communism — VOICES for REASON

One thing the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall should remind us of, in addition to the sheer brutality of communism, is the economic devastation it caused–and the unequivocal economic superiority of freedom. “If you want a contemporary demonstration of the respective merits and performances of a free economy and of a controlled economy,” Ayn Rand wrote in 1961, “a demonstration that comes as close to an historical laboratory experiment as one could hope to see–take a look at the condition of West Germany and of East Germany.”

From the end of World War II until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, East and West Germany were separated, not only by bricks and mortar shells, but by economic doctrines. People who shared a common history, a language, an environment, demonstrated over the course of decades the superiority of markets over government planning.

While retaining various forms of welfare and interventionism, Western Germany’s economy was largely free after the war. Property was privately owned, and prices and wages were determined by market forces. East Germany, however, conformed to Soviet-style central planning. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany oversaw all production, most of the means of production were owned by the state, and prices and wages were placed under centralized control. In other words, the government dictated what to produce, how to produce it, and how to distribute what was produced.

The results? Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, arguably the most famous event signaling the fall of Communism. In the days following November 9, 1989, the world saw residents of East Germany—a satellite state of the supposedly great and powerful Soviet empire—flee en masse to West Germany, revealing how hellish life under Communism truly was. The sight of Germans literally breaking down the wall is an inspiring one that should be remembered as a great landmark of the 20^th century—as Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate explain in this must-see interview.

As we celebrate an event that revealed to the world the oppression of Communism, it is important and instructive to note that for the seven decades of the Soviet Union’s existence, many journalists, authors, and intellectuals in the West evaded the atrocities of Communism, even as Communist states were racking up death tolls in the tens of millions.

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