Imagine you’re a socialist. You read Kristian Niemietz’s Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies and declare him most unfair: “Sure, the typical socialist defended totalitarian regimes during their ‘honeymoon periods.’ The best socialists, however, spoke out at once. And it’s the best socialists who speak for socialism.”
A reasonable position. I don’t want my views judged by the quality of the typical person who shares my label, either.
Still, this raises a weighty question: How should the best socialists react when they discover that a new socialist experiment is about to start? “With dread” is the only sensible answer. After all, the best socialists don’t merely know the horrifying history of the Soviet Union and Maoist China. The best socialists also know the psychotic sociology of the typical socialist, who savors the revolutionary “honeymoon” until the horror becomes too blatant to deny.
If dread is the sensible reaction to the latest socialist experiment, then how should the best socialists react to any earnest proposal for a new socialist experiment? It’s complicated. The proposal stage is the perfect time to avoid the errors of the past – to finally do socialism right. Yet this hope must still be heavily laced with dread. After all, socialists have repeatedly tried to learn from the disasters of earlier socialist regimes. When they gained power, disaster still followed.
At this point, it’s tempting to shift blame to the non-socialist world. Without American-led ostracism, perhaps Cuba would be a fine country today. Or consider Chomsky’s view that the U.S. really won the Vietnam War:
The United States went to war in Vietnam for a very good reason. They were afraid Vietnam would be a successful model of independent development and that would have a virus effect–infect others who might try to follow the same course. There was a very simple war aim–destroy Vietnam. And they did it.
If Chomsky is right about U.S. foreign policy, however, the best socialists should feel even less hope and even more dread. Even if the next generation of socialists finally manages to durably build socialism with a human face, the U.S. will probably strangle it.
Personally, I’m the furthest thing from a socialist. If I were a socialist, though, I would be the world’s most cautious socialist. Socialist experiments don’t merely have a bad track record; socialist self-criticism has a bad track record. That’s why it took years for the failures and horrors of each experiment to come to light. And even if you blame these failures and horrors on the enemies of socialism, how does that change the pessimistic forecast? All wishful thinking aside, anyone who builds socialism is playing with fire. If you really care about the people you want to help, you’ll keep that in mind.
READER COMMENTS
P Burgos
Mar 3 2020 at 5:12pm
This is your regularly scheduled reminder that for most everyone in the US under 40, socialism means Sweden, not the Soviets. You can thank Fox News and talk radio for that perversion of language.
Alexander Turok
Mar 3 2020 at 9:52pm
In the sense that they think it means Sweden, sure. Because the Soviet Union wasn’t true communism, ect. Most people under 40, like most people over 40, are woefully misinformed. When Bernie tells them he means Sweden, they believe him.
But was does Bernie, who’s well over age 40, actually want? He wants to nationalize the healthcare industry,* establish “public ownership” over energy through the green new deal and establish government-run broadband internet. He has so far been mute about nationalizing other industries, in contrast to 1970s Bernie who advocated nationalizing all large industries. But he still says things like:
What, P Burgos, did he mean when he implied that the 23 underarm spray deodorants was something he wanted to sacrifice? It’s a rhetorical question as I’m not expecting an actual answer.
*Which TBF won’t be that much worse than the current system.
P Burgos
Mar 4 2020 at 3:11pm
For the 23 deodorants, it sounds like he was speaking a bit off the cuff, though I personally think that any politician voicing the opinion that we should sacrifice living standards for environmental protection is not in touch with electoral reality.
Electricity is very highly regulated, and in many areas a state granted monopoly. Broadband is a natural monopoly. I guess those examples don’t convince me that Sanders or his supporters are gung-ho about nationalizing industry, as there is nothing to suggest that they want to take over parts of the economy that actually have competitive markets. It seems that healthcare, electricity, and broadband are all areas where whatever markets do exist, they aren’t competitive, so the government is already very heavily involved in those areas.
As other people have pointed out, it seems that “socialism” is just shorthand for what Democrats have always advocated; a larger welfare state and more regulation. That doesn’t seem revolutionary.
