Trust Corbyn

My approach to socialists is rather simplistic, and I’m man enough to admit this failing.

More sophisticated analysts than me divide socialists into finely nuanced categories: national (Nazi), international (communist or some such), moderate, democratic, Christian and so forth.

I simplify this taxonomy by dividing socialists into just two broad groups: good people and those who are still alive.

I’m ashamed of this lack of subtlety, but I can do no other. (Doesn’t this sound so much better in English than in Luther’s original German, Ich kann nicht anders?)

What separates different hues of the socialist red is trivial compared to what unites them: the urge to destroy things that make Britain British or, more generally, the West Western.

When they want to destroy all such things, they’re called extreme or hard left. When they don’t mind keeping the odd thing or two for old times’ sake, they’re called moderate or left of centre.

A distinction without a difference, at least as far as the underlying destructive animus is concerned.

There’s some difference in the chosen weapons of destruction, and that’s admittedly more valid: on balance, I’d rather die impoverished in a care centre than emaciated in a labour camp.

There’s also a difference in the words they use: some are more forthright than others.

For example, Tony Blair, the most perfidious nonentity among our socialists, hid his hatred of every traditional custom and institution behind a smokescreen of fake neo-Thatcherism.

Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand, doesn’t mind openly coming across as an evil nonentity. Where Blair is typologically close to Gramsci, Marcuse and Adorno, Corbyn gravitates more towards Trotsky, Chavez and Maduro.

That’s why I trust Jeremy implicitly. Whenever he promises to introduce a policy guaranteed to reduce Britain to the status of Venezuela, he means what he says – and he’ll do what he promises.

My credulity begins to totter, nay come down crashing, whenever he insists that Britain will profit from his premiership. But, to give Jeremy his due, he’s so vague about any specific benefits that one gets the impression he doesn’t even expect to be believed.

Many people have made the mistake of not taking evil, destructive men at their word when they preach mayhem. Such people clearly have no faith in human honesty, a quality on which I pride myself.

When Lenin talked about wiping out every noxious bourgeois insect, defined in rather open-ended terms, most people assumed that was just a figure of speech.

They noticed that included in that wide category weren’t just factory owners, but everybody Lenin hated: priests, the intelligentsia, army officers, financiers, administrators, engineers, scientists, artisans or simply university graduates.

Surely, people were saying, he couldn’t possibly mean wiping them all out physically. He’s smart enough to realise Russia would be a basket case without her educated classes.

Oh yes, he could mean just that. And he did what he meant, with precisely the dreaded consequences.

In the same vein, when Stalin defined as kulaks every hard-working peasant and called for “liquidating them as a class”, he wasn’t taken literally. Who’d feed the people if all the productive peasants were ‘liquidated’?

They missed the point. Socialism, at least its hard variety, isn’t about feeding people. It’s about liquidating them, and that’s precisely what Stalin proceeded to do, picking up the relay baton his syphilitic predecessor had dropped – with millions starving to death as a result.

And when Hitler published his Mein Kampf, spelling out his plans involving the German Jews, no one – least of all the German Jews themselves – believed him.

Germany, with her Kultur and Bildung, was the most civilised country in the world, they were saying. It can’t possibly allow mass murder, and Herr Hitler, for all his stridency, was only speaking figuratively, wasn’t he?

Yes, quite.

Now Jeremy Corbyn, unfortunately for him, lives at a time and in a country that aren’t quite ready for mass murder. Being a clever chap, he knows it, which is why physical destruction of millions isn’t on his agenda.

But the destruction of the British economy certainly is, and, to Jeremy’s credit, he’s honest about it. He has proposed a whole raft of policies, each of which would damage the economy grievously.

Executed together, they’d take Britain close to the country Corbyn admires with every fibre of what passes for his soul: the Venezuela of Chavez and Maduro.

Two of those proposed policies are very much in the news: obligating companies to transfer 10 per cent of their shares to their employees, and putting several employees and union representatives on company boards.

The second policy is pernicious enough on its own, but it’s the first one that assails not only the country’s economic health but indeed her fundamental principles.

One such principle, without which Britain wouldn’t be Britain, is property rights – and the liberties derived therefrom.

Where will those 10 per cent of the shares come from? There are only two possible sources, both amounting to confiscation.

One is robbing the existing stockholders of 10 per cent of their property; the other is issuing more shares, thereby reducing the value of those already held. This mugging will be exacerbated by many stockholders dumping their shares and reducing the value of the stock even further.

I could easily imagine the practical ramifications of this rape of Britain’s ethos, but mercifully I don’t have to: there’s enough empirical evidence. The effects of this policy have been about the same everywhere it has been tried.

Some companies, and most of the foreign ones, simply move their business elsewhere, leaving behind a gaping hole in the country’s finances and employment statistics.

Those that stay, do two things: lower wages and roll back hiring. That delivers a blow to the country’s economy by effectively reducing GDP and again increasing unemployment.

You see, unlike Corbyn, most companies want to create wealth, not rob or otherwise destroy it. When they see their creative impulse extinguished, they won’t take it lying down. If there’s one thing that history teaches it’s that people – and businesses – flee from socialism.

This policy can do a fine job impoverishing Britain all by itself, but Jeremy isn’t taking any chances. To guarantee his desired outcome, he also plans stratospheric tax rises and wholesale nationalisation.

So please trust Corbyn to deliver on his promises – I certainly do.