Shortages Inherent in Communism

It is without a doubt one of the stupidest, most ignorant, most absurd statements ever made on national TV. On MSNBC's "Donahue" show (1/6/2003), comedian Al Franken vehemently, and repeatedly, attacked former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg for, supposedly, misusing a quote from NBC's John Chancellor.

"It's short of soap, so there are lice in hospitals. It's short of pantyhose, so women's legs go bare. It's short snowsuits, so babies stay home in winter. Sometimes it's short of cigarettes, so millions of people stop smoking involuntarily. It drives everybody crazy. The problem isn't communism. No one even talked about communism this week. The problem is shortages."

OK. So, what's the problem? I mean, it's common knowledge (or so I thought) that communism anywhere has always meant a shortage of almost everything. In fact, the old joke is that if communists took over the Sahara Desert, they would soon be importing sand.

But Franken says that Goldberg took Chancellor out of context. Franken says, with a straight face, that what Chancellor was saying "was that, after six years of perestroika, in which communism was gone, that the people were – that the reason for these shortages was the transition away from communism."

Later in this show, accusing Goldberg of being "sloppy," Franken says the context of Chancellor's remarks was "after six years of perestroika, after six years of dismantling centralized economy in the Soviet Union, that's when they had the worst shortages."

Well, now. For openers, Mikhail Gorbachev, the author of perestroika, was a communist! The June 11, 1990, issue of Time magazine quotes Gorbachev as saying, "I am a communist, a convinced communist."

But, putting Gorbachev's self-proclaimed communism aside, is Franken seriously trying to get us to believe that when the Soviet Union was communist there were no serious shortages? Well, yes, this is exactly what he is implying.

Is this true? Not at all. Here are a few reports during the pre-perestroika years, when even Franken would have to agree the Soviet Union was communist:

In fact, in the Soviet Union under communism there was even a shortage of human life. A May 20, 1985, article in the Los Angeles Times told of the usual: "the enduring shortage of goods and services." Also, there was "a severe shortage of nurses" and "shortages of medical supplies and equipment ranging from antibiotics and high-technology devices to antiseptics and ordinary thermometers."

These things, and more, including rampant alcoholism (one-third of all alcoholics began drinking before they were 10 years old!), led to "the deteriorating situation concerning health."

Beginning in the early 1970s, "there was a change for the worse." In 1975, the infant mortality rate increased by more than a third since 1970. Life expectancy for men had fallen since 1971, when the average was already down to 64. The annual death rate increased from 6.9 per thousand in 1964 to 10.3 in 1983 – a 50 percent jump.

OK, so how about other communist countries where there has been no perestroika? Have there been bad shortages in these countries? Of course. A Jan. 6, 2003, article in the Chicago Tribune, datelined Havana, says that in Cuba "there is a shortage of everything."

And a Jan. 13, 2003, report in Newsweek on Stalinist North Korea says food shortages there are so bad that "more than 2,000,000 people have died of starvation over the last decade."

In fact, when communism no longer rules a country, things – surprise! – get better in terms of shortages. An article in Newsweek dated Jan. 8, 2001, says: "In Eastern Europe, the fall of communism unleashed political freedoms, open markets and a bright array of consumer goods."

A Jan. 14, 2000, piece in European Banker says, regarding the formerly communist Poland: "There remains a pent-up demand for almost everything after 45 years of state socialism when shortages were endemic, there were no choices in domestically produced consumer goods, imports were limited, and political controls rationed who could buy cars and who could get flats and telephones."

At one point on this "Donahue" program, a man named Phil called in and asked Al Franken: "Are you back on cocaine?" It seemed like a cheap shot, but a little research has revealed that "Phil" may be on to something in an effort to explain what Franken was saying.

A Feb. 25, 1986, article by TV writer Tom Shales in the Washington Post discusses two books about NBC's "Saturday Night Live," where Franken was a writer, co-producer and performer. Noting that "drugs were everywhere," Shales says Franken "used LSD on the premises while writing a Nixon sketch."

In a Feb. 23, 1995, interview in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Franken said, regarding his use of drugs when he was with "Saturday Night Live": "I did my share of recreational drugs. I was lucky in that I never became addicted to anything. There'd be cocaine around the show, and if it was 3 a.m. in the morning (in midweek) and I wanted to finish something I was writing, I'd do some. But for some reason, toss of the dice, I was not addicted, at least not to drugs."

Referring to this same subject, the Oct. 5, 2002, Dallas Morning News quotes Franken as saying that when he was with "Saturday Night Live": "I only did cocaine to stay awake to make sure nobody else did too much cocaine. That was the only reason I did it. Heh-heh."