The word “crypto-communist” has a paranoid, McCarthyite connotation. But during the Cold War, numerous communist intellectuals and politicians deliberately concealed their commitment to Marxism-Leninism. Why? To be more successful intellectuals and politicians. A few crypto-communists even managed to become national leaders. Fidel Castro gained power in 1959, but only announced his communism in 1961. Nelson Mandela presented himself as a reasonable democratic reformer. Yet after his death, the African National Congress openly admittedly that Mandela had been on the politburo of the South African Communist Party for decades. Ho Chi Minh joined the Communist Party in 1920, but in 1945 he loudly posed as a moderate democratic reformer – famously quoting the U.S. Declaration of Independence to charm the West. Juan Negrin, last prime minister of Republican Spain, was also very likely a crypto-communist.
Which brings me to my question: What about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders? Is he a crypto-communist? Sanders has sent decades worth of frightening signals – praising Soviet bloc regimes, honeymooning in the Soviet Union, and such. Indeed, he’s said and done almost exactly what you would expect a sincere Marxist-Leninist who wanted to be a U.S. Senator would say and do. Note, moreover, that Sanders came of political age during the 60s and 70s, when communism made a big comeback in the U.S. radical left.
True, this hardly proves that he’s a closeted communist. Alternately, Sanders could be a communist dupe, or a even a true believer in “finding the good in the bad.” The upshot: We have to settle for a probability that Sanders is a crypto-communist, all things considered.
When constructing such probabilities, Bayes’ Rule is usually helpful. As you may recall, the Rule states that: P(A|B)=P(B|A)*P(A)/[P(B|A)*P(A) + P(B|~A)*P(~A)]. In this case, we want to know the probability that (A) Sanders is a crypto-communist given (B) his track record. Piece-by-piece:
1. What’s the probability of Sanders’ track record if he is a crypto-communist? Here, I’d go high. Most crypto-communists in Sanders’ position would be look like him. I give this 75%.
2. What’s the probability of Sanders’ track record if he isn’t a crypto-communist? Sanders view have long been extremely unpopular, but quite a few non-communists on the radical left would have shared them. So I’ll give this 1.2%.
3. What’s the prior probability of being a crypto-communist? Even during the 60s and 70s, this would be low, but not astronomically low. .3% seems plausible.
4. What’s the prior probability of not being a crypto-communist? 100%-.3%=99.7%.
Plugging in to Bayes’ Rule, I get 15.8% – a low but hardly negligible risk that Sanders is a totalitarian hiding in plain sight. Needless to say, you can alter this final estimate by fiddling with the value of the numerical components. But you’d have to change them a lot to get the probability below 5%.
Which brings us to a big related question: When does the risk of crypto-communism become disqualifying for a presidential candidate? I say even a 1% chance should be totally disqualifying, but I fear that most Democrats – and many non-Democrats – will demur. So what risk would they consider acceptable? 5%? 10%? I don’t know, but plausibly revising (1)-(4) to get below a 5% or 10% threshold is no easy feat.
READER COMMENTS
Matthias Görgens
Jan 29 2020 at 10:04am
Disqualify in what sense?
I don’t think you mean this in a legal sense?
In a political sense, there’s all kinds of tactical voting and who-is-the-lesser-evil to consider.
Eg if you don’t want a specific candidate, sending a clone, who you dislike just as much, might still be a smart move to split the vote.
Thaomas
Jan 29 2020 at 10:18am
If Sen Sanders today advocated policies with which one agreed, I don’t think evidence of past left wing sympathies would be disqualifying. The chances of running on a reasonable neo-liberal platform and then trying to govern as a Communist are low enough to be dismissed.
Philo
Jan 29 2020 at 10:51am
If you are interested Sanders’ real political commitments you should probably look to testimony from his intimate friends, who must have much more evidence than you have about the matter.
David Manheim
Feb 10 2020 at 1:51am
Let’s do the analysis and see if this is worth investigating.
What’s the value-of-perfect-information? (If this was a serious attempt at answering a question instead of signalling about something, it would be high.)
What level of additional information would this provide? (Not so much – the probability of truthfulness is at best moderate.)
Is there a better way to get the same information? (Almost certainly – like not making up numbers for the inputs.)
