Thomas Sowell: Even Karl Marx recognized that "crackbrained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis"

When people learn that you are an economist, they often want you to predict which way the economy is going. There seem to be more than the usual number of calls for such predictions lately. But an economist should be more aware than others are of how hazardous such predictions can be.

One reason is that what happens in the economy is affected by what politicians do in Washington-- and who can predict what politicians will do?

However, let me go out on a limb, and try to predict what politicians will not do.

What would probably get the economy recovering fastest and most completely would be for the President of the United States and Congressional leaders to shut up and stop meddling with the economy. But it is virtually impossible that they will do that.

Think about telling all the millions of people who have lost their jobs, their homes or their businesses: "I really messed you up but, hey, nobody's perfect. So I'm going to leave things alone now." In fact, that would be hard even to tell yourself.

If the stimulus isn't working, the true believers have to believe that it is only because it hasn't been tried long enough, or with enough money being spent.

There are always calls for the government to "do something" when things are going bad. Those who make such calls have almost never bothered to check out what actually happens when the government does something, as compared to what happens when the government does nothing.

It is not just free market economists who think the government can make a mess bigger with its interventions. It was none other than Karl Marx who wrote to his colleague Engels that "crackbrained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis."

The history of the United States is full of evidence on the negative effects of government intervention. For the first 150 years of this country's existence, the federal government did not think it was its business to intervene when the economy turned down.

All of those downturns ended faster than the first downturn where the federal government intervened big time-- the Great Depression of the 1930s.

There are two conflicting assumptions about what happened during the Great Depression. The most popular assumption, especially among politicians, is that the market failed and the government had to intervene to save the economy.

Another assumption is that the market went down and was on its way back up when federal intervention sent it down again and led to massive unemployment. If you don't let facts get in the way, you can just pick whichever assumption you like-- and the first assumption wins that popularity contest, hands down.

But, if you look at the facts, they go like this: Unemployment never hit double digits in any of the 12 months following the big stock market crash of 1929 that is often blamed for the massive unemployment of the 1930s. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the October 1929 crash, and then began drifting downward.

Unemployment was down to 6.3 percent by June 1930, when the first big federal intervention occurred. Within six months, the downward trend in unemployment reversed and hit double digits for the first time in December 1930.

Kagan's Princeton thesis centered on German socialist/Nazi who advocated war against capitalism and a "total ordering of life"

Elena Kagan's senior thesis at Princeton University, recounting the history of socialist politics in New York City, cited the theories of an influential German Marxist who notoriously switched allegiances to Nazism after Adolf Hitler attained power.

Werner Sombart was widely recognized as an academic proponent of Marxism and was once praised by Karl Marx's colleague Friedrich Engels as the only German professor who understood Marx's Das Kapital. During World War I, however, Sombart endorsed Germany's "heroic" war against the "capitalist spirit" represented by England. In 1934, Sombart published Deutscher Sozialismus, which advocated the "total ordering of life" as an expression of the German Volksgeist, or "national spirit."

In the introduction to her 1981 thesis, Kagan addresses a question famously asked by Sombart: Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus? -- "Why is there no socialism in the United States?"

Obama pioneers a bold tactic in negotiations: when the adversary's argument blows up, concede

So, on the heels of a dramatic exposure of the scientfic fraud that has fueled the global warming hoax, hoax-master Al Gore salutes President Obama for pioneering a new American stance on the issue.

How did Obama do that? By announcing that he would be in Copenhagen on Dec. 9 to offer U.S. concessions. The U.S. will curb carbon emissions by 17 % from 2006 levels by 2020.

This will be the first time the U.S. has offered such concessions, which would raise the cost of doing business in the U.S., make U.S. manufacturers less competitive in international markets,  and blaze a new trail in the annals of negotiation tactics. The new rule will read as follows: "As soon as your opponent's argument has been blown up beyond retrieval, concede to his demands."

Never mind that no other nation will follow the lead of the U.S. We will have won a place in the hearts of our nonfriends and enemies, and that's what counts. After all, the obvious goal of President Obama is to downsize America's role and standing in the world. Hobbling American business and the economy will do that.

This demonstrates, once again, that leftist certitudes never die; they just are reworked to fit altered environments. Even when yes becomes no, leftists seldom lose a step.

How can they pull this off?

Practice. Practice. Practice.

The godfather of modern leftist collectivism, in all its forms, is Karl Marx, a German intellectual who moved to England early in the industrial revolution. In 1848, he authored the Communist Manifesto, which explored in detail the miserable conditions of England's workers and theorized that the abused workers would eventually rise up and take control of the factories.

From this base, they would capture control of the government as well.

Over ths ensuing 161 years, this never happened anywhere in the world.

In semi-feudal Russia, in 1917, anti-czarists murdered Czar Nicholas II and his family, creating a power vacuum that was filled by expatriate intellectual Vladimir Lenin and motley associates who eventually set up a communist regime.

