By Fred M’membe President of the Socialist Party

In 1919, John Maynard Keynes of the United Kingdom’s Treasury Department published a book that became a sensation. In the book, entitled The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes observed that the Great War had ‘so shaken the system as to endanger the life of Europe itself’. (John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, [1919] 2019), 58.). The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, did not grasp the underlying problems that had led to the war and only cemented the victory of some countries against others. The treaty left structural problems intact, such as the ‘disordered finances’, in Keynes’ words, of many countries (not only Germany, which faced an enormous and unpayable reparations bill). The Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Sterling Crisis of 1931, and the Banking Panics of 1931–1933 revealed the underlying vulnerabilities of capitalism, with the ‘disordered finances’ being the spur towards the potential general collapse of the system. In 1936, Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, a manual to save capitalism by a theoretical plea for governments to use state resources to recycle profits and balance an unbalanceable system. Keynes, who dabbled in eugenics theory, did not extend his views on state intervention to protect the system in the British colonies and prevent the decline of their population’s living standards.

When the United States invited its allies to Bretton Woods (New Hampshire) in July 1944 to discuss how to manage the structural crises that contributed to the Second World War, Keynes – who was one of the main figures at this meeting – said that it would be ‘the most monstrous monkey house assembled for many years’, suggesting that ‘twenty one countries [that] have been invited’ – presenting a list of primarily colonised countries, from Guatemala and Liberia to Iraq and the Philippines – ‘clearly have nothing to contribute and will merely encumber the ground’. (John Maynard Keynes, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Volume XXVI, Activities

1941–1946. Shaping the Post-War World: Bretton Woods and Reparations, ed. D. E. Moggridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 42.)

Instead, Keynes preferred that the two founder states of the Bretton Woods Conference, the United Kingdom and the United States, ‘settle the charter and the main details of the new body without being subjected to the delays and confused counsels of an international conference’, as he explained a few years earlier. (International Monetary Fund, IMF History Volume 3 (1945–1965): Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation Volume III: Documents (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, [1969] 1996), 15.) In fact, Keynes (on behalf of the United Kingdom) and Harry Dexter White (on behalf of the United States) arrived at the meeting with two plans already drafted, which they put on the table and upon which the final Articles of Agreement for the International Monetary Fund as well as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (or the World Bank) were built. The other participants were largely onlookers.

Despite the limited input of most of the world, which was still under colonial rule, the purpose of the IMF as laid out in the Articles of Agreement was straightforward, none of it built to extend the power of the British imperial system. The main thrust of the articles was to assist the ‘expansion and balanced growth of international trade’ and to ‘contribute thereby to the promotion and maintenance of high levels of employment and real income and to the development of the productive resources of all members as primary objectives of economic policy’. (International Monetary Fund, Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2020), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/aa/pdf/aa.pdf). To establish these ‘primary objectives’, the IMF was tasked with preventing any short-term problems from becoming long-term crises, such as by maintaining exchange rate stability and facilitating loans to prevent balance-of-payments spirals ‘without resorting to measures destructive to national or international prosperity’. When the former colonial countries won their freedom, most of them became members of the IMF based on the Articles of Agreement, and in 1961, the IMF created its Africa Department. Until the Third World Debt Crisis that began to spiral with Mexico’s default in 1982, the IMF had primarily operated by providing short-term financing in a relatively modest fashion through the Compensatory Financing Facility (1963) and the Buffer Stock Financing Facility (1969). (International Monetary Fund Policy Development and Review Department, ‘Review of the Compensatory and Contingency Financing Facility (CCFF) and Buffer Stock Financing Facility (BSFF) – Preliminary Considerations’, International Monetary Fund, 9 December 1999, https://www.imf.org/external/np/ccffbsff/review/index.htm.).

In the aftermath of Mexico’s default, the IMF conducted what its managing director, Michel Camdessus, called the ‘silent revolution’. (James M. Boughton, The IMF and the Silent Revolution Global Finance and Development in the 1980s (International Monetary Fund, 11 September 2000), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/silent/index.htm#3.).

