The socialists are back, but is it a big deal? It’s tempting to say that it’s purely rhetorical. Modern socialists don’t want to emulate the Soviet Union. To them, socialism just means “Sweden,” right? Even if their admiration for Sweden is unjustified, we’ve long known that the Western world contains millions of people who want their countries to be like Sweden. Why should we care if Sweden-fans rebrand themselves as “socialists”?
My instinctive objection is that even using the term “socialism” is an affront to the many millions of living victims of Soviet-style totalitarian regimes. Talking about “socialism” understandably horrifies them. Since there are plenty of palatable synonyms for Swedish-type policies (starting with “Swedenism”!), selecting this particular label seems a breach of civility.
If this seems paranoid, what would you say about a new movement of self-styled “national socialists”? Even if their policy positions were moderate, this brand needlessly terrifies lots of folks who have already suffered enough.
On reflection, however, this is a weak objection. Yes, if a label’s connotations are – like “national socialism” – almost entirely horrible, then loudly embracing the label is uncivil. “Socialism,” however, has long had a wide range of meanings. Even during the height of Stalinism, plenty of self-styled “socialists” were avowedly anti-Communist. The upshot: Even if you were a victim of Soviet oppression, assuming the worst when you hear the word “socialism” is hypersensitive. And hypersensitivity is bad.
Yet there’s a much stronger reason to object to the socialist revival. Namely: It’s far from clear that the latter-day socialists do mean Sweden. While some (like John Marsh) plainly say so, others (like Elizabeth Bruenig) are coy indeed. Which raises deeply troubling questions, starting with:
1. Are latter-day socialists unaware of the history of the totalitarian movement that shares their name? Given widespread historical ignorance and the youth of the new socialists, we can hardly rule this out. A troubling thought; isn’t it negligent to champion a radical idea without investigating its history first?
2. Are latter-day socialists ambivalent about the totalitarian movement that shares their name? Do they look on the Soviet Union as a noble experiment with unfortunate shortcomings? How about Chavez’s Venezuela?
3. Do latter-day socialists think of Sweden as a starting point, and something more radical as the ultimate goal? Are there outright crypto-communists among them? If so, do their comrades know? Care?
4. Do latter-day socialists realize that being coy raises the preceding concerns? Do they care? Or is the raising of these concerns a “feature, not a bug”? I.e., they enjoy making people wonder if they’re secret Leninists?
What’s the truth? While I don’t personally know any latter-day socialists well, I do read a lot of articles in The Nation, which publishes a wide range of modern socialists. So here are my best guesses about the preceding possibilities.
1. Older socialists (age 50+) know a lot about the actual history of socialism. The younger ones (age 40 and under), however, know little and care less. They’re negligent romantics.
2. Most historically-literate socialists are indeed ambivalent about the totalitarian movement that shares their name. Very few will defend Stalin, but they just can’t stay mad at Lenin, Castro, or Ho Chi Minh. Even the historically-naive socialists feel pretty good about Cuba today and Venezuela in 2015.
3. Yes, most avowed socialists have a more radical ultimate goal than Sweden. In our Capitalism-Socialism debate, even the reasonable John Marsh mused about a future that realized radical socialist dreams without degenerating into a typical socialist nightmare. How extreme, then, are ultimate goals of the unreasonable socialists? While I really don’t know, videos like this make me strongly suspect that Bernie Sanders is literally a crypto-communist. Even if I’m wrong, how many latter-day socialists would care if Sanders was a crypto-communist?
4. Latter-day socialists really do enjoy making people wonder about their ultimate agenda. When you read The Nation, for example, authors almost never specify exactly what policy should be. Instead, they focus on radical movement in a desired direction, with minimal discussion of their ultimate objective. In particular, they almost never say what would be “too far.” Of course, this describes most political movements; they want to rally the troops, not provide blueprints of an ideal world. But when you cultivate a “radical” image but withhold specifics, you should expect critics’ minds to go to dark places. Rather than try to calm the critics, the latter-day socialists court their disapproval. In fact, most seem to positively enjoy the imagined intellectual trauma they’re inflicting on the unbeliever.
On reflection, then, the return of the self-styled socialist is indeed a travesty. The reason, though, is not that the word is offensive, but that it is deliberately confusing. If you really thought Sweden was a model society, you would just praise Sweden. The “socialist” label, in contrast, is a provocative equivocation. Latter-day socialists adopt it because they would rather insinuate their possible support for totalitarian horrors than earnestly promote an intellectually defensible position.
