successful, many people do not believe this fact but, the dramatic rise in living standards is confirmed by English historian Paul Johnson in his admirable book Enemies of Society.

"The achievements of the new economic civilisation became undeniable.

"In the end capitalism brought much greater equality. Gregory King calculated in 1688 that Lords got 3,200 pounds per year, and gentlemen an average of 280 pounds per year; the mass of the poor got 2 pounds.

"There seems to have been little change between 1688 and 1800; thereafter the equalising process began to operate, and the gigantic disparities between rich and poor, so characteristic of all pre-industrial societies, slowly narrowed, a process which continues today.

What, in material terms is more important is that, at the same time, the real wealth of all increased. In nineteenth century Britain, the size of the working population multiplied fourfold; real wages doubled in the half-century 1800 - 1850, and doubled again, 1850 -1900.

This meant that there was a 1,600% increase in the production and consumption of wage-goods during the century.

Nothing like this had happened anywhere before in the whole of history."

China started to experiment with Capitalism in 1984.

Today, there are over 100 million Chinese people who now have their own trading account on the Chinese Stock Market. More stocks are traded daily in China than anywhere else in Asia, including Japan.