Alexander Turok
Mar 5 2020 at 9:13pm
A monopoly is when one company produces the large majority of that product. Does one company produce the large majority of the electricity? No. The electricity supply to your house is a natural monopoly. Electricity production is not. If the explanation is “well, we want to do the same thing as group X but we have a different justification which is based on assertions which are not true,” I’m sorry, I don’t see the difference there. I think Bernie believes the same things he did in the 1970s.
Does it occur to you that you have the arrow of causality reversed?
Mark Z
Mar 4 2020 at 1:37am
The details of their policy preferences don’t support your claim (either that or it tells us people under 40 don’t know much about Sweden).
RPLong
Mar 4 2020 at 8:51am
Most Americans of any age don’t know much about Canada, our next-door neighbor, largest trading partner, and a country that shares a common language and history with the USA. Imagine what that implies about their knowledge of a more geographically and culturally distant country like Sweden.
Mark Brady
Mar 3 2020 at 8:02pm
And this is your regularly scheduled reminder that for most everyone in the US of whatever age, liberalism means left-of-center political thought, not classical liberalism. You can thank Fox News and talk radio for continuing with that usage.
C.S.
Mar 3 2020 at 9:30pm
Bryan, does the overwhelming support of Bernie Sanders among states with large Hispanic populations make you question you trenchant support for open borders? I’m no immigration hawk but seeing how popular such vile ideas are among the children of immigrants is discouraging.
Chris
Mar 4 2020 at 1:17am
Wow, that’s a lot of fear mongering with almost no substance backing it up.
what exactly is this socialist experiment you’re referring to? I’m assuming you’re talking about Sanders. His platform is largely composed of the government providing a non-profit-driven option in markets that are currently completely screwed up; healthcare, medicine, internet access, etc.
Where exactly do we make the jump from expanded Medicare into the Cultural Revolution? And how is Sanders, a respected senator with a history of working within the constitution, any scarier than Trump, who has constantly attacked our government institutions and constitution since starting his campaign and, yet, somehow has the full support of the Republican Party? Which of the two has questioned the legitimacy of our elections? Which has encouraged foreign interference? Which has cozied up to dictators across the globe? Which has derided the educated “elites”? Which has no understanding of science and has fought to bury inconvenient research? The answer is the Republican supported, archetypical capitalist Trump.
Instead of disagreeing with the specifics of anything Sanders is pushing for, conservatives are ignoring the failures of their own party to address any societal issue today and attacking communist regimes from histories, cultures and societies that were completely different than ours. Honestly, do you all really have so little faith in our institutions, constitutional government, and democracy that you see a public option as a slippery slope toward mass food shortages?
robc
Mar 4 2020 at 9:06am
Did you just call Caplan a conservative? Or did you just lose your train of thought and derail your entire post?
Matthias Görgens
Mar 5 2020 at 11:00am
Please consider reading the book mentioned in the article.
Also, not everything is always about current American politics.
And last, Sanders might be the lesser evil or the bigger evil compared to Trump. That question is simply not addressed in the article.
Btw, Trump is far from an archetypical capitalist. Romney or Bloomberg would be closer. (But no clue whether they’d be anywhere close to deserving the title archetype. The archetypical capitalist would probably prefer running Amazon, not the government.)
Jens
Mar 4 2020 at 3:31am
That actually reads like a very reasonable text, if one assumes that socialists are fundamentally concerned with
– seizing the means of production (*all* means of production, not only some)
– carrying out this project in a revolution
– temporarily suspending basic rights (with a tendency to make it permanent)
– establishing a unitary party or a streamlined political environment
– and thereby make regular elections unnecessary or a farce
– suppressing freedom of speech and research
– despising pluralism
– forcing people in “useful”, “socially adequate” physical work
When I look at the socialists in the western world today, most of them call themselves democratic socialists to distinguish themselves clearly from totalitarian socialists of the past that adored the bullet points.
Of course, you can always take that as a tactic. And some of the regimes in Central and South America have really earned the title of totalitarian socialism (the collapsed regimes in Europe anyway).
And one can also ask why these democratic socialists do not simply call themselves social democrats. But there is simple reason for this. Here in Europe, at least in the recent past, very market-oriented programs have often been implemented by social democratic parties. And in order to discernt themselves and to offer a clearly named political alternative, people did not call themselves “the real social democrats”, but “democratic socialists”. The label is also quite useful to drive capitalists and libertarians crazy and that’s an end in itself for some.