To what end? In modern parlance, the latter-day socialists could just be trolling. This is bad enough, but some socialists probably sincerely believe what they’re insinuating. Or worse. If all you want is Swedish social democracy, making common cause with such socialists is a grave mistake.
READER COMMENTS
Charles
May 22 2019 at 12:24pm
How about the most basic question that everyone seems to ignore in this socialism/capitalism debate: how do we measure a successful society?
Mark Z
May 22 2019 at 2:18pm
The best way: one where people want to live. If people are moving from country A to country B, that’s likely the best sign we have that country A is more successful than B.
Charles
May 23 2019 at 2:24pm
“The best way: one where people want to live. If people are moving from country A to country B, that’s likely the best sign we have that country A is more successful than B.”
That is an extremely shallow assessment for a successful society and assumes that the ability to move from one country to another is a binary choice. For many, it is not even an option due to legal/political standing. Look at the US green card lottery system for some context.
How do we measure a successful society for those living in it?
Mark Z
May 24 2019 at 2:47am
What exactly makes it shallow? It has the advantage of admitting the subjective nature of ‘success.’ Any objective measure – e.g., life expectancy, per capita GDP, makes assumptions about what people value, but (taking life expectancy as an example) many people are willing to trade a few months or years of life expectancy to do things they enjoy.
If we accept (as we should) that value is subjective, then we can only look at where people prefer to live and where they don’t. That migration is inhibited doesn’t change the fundamental flaw of putatively objective measures.
And Paul (commenting beneath me) is of course right. One person’s ideal society is another person’s dystopia. It is possible for two societies to be near polar opposites and each ‘successful’ in the sense that people who prefer one end up living there while those who prefer the other end up living in the other one. It may simply not make sense to speak of an intrinsically successful or unsuccessful society.
Charles
May 24 2019 at 6:04pm
Hey Mark, thanks for the reply. You raise some good points.
“What exactly makes it shallow? It has the advantage of admitting the subjective nature of ‘success.’ Any objective measure – e.g., life expectancy, per capita GDP, makes assumptions about what people value, but (taking life expectancy as an example) many people are willing to trade a few months or years of life expectancy to do things they enjoy.
If we accept (as we should) that value is subjective, then we can only look at where people prefer to live and where they don’t. That migration is inhibited doesn’t change the fundamental flaw of putatively objective measures.”
If you want to be subjective, it tells us nothing about the quality of life.
Why might someone be moving from one country to another? Often it is a case of labor arbitrage where foreign workers endure harsh working environments with higher minimum wages in order to send that money home. I don’t think many would consider that “do[ing] things they enjoy”.
“And Paul (commenting beneath me) is of course right. One person’s ideal society is another person’s dystopia. It is possible for two societies to be near polar opposites and each ‘successful’ in the sense that people who prefer one end up living there while those who prefer the other end up living in the other one. It may simply not make sense to speak of an intrinsically successful or unsuccessful society.”
I’m all for never talking about GDP again but your entire comment feels like an attempt to skirt the larger issue here. If we can’t define a successful society (or economy) than how can you hope to argue for the merit of one framework over another (capitalism vs socialism)? There is no nuance to the discussion. It’s either one or the other. Unfortunately, the world is no so binary.
Paul
May 23 2019 at 6:40pm
“Society” really isn’t a thing and attempts to measure its success foolhardy? Let people pursue their own ends and be successful by their own measurement.
Charles
May 24 2019 at 6:15pm
Hey Paul. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
” ‘Society’ really isn’t a thing and attempts to measure its success foolhardy? Let people pursue their own ends and be successful by their own measurement.”
The economy isn’t really a thing either. It’s merely a framework to make sense of the world. That doesn’t mean we should ignore it.
I’m all for letting people pursue their own ends but to leave the discussion at that ignores the reality of the world and human nature. What if one person’s success comes at the expense of another’s?
Philo
May 22 2019 at 12:50pm
“[I]sn’t it negligent to champion a radical idea without investigating its history first?” Maybe, but how bad is that? “Championing” an idea is mostly just idle talk—just “gassing.” What is my incentive to get my opinion right, when my influence on politics is negligible? It would be different if I had significant political power, but very few of us meet that description. (And if I am semi-sincere–inclined toward a pro-socialist opinion, but not really sure how I would act if my opinion mattered practically–what I am doing by sounding off is not outright trolling.)
JK Brown
May 22 2019 at 1:02pm
I went down this rabbit hole a few years back when I got annoyed that there wasn’t a nuanced definition of capitalism or socialism. The former used anytime some CEO did a bad thing. Everyone going into Borg mode of repeating the 11th grade Econ definitions if you tried to explore either.