But really, the fundamental issue with the analysis here is that it’s not properly framing the decision problem. Why do we care about this, and what decision will it change? It seems Bryan is trying to decide whether he can be voted for – a decision he’s unlikely to change his mind about, but one that he could plausibly influence others about. Value-of-Information without control is an interesting question, but in this case I think it’s drastically reduced because the subjective nature of the estimate provides very weak evidence, especially given that Bryan’s impartiality is deeply suspect.
On the other hand, I don’t think the relevant question is about who to vote for, but rather what the eventual outcome of a Bernie presidency would be. He’s likely to push to liberalize immigration, for example, and try to raise taxes on corporations and the rich.
But given the realative inability of Presidents to make policy changes without congressional approval, this seems relatively minor. On the other hand, the things presidents can do unilaterally – like foreign policy, or using their bully pulpit to change norms or boost/undermine government, seem likely to be at best not worse under Bernie than the alternative. And the best thing I can say about Trump as an alternative is that we’re less uncertain about how damaging it will be.
Steve Bacharach
Jan 29 2020 at 11:28am
Interesting analysis, Bryan. I fear, though, that if Russ Roberts reads this, he’ll give you a hard time about the decimal points!
Quite Likely
Jan 29 2020 at 11:29am
I assume the whole “doing Bayesian calculations with made up probabilities” thing is mostly a joke, but on a more serious note those examples are pretty weird. Didn’t Mandela turn out to in fact be a reasonable democratic reformer? And from what I understand Castro really wasn’t that attached to communism until after the revolution when the US was trying to crush him and the Soviets were the only viable counterweight.
Javier González
Feb 6 2020 at 1:09pm
Dear Quite Likely,
In Spain we often say “no hay peor ciego que quien no quiere ver” (“None so blind as those who will not see”).
Best regards
Mark Mutahi
Feb 24 2020 at 9:18am
I also thought the example was quite weird. Mandela was a really excellent democratic reformed, championed non-racial reconciliation, and today is mocked by leftists on campus as a sellout because he preserved the market mechanism and left the ANC to Thabo Mbeki, a man also mocked as ‘neoliberal’ here in SA.
I think Mandela was a practical man and in his context, communism and engaging with communism made sense.
Michael Stack
Jan 29 2020 at 12:42pm
I’m not sure why the categorization of Sanders is so important. He advocates for destructive policies as it is. My concern with Sanders is which policies he would push for, not which bucket you put him in.
Yes, the bucket can give you an indication of the policies, but we have more insight into the policies than the bucket! The bucket is helpful when you know the bucket but not the policies. You’re essentially inferring a proxy for policy by looking at his preferred policy!
Nick Ronalds
Jan 30 2020 at 1:49pm
Michael, I was going to say something similar. It seems to me it doesn’t matter all that much whether or not he can be fairly classified as a “crypto-communist”. We know what policies he advocates–either outright takeover of large swaths of the economy or comprehensive control via regulation. He would probably prefer as much of the former if possible but would go for the latter if more expedient. We know from decades of observations around the world where such policies lead. They’re catastrophic, if taken beyond some threshold. That’s pretty dispositive information about Bernie and what he stands for. The real problem is that there are a lot of people out there who don’t seem to know that such policies have a very extensive track record, but instead think that the rhetoric about justice is so right and beautiful that policies flowing rom it just have to work.
Patrick A. Bradley
Feb 9 2020 at 8:57pm
The only other countries in the world without either free or universal healthcare beside the United States of America are in Africa, the Middle East, and South East Asia. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany, and France provide free or low-cost college education.
Are their economies stronger than the US’s? No. Some cultural reason why similar programs couldn’t work in the US? No. Why the opposition? Entrenched private interests and fear of change. The decades of observation is to their strength. These policies are just modern, commonplace welfare reform.
Having lived abroad, in a country for whom such a “catastrophic” policy is just what healthcare is had has been since since the 70’s, the apocalyptic warnings just ring hollow. These policies aren’t Venezuela, they’re the NHS.
