Versión Español
Spanish – The history of Russian socialism is full of contradictions, starting with the 1917 revolution itself. Karl Marx believed that communism was bound to flourish after the collapse of capitalism. The bourgeois economy would do its job, generating the wealth that Marx himself recognized as unprecedented in human history. But the exploitation of the proletariat would end the model based on private ownership of the means of production.
In other words, for there to be socialism, there had to be capitalism. However, their scientific socialism did not flourish in England, nor the United States. It took place in a backward economy with strong agrarian, not industrial, influence, under the grip of the Czarist rule.
The monuments to his image were erected, where Marx said it was not possible. The economic, political, social, and cultural failures came later. As the first Austrian School economists warned, Marx’s theory of value was wrong. So the thesis of surplus-value proved to be null and void. The economy without private property, which also did not have prices that functioned as signals to allocate resources, failed wherever it has been implemented.
Although the Soviet Union is in the past, history continues to give us anecdotes that remind us of the misguided nature of socialism. Some are very expensive, as the Venezuelan tragedy, but others are funny and colorful, like the fortunes that are paid for the manuscripts and first editions of Marx’s erroneous books. These prices themselves reveal the subjective nature of value at its best. It is yet another blow for the disgraceful thesis of scientific socialism, which has already claimed more than 100 million victims around the world.
What happened this week in Russia is a new tragi-comic page in socialist history. Lenin said that the capitalists would sell the ropes with which they themselves would be hanged. Currently, his mummy is rolling in the mausoleum where his remains lie. The fact is that he is the one they want to sell and not the greedy capitalists, but the Russian politicians.
It turns out that the Russian state has to spend over 170,000 euros a year to keep Lenin’s remains, as it has been since 1924. The novel coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc throughout the world, and many countries are looking at ways to reduce public spending.
The proponent of the peculiar proposal was Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the LDPR party, a force in opposition to Putin’s government. The Russian politician proposed the following on social media:
“We could sell Lenin’s mummy. There are buyers: China, Vietnam, or some other kind of communist country. And Lenin’s body is in good condition. It was mummified only 96 years ago.”
The government, for the time being, has not considered the proposal, but its mere mention has already written a new story in the long list of communist contradictions. “Selling’ a body… something that could even spark misgivings in the most ardent defenders of private property, flexible prices, and the market economy.
