Many young people are attracted to socialism because socialists are known
for their strong advocacy for social equality and for the elimination of
poverty. That’s how socialism got started as a social movement a couple
centuries back. The first socialists with a political platform were moved in
part by the secular absorption of the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New
Testament, pleading with people not to forget the downtrodden and the poor.
These socialists were known as “Utopian Socialists” because they envisioned a
perfect society driven by the voluntary action of people motivated by love.
They advocated the formation of small, communitarian societies, which later
became very popular in the United States.
My book Socialism has a long chapter devoted to the various kinds
of communal groups which organized privately in the United States. They called
on those who wished to be a part of such an organization to join them and live
with “all things common” as Christians did in the New Testament (See Acts,
chapter 4). The beauty of this approach was that it only involved those who
wished to be involved, whereas the socialist system as a national economy
constrains all citizens to live under its tyranny whether they want to or not.
Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline, and the Attempted Revival in the United States
The Movement Changed Completely when Marx Appeared on the Scene.
But Karl Marx was appalled by the lack of efficiency and by the lack of
power of these socialists who wanted to form a movement of love. Marx advocated
violent overthrow of those whom he blamed for poverty and inequality. He
insisted on a society which constrained all citizens, whether they liked
sharing or not, to live in a socialistic order. He hated capitalists and waited
anxiously for the workers to make the whole social class of property owners,
the bourgeoisie, extinct. It was Marx who turned the movement of socialism into
a movement of hatred. To keep the property owners from trying to regain
power after the Marxian revolution, he advocated the formation of a
“dictatorship of the proletariat (working class)”. This vanguard of the
communist party would organize the government, plan the economy, and rule with
an iron fist.
Karl Marx
Marxism never got over Marx’s personal hatred. When Lenin, a great admirer
and teacher of Marxism, took over Russia’s Bolshevik government after the revolution
of 1917, he immediately set out to establish Marxian institutions to manage the
economy. After Lenin’s early death, Stalin completely took over the
Soviet economy, which cost millions of the peasants and workers their lives as
he forced them into agricultural communes and state farms. He ruthlessly
eliminated all opposition to his confiscation of their private property, their
lands and their animals. Opponents were killed or sent off to Siberia into
forced labor camps.
Vladimir Lenin
Post-Marxian Hatred That Lingered.
Marxists today still loath those who advocate private property and personal
liberty. The Marxian influence has been around so long that many people on the
left uniformly hate those who are affluent, those whom they perceive as
political enemies, business corporations, managers, laborers who don’t vote for
union policies, and on and on. It’s the kind of loathing that one sees today in
many who had planned on the electoral victory of Hillary Clinton. They made it
clear how they hated those who refused to get on board with the radicalization
of the Democratic Party. The Party had enthusiastically supported the protests
of the ‘Occupy Wall Street” movement, the ideology of which was strongly
socialistic. Nor was the “Black Lives Matter” a movement of love. (I address
such activity in my book Socialism so I can keep the story brief
here.) Later, the party accused President Trump of holding political
rallies that encouraged violence. In actual fact, the Clinton emails later
revealed that Clinton campaign funds had paid for hooligans to attack Trump
rallies.
The massive Democratic protests of the election results demonstrated the
love of the contemporary left. There were also incidents of violence and lawlessness,
which were supported not very subtly by Democratic leaders who mandated
resistance on the streets and demonstrated irrational opposition to everything
the Trump administration did. Trump voters were the “half” of American
society labeled by Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a “basket of
deplorables.” Simple, continuously repeated name-calling is a primary
Democratic campaign and governance strategy. Democratic politicians and their
propaganda arm, the media, do it so long and so loudly that many come to
believe the slurs. Billions were spent by the Clinton campaign and by the
media who volunteered their manpower and resources to smear President Trump
during the campaign and after his election.
The Dissemination of Ideological Truth
The book Socialism shows that even the expression of love is aided
by wise policy. There are ways by which, conceptually, we could take care of
the poor, for example. Anti-poverty policies would put greater emphasis on
voluntarism. Social welfare policies would put emphasis on helping low-income
families. The founders of the welfare state wanted to win popular support for
their redistribution policies by providing subsidies even for those who are
nowhere near poverty conditions. Everyone receives the state-sponsored goodies
whether they are poor or not. Wisdom would suggest an elimination of subsidies
for the middle class and others with higher incomes. (Risk could be avoided
through the principles of insurance rather than subsidies.) It takes some time
to explain and justify such policy suggestions, however, so I recommend you
acquire the book at the very nominal prices for which copies are
available. Check out the “Order a Copy” page.
What role did religion play in President Obama’s politics?
Generally, socialists following in the traditions of Marxism reject religion (“the opiate of the masses”) outright. The Obamas’ personal adoption of Christianity was ostensibly for political purposes, since Marxist atheists are not usually good candidates for the U.S. presidency. Actually, the president’s religious inclination, if non-religious interest or sentiment can be so characterized, quite apparently belonged to Islam. President Obama has spoken openly and ardently in praise of Muslim culture; there were, however, few signs of religious devotion in his emotional attachment to Islam. Of course, his father’s dreams were Muslim and according to Muslim beliefs everyone is born Muslim and remains so unless they join some “infidel” religion. The President doubtless identifies with the faith of his father; he clearly had no grasp of Christian doctrines in spite of his joining Reverend Wright’s congregation.
Islam’s historic tradition
In any case, I am convinced that his Christian affiliation was a purely political expedient for his presidential aspirations. When he did join a congregation, it was clearly politicized. Reverend Wright tipped his hand in the first Obama presidential campaign when he publicly spoke out for “black liberation theology,” which is an offshoot of Latin American “liberation theology,” a movement of Catholic Marxists in Latin America. Reverend Wright’s radicalism, viewed during Obama’s first presidential campaign, clearly appealed to the president.
Barack Obama, President of the United States and Community Organizer
Did Obama wish to generalize human rights?
One of President Obama’s most pressing social policy concerns was to secure civil
rights for the LGBTQ community. It was surprising that the LGBTQ community
gained formal and legal recognition so quickly in the United States. Sodomy
laws were perfectly acceptable to Americans from the founding of the colonies
until the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 that it is
unconstitutional to bar consensual sex between adults, calling it a violation of
the 14th Amendment. The Judeo-Christian tradition basically condemned
homosexuality for about four thousand years. One would think it might take more
than a decade or two to convince Christians to bestow full “civil rights” upon
the LGBTQ community, for Christians have always read in the Bible that
homosexuality, like adultery, is unacceptable to God.
It does seem to most of us that any moral issue involved in homosexuality should
be between God and the homosexuals. Regardless of His views of people’s
particular activities, God has commanded all people to love one another and to
leave the issue of theological judgment to Him. He has required of Christians
to love all men while attempting to flee from human frailties. My personal
belief is that the LGBTQ community, appropriately endowed with civil rights,
should also recognize the rights of Christians freely to practice their
religion as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. The consensus seems to be
that all should enjoy the right to practice what they believe, so long as that
does not impinge upon the rights of others.