Bo Villemain
Feb 14 2020 at 12:11pm
Yes, there are cultural, and structural reasons within Senator Sander’s proposals, that make his plans vastly different than what exists elsewhere. I can only speak specifically of Germany, because I have a reasonable amount of experience with that country, but on universal healthcare: Germany gets to universality through a government mandate to purchase (premiums) private insurance, and very strict price controls on services and drugs rendered. Also, deductibles, coinsurance and copays at the time of service are required. Bernie suggests free healthcare – no premiums, deductibles, copays or coinsurance. This is not Medicare for all. Medicare includes all of those features and cost containment measures. Without anything mitigating the choice to seek medical care ever, utilization will increase dramatically. The US has not imposed price controls, but would be forces to. Would our doctors work within those constraints? Unknown. I suspect an “elite” level of medical care would emerge outside of the universal system. Further, what about the millions that work (and pay taxes from) the health insurance industry?
And that’s just one of his proposals. Free college? Sure they have that in Germany, if you have attended Gymnasium (the highest of the three educational tracks in the country). Students are put in their respective track in 8th grade – so only the top third qualify for the minimum standard. Then a student still isn’t guaranteed a spot at university. It is very selective. Culturally this won’t work in the United States. Bernie is promising free public college to anyone who wants to go – that is NOT what Germany does. Then Bernie is wiping out all student loan debt on top of that $1,500,000,000,000 – POOOF! Magic!
And that gets us to another of his proposals, possibly the most expensive of all (but doesn’t get talked about much). A guaranteed Federal job at $15/hr with benefits for anyone who wants it. Doing what? Well I guess we start with all health insurance employees, then anyone working for less than that, or has a boss they don’t like making around that….obviously all jobs would be forced to compete with this magic job from the Fed – so wages might go up, can’t imagine any of this might lead to inflation?
Then there’s the promise to make all publicly traded companies give 20% of their stock to employees (with guaranteed dividends of $5000/yr!), but with that 20% comes the right to vote on 45% of the board’s membership. Bernie just devalued everyone else’s stock – I’m sure THAT won’t have any negative consequences.
Oh, and we end all fossil fuel use by 2030, and the government takes over the energy sector with Wind and Solar. I’m sure that won’t cause issues with anyone.
Overall, Bernie’s proposals add up to between $75 & $98 Trillion over the next decade – well over half, and as much as 70% of our entire (pre economic collapse from all of this) GDP. Government takeover and control of most of the economy. Would there even be an economy left after all of this? Call it communism or not. It’s nuts.
John Hall
Jan 29 2020 at 1:32pm
Could make for an interesting series. Up next: “Is Trump a crypto racist?”?
Are there any prominent crypto-libertarians?
David D Boaz
Feb 8 2020 at 4:28pm
I remember thinking back in the 1990s, if I were President Yeltsin or President De Klerk of South Africa, and trying to lead my nation toward liberal enlightenment, and facing the various realities and pressures they faced, would I be acting more or less like them? So could they have been crypto-libertarians?
Floccina
Jan 29 2020 at 3:05pm
Sanders talks about jailing bankers, compares drug co. executives to murders, calls for criminally prosecuting fossil fuel co. executives and has proposed national rent-control.
He talks not about charity in regard to M4A, housing, food, schooling but about people having a right to the fruit of others’ labor.
I think he was once an old style labor theory of value communist and he still has a little of that in him. Now I’m sure he has learned that you cannot eliminate economic freedom but he wants to minimize it.
He seems to like USSR and Venezuela policy more than danish policy
Scott Sumner
Jan 29 2020 at 3:32pm
It would be interesting to apply this reasoning to President Trump, regarding “crypto-authoritarianism”.
Thomas Sewell
Jan 29 2020 at 11:48pm
How would you update this based on say, multiple paid Sanders staffers caught on video espousing outright Communist revolution?
I guess you’d need to compare that to a baseline of how difficult it would be to find similar paid staffers on other campaigns which are known to not be so sympathetic to Communism? Plus perhaps adjust for the percent of Sanders staffers approached on undercover video until one was willing to speak out on their views?