Against its manifest purpose, the IMF began to respond to requests for short-term bridge financing by demanding that countries radically change their domestic economic policies as a condition for approval. Through their new programmes, the Structural Adjustment Facility (1986), and then the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (1987), the IMF put a singular recipe on the table: privatise the economy, including the state sector; commodify areas of human life that had up to that point been in the public domain; terminate any government deficit financing; and dissolve any barriers on foreign capital investment and trade (such as subsidies and tariffs). The IMF had experimented with these measures in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru in the 1950s with limited success before turning them into the basis for their policy not towards all countries, but specifically to be used against states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which struggled with an international economic system shaped by colonialism and capitalism. These were the countries that had championed the formation of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 to advance their own proposals to exit the neocolonial world order, proposals that were passed by the UN General Assembly in 1974 as the New International Economic Order (NIEO).

The new IMF policy emerged in contest against the possibility of an NIEO, since rather than allow for a better deal for raw material prices or for tariff-subsidy arrangements, it demanded the withdrawal of all these anti-colonial schemes. Even Raghuram Rajan, the IMF’s own chief economist from 2003 to 2007, wrote in his book Fault Lines (2010) that the IMF’s policies appeared as a ‘new form of financial colonialism’. (Raghuram Rajan, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010), 93.).

The IMF’s ‘silent revolution’ intensified the crisis faced by the poorer nations, driving them into a spiral of indebtedness and poverty. The general formula for this spiral is as follows:

Countries go into short-term balance-of-payments debt because of their lack of capital – much of it stolen during the colonial period – and their reliance upon borrowing to conduct (often expensive) capital improvements in their countries (some of which are in the raw material extraction sector, thereby operating as a subsidy for foreign mining companies).
The IMF arrives and informs the finance ministries that government spending for education, healthcare, and other social development projects must be cut in order to prioritise payments to wealthy bondholders (in the London Club) and to governments – mostly the old colonial states – (in the Paris Club) who have lent them money.

To pay the debt servicing on these loans, the poorer nations cut their government spending, thereby impoverishing their people further, and export more of their cheapened raw materials (rather than more profitable finished products). When countries start to export more and more primary commodities, this produces a price war that leads to a steep decline in the revenues gained from the volume of exports.

With weakened revenues from imports, the poorer nations must continue to cut their social spending, ramp up their sales of raw materials and public assets, and borrow more money from external private and governmental sources… just to pay off the interest on their ballooning debt.
The imperative of ‘exchange rate stability’ prevents governments in the poorer nations from exercising any effective monetary policy – including implementing capital controls – while their fiscal policy is already eviscerated by balanced budget demands from the IMF, social spending cuts, and pressure from wealthy bondholders to ‘reform’ (i.e., surrender) their tax policy.

In 2016, senior members of the IMF’s research department published an article called ‘Neoliberalism: Oversold?’, which argued that the ‘adverse feedback loop’ set in motion by austerity, followed by increased inequality and then yet more austerity, had to be broken by a less rigid, less fundamentalist approach to ‘liberalisation’ and neoliberalism. (Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri, ‘Neoliberalism: Oversold?’ Finance and Deveopment 53, no. 2 (June 2016), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm.).

There was even a suggestion of ‘greater acceptance of [capital] controls to deal with the volatility of capital flows’. While there was a decline in the conditions that the IMF required to receive their loans over the course of the decade before this paper was published, there is no evidence of any qualitative change in IMF policy. (Alexander E. Kentikelenis, Thomas H. Stubbs, and Lawrence P. King, ‘IMF Conditionality and Development Policy Space, 1985–2014’, Review of International Political Economy 23, no. 4 (2016): 543-582.).

