The great blackout and the blind worship of capitalism

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See the Lev Navrozov Archive By Lev Navrozov SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian. .

Early this year, I published a column Ò'Capitalism' and 'Socialism': Two Verbal Monstrosities Buzzed for Over Two Centuries.Ó In this column I ridiculed the faith of some Americans in ÒcapitalismÓ as blind as was the faith of some Russians in Òsocialism.Ó

ÒCapitalismÓ is the early 19th-century derogatory European name for private enterprise (see Marx). Actually, private enterprise has existed for millennia under all forms of government. It has flourished in Soviet Russia in the 1920s, as it does in Communist China today.

To many educated Europeans of the early 19th century, ÒcapitalismÓ was a sheer swindle Ñ a landowner sold his land, on which he had toiled to produce food, and, instead of depositing the money in a bank as capital to receive a proper modest bank interest, he invested the money in a factory as capital to receive a dizzying rate of interest and to live off it in parasitic idleness, while the factory hands worked for 12 hours a day to earn a mere pittance by the sweat of their brows under horrible working conditions.

In the United States, the word ÒcapitalismÓ has lost its European rancor and then came to be used much as the word ÒsocialismÓ was used in Soviet Russia Ñ as something so advanced, progressive, creative, inventive, and efficient, as to be above any criticism.

On the other hand, the word ÒsocialismÓ has been a good word in Europe, while in the United States it has become a bugbear, though the U.S. government's help to those who cannot survive without that help is socialism, while ÒwelfareÓ is, economically, communism, under the democratic form of government.

Worshipers of ÒcapitalismÓ imply that while private enterprise existed in Ancient Babylonia, ÒcapitalismÓ as in the United States in 2003 is something so brand-new, so latest, so kindred to the 21st century that it will be adopted by the entire world.

To counter this blind worship of the buzz-word, I described in my column of Jan. 9 what private enterprise has contributed to our New York middle-class neighborhood, and in particular electric transmission lines, hanging on poles made out of raw and rotting tree-trunks, which are prevented from falling by improvised ad hoc devices and prevented from cracking by millions of staples of the kind used to keep sheets of paper together.

As an Òenergy engineerÓ by one of my educational backgrounds, I can also note that in cities, electricity is transmitted by underground cables, not by wires (over the heads of passersby).

Several e-mail responses to my column expressed indignation. How did I dare doubt the absolute perfection of ÒcapitalismÓ? How petty I was! I criticized some electric transmission lines in some streets! Well, what will happen if an electric transmission line pole does fall? There will be no electricity in one neighborhood until the pole is raised and kept from falling by another balancing-act device. The authors of these e-mails forgot the blackout of 1977.

I wonder what these blind worshipers of ÒcapitalismÓ say about the latest electricity blackout, far bigger than its predecessor of 1977. The commonest word of nationally audible comments (mostly self-congratulatory) was Òvulnerable.Ó The blackout has shown how vulnerable our supply of electricity is. The electric power grid is like a delicate child too good for this worldÑthe poor darling is vulnerable, you see. A shout or a rude gesture is enough for an electricity blackoutÑthis time up to Toronto. As for terrorism or war, do such horrors exist?

In my column of Jan. 9, I also asked whether private enterprise always excelled, as compared with governments, in the production of weapons. The possibility of nuclear weapons became clear in 1938, but the Manhattan Project of the U.S. government did not really get under way until 1942. Yet between 1938 and 1942, no private U.S. corporation proposed the development of nuclear weapons to the U.S. government. So, the chief weapons between firearms and expected weaponized nanotechnology were missed by private enterprise. They were developed by a government.

It took the Soviet government also four years to develop nuclear weapons. This could not be done from 1942 to 1945, when Soviet Russia was preoccupied with the war, but the Soviet government did it from 1946 to 1949.

In general, the weapons produced by the Soviet government during the war and after it have been no less timely and no worse than those produced by the world-famous German corporations or by the United States. While developing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, Soviet Russia suddenly launched a space satellite and thus proved to be ahead of the United States. The Kalashnikov of the 1940s is still the world's most reliable and best known weapon of its kind.

When asked about the development of nanotechnology in China, many of my U.S. readers are sure a priori that the U.S. ÒcapitalismÓ is anyway ahead.

Others point out that I am unfair by citing as failures of performance of ÒcapitalismÓ its performance under contracts with the U.S. government. ÒThe officials are either lazy or corrupt,Ó wrote one of my readers in his e-mail.

Indeed, how can U.S. ÒcapitalismÓ be blamed for lagging behind China in the development of nanoweapons if the Chinese government has been pouring billions of dollars into this development, while the U.S. political establishment and mainstream media would not hear of any such development in China and believe that China exists for trade, cheap labor, and American tourists?

But for the sake of argument, let us discard all authorities and all corporations as clients or customers of private enterprise and assume that all of its clients or customers are individuals.

Let me take myself as an example of such an individual. I need few goods and services outside medicine, when an illness may demand anything. In my two rooms I need a large desk, a couple of chairs, a telephone, and a bed.

I did not find in New York a desk of the size I wanted, and a friend of mine made it for me.

My wife and I bought honest-to-goodness American colonial primitif chairs! Not those imitations of English or French furniture! Real American stuff! But they soon fell apart.

I bought a bed. No Swedish fancies please! Just a bed, as beds were a century ago! But its cast-bronze short legs protrude so much that anyone who happens to be barefoot or in socks wounds his feet unless they are also cast out of bronze.

Now, the telephone! Well, last year it became a general complaint on mainstream TV shows such as Ò60 Minutes.Ó When we came to New York in 1972, there was just one telephone company servicing us. We did not even notice it. However, it was soon decided that there should be a competition between many telephone companies. Capitalism!

The TV shows, such as Ò60 Minutes,Ó have been explaining what happened. The hitherto happy owner of a telephone has become prey to many telephone companies fighting for their clients' dollars, each promising almost a free-of-charge telephone service, but their clients pay more and more because they do not understand the bills, as was made clear on Ò60 Minutes,Ó and because the companies impose on them ÒpackagesÓ that they have never asked for. The companies waste their clients' time advertising their almost free-of-charge servicesÑthe old phrase Òtime is moneyÓ is applied by many businesses to themselves, but few of them believe that their client's time is worth anything.

The blind worship of ÒcapitalismÓ is bound to lead to failures on the scale of two rooms, of the United States, or the globe.