Dwight D. Eisenhower on the costs of the arms race with the Soviet Union

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.  It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.  It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.  It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.  We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat.  We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people...  This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.  Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Chance for Peace" speech, April 16, 1953 

(Eisenhower delivered the address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. - broadcast nationwide - shortly after Joseph Stalin’s death and early in his presidency.  The passage highlights the human and economic costs of the arms race, comparing military spending to resources that could instead fund schools, power plants, hospitals, housing, and food.)

 

Saifedean Ammous on the failed forecasts of Paul Samuelson's economics textbook

The most popular and influential economics textbook in the post-war period was written by Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson.  We saw in Chapter 4 how Samuelson predicted that ending World War II would cause the biggest recession in world history, only for one of the biggest booms in U.S. history to ensue.  But it gets even better.  Samuelson wrote the most popular economics textbook of the postwar era, Economics: An Introductory Analysis, which has sold millions of copies over six decades.  Levy and Peart studied the different versions of Samuelson's to find him repeatedly presenting the Soviet economic model as being more conducive to economic growth, predicting in the fourth edition in 1961 that the Soviet Union's economy would overtake that of the United States sometime between 1984 and 1997.  These forecasts for Soviets overtaking the United States continued to be made with increasing confidence through seven editions of the textbook, until the eleventh edition in 1980, with varying estimates for when the overtaking would occur.  In the thirteenth edition, published in 1989, which hit the desks of university students as the Soviet Union was beginning to unravel, Samuelson and this then-co-author William Nordhaus wrote, "The Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and even thrive."  Nor was this confined to one textbook, as Levy and Peart show that such insights were common in the many editions of what is probably the second most popular economics textbook, McConnell's Economics: Principles, Policies and Problems, as well as several other textbooks.  Any student who learned economics in the postwar period in a university following an American curriculum (the majority of the world's students) learned that the Soviet model is a more efficient way of organizing economic activity.  Even after the collapse and utter failure of the Soviet Union, the same textbooks continued to be taught in the same universities, with the newer editions removing the grandiose proclamations about Soviet success, without questioning the rest of their economic worldview and methodological tools.  How is it that such patently failed textbooks continue to be taught, and how is the Keynesian worldview, so brutally assaulted beyond repair by reality over the past seven decades - from the boom after World War II, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the collapse of the Soviet Union - still taught in universities?  The dean of today's Keynesian economists, Paul Krugman, has even written of how an alien invasion would be great for the economy as it would force government to spend and mobilize resources.

In a free market economic system, no self-respecting university would want to teach its students things that are so patently wrong and absurd, as it strives to arm its students with the most useful knowledge.  But in an academic system completely corrupted by government money, the curriculum is not determined through its accordance with reality, but through its accordance with the political agenda of the governments funding it.  And governments, universally, love Keynesian economics today for the same reason they loved it in the 1930s: it offers them the sophistry and justification for acquiring ever more power and money.

~ Saifedean Ammous, The Bitcoin Standard, pp. 158-160

First Edition, 1948

George Kennan on NATO expansion after the Soviet Union collapse

I think it is the beginning of a new cold war.  I think the Russians will react adversely and it will affect their policies.  I think it was a tragic mistake.  There was no reason for this whatsoever.  No one was threatening anybody else.  This expansion would have the Founding Fathers rolling in their graves.  We have signed up to defend a whole series of countries even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.

~ George Kennan, historian who advocated a policy of Soviet containment during the Cold War, May 2, 1998

Yuri Maltsev on Stalin's infatuation with penicillin

The country is flooded with penicillin, however.  In 1946, Stalin was impressed with how effective it was at fighting disease and ordered that the Soviet Union have the same amount the West does.  The "plan" has never been altered, but 89% of citizens have built-up a resistance to penicillin's effects.  But it is still prescribed because there is nothing else.

~ Yuri N. Maltsev, "The Soviet Medical Nightmare," The Free Market, August 1990

Levrentiy Beria on justice during the Stalin era

Show me the man and I'll find you the crime. 

~ Levrentiy Beria, Deputy Premier under Stalin

Vasko Kohlmayer on the twilight zone of official narratives in the Soviet Union

The narrative of the twilight zone of my youth went roughly as follows: Socialism was the greatest socio-economic system ever devised while capitalism was very, very bad. The Soviet Union was a paradisiacal land of freedom, opportunity, prosperity and happiness. The United States, on the other hand, was a country of exploitation and oppression where most people were bound, destitute and miserable. This official narrative was constantly and relentlessly promulgated from every quarter of our twilight zone: television, radio, textbooks, arts, newspapers, magazines, etc. Needless to say, the narrative ran in complete contravention of reality. The actual truth was that socialism was no good. On the other hand, most people in the United States were free, quite prosperous and reasonably happy while the Soviet Union was pretty much an all-around hellhole.