Guinea, for instance – a country that has at least a third of the world’s bauxite – entered the IMF rollercoaster in 2011 and immediately became trapped in the debt-austerity cycle.(Lounceny Nabé and Kerfalla Yansané, ‘Guinea: Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding’, International Monetary Fund, 20 June 2011, https://www.imf.org/external/np/loi/2011/gin/063011.pdf.). In 2014, the Guinean government of Alpha Condé wrote to the IMF that the ‘tight fiscal and monetary policy’ had led to a ‘reduction in spending, including on domestic investment’, which made it impossible for Guinea ‘to respect the indicative targets for spending in priority sectors’. (Mohamed Diaré and Lounceny Nabé, ‘Guinea: Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding’, International Monetary Fund, 1 February 2014, https://www.imf.org/External/NP/LOI/2014/GIN/020114.pdf). In other words, Guinea borrowed to try and exit a crisis, but the borrowing itself led to cuts in social spending and deepened its crisis. In 2019–2020, the country experienced a cycle of protests sparked both by Condé’s attempt to change the constitution as well as the worsened economic situation. A UNICEF report found that, in 2019, twenty-five very poor countries spent more on debt servicing than on education, health, and social protection combined. Sixteen of those countries are on the African continent.(UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, COVID-19 and the Looming Debt Crisis, Innocenti Policy Brief 2021-01, Protecting and Transforming Social Spending for Inclusive Recoveries (Florence: UNICEF, April 2021), https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/Social-spending-series_COVID-19-and-the-looming-debt-crisis.pdf, 15.). In the early months of the pandemic in 2020, the IMF offered to open up new windows for borrowing that they said would come without conditionalities. (Kristalina Georgieva, ‘The Next Phase of the Crisis: Further Action Needed for a Resilient Recovery’, IMF (blog), 16 July 2020, https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2020/07/16/blog-g20-md-the-next-phase-of-the-crisis-further-action-needed-for-a-resilient-recovery.).

The G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative and other such offers to pause debt payments suggested that the poorer nations would receive assistance to prevent total economic collapse and to gain access to vaccines. However, Oxfam found that thirteen of the fifteen IMF loan programmes during the second year of the pandemic (2021) required ‘new austerity measures such as taxes on food and fuel or spending cuts that could put vital public services at risk’. (Oxfam International, ‘IMF Must Abandon Demands for Austerity as Cost-of-Living Crisis Drives up Hunger and Poverty Worldwide’, Oxfam Press Release, 19 April 2022, https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/imf-must-abandon-demands-austerity-cost-living-crisis-drives-hunger-and-poverty.) The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index reveals that fourteen out of the sixteen countries in West Africa planned to cut their budgets by a total of $26.8 billion in 2021 to contain haemorrhaging national debt crises and that these policies have been encouraged by the IMF’s COVID-19 loans. (Matthew Martin et al., The West Africa Inequality Crisis: Fighting Austerity and the Pandemic, Oxfam and Development Finance International, 14 October 2021, https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621300/rr-west-africa-cri-austerity-pandemic-141021-en.pdf, 4, 19.).

The evidence is clear: the IMF not only engineers austerity-driven debt crises, but its policies are designed to ensure and manage a permanent debt crisis, not to erase debt.

By Henry Kyambalesa

This article is a response to a news article titled “Socialist Party President Dr Fred M’membe Unveils Job-Creation Strategy Focused on Education, Health and Peasant Agriculture.” It is designed to provide a bird’s-eye view of the following: (a) the Uruguay Round Accord, including the agreement relating to agriculture; (b) the proposed 25% allocation to education; (c) a critique of Karl Marx’s theories; (d) widespread repudiation of socialism; (e) socialism versus human nature; (f) China and private investors; and (g) the matter of economic growth and job creation.

1. The Uruguay Round Accord

The trade negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which fell under the “Uruguay Round” rubric were started in Septem­ber 1986 in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and con­cluded in Decem­ber 1993.

Important elements of the Uruguay Round pact include the fol­lowing: (a) the GATT protocol; (b) rules of origin; (c) agreement on export subsidies; (d) agreement on technical barriers to trade; (e) the anti-dumping code; (f) im­port-licensing procedures; (g) agreement on trade-related aspects of investment mea­sures (TRIMS); (h) agreement on agricul­ture; (i) agree­ment on trade-related aspects of intel­lectual property (TRIP); and (j) agree­ment on trade in servic­es.

The GATT protocol re-affirmed the original and general objective of the GATT (hereinafter referred to as the World Trade Organiza­tion or WTO, the new name it assumed on January 1, 1995)—that is: to create an open, liberal and competitive interna­tional trading system and thereby contrib­ute to global economic growth and develop­ment, as well as enhance prosperi­ty and welfare world­wide.

