There Is a Solution to the Problem of Socialism
After having posted many essays on this site, I was recently pondering on some eternal principles and timeless values. It occurred to me that all of these essays have been essentially negative in tone. They had to be, of course, since my goal is to make our world safer and healthier by helping it avoid a seductive social order that would prove as deleterious to us as it has to all previous societies which have attempted to establish and maintain a socialistic system. My blogs have been negative because socialism threatens to be a devastating negative for our future.
A Favorable Prospect. Implicit in all my work has been the assumption that a society is best ordered to be productive when it is based on the market, free enterprise system. In order to function properly, that system requires commercial and personal freedoms, and those will also be attended by religious and cultural freedoms for the individual. In that environment the economy can function efficiently and the market’s inherent incentive structures will open paths to individual and collective success. People will be motivated to care for each other through healthy institutions so that the less productive and viable individuals, whether from misfortune or incapacity, will not fail to prosper. This favorable prospect assumes that society is able to avoid the toxic trap of socialism in any of the historical forms thoroughly analyzed in the book Socialism.
Whether a successful market system can be restored and maintained is an open question. The book just mentioned reviewed the effort pursued by the Obama administration to revive socialism in the United States and thereby weaken or eliminate the institutions of free enterprise. Since the arrival of the Trump administration there has been a struggle for the restoration of market institutions; the outcome of that struggle remains highly uncertain as of this writing. If many of the Obama initiatives can in fact be reversed, the favorable prospect can be realized.
A Utopian Solution. What I wish to introduce in this essay is the notion that there exists in concept a solution, even a panacea for the problem of socialism. This utopian solution is in some quarters well known, but given little heed in contemporary life. After having written numerous negative chapters on socialism and its hazards, I wanted here to write a positive one on that utopian solution. I am hopeful, of course, that the favorable prospect discussed above can be realized. I am not really optimistic that the utopian or ideal prospect can be achieved in our time. Imperfect man in imperfect society will not even attempt the solution, although many individuals in the world might be willing to do so.
If the attempt were supported and promoted by a significantly large proportion of the population, the aggregate effect might bring us closer to a bright future. I remain pessimistic, but wish nevertheless to describe in the most succinct terms this utopian prospect. It involves religious principles, so if you are one of the modern sophisticates who reject religion out of hand, there is no purpose in your reading further. But I would invite you to read the last paragraph of this blog to realize that the appropriate secular philosophy expresses the same principles in non-religious terms.
I have now written hundreds of pages on the problem of socialism, so I believe I can express the core dilemma concisely. Socialists wish to achieve utopia by dividing society, declaring war and eliminating those who stand in the way of social justice. The core of Marxian analysis is constructed on the notion of class struggle. We in America don’t understand the class struggle as Europeans do; although classes are much weaker today than in Marx’s time, their informal influence remains apparent in most parts of Europe. Those who study Marxism are exposed to it, are immersed in it, and have it enmeshed with their internal organs. They see the class enemy in racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and in all the other social divisions they wish to denounce, exploit, and promote.
Socialism wishes to divide society as Marx did with his proletarians (workers) and bourgeoisie (property holders). These constitute the working class and the ruling class. His answer was to organize and begin the revolution. The bourgeoisie was to be destroyed and when only the oppressed class remains to live and rule, social problems disappear. It will be essential, of course, to establish the “dictatorship of the proletariat” to crush any remnants of private property or control over any of the means of production. The ruling class will be anxious to conduct some sort of counter-revolution to have their property and privileges restored after the revolution; socialists are determined not to permit that.
Socialism has sought to eliminate personal and commercial freedoms to keep power in the hands of the victorious working class and to eliminate all vestiges of the ruling class, thus unifying society. The motive of achieving unity and love is pursued by the destruction of the opposing class. Today, socialists use identity politics to divide society into groups or classes with the objective of uniting the oppressed ones to achieve victory over the wealthy, the white supremacists, the racists, the oppressors, the discriminators, the misogynists, and all the others. After, or in lieu of the victory, there must be a thorough-going redistribution of incomes in favor of the poor and in pursuit of social equality. In a 900 page book I have shown the numerous failures of societies which have attempted through Marxian principles to collectivize the effort to achieve personal and social economic success.
The utopian or ideal prospect comes through the teachings of the first individual to teach the counter-intuitive answer to the social dilemma at the root of poverty. Rather than teaching that man’s happiness must be based on the possession of this world’s goods, on commanding influence or power over other people, and on receiving recognition for the achievement of social standing, he taught an altogether different doctrine. Rather than dividing society into deplorables and acceptables, he taught the unity of men. Each and every individual born on this planet could call its creator “Father.”
All men are in fact brothers; our first parents were created in the image of the creator. Various commandments were supplied for those willing to accept this counter-intuitive doctrine of the brotherhood of all men. The commandments were a road map to the happy and productive life; the first was that we should love God, the Creator of all. The second was that we were to love our fellow men as we love ourselves. We were to be united in this love and to devote our lives to caring for those around us who require assistance. Although many who have pursued this counter-intuitive path to happiness testify that this doctrine really does bring happiness, too few are willing to give it a try to achieve the longed for social utopia. However, this was written just subsequent to the natural disasters of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and others. The overwhelming outpouring of humanitarian assistance and concern manifest in that period made one wonder whether private-sector contributions might not be able to move us beyond sole reliance on big-brother government to meet all our social needs and lift the poor among us.
With the freedom and incentives of the free enterprise system in place, enough would be produced to provide abundance for humankind. Even without complete, universal acceptance of the unifying principles of fraternal love and social harmony, society’s diverse interests could coexist and people could pursue their personal lives with tolerance and respect for others’ freedoms. This utopian or ideal prospect could be spelled out, of course, in much greater detail, although this is not the place for that. I can also suggest where additional information on the ideal prospect can be found, but here I wanted merely to indicate that the dark side of socialism need not depress us. It is not necessary to take violence to the streets either to impose or to free ourselves from the lowering tyranny socialism threatens for our future.
The principles of the free market as explicated by Adam Smith are completely compatible with the “religious” principles I have mentioned above. Adam Smith expressed that compatibility in his famous book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. As a philosopher and moralist, Smith simply applied Christian values to the economic system he analyzed in his later masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations. So if you are against religion or biased against Christianity, you should realize that you need not believe in Christ’s divinity. You should simply be aware that his teachings make clear that the pursuit of either wealth, influence, fame, or power (not to mention all of the above) will not bring happiness. But loving and serving those around you are the counter-intuitive secrets that you can discover only through your own personal experimentation.
Adam Smith knew whereof he spoke. Upon his death he could have been expected to be affluent, if only on the basis of the publication of his books. But as they investigated the affairs of the deceased they discovered that he really had nothing more than to sustain his modest existence. He had given almost everything away.