Mark Z
Jan 30 2020 at 4:18am
An issue with this kind of diagnosis is that I doubt even many politicians have particularly stable, precise ideologies. For many, the single most important issue is ‘which side’ you’re on. On the left, this may mean a sort of ‘popular front’ mentality which entails a rather seamless fluidity between moderate progressive and full-blown Marxist. I think generally most people think about politics in a directional manner: we need more/less government, higher/lower taxes, etc. not in terms of specific levels, and I speculate that even most politicians aren’t sure, if unconstrained by practical considerations, how far they’d go in their chosen direction before they’d stop. I’m not sure I’d expect Sanders to have a clear idea of which industries he wouldn’t nationalize even if he could, for example. He’s probably too focused on the margin for that. Of course, maybe he would go all the way to communism given the chance, but even in that case, I doubt Sanders himself would know whether Sanders is a crypto-communist.
Miguel Madeira
Jan 30 2020 at 12:24pm
This could also depend of what you are counting as “communist”, no? Only orthodox Soviet-style Communists? Also the adherents of the zilion of Marxist heretical sects? Even also some kind of non-Marxists but anti-capitalists and anti-mixed economy socialists?
The broader the concept of “communist” (and, of course, of “cryptocommunist”), higher the probability of being a cryptocommunist.
If we adopt the broadest definition, I am sure that, at least in the 60/70s, Sanders was a kind of “communist”, even without the “crypto-” (combined with extremely libertarian positions with non-economic issues, including in issues like gun rights, compulsory school or mandatory helmets) .
Miguel Madeira
Jan 30 2020 at 12:27pm
But there is a thing – if we are talking only about big-C-Communists, they had a tendency to pose as “moderates” (remember that Negrin was supposed to be the leader of the “right-wing” of the PSOE, against the “radical” Caballero); then, perhaps the positions of Sanders in many issues are a point against he being a cryptocommunist?
Derrick
Jan 30 2020 at 12:55pm
This article and comment section look like the same old tired pearl-clutching that neoliberals have been braying about since Bush II. Is Sanders a secret communist? Well, by what standard, what do you consider communism? Is a national health care system communist? Well then most of the western world is. Is free public college communist? Again most of the western world is then.
Neoliberal policies, which I suspect many here still support, have not adequately produced sustainable living conditions for a great deal of people in the U.S. Sanders is a good counterweight, a needed push in the other direction, from the hyper-capitalism and grift frenzy that major cabals of corporations have set up in our political system.
A good proxy for this is cable companies. Imagine if Comcast, which is so hated they rebranded as Xfinity, ran everything. This is the result of unchecked capitalist oligopoly. The market had a chance to deal with healthcare, energy, climate change, and corporate greed. It has failed, and suddenly everyone in the center left is very surprised that there are so many working class people that are angry.
Michael Stack
Jan 30 2020 at 1:09pm
Yes, the “hyper-capitalist” USA, in which government consumes roughly $0.40 of every dollar spent. Please.
Interesting that your areas of contention (cable service, healthcare, energy) are highly regulated areas of the economy.
Derrick
Jan 30 2020 at 1:25pm
I’m not sure you understand what I mean by “hyper-capitalism”. For context, check out this post which talks about government spending as a % of GDP.
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/is-government-spending-really-41-percent-of-gdp
Also, spending and consuming are two different things. Additionally, we can no longer say that a conservative counterpart to Sanders will be a deficit hawk, or reduce government spending. That ship sailed with Trump.
As far as the areas of the economy which are heavily regulated. Why is that the case? Well, because we have seen the consequences of what happens when monopolists and oligopolists are not regulated. Quality and service go down, and margins increase. Comcast just happens to be an egregious example as they, among other cable providers, took 400+ billion dollars from the feds to expand internet service. In turn, the government sold the right to connect the internet to the actual dwelling, meaning everyone who wants internet is a captive consumer.
You may say, “well we just need to get government out of that sector completely, and then the market will take over and solve that problem”. Wrong. The issue is that corporate influence and power has grown so great that regulatory capture exists in too many industries. Companies now have the power to write laws which prohibit competition. That is the root of the problem. Sanders is the only one who I have heard about tackling this issue, and he has been saying it for 50 years.
Robert
Feb 1 2020 at 11:02pm
No, most of the western world does not have free public universities. This is simply untrue.
Mark Z
Jan 30 2020 at 4:26pm
Whenever someone says, “the market has failed,” the obvious retort is, “compared to what?” Compared to socialism, markets have been a resounding success. It’s astonishing that this isn’t a wide consensus.