I don’t know exactly how Bernie Sanders can be categorized here, but I lack the belief that he really wants to tackle the above indents or a substantial subset of them at the core, or that the US political system would allow that.
And that’s why I come to the conclusion that this is a very reasonable text, but also a text about nothing. Now there may be people who like to spend their time with texts about nothing (e.g. Samuel Beckett fans). But others consider it a waste of time. Personal preferences and nothing else after all i suppose.
Miguel Madeira
Mar 4 2020 at 9:52am
I think many of you (from Caplan to Krugman) exaggerate the difference between “social-democracy” and “socialism” (like the word is largely used in Europe).
Since the times of the Cold War (attention – not “since the end of the Cold War”, this is almost since the beginning), that probably most people who calls themselves “socialists” (excluding those who also call themselves “communists”) defends more or less the same thing as the “social-democrats” (and perhaps not much different from many US “liberals”): high taxes, much social services and one or another nationalization.
The difference between “socialism” and “social-democracy” was more of geography – the countries more culturally influenced by Germany (in Eastern and Northern Europe) used the word “social-democrat”, the countries more culturally influence by France (in Southern Europe and some in Latin America) used the word “socialist”; look for the main parties of the “Socialist International” – some have “socialist” in the name, others “social-democrat”, others “labour”, but there are not much relation between differences in the name and differences in ideology.
Matthias Görgens
Mar 5 2020 at 11:03am
The Scandinavians don’t like being called socialist.
And in fact, apart from high taxes, the Nordic countries rank pretty high on indices of economic freedom. I don’t think American socialists want to implement a programme of deregulation?
Diane Merriam
Mar 7 2020 at 10:10pm
The Scandanavians, as well as the British, used to be far more actually socialist than they are today. They rolled back the controls, sold previously government owned and controlled businesses and industry back into the private market, and are working on reducing even their welfare state programs. They no longer qualify as socialists now, but they used to. Some countries have stepped back from the brink while others have gone over the cliff.
KevinDC
Mar 5 2020 at 1:22pm
Hello Miguel –
The book Caplan references addresses the argument about whether “democratic socialism” is really interchangeable with “social democracy.” It also points out that in many of those countries, both parties exist side by side. But the “democratic socialists” position isn’t the same as the social democrats but a little further left. They have profound disagreements and very fundamental differences with each other. Forgive the long quote, but I think it’s instructive:
Fareed Zakaria makes many of the same points in this article at the Washington Post.
Atticus Finch
Mar 9 2020 at 5:40pm
Is Socialism illegal under the constitution? Where does it say that?
The constitution “is not intended to embody a particular economic theory whether, of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire..” Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 75 (1905)(Holmes, J., dissenting).
The only thing that the constitution “guarantees ” as a form of government for every state is that it be a “Republican Form of Government.” Article IV, Section 4
As such, capitalism is not mandated in the Constitution. “The Constitution does not require the States to subscribe to any particular economic theory. We are not inclined “to second guess the empirical judgments of lawmakers concerning the utility of legislation,”(internal citation omitted) CTS Corp v. Dynamics Corporation of America, 481 U.S. 69, 92 (1987). Moreover, “As a matter of substantive policy, therefore, government is free to move in any direction, or to change directions, in the economic and commercial sphere. The structure of economic and commercial life is a matter of political compromise, not constitutional principle….” Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 US 432, 471 (1985)
Justice Brandeis in his dissenting opinion in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, (1932), acknowledged the various economic theories by noting: There must be power in the States and the Nation to remould, through experimentation, our economic practices and institutions to meet changing social and economic needs. . . . .[t]o stay experimentation in things social and economic is a grave responsibility. Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the Nation. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. Id at 311.
Moreover, the founding fathers did not write the Constitution with idea of setting forth a particular economic system for this new republic but rather by allowing future generations to develop economic, political and social changes for a more “Perfect Union.”
Justice Holmes in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), articulated the nature of the Constitution: “With regard to that we may add that when we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution of the United States, we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. It was enough for them to realize or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and has cost their successors much sweat and blood to prove that they created a nation. The case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hndred years ago.” Id at 434.
As such, this nation was founded on an idea that we the people can form a more perfect union without being shackled by the old world’s economic, social and political structures.
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