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Saturday, November 29, 2008
Yuri Maltsev: The fall of Communism and the rise of 21st century socialism
Here's the final video in the series from the Nov. 22nd Economics and Government seminar at the University of Waterloo put on by the Institute for Liberal Studies (that's "Liberal" in the classical liberal sense). You can view Dr. George Bragues' talk here, and Peter Holle's talk here.
In this video, former Soviet trade economist, advisor to Gorbachev, and current economics professor at Carthage College, Yuri Maltsev gives a riveting and hilarious talk entitled "The fall of Communism and the rise of 21st century socialism." The Cord Weekly, campus newspaper for Wilfrid Laurier University, covered Maltsev's talk here. A few excerpts:
Dr. Maltsev’s presentation... at the University of Waterloo proved to be both entertaining and educational.
Maltsev introduced himself as a former Soviet Trade Economist, which he joked sounded like an oxymoron.
He recounted stories of his time as a member of Gorbachev’s team of economists, and their job of “recalculating” Soviet GDP. In reality, he said, their task was the fabrication of records.
In fact, “all Soviet-era statistics were falsified,” according to Maltsev. The government wanted “the statistics as propaganda to show socialism’s triumph over capitalism.”
“Marxism is not an economic system; it is a system of management,” Maltsev said. It functions as a system of top-down commands – where the people go to work day after day simply because they are told to. He argued that it was a system run only by fear – the fear of losing your life.
Joseph Stalin once said, “The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic.” Maltsev cited this quote to make clear the sheer brutality of communist regimes. He elaborated, “the probable number of murders by the Soviet Union alone – one communist country – far surpasses the cost of war.” Communism is successful only with fear. Once the fear is gone, the regime is doomed, he argued.
Read the rest of the article here, and view the video here:
To learn more about the Institute for Liberal Studies, visit the website at www.liberalstudies.ca. At the moment, we host four annual seminars, including the Toronto Liberty Seminar, the Waterloo Liberty Seminar, the Windsor Liberty Seminar, and our headline weekend-long event, the Liberty Summer Seminar (or "LibertyStock" as most people refer to it).
We wrote about Maltsev and the story of how he was introduced to free market economics in the Soviet Union here.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on November 29, 2008 in Economic freedom | Permalink
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Comments
Absolutely brilliant, funny and moving. This guy is a gem. Thanks for posting this, Peter. I wish I could have seen this live.
How do we get this guy to Calgary?
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2008-11-29 12:55:25 PM
The only difference between communism and socialism is the means they use to accomplish their same end goal. Even that difference is often blurred when we witness the aggression and violence often employed by the Left.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-11-29 1:44:01 PM
Alain,
"Even that difference is often blurred when we witness the aggression and violence often employed by the Left."
Agreed. And the Left is still employing fear. Take the HRCs for example. Designed to put the average person in fear of just saying the wrong thing. Instead of sending us to the gulag, we are hauled before these star-chambers. If we say the wrong thing at the office, we lose our livelihoods. On and on it goes.
And then there is the complicity in enabling the terrorists via left-wing propaganda whose very existence is to put us in fear.
And we also have the never-ending environmental catastrophes designed to send us scurrying into submission. Again, using fear of ozone holes, climate change, acid rain, over-population, etc. as the weapon. Take a small truth and exaggerate it, mix with some falsities and they have a potent hammer to hit us with until we cry uncle.
Uncle Joe, that is!
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2008-11-30 6:33:45 AM
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