The following is a cursory description of each of the other ele­ments of the Uruguay Round Accord cited above:

(a) Harmonization of rules of origin so that World Trade Organiza­tion (WTO) member-coun­tries cannot use them either to promote their nation­al trade objectives or to delib­erately imperil interna­tional trade;

(b) Removal of any and all export subsidies which are intend­ed, or are by design likely, to disadvan­tage other trading nations;

(c) Redressing technical trade barriers (such as health and safety regula­tions, labeling require­ments, government procure­ment policies, interna­tional agreements which are likely to lead to the emer­gence of international cartels, multiple exchange rates [ME­Rs], and border taxes), taking into account the special development needs of develop­ing nations;

(d) Preclusion of the use of dumping as a trade strategy by any of the WTO member-countries;

(e) Streamlining of import-licensing procedures that are likely to have a negative effect on the flow of commod­ities into a country due to their being cumbersome and time-consuming to import­ers;

(f) Elimination of deliberate measures aimed at promoting invest­ments that restrict or distort international trade (such as domestic purchase require­ments, limits on im­ports and multiple exchange rates [MERs]), and promotion of unrestrained cross-border move­ment of invest­ment capital;

(g) Progressive reduction of governmental support for, and protec­tion of, agricultural activities in order to enhance market access and competi­tive­ness interna­tionally, hav­ing regard for member-countr­ies’ quest for en­hanced food security and protection of the fragile environ­ment;

(h) Effective and adequate protection of intellectual property rights, while ensuring that measures and procedures designed to protect such rights do not themselves become barriers to trade; and

(i) Enhancement of transparency in, and progressive liberalization of, trade in services (including financial services, telecommunications, air transport services, and the like), not excepting the free movement of service providers, but with regard for national measures designed to maintain national security, public safety, public order, and public morals.

It is also important to note that the WTO requires countries which are signatories to the Uruguay Round accord to ensure that foreign business entities are not subjected to any covert trade rules, regulations and practices which are likely to place them at a competitive disadvantage against domestic firms. Obviously, this also implies that governments need to discourage domestic companies from engaging in “Buy Zambian” campaigns, for example.

Zambia is a de facto and active member of the WTO and must, therefore, comply with the rules and expectations of the Organization. Unfortunately, the Socialist Party’s contemplated socioeconomic policies would be in violation of the GATT Protocol and elements (b), (c), (f), (g), and (i) cited immediately above.

With respect to “agriculture,” M’membe has pledged that “The Socialist Party will prioritize peasant agriculture [and] … will transform the sector by providing appropriate ploughs, planters, harvesters, and other necessities.”

Our beloved country can hardly afford to deliberately attract sanctions and lawsuits from other members of the WTO for violating the Organization’s rules and norms. It is, therefore, cruel and folly for M’membe and his colleagues to attempt to resurrect an archaic and failed ideology that can surely impose greater suffering on the citizenry.

If M’membe and his lieutenants wish to contribute meaningfully to Zambia’s quest for sustained socioeconomic development, they need to swallow their pride, ditch the socialist ideology and adopt the free-market ideology. Arrogance stubbornness on their part will neither improve their legacies nor expand the socioeconomic vistas of our fellow citizens.

Besides, countries worldwide have moved away from the Agricultural Revolution of yesteryear and through the Industrial Revolution to the current post-industrial society based on information and services. While all governments generally recognize the crucial role locally based agricultural production plays in the attainment of food security, there is really no wisdom in shifting much of our country’s human and financial resources to “peasant farming” and inhibit “commercial farming.”

2. Allocation to Education

The pledge that Fred M’membe and the Socialist Party would allocate 25% of Zambia’s government revenue to education is both outrageous and outlandish. What percentage of government revenue would then be allocated to the following: Public Health and Sanitation; Agriculture and Food Security; Finance and Revenue; Commerce and Industry; National Defence and Security; Home Affairs; Works, Supply and Transport; Lands and Public Housing; Culture and Community Services; Justice, Prisons and Immigration; Foreign Affairs and Tourism; Bank of Zambia; The National Assembly; Executive Agencies; Cabinet Office + OP; and Provinces + Miscellaneous?