Why Even Bring Up Non-Economic Issues in Socialism?
The purpose of this blog is merely to acknowledge that human rights are a
highly important issue for socialists or progressives, as for us all. I speculate
that it currently plays a role larger than it otherwise might if socialists had
some effective economic policy to promote. The long book I
wrote on socialism is really focused on economics and does not address either
the issues of Islam or of social policy, although I am greatly interested in
the interplay between socialism and personal freedom and in the issue of human
rights for the unborn. But these problems are not belabored in my book, which
focuses, as indicated, more on economic issues.
Is socialism’s “social policy” simply an attempt to compensate for poor
economics?
Socialism was primarily, of course, a system of economics. Marx and other
Marxians wanted first and foremost to eliminate the capitalists, the
exploitation of labor, and the property rights of the capitalist system. But, while
working on economic issues, socialists were never unwilling to eliminate all
the old, “reactionary” institutions of society. Thus Marxists made various attacks
on marriage, cultural mores, education, youth programs, and other long-standing
traditions that were more social than economic. Therefore, when economic
programs have failed to prove effective, agreeable, or even viable, socialists have
turned with even greater purpose to these other, more purely political
pursuits.
President Obama and environmental policy
President Obama’s greatest preoccupations seemed to lie in the realm of environmental policy. He was perfectly willing to watch the spread of unemployment that accompanied his anti-employment environmental efforts. It is fortunate for the United States that his preoccupation with environmental issues – his complete buy-in to an Al Gore or Michael More politicization of global warming – kept him from devoting his full presidential energy to economic change and the “complete transformation” of the American system. Golf may also have been of assistance to his being diverted from economic strategy, since online photos demonstrate he spent inordinate amounts of time pursuing the sport.
Of course he should receive kudos for his efforts to persuade China and
India that they should make contributions toward any worldwide effort to stem
global warming. If the leading developing countries do not make efforts to curb
the growth of carbon, anything the U.S. does will be far too little. If China,
India and Russia ignore climate change, any extant problems can only become
more urgent regardless of U.S. policies.
Here and in China, Russia, India and elsewhere
As a result of that fact, the reasonable approach to whatever man-made global warming there is would not be to behave as though the U.S. could solve any climate problem singlehandedly. It would make more sense for the U.S. simply to accommodate to climate change while undertaking gradualist initiatives promising greater benefits than costs. To let hundreds of thousands, or even millions of workers subsist in unemployment in an attempt to reduce global warming by half a degree Fahrenheit seems far from prudent policy.
What seems a little strange about climate change ideology is that it appears
more concerned about the home of the human race, the globe, than it
does with the humans involved. Whether or not the climate is warming, pollution
is rarely conducive to good health. It is a worthwhile goal for humans to
strive to achieve a clean environment in any case.
With or without global warming, people need to breathe.
But again, the costs and benefits associated with any given environmental
problem and of its prospective solutions would seem to be worthy of our
consideration. It seems surprising to me that the president alleged to be so
brilliant surrounded himself with numerous Marxist “czars” and advisors like Larry
Summers. Those expert advisers appeared never to have introduced President
Obama to the most casual form of cost/benefit analysis. He never seems to have
asked himself the question, “how much unemployment is justified by a policy
promising (probably without certainty) a 1̊ Fahrenheit reduction achieved over a ten year
period?”
Political Action (Corruption or Abuse of Power) as Opposed to
Political Policy.
Using the power of the IRS and other government agencies to attack individuals and organizations perceived to be President Obama’s political enemies was not, of course, social policy. But using the power of his office as a political weapon was apparently a commonplace in his presidency.
American liberals have long sensed the need to find the right label for
their political orientation. In their selection of labels they have,
incidentally, been rather unfair. In every other country in the world,
advocates of free markets and personal
liberty have called themselves (and have been called) “liberals.”
Early on in American history the leftists simply confiscated the beloved title
for themselves, so that “liberal” came to mean, only in this country, one who
did not favor markets and personal liberty. Some American
liberals would probably have preferred the more honest title “socialist,” but
the socialist rubric was found abhorrent in the United States. As a result,
leftists were happy to steal the more appealing “liberal” label.
After a while, however, the so-called liberals gained a negative reputation
for their obvious preference for big spending and big government. As a
result, “liberal” had now also become an unfavorable term, one to be avoided by
left-oriented politicians. In the tradition of American leftists, another
euphemism was sought; the new label turned out to be “progressive.”
The international symbol of socialism.
It’s time now for a little honesty, which thanks to Bernie Sanders we are
beginning to see. Many young people on the left are unabashed in
embracing the appropriate word “socialist.” But it’s not just a matter of
a new generation’s disregard for the political traditions of their parents and
grandparents. The ongoing, continual (one might say “progressive”) shift toward
the left of the democratic party thoroughly qualifies democrats and other
leftists for the socialist label. Let me make the case rather irrefutably by
showing some of the policies Europeans advocate while calling themselves
“socialists.”
French Socialism
In the midst of their 2017
presidential election, the French made clear in their socialist party platform what
French socialists advocate. As anyone can quickly discover on line, they pushed
for
1) the legalization of cannabis (marijuana),
2) for a basic income (a guaranteed, state-provided income for all citizens independent of employment) as a welfare state program,
3) lower taxes on the poor,
4) heavier national investments in green technologies,
5) plans to “revamp” Europe and strengthen the European Union,
6) heavier taxation of the wealth created by robots,
7) the repeal of the labor law passed last year that made it easier to hire and fire.
Socialists also maintain traditional positions on workers’ rights, the
redistribution of income, promotion of civil liberties and state measures to
protect the environment.
German Socialism
The Germans like to use the word
“social” as a code word for socialism of the non-totalitarian variety. Their
manipulation of the language shows an abhorrence for totalitarian central planning
of the Stalinist or Ulbricht/Honnecker type; it maintains that the socialist
market economy favored by the later Marxists should respectfully be labeled the
“social market economy.” Thus, the German socialist party is called the SPD, or
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. Now, consider what their
party platform includes.
1) Social Democrats want to
position themselves as the “peace party.” That means “no” to new sanctions
against Russia, “no” to a heightened conflict
2) The SPD implemented a minimum
wage of 8.50 € (Euros), which was later raised to 8.84 €.
3) The coordinated social market
economy (“as much competition as possible, as much regulation as necessary”)
should be strengthened and incomes should be “fairly” distributed.
4) The European Union should be
extended and intensified, while national sovereignty should be yielded to the
EU.
5) The party intends to work
towards the complete equality of civil rights for the LGBT community.
6) It also advocates a
“climate-friendly” energy policy, minimizing the costs of such, which should be
justly borne by all.
These views, like those of
socialist parties in other European socialist countries, are basically the same
as those our leftists are advocating and the mentality is virtually identical
with that of the American socialist (Democrat). It is thus logical to
call a socialist a socialist, especially when it is no longer a term of
opprobrium.
