To the Editor:

In reply to Scott Allen Bennett’s letter, Dec. 20.

Mr. Bennet states Mr. Schulz is a SUNY Associate Professor of History with “extensive, relevant experience and training”

As Mark Twain once said, “I never let schooling interfere with my education.” I’ve maintained an ongoing study of history throughout my life that goes beyond my college experience. I do not dispute Mr. Schulz’s extensive knowledge of European history and Marxism. I only take exceptions to his biased conclusions viewed through a Marxist lens.

“Fair-Schulz's 12/13/21 letter cited sources for his assertions, and even recommended further readings. Fair-Shulz's irrefutable observations on the death throes of poorly regulated, end stage capitalism and its tragic impact on the lives of our working people stand unanswered.”

Mr. Schultz’s data comparing Scandinavian and other nations to the US was not “irrefutable”. It was out of context. I cited facts from valid sources, revealing the unsustainable cost in taxes to maintain such comprehensive social programs, their restrictive immigration policies, and how they all practiced capitalism. Mr. Bennett, would you be willing to pay 40% tax on your annual income, along with a 25% sales tax, to support such massive social programs?

These nations do not abide the socialist requirement of a centralized industry run by the government. Providing social programs does not qualify them as a practicing Socialist government any more that China can claim to be anti-capitalist while doing a brisk business with US companies such as Apple, the NBA, or Hollywood.

”Citing the manifest failures of dictatorships is a worn-out right-wing trope, as is any suggestion that those who criticize our crumbling system ought to pack their bags, tout de suite.”

It’s ironic that I am accused of using history as a trope, considering Marx himself presented his own historical materialism theory as a tool to predict a future that capitalism will implode upon itself. The only economic systems that failed were those based on Marx’s fuzzy economic ideas. The problems with capitalism is not due to the theory itself, only it's abuse by dishonest individuals and government that turns it into the monster known as corporatism.

I have serious concerns of the danger of the Military-Industrial complex as warned by Eisenhower. I am very angry at how many of our elected officials become millionaires in office, using inside information to enrich themselves and pass bills to benefit their friends and family. I am for term limits, to break the cycle of the cozy cronyism between politicians and business.

That said, millions of family run businesses and start-ups have thrived on employing Capitalism when applied in its purest intent. Their personal success has raised everyone’s standards of living, by investing their own private capital while taking all the risk. This is Marx and Lenin’s gravest misunderstanding of what capital truly is. They never understood that capital comes from individuals freely investing their own time, effort, money, (Often borrowed) to start up a job, not the workers productivity. If a family or individual runs a business, are they exploiting themselves? I think not.

History is on my side, demonstrating no nation fully practicing any version of Marxism, with the government possessing complete and total control of production and redistribution, ever worked. I challenge anyone to show me a nation that incorporated Marxism in the fullest degree that achieved the ideal state of perfect redistribution of wealth among all its citizens.

Marxism is not the answer to America’s problems. Marxist economics work about as well as Lysenko’s theory that resulted in massive famine throughout the Soviet Union. It destroys the economy of every nation that practiced it, leaving behind mountains of corpses and broken citizens behind. It leads to iron curtains, imprisonment, gulags, government controlled news, and censorship from information. Criticism is forbidden, subject to severe punishment, as Trotsky and Peng Dehuai, Mao’s former Long March comrade and ablest Chinese general, found out the hard way.

I suggest before taking America to task for its faults, to start with China first, as the biggest polluter in the world, imprisoning a million Muslim Uyghurs in concentration camps, steals our technology, censors the internet, and threatening Taiwan. As well as North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba, where Cuban citizens demanding change in peaceful protest were cracked-down by their communist government.

Do not dismiss this as a “right-wing trope or talking point”. These nations and others like them stand as clear evidence of the failure of implementing Marxism, regardless of one's political position.

Below are my recommendations to read personal accounts by former loyal communists betrayed by the ideology they believed was the answer to social injustice and economic poverty.

“The God that Failed”. Essays by Nobel-Prize winner Andre Gide, noted Black activist Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, and Louis Fischer.

"The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A first-hand account of his journey through the Soviet judicial system and the callous cruelty enacted upon political dissent prisoners in the gulags.

Ron Shirtz
Rensselaer Falls