3. Karl Marx’s Theories

The theories and propositions by Karl Marx (and Frederick Engels) are both controversial and impractical, and have attracted numerous criticisms—some of which are cited by Phil Gasper (2005:25-28). They include the following:

3.1 That he could not prescribe the structure, organs and functions of a socialist and/or communist government at local, national and/or regional levels, and that he said “comparatively little about what this alternative—‘socialism’ or ‘communism’—[would] … look like.”

3.2 That his theories have failed miserably in practice, with particular reference to the collapse of the former Soviet Union and other socialist and communist countries in Eastern Europe.

3.3 That he and Engels treated the “bourgeoisie” as if it were an organized group or class of individuals or organizations whose existence could be likened to that of labor unions, trade unions, associations of manufacturers, or chambers of commerce and industry—a seemingly unfair characterization of a group or class of discrete individuals and organizations.

3.4 That capitalism is no longer what it used to be during his time, considering the fact that governments in capitalist countries now provide for social welfare programs designed to meet the basic needs of economically vulnerable or disadvantaged members of society. Also, there is a prevalence of labor unions worldwide, which advance the interests of workers. Besides, some corporations in capitalist countries provide for stock ownership by workers. And

3.5 That his views relating to the creation of a classless society were and are not consistent with “human nature”—that is, the inherent or intrinsic dispositions and traits of human beings, which include the following: (a) liberty-seeking nature—that is, proclivity for freedom to think, choose, act, and/or acquire property without being compelled or constrained by force, social norms or necessity; and (b) self-centered nature—that is, the tendency to concentrate selfishly or egoistically on one’s own needs and affairs, and to show little or no concern for the needs and affairs of other members of society.

3.6 The rigid and unrealistic stratification of any given society into “oppressors” (or the bourgeoisie) and the “oppressed” (or the proletariat) that is presented by Engels (1906:12) and cited by Phil Gasper (2005:40) in the second paragraph of Part I of the Communist Manifesto is a misconception of reality, because some members of the “oppressors” join the “oppressed” through mismanagement of their resources and/or unpredictable misfortunes.

And, on the other hand, some members of the “oppressed” join the “oppressors” through their own ingenuity, hard work and/or merely through some sheer stroke of luck—and this is apparently a more common state of affairs.

Thus, very few countries would tolerate anyone who would demonize, stigmatize or ostracize owners of organizations developed from scratch by individual members of society through their own ingenuity, hard work and/or merely through some sheer stroke of luck by referring to them (in the Manifesto of the Communist Party) as “The ‘dangerous class,’ the social scum, that passively rotting mass” which would need to be ex-terminated from society—Marx and Engels (1906:29).

As such, there was perhaps no better reason for the governments of Germany, France and Belgium to have expelled Marx from their countries. As noted elsewhere in this article, he sought asylum in London, England, where he lived until his death in 1883.

3.7 In the Manifesto for the Communist Party, Marx and Engels (1906:20&54) agitated for the abolition of what they referred to as “bourgeois competition” and replace it with “association” because “private property [that has to be abolished] cannot be separated from competition.”

This is perhaps one of the most controversial and impractical of the propositions advanced by Marx and Engels because, in reality, competition is actually a natural element in every sphere and facet of human endeavor. And the success (or failure) of all individuals and the organizations or societies they found or belong to is essentially and generally a direct result of their ability (or inability) to compete against other individuals, organizations and/or societies.

In other words, the ability, freedom and inclination to compete are what drives and propels individuals, organizations and countries to higher levels of performance; as such, any attempt to limit or abolish competition can ultimately undermine the potential of individuals, organizations and countries to meet the basic needs and expectations of the majority of their stakeholders.

3.8 In the same Manifesto, Marx and Engels (1906:16&37) pushed for what they referred to as “the communistic abolition of free trade, and of buying and selling of commodities.”

This is also one of the most controversial and impractical of the propositions advanced by Marx and Engels mainly because trade among nations particularly is actually an important element in any given country’s quest for heightened economic and technological development, and it can benefit a country in numerous and very specific ways.

The United Nations (2015), for example, has recognized the necessity of free trade among nations in the following words: “International trade is an engine for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction, and contributes to the promotion of sustainable development.”