The real problem with socialism, whether of the centrally planned or of the “democratic” type, is that it is not a market system. That statement gives me great pleasure and provides me with some appreciated entertainment. It gives me pleasure because it is true and provides entertainment for me because it requires explanation.
Socialists rarely have a solid understanding of the rather straightforward concepts of market economics. They are not the only ones, of course. By definition, socialists are hostile to the notion of free minds and free markets and hardly ever refer to “market economics”. Rather, they characterize the market system as “capitalism,” a term derived from the ideas of Marx’s das Kapital and one that they perceive to be an epithet rather than a simple descriptor. But the market system has some most beneficial characteristics that can be credited for much of the material abundance our planet has to offer.
We should all understand how markets work. Unfortunately, the economics profession has done too little to get the word out to the public on even the most basic aspects of the discipline. I can understand this, of course, since when I as a student learned the first principles of economics, I had no particular feeling for markets. Learning about how they functioned was like trying to get a grasp on the periodic table of elements for a chemistry class. I didn’t come really to perceive the positive characteristics of markets until some years later when I was living in a centrally planned economy and experiencing what happens when markets are not employed in the economic system. In hopes that people might be more perceptive than I was as a college student, I proceed on the conviction that a few lines on how the market system functions should be useful.
Adam Smith, Father of the Discipline of Economics
It was Adam Smith who first perceived the significance of individuals engaging in informal commercial transactions that made it possible for them, their families and their societies to subsist in prosperity. Through time, a number of fairly complex institutions grew up around the efforts of individuals to engage successfully in “the ordinary business of life.” That expression was the definition of the great Victorian economist, Alfred Marshall, of his chosen discipline. That ordinary business is rendered fruitful through the specialization and division of labor that Smith found to be the core of market economics. But the reasons capitalism tends to produce economic growth and wealth also include the positive incentives that are an intrinsic part of the market system. Many people in a given society will be inclined to work hard, study hard, and be creative in order to achieve a secure and financially sound life. We tend to look with suspicion on “materialistic” motives (despite the fact that we all pursue them), but where they are nonexistent, poverty and want prevail. In the centrally planned economies, for example, highly-prized economic equality was achieved admirably. Managers of large business enterprises made scarcely more money than the janitor on the shop floor. So there was a high degree of equality in a society that otherwise produced little more than poverty. Lacking the general social response to the powerful incentives of markets, the economy never could function effectively. Where the government steps in to come down hard on avarice, it also comes down hard on productivity.
So a market economy is really just about producing to satisfy the acquisitive desires of productive people. Life is, of course, much more than just work and income. But once work has assured an acceptable income, we still have time in our lives to pursue the other activities that can make life truly rewarding. Those other things are what we do when we are not at work eliminating poverty. And in a healthy market society there is plenty of room for charitable endeavor, cultural expression, religious participation, civic participation, sports, educational pursuits, and on and on. When the socialist government steps in with its youth (indoctrination) program and other mandated programs, exerting control over all the aspects of life it can manage, society is quite sterile indeed. I have had many experiences, both alone and with my family, in the formerly communist countries of East Europe and the Soviet Union. Marxist socialism was a failure in economic terms and did little better in terms of the social and cultural effects it produced. I write of some of these in my book, Socialism, and can assure the reader that a free society is the only place you want to live.
Part II: But How Do Markets Work?
Adam Smith Statue by Alexander Stoddart
Seeking to improve their situation in life, many individuals are willing to work hard to produce and enjoy greater wealth. The pursuit of self-interest is to enhance the well-being of all. Smith wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, 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, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses (sic) to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.” This process is not limited to single communities or even to the nation state; it implies international trade and ultimately even economic integration in pursuit of the economic growth it makes possible.
It’s quite simple, really, why a free market works. Individuals must produce or purchase things essential for themselves and their families to subsist. As they discover that they can produce some commodity effectively, they realize that someone might be interested in an exchange of some other vital item for the commodity they are producing. Or someone else might willingly purchase that commodity, thus permitting the purchase of needed goods and services. If no outside parties interfere in the process, an individual offers to passing travelers, say, food for their journey.
The traveler will likely find the offer of a potential trading partner an auspicious one and will be pleased that he got what he purchased at a reasonable price. The seller will likewise probably find the transaction beneficial and agreeable. Neither is forced into the exchange – there is rarely both a big winner and an exploited loser in free transactions – since either buyer or seller is free to walk away if the deal is an unfair one.
Lenin, famed for his total conviction and commitment to Marxism, expressed the contrasting socialist view this way; the only question about each market transaction is “kto kogo?” The translation is “who whom?” a brief sentence equipped with everything but a verb. The question is “who exploits whom,” “who rips off whom?” “who cheats whom?” “who does a number on whom?” and so on. The verb didn’t need to be expressed, since all good Marxists understand exactly what is happening when a member of the bourgeoisie is dealing with someone from the proletariat. (At least the Russians get the who and whom correct grammatically, which is something that
Lenin the Grammarian.
would not likely happen in the United States. Here, journalists appear not to perceive when to use “who” and when “whom”. But enough of the terribly complex linguistics subtleties; my point is that Marx and Lenin were flat-out wrong. Commercial life is not as Marxian pessimism perceives it: there is not an exploited party in every transaction.
Part III: Benefits of Competitive Markets
A food market in Thailand
A great advantage of the market system is that it requires no external controls to function. No government is necessary to manage the day-by-day activities of buyers and sellers, but only to enforce contracts and maintain basic law and order in the production and sales of commodities and services. Markets function with an automaticity that is most beneficial to the social order. To demonstrate how markets function automatically when buyers and sellers transact a purchase, or sale, a chapter early in my book on socialism describes the nature of market supply and demand. Without the use of mathematics, or even of the inevitable supply and demand curves of an introductory college course in economics, the book describes markets in which expansion occurs in response to strong demand for a given good. Market expansion normally causes prices to rise and profits to appear.
A Contemporary Market Hall
The existence of net revenues is a signal for new firms to enter the market and share the profits. The growth in numbers of firms will increase the supply and cause the price to fall to a level where only enough profit is earned, i.e., a “normal” profit, to cover all costs, including a market rate of return to the manager and the owner or stockholder. This market groping for the truly just price is an automatic feature of free entry into the growing market. Symmetrically, an automatic adjustment occurs when the overall market demand is declining.
Where losses in an industry occur, perhaps because demand and the market price are declining, firms will begin to exit the industry. The resultant reduction in supply will cause the price to stabilize; although it could ultimately rise again, no more than a normal profit can be expected in the long term. All this occurs to the general well-being of the firm, its workers, and its consumers.
Market activity is expressive of personal freedom, creative productivity in response to perceived wants, and exchange that benefits both buyer and seller. A successful seller and natural entrepreneur will inevitably organize a few of his neighbors as workers in a firm. Large-scale production and specialization and division of labor may enhance the productivity of the group substantially. And what motivates the members of this fledgling firm? If they are productive and can keep costs down, through greater sales they can generate significant revenues which can become a source of general well-being for all involved.