This led me to read a lot of Mises’ works. After all, he wrote ‘The Anti-capitalist Mentality’ which seemed like a good place to start. I also found some good pieces from prior to 1920 that had nuance. Perhaps not surprisingly, post 1920 writings on socialism/communism and capitalism move toward a dogmatic approach, with exceptions like Mises who wrote across the divide. Not surprising given the adoption of what Mises named, the German pattern of Zwangswirtschaft (compulsory economy), by the UK and even to an extent the US. Noting that Communism was really just extreme socialism would have interfered politically.
Trained in Physics, I looked for the common root. The led me to the, oddly unnamed, liberty to keep earnings, in excess of your subsistence, from your labor and use this accumulated “capital” to make wealth for yourself by participation in markets and enterprises.
Is this “capitalism”? I saw a spectrum from low interference with this liberty as in laissez faire capitalism, through various government invention levels, such as guilds, licensing, etc., to total state “capitalism” that was Communism. At various levels, who was granted the liberty to make wealth is restricted including cronies and at the Communist level, party officials. If you step back, you can see that feudalism fits and socialism is very much like the various varieties of feudalism.
And this is the best succinct exposition on the best that socialism has to offer
Mark Z
May 22 2019 at 2:12pm
The instinct of self-styled democratic socialists is clearly ‘command and control,’ not merely ‘high taxes and a really generous welfare state’ as many will claim. Sanders has recently argued for outlawing for-profit colleges outright. I think the main difference between democratic socialists and radical, revolutionary ones is that the former are more Fabian, but the endpoint is the same. Why does a democratic socialist support socializing medicine but not food? I’d say only because it’s not yet socially acceptable to support the latter. After medicine, then what? Then another industry will be added to the list of ‘exceptional industries.’ After one price control, another will show up at the new margin as necessary. The nationalization of pretty much all major industries and the strict regulation of prices and production by the state are the end goal, imo. Democratic socialists are just boiling the frog slowly. (I’m aware one might say the same thing about conservatives – that they’re secretly AnCaps; I think that’s rather laughable nowadays, but in the 90s it might’ve been more analogous).
Of course, ‘bad socialism’ mainly evokes the non-economic policies of socialist governments. Even if new socialists really do want a centrally planned economy, that doesn’t make them Stalinists, right? Well, if socialist economic policies run into the non-compliance problems they have historically run into, the socialist will have to make a choice: use force – possibly very brutal force – to compel compliance to make the policies minimally functional, or give up on the policies.
An analogy: imagine a movement committed to the eradication of genetic diseases. The leaders insist that they won’t need to resort to sterilization, forced abortions, or killing to eradicate genetic diseases, they have peaceful methods. But suppose a critic argues persuasively that the peaceful methods probably won’t work. It’s fair to ask the movement, what will you do if we are right and your peaceful methods don’t work? Give up on the goal, or give up on the peaceful methods?
Charles
May 24 2019 at 8:24pm
“Why does a democratic socialist support socializing medicine but not food? I’d say only because it’s not yet socially acceptable to support the latter. After medicine, then what? Then another industry will be added to the list of ‘exceptional industries.’”
I’m not in favor of socializing everything but medicine is the best possible example of inelastic demand. When you’re deathly sick and there is only one option for treatment, pricing is entirely at the discretion of the individual providing that treatment. It’s the most absolute form of monopolist power.
There are so many other capitalist countries which have nationalized health systems. By framing access to healthcare as a choice between capitalism vs socialism, you’re effectively endorsing the status quo, where millions of Americans do not have access to health care.
“Food” is absolutely inelastic but there is not a single provider for “food” and varying price points exist. That being said, food insecurity is a serious problem in this country. Is our current system working that well if so many people can’t afford food and medicine?
“Of course, ‘bad socialism’ mainly evokes the non-economic policies of socialist governments. Even if new socialists really do want a centrally planned economy, that doesn’t make them Stalinists, right? Well, if socialist economic policies run into the non-compliance problems they have historically run into, the socialist will have to make a choice: use force – possibly very brutal force – to compel compliance to make the policies minimally functional, or give up on the policies.”
We force compliance with our current system through the criminal justice system.