Those who attempted to point out the truth or question the authorized storyline were promptly silenced, suppressed and punished. As a result of the swift and efficient censorship the false narrative prevailed and took a deep hold on the societal mind. And because it served as the paradigm for reality, it distorted and turned upside down almost every aspect of life: the good was bad and bad was good; white was black and black was white. The values and ethics in the twilight zone became inverted.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "Twilight Zone USA," LewRockwell.com, June 19, 2020

Butler Shaffer on constitutions

Formal constitutions were written, presuming to create a state by contract, in the collective name of “We the people.” In the American version, political authority was to be disbursed among three major branches, with the legislative branch to enjoy sovereign power; a proposition that would make it difficult – if not impossible – for an individual to enjoy unchecked authority. Coupled with the illusion that the exercise of power could be restrained by words written on parchment, it was believed that reasonable persons could therefore trust state power. That some of the most repressive actions of the Soviet Union were conducted under a written constitution loosely modeled on the American one, should disabuse anyone of the thought that governmental powers could be restrained by words.

~ Butler Shaffer, "The Myth of the Constitution," LewRockwell.com, April 5, 2017

USSR Constitution Day
1949

Lew Rockwell on the exaggerated Soviet military threat

As it turns out, by the way, the Soviet threat was grossly exaggerated, as such threats always are. The wickedness of the Soviet regime was never in doubt, but its capabilities and intentions were consistently distorted and overblown.

According to Matthew Evangelista, writing in Diplomatic History, “Despite the fact that the Russian archives have yielded ample evidence of Soviet perfidy and egregious behavior in many other spheres, nothing has turned up to support the idea that the Soviet leadership at any time actually planned to start World War III and send the ‘Russian hordes’ westward.” Some people tried making similar arguments at the time, to no avail.

Pushing the preposterous narrative of a socialist basket case as an overwhelming military threat was a group of neoconservatives who became known as “Team B” (“Team A” being the analysts of the CIA, who were accused by the neocons of being willfully blind to growing Soviet military power). In 1976, CIA director George H.W. Bush gave these neoconservatives extraordinarily access to classified CIA documents as they prepared a report excoriating the agency for its alleged failure to perceive a Soviet military buildup.

Team B claimed, for example, that the Soviets had a non-acoustic antisubmarine system. There was about as much evidence of this as there was years later that Saddam Hussein had a fleet of unmanned drones. When CIA analysts protested that they could find no evidence of such a system, Team B described the lack of evidence as a further indication of just how wily and clever the Soviet adversary was.

“If you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems,” wrote analyst Anne Cahn, “and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong.” So in case you thought bringing ideological pressure to bear on the intelligence community began with Iraq, there you go.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Murray Rothbard Soars, Bill Buckley Evaporates," Mises,org, March 31, 2016

Nikita Khrushchev, moving from socialism to communism

We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.

~ Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

Howard Buffett on the Soviet threat

We see no advantage in dodging the facts [that] if this tension with Russia keeps up, the military will probably succeed in imposing permanent conscription, will become the dominant factor in making and directing our foreign policy…. and will insist on the projection of American military power – of course, only as a measure of ‘security’ – into every part of the earth. 

~ Congressman Howard Buffett, March 28, 1946

Ronald Reagan: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" (1987)

In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards. . . . Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself... Freedom is the victor... General Secretary Gorbachev . . . come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

~ President Ronald Reagan, speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, 1987

Ronald Reagan on the crisis of Marxism-Leninism (1982)

In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis. . . . But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens. [If the Western alliance remains strong it will produce a] march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.

~ President Ronald Reagan, from a speech given to the British Parliament in London, 1982

Ronald Reagan on the "last pages"of communism (1981)

The West won't contain Communism. It will transcend Communism. We will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.

~ President Ronald Reagan, 1981

Lester Thurow on the Soviet economy (1989)

Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States.

~ Lester Thurow, MIT economist and well-known author, 1989

Paul Samuelson on the Soviet model (1985)

What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth. . . . The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth.

~ Paul Samuelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel laureate in economics, Economics, 1985 edition of his widely used textbook

12th Edition, 1985

John Kenneth Galbraith: "The Soviet system has made great material progress" (1984)

That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene. . . . One sees it in the appearance of solid well-being of the people on the streets . . . and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops. . . . Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.

~ John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard economist, 1984

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. on the possibility of a Soviet collapse (1982)

Those who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse are kidding themselves.

~ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Establishment historian, 1982

Seweryn Bialer on political and social stability in the Soviet Union (1982)

The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability.

~ Seweryn Bialer, Sovietologist, Columbia University, Foreign Affairs, 1982

John Reed on the Bolshevik Revolution

It is still fashionable, after a whole year of the Soviet Government, to speak of the Bolshevik insurrection as an “adventure.” Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the head of the toiling masses, and staking everything on their vast and simple desires. Already the machinery had been set up by which the land of the great estates could be distributed among the peasants. The Factory-Shop Committees and the Trade Unions were there to put into operation workers’ control of industry. In every village, town, city, district and province there were Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, prepared to assume the task of local administration.

In the struggle my sympathies were not neutral. But in telling the story of those great days I have tried to see events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in setting down the truth.

~ John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, Preface, January 1, 1919