Part IV: Socialist Pessimism Regarding Markets
At this point the socialist mind perceives only the potential for great evil. What if the capitalist manager can find in his heart no good will for his neighbors as they become his hired helpers? Surely, he will be so money-hungry and money-grabbing that he will pay them only an unjust fraction of the earnings their products or services produce. Surely, in the haste to build an industrial empire he will force his laborers to work long hours in hazardous and environmentally detrimental conditions! When a gay couple enters the establishment to order a wedding cake, this blossoming robber baron will decline on the basis of prejudice to provide the cake. Consumers who get a wedding cake, other bakery goods, or any other commodity will be forced to pay exorbitant amounts. Once established, the producer will obviously form a monopoly by reducing his prices just long enough to drive all of his competitors out of business. Then, of course, the prices will go back up higher than ever to enrich the monopolist. Karl Marx proved, so the Marxists suppose, that all these things are inevitable and must irrevocably persist until the starving workers end the evil in a revolutionary bloodbath. Where Marx went wrong is explained at length on the basis of the analysis of numerous great minds who have rejected Marxism root and branch. Marx went wrong historically in that his predictions never came to pass. And his view of history has helped historians neither reach a realistic understanding of how the world should work nor to make successful predictions about how societies actually function.
But What about Evil Markets and Evil Capitalists?
Socialists will still worry that the conditions mentioned in the previous paragraph will ultimately be realized. They will then attempt to convince all voters that it is time for government to step in and put a stop to the abuses of the capitalists. (“Communists” would, of course, prefer a revolution to a ballot-box victory.) It is true, of course, that some capitalists really are greedy and dishonest. For them, we must have a government to enforce contracts and police efforts to thwart cheating. At the same time, history taught the capitalists over the past century or so that profits can be made without underpaying workers and overcharging consumers. Scholarly and prescient observers (although such cannot be said, perhaps, either of socialists or of governments) gradually discovered that the saving grace of market activity is competition. If monopoly (which is characterized by a single seller) is avoided through good policy, and if monopsony (a market characterized by a single buyer, such as a firm that is the only buyer of labor in a given area) is likewise avoided, workers and buyers will have choices so that their business cannot be monopolized.
If there are free choices, the gay couple seeking a wedding cake can simply purchase elsewhere. In spite of the politically correct views of so many contemporaries, the freedom of the bigoted cake baker to choose his transactions partners should be honored as a traditional freedom of the market system. A free society values the freedom of all citizens, both the saints and the bigots. If the prejudiced producer wants to lose the business of the gay cake consumers, his business will be less profitable and his disappointing bottom line will be sufficient punishment. (My book on socialism reviews much of the discussion on liberty that has gone on through the course of the history of socialism’s failure.) Of course, if society’s hatred for haters becomes sufficiently intense, the socialist solution may be preferable. Society will then punish the hater by dispatching him to the guillotine, which will make the world a more loving place. (I discussed the loving and loathing of socialism in a previous blog.)
Where monopoly power threatens the happy outcomes of competitive markets, wise policies can discourage monopoly power. It can do so, for example, by opening markets to new entrants from other geographic regions. Moreover, even anti-trust activities might be helpful in some cases.
If government activism and market interventionism persist long enough, however, markets may reflect anything but the benefits of competitive performance. The U.S. health care system, which is somewhere between Obama and Trump at this writing, is a clear example of the harm that increasing encroachment by bureaucratic forces can wield over time against public welfare.
Karl Marx has been the hero of socialists and the deity of communists. My book, Socialism, addresses the life, the writings and theories of Marx in some detail, since his thinking is basically the foundation of socialism. Even the socialist who claims he is not a follower of Marx generally follows the same principles and evinces the same preferences as other socialists who do follow Marx. I introduce this topic here with a synopsis of a chapter on Marx from the book.
To understand why the spirit of Marxist socialism is bitter and negative, one should know a little bit about Marx’s life. Somewhat surprisingly, it was founded upon a secure childhood. Since he never held a job, Marx was never an exploited worker. As a student he studied philosophy and religion, but thought very little of religion. He married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, but there was little class struggle in the marriage. For political reasons, he was not able to become a professor, so he went into journalism. Because of the opposition engendered by his radical views, he spent time being expelled from various places in Germany, France and England. For quite some time, Marx’s unwilling parents supported him and his family. As a library researcher, writing radical tracts and tomes on economic theory, he also received help from his friend and colleague, Friedrich Engels, thanks to the Engels’s textile factory and its exploited workers. From them Marx received a pittance, which, tragically, was insufficient for all his family to survive.
Marx’s most famous writings were The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, the latter being a three-volume critique of capitalism. The first volume of Kapital took him ten years to complete and the next two volumes were published posthumously by Engels. Critics tend to believe the publication postponement beyond Marx’s death was a result of the author’s dissatisfaction with his own attempt to resolve the incongruities in his theory of value. He never could free the theory of contradiction.
Marx wrote about a large number of philosophical and political issues, presenting theories he mostly borrowed from other scholars. He always found flaws in the theories others had developed, but he generally modified or embellished such theories rather than develop many of his own. He came to economics a little later and that topic became the foundation of his multi-volumed work on capitalism, Kapital. He ultimately devoted the bulk of his time studying economics trying to resolve inconsistencies from his theory of value, which was outdated from its inception. He focused on Ricardo’s labor theory of value, emphasizing that labor created value and that the capitalist stole that value from the workers from the time they entered into a contract to work a given (large) number of hours at a wage that would give them no more than a subsistence living. Meanwhile the capitalist pocketed all of the surplus value produced by the workers beyond the subsistence level.
Marx’s writings and actions were filled with the spirit of hatred for the capitalist. He considered the writings of previous socialists as “utopian socialism,” based on optimistic hopes that things would go better for workers if they voluntarily joined communitarian organizations. His own writings he considered “scientific socialism,” and they were based on the theoretical necessity of working men uniting in revolutionary action to exterminate the entire bourgeois class, thus eliminating the class struggle and opening the way for a future communistic society. Marx’s most striking achievement was to transform the utopians’ movement of love into a movement of hate.
Paul Dowling has referred to socialism as: “government-Induced slavery in the name of the general welfare.”* After a couple decades of socialist indoctrination, an apparent majority of American students from their K12 days through the university have now come to endorse and support what Dowling refers to as “government-induced slavery.” They think of themselves as socialists. Thus there are now more socialists in the world and in the United States. Interestingly, however, there is no longer any real socialism in the world. My book, Socialism, reviews a hundred years of European history in demonstrating why and how we now have many socialists, but no socialism!