Hazel Meade
May 30 2019 at 12:29pm
Part of the problem is that people keep arguing as if the current US system actually represents “capitalist” health care, when it really isn’t. The US health care system is actually a highly regulated and largely state funded system. Much of the population gets their medical care via Medicare or Medicaid, the rest gets insurance via their employers, a system officially encouraged by US tax policy (and now mandated by the ACA). We are nowhere near a free market, and a lot of the dysfunctional aspects of our system are because of that. If you want to see something more like how a free market in healthcare would work, look at medical tourism.
Mark Z
May 22 2019 at 2:27pm
Trolling definitely seems to be a thing among socialists. I wonder, what does it actually say about a person who likes to say nice things about Stalin or flaunt his Mao paraphernalia because it ‘gets those right wingers all riled up?’ I think the most charitable interpretation is that it indicates intellectual immaturity. Just as if someone says, ‘I like to say Nazi things just to get the leftists upset,’ the most generous response is to attribute it to sheer immaturity and conclude this is a person whose political opinions should be ignored as impertinent. It may annoy them, but they should be thankful for it, as the alternative would be to see it as evidence of lack of a conscience.
Mattb
May 22 2019 at 2:52pm
This seems to be a classic motte and bailey argument where the confusion on the part of the socialists is intentional. What they really want (the bailey) is “full on hardcore socialism, but done right this time” but when challenged they will retreat to the more easily defensible position (the bailey) of “but we really want to be more like Sweden”.
Grant Gould
May 22 2019 at 3:47pm
Socialists would say the same about capitalism — that proponents talk about “free markets” which have seldom if ever been present under actually existing capitalism (where supply is always restricted and demand subsidized to increase returns to scale, and where if the market doesn’t demand enough police impunity or fighter jets the state is always willing to step in and help out with those “public goods”) and actually existing capitalists (who always seem to find a soft spot for the Pinochets of the world).
Every ideology is a caricature of its allies to its enemies and a pure ideal of unattained policies to its adherents.
Charles
May 24 2019 at 8:25pm
Well said.
Joseph E Munson
May 22 2019 at 9:29pm
To make any type of change and play the game of American politics you must be deliberately confusing to an extent. Just the electoral dynamics of trying to win a primary after a general.
Phil H
May 23 2019 at 1:42am
I kinda agree with Caplan on this, and yet I’m going to make an argument “for” socialism. I’m not yet sure how to square this circle.
The argument goes that, to the extent that socialism is a doctrine about property, the future will indeed, almost inevitably, involve much greater state ownership of (or control of) property, and that is something that we either shouldn’t worry about, or have to come to terms with.
The reason is that more and more property is intangible. I’ll give two examples: intellectual property, and the airwaves.
IP is said to be owned by the individual, but that ownership only comes into effect following an approval by the government regulator, and only for a period agreed by the regulator, so it’s an attenuated form of ownership at best. The government doesn’t “own” all IP, but it has much more control over it than it does over my computer, for example. And I can’t see any way of changing this dynamic: IP requires community agreement, and that’s an inherently political/governmental thing.
The airwaves are a good that did not exist prior to the invention of radio communications; they are typically monopolized by the government. They may be sold to individuals, but again, these sales are conditional. And again, I’m not sure how it could be otherwise. The airwaves could be held as a commons, but the level of coordination required (particularly if we want markets to be open to diverse participants) is formidable; international coordination would also become more difficult.
Both of these domains are now extremely valuable – comparable in value to all the tangible goods we own. In the future I expect the value of intangibles to continue to rise, and ultimately to dominate the value of tangible goods, so government or government-like ownership or control of much of the economy is almost inevitable.
In order to prevent the failures of socialism being repeated, it seems like strong market-style institutions should be built (as they largely have been for IP and the airwaves) so that market mechanisms can still allocate resources fairly and efficiently. And perhaps that’s the critical difference: I see the political project going forward as being about how to build markets. Socialists don’t seem to want to build markets. And the error that I think people here fall into is that they don’t realise markets need to be built.
Chip I. Alhazred
May 24 2019 at 12:17am
Phil H wrote: “The airwaves are a good that did not exist prior to the invention of radio communications; they are typically monopolized by the government. They may be sold to individuals, but again, these sales are conditional. And again, I’m not sure how it could be otherwise.”
I can’t speak to your larger point, but I can hint that radio almost might have been otherwise….
I have not read the book itself, but as I recall from reviews of “Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio” by Jesse Walker, radio was originally private, and private owners of airwave territory were starting to settle disputes when Uncle Sam barged in and took over.
Thaomas
May 23 2019 at 6:04am
If its wrong for those who do not advocate state ownership of the means of production to describe their policies as “socialist,” Is it also wrong for people who oppose policies that transfer income to lower income people as “socialist?” Isn’t calling single payer health insurance “socialized medicine” equally insulting to the victims of Soviet terror?