In China, Communists won a civil war.

Eastern Europe fell into the communist sphere through occupation by Russia.

In Cuba, Fidel Castro and his ragtag communist army overthrew the hated Batista regime.

in Korea, the United Nations fenced off the north, a Chinese sphere of influence, to enable journalists to deploy the phrase "lunatic leader" as often as they liked.

Nowhere did the workers rise up and seize control of a country, as Marx had envisaged.

To top it off, British historian Paul Johnson made an amazing discovery. Having carved out a niche through his exposure of the lies, distortions and depravities of famous intellectuals, Johnson searched for evidence that Marx had ever set foot in a factory.

He found none. So, Marx has his chapter in Johnson's book, "Intellectuals," along with Percy Shelley, Henrik Ibsen, Leon Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Bertolt Brecht, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Edmund Wilson.

Although Marxist theory failed utterly in the real world, it captured huge swaths in the worlds of theory and theology.

Few, if any, university departments of economics, political science and history have escaped Marxist inluence. In some English departments, literature now plays second fiddle to leftist politics. Whole new departments, featuring courses like postmodern studies, ethnic studies and women's studies have sprung up since the 1950s. David Horowitz has come up with a useful rule of thumb: any course name with the word "studies" in it should be regarded with suspicion.

Most, if not all, of those courses shared a purpose, which was to train students to think of themselves as victims.

Not surprisingly, university professors have been among the leading table pounders for global warming.

Now, they have a dilemma. Alarmists have claimed for many years that manmade global warming was going on now. It wasn't, and isn't. The hysteria was based on faudulent science. It's time to back down.

In the real world, marxists can keep right on dreaming of the belated revolution of the workers. Marx didn't put a time limit on his theory.

Gore, who won his Nobel in 2007 for his excellent propaganda on climate change, said that Obama "took an important step" by announcing he would attend the Copenhagen talks on a new climate treaty. Why they need a new treaty is puzzling because hardly anyone paid any attention to the old one, which lies there in pristine condition.

Gore's words may signify a downshift in Democrat expectations. It used to be that Democrats celebrated when they passed a bill growing government and spending more money. Now, Gore is declaring victory on grounds Obama is taking another trip.

Bear in mind that Obama's concession, like Marx's prediction, is on the come.

Obama bears some resemblance fo Karl Marx

Historian Paul Johnson, in a book titled simply, "Intellectuals," chronicled the failings, deceptions and depravities of a wide range of thinkers and writers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom he described as "an intersting madman;" Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell and Lillian Hellman.

About one of his subjects, Karl Marx, Johnson made two pertinent observations:

"He was not interested in finding the truth but in proclaiming it."

"He believed, as his poetic imagination told him, that society was on the verge of collapse."

Don't these descriptions seem equally applicable to President Barack Obama?

The UAW owns General Motors; with White House aid, Karl Marx's vision has been realized

My last all-American-made car was a 1976 Dodge Aspen. It ground up its own transmission three times. On one of those occasions we were driving toward grandmother's house, 250 miles away, for Christmas.

About 100 miles from our destination the shifter stopped working while the car was in the third of four gears. Stopping was no longer an option. By carefully adjusting my speed while approaching intersections and building up speed to climb hills I was able to navigate all of the obstacles and finish the trip.

But it was a white-knuckle journey that left me seethng with rage.

Years later, I told the story to an acquaintance who had spent his working career in Detriot auto plants, although he was not an auto worker. He told me that he had watched as line workers ate lunch, tossing their wrappings into gas tanks still lying open on the factory floor.

Later, those line workers would seal the two halves of a gas tank with the trash still inside. My acquaintance thought it was funny.

I no longer cared because I hadn't owned an American-made car for more than 20 years.

Now the perpetrators of the Dodge Aspen and dozens of other instant lemons, through the UAW, own General Motors. Does anyone, other than the United States government, think that's a good thing? Does anyone, other than the government, think that we've forgotten or forgiven the trash that was foisted on us over the years by the auto industry?

It was Honda, Toyota and other Japanese auto makers that forced General Motors and the other American car companies to mend their ways in the manufacturing plants. But that mending came about because the plants were run by managers who answered to executives of corporations engaged in competition for markets.

Who will the UAW answer to? A one-party government that regularly demonstrates contempt for free markets while building a statist system in which government allocates ownership of failed corporations instead of leaving those decisions to the bankruptcy system. That's how General Motors came to be owned by the UAW.

Some of us may shudder at the prospect of White House oversight. Air Force One, after all, just made a $329,000 flyover photo-op that sent New Yorkers scurrying for cover.

But Karl Marx would have nodded with approval, amazed at the eventual success of his 1848 screed that called on workers to overthrow their bosses and take control of the factories.

Even Marx, who thought big, would not have imagined that the White House would be a party to the fulfillment of his Communist Manifesto.