Dowling’s point is that socialist thinking has made government over-reach seem natural in political life today. There has always been a place for the government to provide public services, i.e., those services such as national defense, state highways and infrastructure, police and fire services, etc., but a graduated income tax for the purpose of income redistribution and the institution of the welfare state under Lyndon Johnson provide political justification for the pursuit of socialist policies that have become ever more popular in the absence of real socialism. This has enabled the promotion of “freedom-killing socialist beliefs by many in government, media, and academia.”
Once, socialism was a term for an economic system that:
1) demanded the nationalization of industry. All business was to be owned and controlled by the government. Socialism also
2) insisted that all economic activity be based on a governmentally-designed and -directed economic plan; it also
3) mandated governmentally-controlled and -directed industrial regulation through a large, omnipresent bureaucracy. When these economic policies and strategies failed, the system simply
4) diverted its focus to social policies. Socialists have long enjoyed threatening and attacking the established, culture-based traditions that had been the social glue of nations for centuries. Originally, in the early socialist years of the Marxian era, social traditions such as marriage were under attack.
Traditional social policies were considered the creations of and glue for bourgeois society. The view was that the “haves” of society had made the social rules and imposed them on the “have nots.” To “expropriate the expropriators” it was important for the socialists to destroy the old traditions and build new ones for the new order.
In a later era, it appears that social policy, once a mere footnote to the more significant economic policy, became a set of hot items to constitute part of a political platform and substitute for economic policies that had proven ineffective and undesirable. For example, after World War II, all socialist countries felt it essential to
To control a massive economy, Stalin had to resort to economic planning,
follow the example of Josef Stalin and develop a national economic plan. Gradually, it became apparent that this effort added nothing to economic performance. One should not have expected that one gargantuan, state economic plan could be detailed and complex enough to replace the millions of individual plans that are developed formally and informally by the myriad of individual firms and consumers that comprise the national economy in a market system. So when one drops the national plan from the socialist party’s political platform, it can easily be replaced, for example, by the feminist movement. Another substitute for traditional socialist economic policies is simply an expansion of the entitlements of the welfare program, such as providing free secondary education or cancelling student debts.
All of the traditional economic pillars of socialist policy failed. Nationalization didn’t work because the
Nationalization of industry and economic planning failed.
parliament, charged with the management of the nation’s industries, did not have time to manage the many thousands of firms involved. That would mean hiring managers who would act for the state, but may in practice be inclined to pursue their own personal interests rather than the interests of all the citizens. So there would have to be a national review from time to time of the state-owned firms’ performances. That all worked very poorly, so the alternative was simply to rely on a large bureaucracy to regulate all the activities of the private firms. Thousands of bureaucrats could then drown the private managers in an avalanche of rules and red tape, raising production costs and the prices we consumers pay as those costs are passed on to us.
Today, socialism consists only of 1) bureaucratic regulation of industry, 2) extensive social policies including welfare statist entitlements and legalizing and endorsing traditionally anti-social private activity. Where the latter involves mutually-acceptable personal activity of adults this seems reasonable and acceptable to tolerant and peace-loving individuals in the community. What is more troublesome is the increasing proclivity to push, for example, for the coming social acceptance of pedophilia. In any case, the final and fundamental pillar of contemporary socialism is 3) the redistribution of income.
The Nature of Socialism Part II
Income Redistribution
Individuals opposed to socialism find income redistribution unjust. This is based on the hypothetical case of a person wanting to help a poor old woman by giving her money. To acquire the needed funds, however, the benefactor robs you at gunpoint. This simply forces you to be “charitable” by constraining you to use the fruits of your labor for redistribution to someone else to whom they do not belong.
Although charitably helping others is a virtue to be encouraged, when government raises taxes in order to provide government relief, the taxpayer cannot control the level of giving, and individuals also lose their ability to provide charity to the recipients they would choose. First, the government-provided charity forces productive people to work for unproductive people. Second, politicians inevitably vote to award charity to people who are not truly in need, in order to win their votes. The structure of welfare programs such as social security is designed to win the support of taxpayers by including them both as payers and recipients in the plan. The program thus becomes very expensive with basically everyone being entitled, and the entire nation begins a process of drifting toward insolvency. Politicians support defined groups in exchange for votes. Those opposed to the socialist system of charity for votes are not really supporting charity, but a form of pay-for-play corruption.
Correct Principles of Government and the US Constitution
Socialists always call for “democracy” and rail against those who, according to them, are not permitting our “democracy” to function. But the word “democracy” does not appear anywhere in America’s founding documents. The United States governmental system is not a democracy so much as a republic. Republicanism is based upon the Constitutional view that the government follows a set of consistently applied, universal principles, rather than upon the notions of fleeting majorities who may wish to tyrannize over minorities. The Constitution is intended to promote liberty, not democracy. The Constitution protects the rights of individuals’ from their own government, as well as from their fellow citizens. Thus, the Constitution establishes distinct, unequivocal and enforceable rules to protect the rights of the individual. It is for this reason that the government’s size and functions were strictly limited to those not granted to states. Every American is thus equal – equally protected against the mob tyranny into which democracy has the potential to descend. The government is the agent of the society’s individuals and it has no right to possess or implement any power to harm one individual or group in order to help another individual or group.
If all Americans thought it right to let the government run the agencies of charity, taking it out of the hands of the people, perhaps it would be appropriate to let the government take care of all of those who couldn’t (or who chose not to) take care of themselves. That would be sad, however, for those who wish to take care of their own children or their own parents. Perhaps income redistribution is the choice of most Americans today, even of those who lose control over those funds which they could otherwise use for their own charitable impulses. It is clear in any case that the government’s choices lead to the dependence rather than the self-reliance of recipients. It is clear that in the presence of welfare-state entitlements, the demand for charitable services will ultimately far exceed the supply generated by available funds, given the presence of budgetary needs for other, non-welfare policies. These and other problems are also discussed in another blog on this site entitled “The Failed Welfare Policies of Socialism.” The economics of income redistribution and welfare policies are presented in detail in the book Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline and the Attempted Revival in the United States.
It should be noted from recent natural and terror disasters that Americans are willing, even anxious to help those in need. If those welfare transfers organized by government were left on a voluntary basis and were combined with the efforts of well-organized private agencies, generous Americans might even be able to meet legitimate charitable needs without relying on governmental redistribution of incomes.
The evolution from K12 youth indoctrination to organized political activity in the United States is reminiscent of the Hitler Youth movement (Hitlerjugend, HJ). This official organisation for male youths from 14 to 18 in Germany was a paramilitary organization. The proclaimed purpose of the Antifa in the U.S. is to fight against the racism that officially motivated the German fascist youth. The de facto purpose of the movement is simply to take the objectives of the far left to the street. In doing so, the movement is very reminiscent of the Hitler era street bullying of political opponents. The “racism” being attacked by the Antifa and the American left is merely a chimera reflective of hatred; it is often nothing more than name-calling used to demonize any antagonist, usually without any relationship to any issue of actual racism.
