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One of the underlying arguments commonly raised against commerce is the Marxist presumption that all wealth is derived from either exploiting natural resources or forcing humans into slavery.

Notes business guru-cum-evil-genius Michael Phillips.

When confronted with the Marxist view that all commercial productivity is inherently imperialistic, simply ask the question: ‘Could one salaried employee out produce five slaves?’ The answer is 'Yes'. Slaves are very unproductive, very difficult to manage and Marxists are hanging on to the slavery idea long after the commercial world has discarded it.

Nowhere is this rhetoric more commonly found (at every turn) than in the workers’ paradise of western Europe. The first clue is the misidentification of any and all non-governmental economic activity taking place in civil society as capitalism. It displays an identical ignorance of it that I came to know behind the iron curtain: founded on what little information about it that had been offered to people, and all of it was deliberately negative.

The idea that the idea... the rhetorical grenade to be precise, is something the syndicalist / lynch-mob fantasy left is hanging on to with all of its’ will is precise. Precisely because it is such a fake argument, and is simple enough to thrust onto children who have no life experience to differentiate it. It’s done in the hope that it will produce in them an adherent, knowing full well that ideas that contrived can only be inculcated where there are opportunities to program the target at a vulnerable developmental stage.

The reason is simple. The level of management (and government support) required to use slaves is great and their productivity is nil.

Which, rather ironically, is exactly how the Comecon Marxist-Leninist economies operated: they were filthy with regulatory carpriciousness and ineffectual middle-management, and treated the worker for what he and she was: a captive of the state. Every instiution you were tied to was its’ own plantation, and leaving the society or dropping out was rarely an option.

How a modern leftist can observe those truths, and process the difference between what they want to call slavery with what was an objectively real, living, slavery is most telling.

The counter-argument was that these states didn’t practice “real” socialism. How would they know? The practices of these states were as philosophically consistent as Marx and Engels’ teachings had proscribed. Is what was really there – slavery – not real enough for them?