Cliff
Jan 30 2020 at 10:26pm
“Is a national health care system communist?”
No
“Is free public college communist?”
No.
“Neoliberal policies… have not adequately produced sustainable living conditions for a great deal of people in the U.S.”
What do you mean? The 2% of people in the U.S. who are in poverty after taxes and transfers?
“Imagine if Comcast, which is so hated they rebranded as Xfinity, ran everything.”
Comcast is a perfectly fine company and probably does far better than Internet service run by the federal government would do. It also has plenty of competition for the most part.
“This is the result of unchecked capitalist oligopoly.”
Where is your evidence of market concentration?
“The market had a chance to deal with healthcare, energy, climate change, and corporate greed. It has failed”
What’s the problem with energy exactly? In healthcare there is certainly no free market but hey, all poor and elderly have free healthcare already. Climate change? Requires international cooperation. The U.S. can’t stop climate change unilaterally (except maybe geoengineering which is anathema to Sanders). Leftists fight tooth and nail against actual solutions like nuclear energy and geoengineering.
Derrick
Jan 30 2020 at 11:29pm
Sanders’ two most prominent policy concerns are public healthcare and higher education. If you agree that these are not communist, than you must also agree that he is not a communist.
As far as your 2% poverty rate post-transfers, I’m not sure where you’re getting that data from. We are much worse off compared to other developed countries:
https://www.epi.org/publication/ib339-us-poverty-higher-safety-net-weaker/
“What is your evidence of market concentration”
This is a significant concern for macro-economists:
By way of background, recent studies of industry concentration conclude that it is both
high and rising over time. For example, Grullon, Larkin, and Michaely conclude that
concentration increased in 75% of industries from 1997 to 2012.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_comments/2018/09/ftc-2018-0074-d-0042-155544.pdf.
“Leftists fight tooth and nail against actual solutions like nuclear energy and geoengineering.”
There is a whole suite of solutions provided by the left to fight climate change. Are you suggesting that because other counties won’t do anything that the U.S., a major contributor to climate change, should just race with them to climate destruction? What an infantile point of view.
The problem is that the solutions that the left proposes threaten incumbent, vested interests, like coal and oil. Since regulatory capture came and went, the relative voice in our congress for these companies is outsized. How tragic would it be if the coasts were demolished by hurricanes on an unsustainable level simply because it threatened a cabal of companies’ bottom line?
Miguel Madeira
Jan 30 2020 at 1:45pm
“I don’t know, but plausibly revising (1)-(4) to get below a 5% or 10% threshold is no easy feat.”
Below 10% is easy:
Probability of a cryptocomunist having the Sanders record: 75% → 70%
Probability of a non-comunist having the Sanders record: 1,2% → 1,5%
Probability of someone being a cryptocomunist: 0,3% → 0,2%
Probability of Sanders being a cryptocomunist: 15,8% → 8,6%
Ohioan
Jan 30 2020 at 2:02pm
I. This article reminds of of the old joke:
An engineer, a scientist and an economist are stranded on a desert island, when a crate of canned beans washes ashore.
The scientist says, “Oh this is simple, we just build a fire and het up the can, until the internal pressure causes the can to burst open–voila! Beans!”
The engineer says, “Even simpler: we just construct a lever out of a stick and a coconut, and we can pry the can lid off.”
The economist says, “You two work too hard–just assume we have a can opener…”
II. Why do you care if Sanders is a crypto-commie? Is corporatism doing well for the majority of Americans, compared to other developed nations?
III. In the short run, universal justice may not be optimal. But it is fair, and worth striving for.
Robert
Feb 1 2020 at 11:07pm
Can’t say that it is because of corporatism, whatever that means, but yes, life is much better in the US than most of the rest of the world. Class mobility is higher, parental income doesn’t predict child’s income in the US as much as it does most other countries, economic and personal freedom is higher. Sure, there is still much that can be improved, but things certainly are worse in France, or Spain, or Italy, or Russia, or Chile, or most other places.