In their effort to rationalize street violence, young socialists declare they are on a campaign against Fascism, hence the emergence of the Antifascists or “Antifa.” (Given their modus operandi they might better be called “Antifa Fa”. Out in the streets they certainly do resemble Fascists.) From their supportive position, the left-wing media have tended to refer to them as “activists” or simply as “protesters.” The link between the Antifa and their political party is not as direct and open as the relationship between the Hitlerjugend and the National Socialist Party, but it is no less apparent.
Conceptual Beliefs of the Antifa
When I published my book on socialism, the Antifa was just getting organized and had not yet made its public appearance, so I did not include the group in the book. The same can be said for Black Lives Matter. But at that time the Occupy Wall Street Movement had already appeared and the things that must be observed about that group apply to the lawless preferences of the later young socialists as well.
American socialists were formerly the left wing of the Democratic Party; since sometime around the emergence of the Obama phenomenon, we can refer to them as simply Democrats. It is not sufficient for the Antifa merely to attack “Fascists;” the insult must be generalized. There are in reality precious few Fascists in the United States, but that does not hinder the Democratic Party and the liberal media from smearing the few through the “Antifa” and to broaden the attack to include all “white supremacists,” which of course includes the entire political opposition.
A website description of the would-be Nazi activists in the United States today declares “…the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States is the Detroit-based National Socialist Movement (NSM), with around 350 members in the entire country. Led by Jeff Schoep, the group mostly avoided the in-fighting that decimated some other neo-Nazi groups. The NSM reached a peak of activity in the mid-2000s, organizing a number of public events and rallies around the country, but its activities have tailed off somewhat more recently…” (See https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/state-of-white-supremacy#neo-nazis.)
What I wish to point out is the fact that the movement in the U.S. today is trivially small and declining – it is a stretch to call it a movement. When the recent Boston counter-protest was touted as involving ten times more anti-Nazi protesters than Fascists, that was probably an extreme understatement. In Boston there are probably about as many Fascists as New-England witches. As all but the Democrats seem to be aware, racism and white supremacy sentiment have long been fading away in America. The Democrats have become confused about racism, I believe, because their political tactic of first (and recently last and only) resort is to cry “Racism!” to smear all political opponents. It has nothing to do with whether there is any actual hint of racist attitudes or behaviors. You just scream racism regardless of the event.
Neo-Nazis probably know as little about the economics, politics, and history of Fascism as the average socialist or “Antifa.” Fascists are fanatics who are as sour in heart and mind as those prepared to oppose them in the streets. Ironically, the “Antifa” are as mistaken about the political nature of Fascism as are socialists generally. In socialist propaganda, Fascism is falsely presented as a right-wing phenomenon. Scholars understand, however, as Hitler himself did, that his was a nationalistic form of socialism, although it was inclined to combat ethnic rather than social/economic class enemies. I elaborate on this point and present evidence in my book, which presents evidence that national socialism was a leftist phenomenon. Hitler just switched the class struggle in Mein Kampf (My Struggle) from being a social to an ethnic conflict. He was thereby a true racist, but he was not the only racist socialist.
The Dissemination of Ideological Truth
Currently the danger of violence in the United States stems from the socialist movement, a prominent wing of which claims for itself the euphemism “anti-Fascist”, which is aided, abetted and encouraged by the socialists who have recently come to dominate the Democratic Party. Going back to the last presidential campaign, which included the hiring of “activists” or “protesters” by the Clinton campaign to attack Trump rallies, the large numbers of young criminals who want to turn every event into violence and a looting spree have not disappeared from society since the 2016 election. President Obama loved and encouraged such groups, which is seen by looking back at his lack of anything negative to say about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Black Lives Matter and other hate groups. He was more likely to make them honored guests at the White House.
In the meantime, the left wing continues to spew hatred for contemporary America. Hillary herself labeled half of America as bigoted “deplorables”. The media are currently attempting to brand all Republicans as White Supremacists. The technique of name calling has been so successful for the Democrats and the media that every imagined offense is labeled racism. It is ironic that it is the policies of the Democrats that have been so disastrous, especially for low-income inner city citizens.
What’s the next epithet? We have millions of young socialists in this country who are emotionally confused with the name calling and the socialist propaganda. Historically, there were quite a few Ku Klux Klan racists in the slavery era and in its extended wake, and interestingly, they were Democrats. Later, Democrats dominated the ranks and leadership of the Jim Crow movement. Today, the young Marxist revolutionaries whose hero is Bill Ayers are clearly the most numerous and most dangerous hooligans of the present.
This website and this blog are dedicated to those interested in basic political questions and more especially in questions about the nature of our economic system. I recently published a book entitled Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline and the Attempted Revival in the United States, which addressed the economic issues exhaustively.
In the book I speak of President Obama as a voice for socialism. Many have not been aware of his family heritage, his boyhood mentors, his college training and interests, and his brief professional life as a community organizer (preparing communities for socialism). In all those things he was well schooled in socialism and trained to be an advocate. Aside from his public political persona, he would doubtless confirm that he is at heart a socialist. I have on occasion referred to him as a “stealth socialist,” since during the campaign he did not reveal his preferences and ideological bent, desiring to appear for political purposes as a rather ordinary, old-fashioned progressive.
President Obama, Owner of Pen and Phone
A word needs to be said about Obama’s performance as president. Some analysts have reviewed his record in office and concluded that he was not much of a socialist, since he accomplished few long-term socialist goals. One must remember that the country was already quite divided as socialist sentiment became more and more prominent in the Democratic Party. Legislative gridlock was well in place and the constitution’s mandate for a division of powers placed constraints on the judicial branch, in spite of strong “progressive” representation. Congress was starkly divided, hardly in a position to legislate the extreme left agenda with which President Obama had long since been indoctrinated. But he did make it clear that his objective was fundamentally to transform our system. He took to his pen and his telephone to implement his socialist preferences so far as possible through executive orders. Finally, socialist initiatives would have emphasized greater control over the economy rather than Obama’s diversion into divisive integration and immigration issues, but Obama left the economy to his regulators in government agencies and after the failure of the huge and useless stimulus package, neither he nor other democrats had any idea what in the world should be done about the stuttering and sputtering economy. Not that the president really minded the lack of economic growth, justice, or success of the economy. He was more concerned with strangling large sectors of the economy to reduce it’s “carbon footprint” on the world stage. A continuation of such policies would have truly required a magic wand to have brought back economic growth.
Thus, Obama’s socialism was mixed with legislative constraints and diverted objectives that kept him from focusing single-heartedly on pure and fundamental socialist policies. Finally, a preference for golf and extensive vacationing kept him from being the driven and committed socialist that would have been an even greater devastation for our country.
Many Americans, especially those closer to my advanced age, would consider the socialist label as a negative thing, perhaps an outright insult. But to many, especially younger Americans, socialism has recently lost its traditional stigma. Europeans have long considered socialism a positive. So when I use the term “socialist” I am not doing so in order to insult anyone. I am happy to insult and denigrate most socialist policies, since I have made a study of those over a whole career as a systems economist. But socialists are usually people with a strong emotional attachment to the goals of eliminating poverty and achieving social equality. Those ideals appeal to most of us, although there are strong differences among us as to how they could or should be achieved.