Miguel Madeira
May 23 2019 at 7:15am
About the word “socialism”, a reflection of a Venezuelan jornalist:
https://twitter.com/QuicoToro/status/1107036259673874432
Miguel Madeira
May 23 2019 at 7:32am
Other point (well, it is a variant of “Even during the height of Stalinism, plenty of self-styled “socialists” were avowedly anti-Communist”, but in a stronger version) is that even during the times of USSR, the word that most people associated with USSR was “communism”, not “socialism” – at least in Western Europe “socialism” during most of the 20th century already had the connotation of “Sweden”, or in the “worst” case the United Kingdom under Labour; what parties members of “Socialist International” (like British Labour, Swedish SAP, etc.) did when in power was raise taxes (and/or make them more progressive) and social expenses, and eventually the nationalization of one or other business (never the plannification of the economy – even the nationalized business in countries like UK and France worked largely in a market framework, not subject of a kind of Gosplan).
Floccina
May 24 2019 at 10:41am
I think Bernie Sanders was once literally a crypto-communist but today he is just a confidence man grabbing at power. It became all to obvious that he was wrong and he no longer seems to support radical policy.
Jon
May 25 2019 at 4:05pm
For my part I think I don’t really believe everything we’ve been told about the SU. You know how you have all these crazy uncles that are always forwarding memes that are made up. Today it’s not so bad because it’s easy to go to Snopes and debunk things, but back in the day I feel like the media just passed off one hysterical story after the other about the Soviet monstrosity and every just lapped it up.
Chomsky made this point well in a discussion with David Frum. The media just has certain atrocities they focus on (those of state enemies) and others that are ignored (atrocities of our allies or us). When everything wicked they do is magnified, often exaggerated, there’s no check on that. Meanwhile we’re rampaging through Indonesia, East Timor, Guatemala. Nobody hardly even knows. Link to Chomsky below. The reason we get so worked up about Stalin is because we just aren’t talking about Sukarno or other US backed capitalist thugs.
https://youtu.be/qnGyImubRp0
The other thing that I think is hard to argue with is the economic growth planned economies have experienced. There are plenty of points of criticism for the SU, but there growth was decent. Life did get a lot better for ordinary people. In fact polls show Russians see the fall of the SU as a tragedy. In the US when we were a planned economy during WWII this is the best growth we ever experienced. Today China, though capitalist, has a lot of planning, not totally unlike the US during the war. Real wages in China are flying up, whereas in the US they are stagnant, even declining for the lower income groups. We’re told to be afraid of China or the SU, in fact life is getting better at least in China. When capitalism came to the SU so many people died life expectancy actually fell dramatically, it was almost like a war. Capitalism was not so great for them.
Timur
May 26 2019 at 4:15pm
What curious reasoning! Yes, of course: Socialism is bad because people have suffered under socialist authoritarian governments. But the same is not true for the people who have suffered under capitalist governments? It is almost as if it is not that socialism is bad, but that authoritative, nationalist, and totalitarian governments are bad, whether they embrace capitalist or socialist theories.
Jon
May 27 2019 at 11:30am
You got it. Apparently more people starved to death in capitalist India from the time of it’s independence in 1947 until the fall of the Soviet Union than all deaths attributed to communism in the 20th century in all countries combined, the SU, China, Cambodia. Bryan asks “Are they unaware of the history?” We’re aware, it just seems that the apologists for capitalism have absolutely no awareness of the mountain of corpses capitalism has generated.
Hazel Meade
May 30 2019 at 1:32pm
India was not exactly “capitalist” after it’s independence.
https://intpolicydigest.org/2013/04/24/history-of-economic-growth-in-india/
To better understand India’s economic growth, its economic history should be divided into two phases, the first 45 years after the independence and the last twenty years as a free market economy. During the first 45 years after independence, India’s economy was divided into two distinct segments, private and public.
The private sector owned and operated small to medium size businesses and industries protected by the government and the government took care of everything else. The government was in charge of most of the consumer services including transportation such as airlines, railroads and local transportation, communication services such as postal, telephone and telegraph, radio and television broadcasting, and social services such as education and health care.
The intention of the government was to provide these services, at a reasonable cost, as well as employment. India adopted a five-year development plan from its closest ally, the Soviet Union, in order to improve infrastructure, agricultural production, health care, and education, but the progress was extremely slow due to India’s democratic system.
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