DeservingPorcupine
Jan 30 2020 at 8:23pm
I’m confused. Is there some actually meaningful difference between a communist and a socialist? He’s an out-in-the-open socialist, so…
JS
Jan 31 2020 at 6:10pm
Did you really mean 3% in the below statement or the stated 0.3%? Because if it’s the latter, then the answer is a very low .02% or so of his being a communist, from my calculations
“What’s the prior probability of being a crypto-communist? Even during the 60s and 70s, this would be low, but not astronomically low. .3% seems plausible.”
JS
Jan 31 2020 at 6:17pm
Sorry, the probability is coming out to 1.85% not what I said above of 0.02%.
Rob
Feb 2 2020 at 7:17am
While he may have supported Marxism-Leninism at some point, isn’t it likely that having seen the collapse of the USSR and other countries he would have moderated his position?
Because it’s a crazy view there’s very few supporters of ML in the US today, so I have a very low prior that any given individual is actually a fan.
DeservingPorcupine
Feb 3 2020 at 12:04pm
I’m highly skeptical. He’s had decades to be explicit about such a moderation/disavowal, and he never has. When questioned about it, he dodges with answers like “Did I nationalize the banks in Burlington?”, and he invites confusion between social democratic parties in places like Denmark with democratic socialism. I think there’s about an 80% chance he thinks that the USSR fell apart only because of some trifling errors of execution rather than fundamental flaws of the underlying political philosophy.
Josh D Wexler
Feb 5 2020 at 4:28am
All of this strikes me as eminently reasonable, but the prior probability for the second term seems to me to be wildly low. Perhaps I’m misreading:
“2. What’s the probability of Sanders’ track record if he isn’t a crypto-communist? Sanders view have long been extremely unpopular, but quite a few non-communists on the radical left would have shared them. So I’ll give this 1.2%.”
Caplan seems to concede that plenty of non-communists share Sanders views, so why the very low prior here?
I’d put the probability of his track record if he isn’t a crypto-communist at no less than 30%, and likely closer to 50%. For the following reasons:
1)It’s almost a platitude for people initially to have more extreme ideologies which moderate as they age. My track record features half-embarrassing, half-fond memories of excitement about Ayn Rand. I think this is common among libertarians. But probably few of your libertarian friends who profess to have moved on are crypto-objectivists. There are far more examples of people following this pattern than the Castro pattern offered as an example above.
2)Most of Western Europe supports a similar policy slate to Sanders. But I take it as fairly obvious that most Europeans are just social democrats and not crypto-communists. Are there any ruling communist parties in Europe other than Spain and Czech Republic?
3)Sanders doesn’t hide his kookier and more unpopular beliefs. He’s publicly expressed some waayyyy out there stuff in his past (eg, that sexual repression is a main cause of cancer). And even these days he’s agitating for: eliminating private health insurance, labeling GMOs, abolishing ICE and halting deportations, more than doubling the federal budget… things that are either kooky or very unpopular or both. More to the point, he has used the appellation “Socialist” for himself, which surely would hurt his electoral chances in America. He seems to be a straight shooter.
4)Sanders isn’t a terribly bright or thoughtful guy. The most parsimonious explanation is that he’s a standard progressive left guy who strongly believes in the vague things he says. Not some very clever mastermind deftly navigating the ideological waters.
I get a range of about a half a percent to three quarters of a percent.
Janus Daniels
Feb 10 2020 at 9:53am
Bryan, you need a ” 😉 ” on this; otherwise readers my think that you eat underwear and vote Republican. #PoesLaw
Readers with interest beyond amusement with Bryan’s spoof may wish to understand how to apply Bayes’ work. You can get a good start here: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Bayesian+reasoning
Colin Steitz
Feb 10 2020 at 10:51am
What a great understated phrase.
Doug Sterling
Feb 13 2020 at 10:32pm
The President of the USA is not unconstrained. Barack Obama might have been a “crypto-communist”, but we survived 8 years of his rule. And when it comes to all of the Democratic aspirants, not just Bernie, open borders and an all-out war against an imaginary climate crisis are both likely to prove fatal to the USA. So why worry about communism? It’s such a 20th century danger!
Nell Beahill
Feb 20 2020 at 2:51am
As a mathematician, I’m happy to see someone apply Bayes’ Theorem. Once you invent fanciful numbers to plug in, though, the “theorem” part becomes less convincing.
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