austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

88 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
pay would be available to the most productive and skilled (implying
over $150,000 in annual income being available to the most skilled in
the USA), and so only the millionaires and billionaires would be eco­
nomically worse off. The advantages of communism to an extremely
large portion of the population becomes even more apparent when one
considers the fact that it is substantially more likely for a middle class
American to fall into poverty than to rise into the upper class (Strobel
and Peterson, 1999), thus implying that communism may be desirable
not only because it increases incomes for almost all Americans but
also because it greatly reduces the undesirable downward component of
income variation. 19
Communism was theoretically and ideally designed to eventually
eliminate the need fo r government, as capitalistic egoism was sup­
posed to be slowly deleamed after potentially hundreds of years of tran­
sitory communism or socialism, at which time all could share equally
in consumption/income according to their need (Hahn, Kosing, and
Rupprecht, 1983). If such a purer fo rm of communism were applied
that distributed GNP equally among all USA residents (not just the
employed), each person would be entitled to about $35,000 per year,
or about $140,000 annually fo r a fa mily of four. Note that this latter
calculation incorporates social security and similar transfer payments
to retirees and others not working, and so an even smaller percentage of
this latter income would be taken away in taxes. In addition, the latter
figure might easily be l 0-20% higher because cheap child care facilities
and the availability of jobs for all under communism would increase
employment and GOP. Some might assert that output might actually
decline under pure communism without material incentives for harder
work and productivity, largely because capitalist economists tend to
view work as "irksome, involving 'disutility' that must be overcome
by wages to secure the labor needed for production," but, in contrast,
anthropologists (recognizing past cultures such as the aborigines and
Indians to have thrived without such incentives) perceive work as "the
fundamental condition of human existence ... through which the individual
is able to define himself as a fu ll and valued member of society"
(Strobel and Peterson, 1999). One can observe from youth engaged in
sport activities how natural it is to exhibit extreme exertion and enthusiasm
without monetary rewards, so that it is certainly possible that sev-
CHAPTER 1
era! hundred years of communist society in transition would allow us
adults to learn what is natural to youth (and past societies).
Regardless, through a great reduction in unemployment, poverty,
crime, money anxieties, and social frictions, communism can permit a
higher quality of life, more freedom, and greater individuality, just as it
did in earlier communist societies (Zion, 1995). A detailed, documented
analysis of the advantages of communism (in transition) in the modem
world (and a comparison with capitalism) is provided in the next chapter
using the German case as an empirical example.
89