Among other benefits, it can: (a) enable a country to gain access to foreign goods, services and technology; (b) be a trigger of innovation and creativity in a country’s economy; (c) function as a conduit for a country’s potential surplus; (d) be a boon for job creation; (e) be a potential and reliable source of foreign reserves for any given country; (f) lead to the realization of economies of scale and scope by a country’s business and non-business entities; (g) be a boon for peace and amicable relations among trading sovereign nations and their citizens; and (h) be more potent than foreign aid in any given country’s quest to attain desired levels of socioeconomic development.

3.9 The following constitute other obvious and problematic issues which are directly associated with the idea of adopting socialism or socialist ideals by any country:

(a) Socioeconomic ills: A deliberate conversion or transformation of any given country’s mixed socioeconomic system, pseudo free-market economy or free-market economy to an economy based on socialist ideals would require the prospective socialist government to take the following unpalatable measures: (i) impose a one-party political regime on a country by banning opposition political parties; (ii) criminalize dissent and criticism because, by their nature, single-party political regimes do not tolerate dissent and criticism; (iii) nationalize and/or expropriate privately owned companies and convert them into state-owned enterprises; (iv) abolition of private property; (v) imposition of price controls, which, as Murray Sanderson (1993:2&4) as advised, can cause and/or exacerbate commodity shortages in a country; and (vi) alteration of the perceptions and psyches or psychological make-ups of members of society on a mass scale.

(b) Bolster to corruption: State-owned companies, to paraphrase Gerry N. Muuka and Binta Abubakar (2002:16), can (and have) become vehicles for embezzlement and bribery for personal aggrandizement, often at the expense of the implementation of aid-financed projects. Besides, they can foster the development of cronyism through patronage at the highest levels of government. Moreover, they can bolster the siphoning-off of public re-sources for party, political or factional purposes, as well as trigger the packing of public enterprises with supporters of the ruling political party without regard for genuine personnel requirements.

(c) Authoritarian rule: Socialism and communism greatly depend on a national government’s authority to introduce what is referred to in Marxist-Leninist doctrine as “dictatorship of the proletariat”—that is, exercise, control and retention of political power in a country by the economic and social class consisting of workers who derive their incomes solely from the ‘sale’ of their labor to employers.

(d) Suppression of innovation: In socialist countries, constraints on the process of innovation, as Goldman and Simon (1989:7) have discerned, are ideological in nature; and since socialist ideology regards S&T knowledge as belonging to all the people in a given country, it treats such knowledge as a free good. This undervalues the knowledge and, as a result, removes the necessary incentive for creativity and innovation. And

(e) Abolition of religion: Ordinarily, implementation of socialist and/or communist ideals would require a denunciation of all forms of religious worship and beliefs (including beliefs and worship associated with Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Bahá’í Faith) in consonance with one of Karl Marx’s goals of abolishing religion because he regarded it as a source of illusory happiness among believers and worshippers as implied by the following declaration attributed to him: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Nevertheless, religion somewhat provides explanations of situations, events and/or phenomena relating to human experiences or conditions which are not easy to understand or explain. For example, humanity is yet to ascertain, unravel or explain the origins and wonders of the Heavens and the Earth, the origins and intricacies of life and the possibility of life after death beyond reasonable doubt. Did the Sun, for example, come about by means of blind forces, by chance, or through intelligent design? And what exactly lies beyond what we can see above us with our naked eyes, and with telescopes?

4. Repudiation of Socialism

Three historical events signaled the end or rejection of socialism and communism as alternatives to the market-based socioeconomic system in the world’s quest to improve humanity’s socioeconomic vistas; that is:

(a) The worldwide quest for economic liberalization over the last 40 or so years by countries which have had socialist or communist national economies.

(b) The introduction of “perestroika” and “glasnost” in the former Union of Soviets Socialist Republics (USSR) by the Mikhail Gorbachev administration in 1987, and the eventual break-up of the USSR on December 26, 1991. And

(c) The dismantling of the Berlin Wall, which separated communist East Germany (that was under the tutelage of the former Soviet Union) and capitalist West Germany, in November 1989 and eventual reunification of the two countries into a united and capitalist Germany upon the signing of a reunification treaty on August 31, 1990.