We saw vivid evidence in the last presidential campaign of how many young people enthusiastically followed Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist.” Those who follow politics at all would have known by the time that President Obama was running for reelection that he favored socialistic income redistribution, solution of major economic problems by government intervention and heavy governmental regulation of the private sector. In other words, by his social policy predilections it is clear that he is a socialist. For electoral purposes, of course, he wished simply to appear “liberal.”
Speaking of socialism or of socialists is appropriate in contemporary America, and it is not to be done with the disdain that might have seeped into the conversation at an earlier period in our history. We need a dialog about the subject, as is apparent in my book. You can find on the pages of this site some basic information about Socialism, and confirm that after a long career of teaching and researching comparative economics I favor market solutions to our economic problems. I started out as a democrat when liberals merely believed in a basic safety net and in Keynesian economics. But as the democrats grew increasingly radical I could not obstinately follow simply because I had always been a democrat. I had come strongly to believe that Adam Smith got it right and that Karl Marx was decidedly a dealer in flawed and specious principles of economics.
Incidentally, I also believe that an economic system should provide a good life for all our country’s citizens. I also share the religious values of many Americans who believe that poverty should be eradicated. That won’t happen through socialism in spite of its admirable economic objectives as I show in my book. But the well-being of all the planet’s inhabitants should be pursued because our universal creator taught that it should be so.
What is Democratic Socialism? When one examines the vagaries of the website of the Democratic Socialists of America,* one can only conclude that Democratic Socialism is nonsense. Unfortunately, given the
Two key players in American socialism.
tendency of the young and inexperienced to respond to impulse, it can be rather dangerous nonsense. It is my pleasure to document this statement by showing why their grand platitudes are meaningless, yet their conclusions are anything but harmless.
Let us imagine that divorce were such a disaster that it broke up families, put vulnerable children at risk for severe emotional problems, put mothers and children at risk from deadbeat husbands who predictably failed to meet their alimony obligations, and on and on. Those of us who have a social conscience would have to organize to solve the problem. Because married couples are not sufficiently responsible to manage the marriage institution successfully, our advocacy group, possibly with an eye to becoming a political party later, would manage the problem for them.
The decision to cancel a marriage has social implications, so we would advocate for an end to the practice of permitting individual couples to choose whether or not to continue their marriage. That decision would be made democratically to meet public needs, not to cater to the preferences and desires of the few. We would radically transform the marital system through greater social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives. We will not explain to the public how we intend to implement our democratic procedures for ending or forbidding an end to the social abuse of private marital arrangements. But the public may be aware that the key marital decisions will be made democratically (publicly) rather than privately.
The above kind of reasoning is at the core of the advocacy of the Democratic Socialists of America. But let us consider the specific argumentation of the DSA website as applied to private property rather than private marital arrangements. We begin with the DSA’s answer to the question “What is Democratic Socialism”? I now quote directly from the website:
_______________________
“What is Democratic Socialism?
“Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.”
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She: “You’ll get free stuff! He: But will you ever pay!
It is no less ridiculous to posit that society could “democratically” solve the problems of private firms and corporations than to assert that it could democratically solve the problems of the marriages of private individuals. But let us look carefully at some of the specifics of the problem. Quoting again from the DSA website we learn from the first point of DSA advocacy the following:
__________________________________
Doesn’t socialism mean that the government will own and run everything?
“Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But we do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either. Rather, we believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect.
“Today, corporate executives who answer only to themselves and a few wealthy stockholders make basic economic decisions affecting millions of people. Resources are used to make money for capitalists rather than to meet human needs. We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them.
“Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Democratic socialists favor as much decentralization as possible. While the large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may necessitate some form of state ownership, many consumer-goods industries might be best run as cooperatives.”
“Democratic socialists have long rejected the belief that the whole economy should be centrally planned. While we believe that democratic planning can shape major social investments like mass transit, housing, and energy, market mechanisms are needed to determine the demand for many consumer goods.”
__________________________________
Let us think for just a moment about the grandiloquent assertions of this first section of the DSA website and observe what they can or cannot mean. Consider the first two statements: “Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But we do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either.”
The paper war of industrial regulations.
The first one simply avoids an obvious truth. Socialists and even all democrats are believers in the virtue, the importance, and the necessity of big government. The more you want to regulate the “multis”, which socialists love to hate, the more you build up government bureaucracies to design and implement government regulations. The larger the organizations and the economy you want to regulate and control (democratically, of course), the more you are dependent on the agencies of government we call “bureaucracy.” The second sentence says “we do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either.” Corporate bureaucracies are not big in any sense of the word compared to government bureaucracies. Moreover, what is said here about corporations is absolutely irresponsible; corporate bureaucracies do not control our society. They are subject to governmental taxation which can take any portion of the resources with which corporations can control anything at all. They are subject to the laws of congress and the regulations of the governmental bureaucracy. The only response a corporation can have to governmental power is to leave the country and take its jobs with it. There may be hundreds of “multis”, but there are many thousands of smaller corporations and small businesses which have no ability to break the laws or defy the regulations of the federal and state governments. Even the multis are
Multinational corporation soldiers controlling our society
seldom armed with military tanks, machine guns, fighter planes, or nuclear weapons which can be mobilized to control society. The government is somewhat better equipped to enforce its will. The assertion that corporations “control” our society is really a meaningless, ideological platitude.
For the workers to own the firm, the government would of course raise tax revenues from those who pay taxes and use that money to purchase the firms from their current (stockholder) owners. One would confiscate the funds from private owners with which one would purchase their property. And one wonders whether those thus plundered would become adoring socialists?
No wonder socialism has always depended on a “dictatorship of the proletariat” to prevent a counter-revolution.
Part 2
Ocasio-Cortez, College Graduate and Millennial.
To those impressed with the assertions of the socialists that government will manage the economy with “democratic” methods (rather than central economic planning), one should refer to a large literature on the subject of bureaucracy (for an extensive review of that literature, see my book, Socialism). Beyond the ownership question is that of controlling the producing firms, be they publicly or privately owned. It inevitably comes down to a large, state bureaucracy to organize and guide the economy. But bureaucracies have lives of their own and their realm of activity ultimately ends up beyond the control of the forces that created them. For a single, readable book on the tendencies of bureaucracy and “democratic planning,” the reader might refer to Hayek’s classic work, The Road to Serfdom.
Bernie Sanders: Moscovian Marxist and Independent Democrat
Moving on to the next sentence, we see that democratic socialists “believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect.” The core value of our free enterprise society, as designed by the founding fathers, is private property. Since socialists don’t like what a corporation or small business might do, as a single example, to our environment, they stipulate that, rather than pass laws about what can be dumped into our air or our water, we tell the corporation that decisions about the disposition of industrial effluents will be made at the ballot box!? That’s a lot of decisions to take over socially. Would the DSA take over the decision processes of all the private firms – multis, corporations, and small businesses – democratically? How? Through the ballot box? Last year the IRS received about 32 million non-farm business tax returns. About 30% of these returns represent legal entities, and of course we must control farm businesses as well, since some of them are manned by capitalist farmers.
