"Socialism Is Love"- Hugo Chavez - 2007

"Socialism is love" at least according to the half insane, buffoon dictator from Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. And, he has been acting accordingly by taxing the rich, socializing their businesses, and giving money and services to the poor. He is just a very loving, caring man, and, not coincidently, so are our American Democrats who would love to do the same things here if only they could get rid of the mean, loveless, self-interested Republicans.

The first of these self-interested Republicans was probably Adam Smith who published his capitalist bible "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776 just in time to see it incorporated into the new American Constitution which then proved to be the foundation of freedom and prosperity on earth. But, in perhaps one of the most unfortunate public relations omissions in human intellectual history Smith wrote "It is not from the benevolence of butchers, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self love." So there it is, regardless of the results of Adam Smith's capitalism, whether seen in the comparison between North and South Korea, USA and USSR/Communist China, East and West Germany, East and West Berlin, Cuba and Florida, Nogales,AZ and Nogales, Mexico, and Hong Kong and Communist China, capitalism was created for the "self-love" or the "interest" of the capitalist and so it is just no damn good despite the supernatural results.

To be fair to Smith, the distrust of the rich started long before 1776. The Bible (Matthew 19:24) , after all, says, "it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven." That prejudice against the rich, however, should be largely discounted in part because it was, in fact, mostly justified at the time it was written, and in part because even today, despite the discovery and development of the science of economics, the Church, much like Hugo Chavez, has not been able to mature its economic thinking one tiny bit beyond pre-economic Biblical times.

Given the historic and long standing distrust of the rich it was indeed unfortunate for Smith to perpetuate this Biblical disapprobation for the rich by referring to self-love and self- interest at a time when it was widely believed among the masses that real love had to be wholly manifested toward another person; not the self. God, after all, magnanimously sacrificed his son for us; not for himself. But did the founding architect of capitalism really believe capitalists were selfish? Of course not. Smith, as it turns out, was also a moral philosopher equally famous for his "Theory of Moral Sentiments" which is a 500 page tome about the moral obligations that people naturally feel toward one another, and place at the heart of their lives.

So how did he reconcile man's natural moral and social sentiments with capitalism? Concentrate here if you are a Democrat, this is the place where the complexity may well grow too much for you. In Chapter One, page one, Smith says, "how selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure in seeing it. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it".

On Chapter 2, page 10,