The term “perestroika” refers to the profound reorganization or restructuring of the system of centralized planning and management of the entire economy of the former Soviet Union initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev (then leader of the Soviet Union) during the late 1980s.

Linked to “perestroika” was “khozrachot”—a concept or principle that provided for the following: (a) gradual elimination of subsidies, price controls and foreign exchange controls; and (b) conversion of state-owned and state-controlled monopolistic enterprises into competitive and independently operated business entities.

“Glasnost” refers to the concept of openness introduced in the former Soviet Union in 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev, which provided for a general relaxation of constraints on freedom of speech in the USSR. As noted by Hall and Kirk (2002:778), “Perestroika” and “khozrachot” were also introduced during the same year.

5. Socialism v. Human Nature

In early February 2019 during a State of the Union Address, then U.S. President, Mr. Donald J. Trump, warned about what he perceived to be the emergence of incessant calls to introduce socialism in the United States of America.

The warning was apparently evoked by some Democrats in the U.S. Congress who have been espousing popular policies—including Medicare for all, tuition-free education at public colleges and universities, tax hikes on wealthy citizens and residents, and the New Green Deal.

Later during the same month, he was reported by Fishbein (2019) and Rodrigo (2019), for example, as having reiterated the warning in a speech he delivered in Miami, Florida, in the following words:

“Socialism is a sad and discredited ideology rooted in the total ignorance of history and human nature. [Here] … in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and in-dependence—not government coercion, domination and control.”

In the remainder of this section, an attempt is made to tender a set of what may be said to be salient traits of “human nature” and determine whether or not the traits of human nature are consistent with socialist ideals or beliefs.

5.1 Salient Traits of Human Nature: The term “human nature” is used in this article to refer to the inherent or intrinsic dispositions and traits of human beings, which include the following:

(a) A sense of belonging: An inclination to seek to be a member of a community of humans and to live as an accepted member of the community rather than live in solitude;

(b) Fairness-seeking nature: An inherent propensity to expect to be treated fairly as an important, vital and unique member of one’s community, and to be rewarded and/or recognized accordingly for one’s distinctive work in the community;

(c) Liberty-seeking nature: Proclivity for freedom to think, choose, act, and/or acquire property without being compelled or constrained by force, social norms or necessity;

(d) Pleasure-seeking nature: An inclination for the pursuit of leisure, happiness and/or relaxation;

(e) Self-centered nature: The tendency to concentrate selfishly or egoistically on one’s own needs and affairs, and to show little or no concern for the needs and affairs of other people; and

(f) The survival instinct: The impulse to be alive and to exist, especially in the light of life-threatening circumstances obtaining in one’s environment, and to avoid activities or situations which have the potential to cause or inflict pain.

5.2 Consistency with Human Nature: Let us now determine whether the ideology of socialism would be consistent with any of the traits of “human nature.” Firstly, socialism—which would require the forfeiture of privately owned factors or means of production and distribution—would not be consistent with the “liberty-seeking nature” of humans that seeks the freedom to think, choose, act, and/or acquire property without being compelled or constrained by force, social norms or necessity.

Secondly, the possibility of being compelled to jointly own and manage the means or factors of production and distribution that would be converted from private ownership to public ownership would be inconsistent with the “selfish,” “egoistic” or “self-centered” nature of humans.

And, thirdly, the provision of public goods (such as mass transit, healthcare and retirement benefits) and the subsequent prevention of the operations of private providers would also be inconsistent with the “liberty-seeking nature” of humans by which individuals seek the freedom to think, choose, act, and/or acquire property without being compelled or constrained by force, social norms or necessity.

However, the creation of a society where income and wealth inequalities are minimal is consistent with the “fairness-seeking nature” of humans.

In general, therefore, the ideology of socialism is not consistent with “human nature.”

6. China and Private Investors

Socialist ideologues worldwide are likely to point to China as an excellent example of a socialist / communist country whose economic outputs have continued to flood the entire world unlike any other country in modern history. In this regard, News China (2019:1) in an editorial has summed up the actual reason for the country’s economic success in the following words:

“China’s economic success in the past decades has been established on the premise of a liberalized and vital private sector.” And “Chinese President Xi Jinping affirmed in a meeting on November 1 [2018] that the [Chinese] government will support the private sector to become bigger and stronger.”

