A Communist with a Truthful Agenda by Dan Mitchell

In large part because of an economic system completely at odds with human nature, communists have a nasty habit of never delivering on Marx’s vision.

• They promise equality, but the elite enjoy lavish lifestyles while ordinary people suffer.
• They promise better lives for workers, but they deliver deprivation and suffering.
• They promise harmony, but the reality of socialists societies is division and discord.

One obvious conclusion is that communists are despicable people  That’s true, and the people who give aid and comfort to communists also deserve scorn.

Another conclusion is that we should disbelieve anything communists say.

Based on the above examples, that would be an understandable conclusion.

But I have found a communist who is semi-truthful. His name is Kohei Saito and I trust him because he is telling people that his policies will lead to less prosperity.

Here are some excerpts from a New York Times story by Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno.

When Kohei Saito decided to write about “degrowth communism,” his editor was understandably skeptical. Communism is unpopular in Japan. …So a book arguing that Japan should view its current condition of population decline and economic stagnation not as a crisis, but as an opportunity for Marxist reinvention, sounded like a tough sell. But…Mr. Saito’s book “Capital in the Anthropocene” has sold more than 500,000 copies, exceeding his wildest imaginings. Mr. Saito, a philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo, appears regularly in Japanese media to discuss his ideas. …Mr. Saito said, …“there are too many cars, too many skyscrapers, too many convenience stores, too much fast fashion,”… Mr. Saito is not clear exactly what shape a world under degrowth communism would take, but he insists that it would be…focused on expanding communal resources.

It is safe to say that Mr. Saito is an immoral idiot.

But I have to give him credit for accidental honesty. Communism is very capable of delivering “degrowth.”

If Japan follows Saito’s advice, it is a sure bet that there will be fewer cars, fewer skyscrapers, fewer convenience stores, and less fashion.

By the way, in addition to being an immoral idiot, Mr. Saito is also a hypocrite (a common problem on the left).

Mr. Saito’s critics have called him out for castigating the capitalist system he himself has benefited from… He recently moved into a three-story home in an upscale neighborhood..

It’s unfortunate that the New York Times decided to devote attention to a crank like Saito, though I guess it is somewhat newsworthy that he has sold 500,000 books.

So I won’t criticize the authors for writing the story. But I can’t resist pointing out some economic illiteracy in their report. They write about supposed problems with capitalism, but the Japanese policies they cite – easy money and wasteful spending – are examples of statism.

Mr. Saito has tapped into what he describes as a growing disillusionment in Japan with capitalism’s ability to solve the problems people see around them… Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, has worked for years to promote economic growth… But there are strong indications that the country’s…policies of ultracheap money and big government spending are reaching their limits.  The interventions have done little to stimulate growth.

Keynesian policies didn’t work? At the risk of being overly sarcastic, I’m shocked, shocked.

I’ll close with a few general observations about Japanese economic policy.

The good news is that post-war capitalism enabled Japan to become reasonably prosperous.

But the bad news is that a range of misguided policies, starting with industrial policy in 1960s and 1970s and continuing with Keynesian spending and tax increases in the 1990s and beyond, have eroded Japan’s competitiveness. The nation is slowly but surely falling behind.

Mr Saito wants to accelerate his country’s decline. Hopefully Japanese policymakers will ignore his poisonous advice.