Today my friends Bob Lawson and Ben Powell have released their new Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World. Intellectually, EconLog readers will know the score, but Socialism Sucks embeds good economics and economic history within an irreverent travelogue. Modern socialist rhetoric is so ahistorical and otherworldly that it’s great to hear reports about what North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba are actually like. Along the way, Lawson and Powell thoughtfully explore the whole “That’s not real socialism” slogan. Quick version: Contrary to First World socialists, it’s the hell-states that are real socialism, and the success stories of Scandinavia that are fake socialism.
I actually had the privilege of workshopping the draft of this book. Some of the attendees urged Bob and Ben to rewrite the book to appeal to young progressives, but I insisted that this was a task for a completely different book. Socialism Sucks speaks to people with common sense and a sense of humor who simply don’t know much about socialism. That includes 95% of American conservatives, who normally have negative feelings about the socialist label but who couldn’t tell you about the Holodomor, the Gulag, the Great Leap Forward, or the Laogai, much less the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or the Killing Fields. Talk radio is going to try to angry up its listeners anyway, so it might as well angry them up against smug nostalgia for a totalitarian idea that murdered over a hundred million people and reduced dozens of nations to slavery while claiming to be the greatest of heroes and humanitarians.
Do Lawson and Powell really think that young self-styled American socialists are plotting mass murder? Do I? My answer, at least, is, “I severely doubt it, but I shouldn’t have to wonder.” When activists gush about the glories of socialism as if the Soviet Union never existed, all people of common decency should be horrified. The right response to the slogan, “We want Sweden, not Venezuela” really is, “The Venezuelans didn’t want Venezuela either, but that’s what they got.”
READER COMMENTS
Mark Brady
Jul 30 2019 at 5:14pm
I look forward to reading serious reviews of this book by people of whatever political inclination. Not cursory dismissals, or paeans of praise, but serious reviews.
Floccina
Jul 30 2019 at 5:15pm
Phil H
Jul 31 2019 at 10:07am
It is a great line, and it’s the kind of argument that I think non-libertarians should take very seriously.
I don’t think it’s right though, because the difference between Venezuela and Sweden is not that they both aimed for moderate democracy, but one of them overshot a bit. The difference between the two countries is the strength of rule of law, and the commitment to stopping corruption. Still, it is very much worth considering.
Another good line is: “When activists gush about the glories of socialism as if the Soviet Union never existed, all people of common decency should be horrified.”
He’s right, if you’re on the left, you do have some responsibility to differentiate yourself from the poisonous left. Equally, conservatives have a responsibility to explain (briefly) how they are anything more than selfish protectors of vested interests; and libertarians have a responsibility to explain how they are not anarchists who want to plunge us into a Hobbesian state of violent nature.
Stefano Cirolini
Jul 31 2019 at 5:19am
If when you want Sweden, you get Venezuela, what do you have to want to get Sweden?
Floccina
Jul 31 2019 at 2:35pm
You have to want Sweden as it really is ,which is more capitalist than many imagine, and you should think about whether the US electorate more like Sweden’s or Venezuela’s or something in between.
Thaomas
Jul 31 2019 at 8:27am
When you have people saying that ACA is socialism, you are bound to get a lot of people saying “Yeah, lemme have some of that.”
nobody.really
Jul 31 2019 at 2:24pm
And that’s an excellent point. Various people have used the word “socialism” for various purposes. Most prominently in the US, any effort for government to help the poor has been derived as “socialism,” with the premise that adopting child labor laws (or whathaveyou) was a step upon the slippery slope to totalitarianism. After decades of Republicans using the label “socialism” to describe what Caplan calls “fake socialism,” can anyone be surprised that we have extinguished the public’s aversion to this word?
Sanders wanted to emphasize that he favors more activist policies more akin to those of Scandinavia than of the Democratic Platform, so he embraced the Socialist label. That seems consistent with how the word is used today. It is rather Lawson, Powell, and Caplan who seem to be clinging to an archaic usage. And if you crave the archaic, why not listen to Favorinus of Arelata (CE 85 – 155)?
“You clutter your speech with archaic words because you want no one to comprehend what you are saying. Why not go all the way, fool, and simply say nothing at all? But say to seek to emulate olden time when people were virtuous. In that case, feel free to live according to the manners of the past–but speak in the language of the present…”
A. Cornelius Gellius • Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights) — Book I
Dylan
Jul 31 2019 at 9:01am
A question on terminology from someone who doesn’t follow this very closely. When ever I read disagreement over the use of “socialist” there is a comparison between either the Nordic countries on one hand vs. Venezuela, North Korea, or the USSR on the other. But what doesn’t get mentioned is the many European parties that have labeled themselves socialist, have been in power at various times, and tend to govern from the center left, like in France and Spain? By their rhetoric, Sanders and the others appear most closely aligned with those parties more than they do with the Nordic countries or the more basket case socialist countries of the world. I can still disagree strongly with their policy proposals of course, but there does at least seem to be precedence for democratic countries to elect “Socialist” governments and not turn into Venezuela.
Henri Hein
Aug 2 2019 at 2:49pm
European socialist parties, at least the popular ones, subscribe to a Fabian style socialism. What this means is that they place democracy over their socialist ideals, wanting to introduce socialism incrementally, with the electorate’s approval. Though many of them do wish for a full-fledged socialist state, this is a different flavor of socialism from that of the radical firebrands that led the revolutions in countries like China and Russia. What the Fabian socialists find is that in some countries, the Scandinavian ones in particular, the electorates do not want full fledged socialism.
What makes the terminology even more confounding in the US is that some of the progressives that advocate a form of socialism call themselves ‘socialist democrats,’ but in Europe, this term usually refers to Fabian style socialism.
Ed Zimmer
Jul 31 2019 at 3:16pm
If socialism is public ownership of means of production, has there ever been a government not simultaneously both capitalist and socialist. In the US, both the Post Office and VA appear to be pure socialist. In socialist regimes, aren’t small entrepreneurs (like barbers/hairdressers, or certainly street vendors) pure capitalist?
Joseph E Munson
Jul 31 2019 at 7:26pm
There has become a bit of a semantic confusion, as most of the people I know who advocate socialism consider socialism a word for capitalism with higher amount of cash transfer to the poor and middle class.
Not really the traditional meaning, but when enough people decide to change the meaning of a word, then at some point one has to hop on the wagon in order to communicate.
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