Also, the following quote excerpted from the South China Morning Post highlights the country’s yearning for foreign private investment: “[Former] … Premier Li Keqiang said China will make greater efforts to attract and utilize foreign capital, by expanding market access to foreign investors, especially in the modern service sector.”

In fact, it is not enough to consider a country’s progress only in terms of its economic outputs. Other considerations include the rights and freedoms exercised by citizens of multi-party and democratic systems of government worldwide—rights and freedoms which are not catered for in socialist and communist countries like China.

News China (2023:1) has perhaps provided a more succinct assessment of the private sector’s contribution to China’s remarkable economic performance in an editorial in the following words:

“The importance of the private sector [in China] has long been recognized and is dubbed ‘56789,’ an allusion to the private sector’s contribution [amounting to] … 50 percent of the country’s tax revenue, 60 percent of national GDP, 70 percent of technological innovations, and 80 percent of urban jobs, with private firms accounting for 90 percent of all enterprises.”

Private investors in the Chinese economy include indigenous capitalists and investors from a wide range of countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

7. Jobs and Economic Growth

Zambia needs a robust and competitive private sector if it is to attain meaningful economic growth and development and to create adequate jobs for citizens who are currently roaming the streets due to the persistent lack of employment opportunities. “Peasant farming” cannot be the primary engine for generating jobs in the Zambian economy, as insinuated or suggested by Fred M’membe. Such a myopic experiment failed miserably in the former Soviet Union.

In this regard, government leaders have tended to place a great deal of emphasis on stabilizing inflation at the expense of job creation and economic growth. There is a need to reverse this trend by placing greater emphasis on job creation and economic growth through low interest rates and progressive reductions in taxes in order to stimulate both investment and consumption.

What any given national government needs in its quest to uplift the standard of living of the majority of its people is neither socialism and its utopian ideals nor crude capitalism and its zealous quest for profit maximization; rather, it needs to strive to create what is referred to as the “social welfare state”—that is, a country that provides for a dynamic free-market economy which essentially has a human face.

More precisely, a “social welfare state” is a country whose government simultaneously provides for a highly competitive business system—which can be realized through various kinds of guarantees, inducements and essential public services and facilities designed to lavishly incentivize both local and foreign private investors—and an effective mechanism for re-distributing wealth to the needy.

In other words, a “social welfare state” is any country whose government is dedicated to diligently and simultaneously pursue pro-business, pro-labor and pro-poor policies.

Countries which have succeeded in meeting the basic needs and aspirations of the majority of their people—such as Finland, Australia, the United States of America, Japan, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands (Holland), and Germany—are essentially social welfare states!

When German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels released “The Communist Manifesto” (originally referred to as the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”) in February 1848, the economies of Western Europe were predominantly administered through crude capitalism.

Perhaps this explains why some portions of The Communist Manifesto, as Samuel Moore (2019) has noted, feature “their ideas on how capitalist societies of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism.”

Incidentally, Germany today has a market-based economy in spite of the fact that it is the birthplace of Marxism. And Karl Marx was banished from Germany and had to seek lifelong refuge in London, where he died in 1883 despite having been denied British citizenship, perhaps due to his outlandish views.

In fact, one may even wonder whether the socioeconomic conditions that existed in Western Europe at the time when Marx and Engels were propounding, expounding and articulating their theories actually exist in modern African countries or elsewhere in the world.

Ultimately, the revolutionary transition of capitalism to socialism and, finally, to communism that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels envisioned will apparently never come to fruition due to the emergence of welfare capitalism and the social welfare state.

In any given country’s quest to improve the livelihoods of the majority of its people, therefore, it is perhaps essential for government leaders to keep in mind the following caveat provided by the late F. W. de Klerk (1993:16) regarding the pursuit of socioeconomic development:

“The reality is that the economy does not grow from political slogans … [basic] requirements for economic growth [and development] are peace and stability, free enterprise, imaginative entrepreneurship, efficient and frugal government, innovative and caring management, a well-educated and motivated work force, and a lot of hard work.”