Trying to have any significant direct impact on private firms would require large government agencies, just as it did in the Soviet Union and the other communist countries. Naturally, you don’t have to own and control all firms. You can try to control all of them indirectly by controlling the key corporations directly. This was the idea in democratic West Europe where, for 100 odd years Marxists hoped to implement a democratic form of socialism by having the parliament of the country be in charge of the nationalization of some share of each country’s businesses.
How did it work? It worked so well that they abandoned the whole theory of socialism. They learned through disappointing experience that it was impossible that some subcommittee of the democratically elected parliament in charge of steel or aluminum production could really manage the governance tasks of whole industries. Governments are managed by politicians, of course, who typically know little of business. And if the politicians hired professional managers, they functioned just like Soviet managers: their salaries were not dependent on performance (profits), but on following the party line. And with the incentives built into socialism, productivity was so low that the citizen consumers were served by empty government department stores stocked only with empty shelves. In democratic Western Europe, however, they gave up on the whole system before the age of scarcity (empty shelves in stores) really ever arrived. Real socialism (not just the modern version of free government “goodies” and income redistribution) disappeared in the last century. Socialists did not become extinct, but the world became bereft of real socialism. The modern version includes only subsidization, heavy industrial regulation and “modern” social policy. All of these I have addressed in other blogs on this website.
The rest of the material cited from the DSA website includes only two propositions that merit serious discussion. As we saw above, socialists argue as follows: “Resources are used to make money for capitalists rather than to meet human needs. We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them.”
Corporations do indeed make money, and they do indeed pay taxes. They, along with small businesses, pay a lot of money in wages and salaries. The managers work for a salary (sometimes large, but also taxed) and corporate revenues flow out to many investors who from their stock market investments receive dividends and capital gains. Many Americans who own 401K retirement plans can count on them to finance their retirement. As part of the country’s financial system, corporations thus provide for many human needs.
Capitalist corporations
Finally, the statement that workers and consumers should own and control firms because “they are affected” by them is as silly as saying that society should make the decisions about marriages because people outside marriage partnerships are affected by them. We are financial stakeholders because when a marriage ends and a deadbeat fails to pay alimony, we taxpayers must provide the safety net for the wives and children. Corporations are owned by private parties who purchase ownership (stocks) in them, and small businesses are owned by their proprietors. Society has plenty of weapons to control corporations so that they do not impose social costs on their fellow citizens. Abuses against society can be addressed by laws, regulations, taxes, policemen, government agencies, fines and financial penalties, jails for corporate abusers, taxes, and groups who belittle and demean corporations. To say that the people should own and control corporations is like tipping the phrase of Proudohn on its head. He said “Property is Theft.” No, theft is what socialists wish to do to acquire property.
Socialists may try to do some of the things discussed above to control the activities of private firms. All those efforts have failed in multiple countries. More
East German “Trabant”, product of socialist planning.
realistically, socialists may try to do only what they have been attempting in recent years. On the one hand, they move forward with the regulation of industry (an effort President Trump is valiantly trying to reverse), the outcome of which is not foreseeable for individual sectors of the economy, but which can very well be predicted in general terms. Through excessive regulation the fettered economy loses responsiveness and resilience. Costs of compliance for individual firms of all types increase dramatically so that prices rise, profitability declines, employment is reduced, entrepreneurship and technical innovation wane, and industry begins to remind us of Soviet industry.
East European type socialist housing
It isn’t really necessary to hogtie industry, although socialists, who have been trained to hate firms, profits, economic efficiency, and individual success, may desire to punish the general population by punishing its productivity. Of course there must be some regulation to avoid any abuses by the more devious managers, and
Socialist life in Cuba
contracts must be enforced. But excessive regulation, designed by imprudent bureaucrats oblivious to efficiency and motivated by ideological considerations, must be curbed and undone. If one were to assume away such irrationality, there would still remain as the final weapon in the socialist arsenal, the core of socialist belief and passion – income redistribution. Even without further controls on industry, one may always tax private earnings, incomes, expenditures, etc. We ignore that one may pursue such a tax and spend course until many of the firms are driven out of the country seeking a home under the jurisdiction of less greedy governments. Taxpayers as well become mobile when state governments continually increase their taxes. Thus, we observe the exodus from Maine to Florida and from California to Texas. If the tax take from corporations and citizens is high enough, the socialists can still attempt to subsidize the individual from cradle to grave.
That leaves only the worry that socialists generally lack the facility for counting. The results of the midterm elections of 2018 gave us the youngest female member of congress in history, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez exemplifies an inability to conceive of financial constraints in budgeting at the federal level. Socialists in general tend to legislate fiscal programs that will ultimately lead to the collapse of the budget. In advocating “Medicare for all”, Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez refer to a working paper, “The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System,” published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The top line of the paper’s abstract says that the bill “would, under conservative estimates, increase federal budget commitments by approximately $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation.” According to the paper, even doubling all “currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.” When asked how we could afford such a plan, Ocasio-Cortez said we should “just pay for it.”*
contemporaries, the freedom of the bigoted cake baker to choose his transactions partners should be honored as a traditional freedom of the market system. A free society values the freedom of all citizens, both the saints and the bigots. If the prejudiced producer wants to lose the business of the gay cake consumers, his business will be less profitable and his disappointing bottom line will be sufficient punishment. (My book on socialism reviews much of the discussion on liberty that has gone on through the course of the history of socialism’s failure.) Of course, if society’s hatred for haters becomes sufficiently intense, the socialist solution may be preferable. Society will then punish the hater by dispatching him to the guillotine, which will make the world a more loving place. (I discussed the loving and loathing of socialism in a previous blog.)
Thus there are now more socialists in the world and in the United States. Interestingly, however, there is no longer any real socialism in the world. My book, Socialism, reviews a hundred years of European history in demonstrating why and how we now have many socialists, but no socialism!
Another substitute for traditional socialist economic policies is simply an expansion of the entitlements of the welfare program, such as providing free secondary education or cancelling student debts.
democracy has the potential to descend. The government is the agent of the society’s individuals and it has no right to possess or implement any power to harm one individual or group in order to help another individual or group.
counter-protest was touted as involving ten times more anti-Nazi protesters than Fascists, that was probably an extreme understatement. In Boston there are probably about as many Fascists as New-England witches. As all but the Democrats seem to be aware, racism and white supremacy sentiment have long been fading away in America. The Democrats have become confused about racism, I believe, because their political tactic of first (and recently last and only) resort is to cry “Racism!” to smear all political opponents. It has nothing to do with whether there is any actual hint of racist attitudes or behaviors. You just scream racism regardless of the event. 
