If it hasn’t happened, it won’t happen. – Progressive shibboleth
George Rebane
The conversation hereabouts circles the ‘sustainability of socialism’ barn as regularly as turning the pages of a calendar. Ever since the French revolution we have always lived with socialists who in past years were harder to spot, at least until Marx and Bastiat published their pro- and con- apologies. In those years socialists living in capitalist countries did their best to hide their socio-economic credos as they sought to fashion public policy, and letting the word ‘socialism’ be connected with their proposals was the ultimate taboo and an almost certain kiss of death.
Not so any more. We are now almost 50 years into a public education system the common thread of which has been to turn out socialist-friendly graduates. Most recently this subterfuge has been replaced with the educators’ blatant promotion of socialism accompanied by a revised history that strongly recommends it to young minds. And so today we have at least two generations of 'educated' voters who are convinced that everything anti-socialist they hear in the public forum is fomented by the rightwing fascisti and their greedy capitalist running dogs.
In present-day America socialism is viewed by tens of millions as an ideological peer of capitalism, republicanism, libertarianism, conservatism, … – an idea definitely suited for being promoted in polite company. When the conversation turns to comparing and contrasting socialism with other ways of organizing society, then the notion of sustainable socialism inevitably surfaces. And such conversational turns can even yield some productive ideas once the participants agree that socialism, as capitalism, is not an all-or-nothing form of governance – both exist and operate in variable configurations and degrees of implementation.
The big rift or tear in understanding socialism begins between people when it becomes clear that socialistic governments can operate only under centralized planning and control, and with a massive and continuous transfer of funds from the diminishing troop of producers whose means of production have yet to be nationalized. In short, socialism’s lifeblood is other people’s money (OPM) since for some hidden (to socialists) reason socialism is not so good at generating the wealth it wants to redistribute.
Today America’s paleo-socialists and proto-socialists continue to hold up the EU countries as success templates for socialist policies, and ask why we can’t be more like them. What they continue to miss and/or misrepresent is that the US has succored EU development through direct aid and very favorable trade policies, and under Pax Americana has allowed that continent to exist in a blissful peace paying only lip service to its defense obligations. But in spite of all these benefits, while operating under socialist policies, the EU’s growth and its countries’ abilities to deliver services like healthcare and electric power has been strained to the point where now unemployment is still high, prices are soaring, and delivered services are going down.
Distinguished columnist Walter Russell Mead recently wrote ‘Europe’s Challenge is Decline not Trump’ wherein he outlined a number of metrics which glaringly illustrate why countries like GB, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, … are doing their best to roll back socialism without roiling their addicted populations. The EU’s economic recovery under socialism has languished at 0.6% annually, and its unemployment is still at 6.8% while it spends only 1.3% on its defense needs – almost all countries abrogating their 2% NATO commitment level which is met only by Estonia (2.4%) and Greece (2.1%), and GB almost at 1.9%. And even this anemic economic performance is only possible because America’s recent entry as a major energy exporter (thanks to fracking) is keeping oil/gas prices at levels that would otherwise bankrupt half of EU’s members while drastically lowering the QoL for the remainder.
And in spite of all the European hoopla about concern for the environment, no country on the continent has come even close to meeting its much publicized climate change goals. (more here and here) This is not the message that our lamestream makes clear to Americans as our Left lambasts us for our CO2 emissions which have been and continue to be reduced by the greatest percentages in the world. As a footnote to OPM, Finland just ended its failed experiment with guaranteed national income, concluding that people paid for doing nothing didn’t take advantage of their good fortune to become more creative, learn new skills, and/or find a job. Instead, they reported just being “happier”, unstressed, and quite sanguine about not having to work – whoulda thought? (more here)
Meanwhile, our liberals keep repeating that since no EU country has yet to crash and burn, and/or turn to tyranny, it proves that socialism works and that the EU is a stable exemplar of socialism’s success. Such liberals work with different 'facts', and no one offers any hope that a socialist will ever reason with facts. But the closely related problem in the history of socialism is that basing its economic paradigm on forcible redistribution of OPM, socialists have never been good at social management or successfully predicting the impact of their policies on people’s behavior and the economy. They are, however, profuse in manufacturing reasons why their plans haven’t worked out – their guiding star in this is the USSR’s record of perennially explaining that its agriculture’s failure to meet 5-year plans was due to 70+ years of “bad weather”.
A closer look at socialism’s history allows us to liken it to pregnancy. There we know that it is not possible to be ‘a little bit pregnant’, it is the same with socialism. For left to its natural progression, socialism will inevitably give birth to tyranny when OPM runs out. As with pregnancy, the only way to stop it is with an abortion, one that can be a simple procedure at first, but then needs to be more violent as the pregnancy approaches term.
An example of the accelerating advent of socialism is also seen in the developing migration patterns of Americans as they seek states that have less rapacious governments. Steven Malanga of the City Journal has done an analysis of such migration patterns and reports it in his ‘Why Service is Lousy in High-Tax States’. There we see a litany of stats that document the movement of productive Americans away from our most socialist states to those that still understand how tax rates and regulations affect the productive and productivity. A common denominator of our socialist havens is their deteriorating infrastructures and poor/unresponsive government services, exactly what has happened in other countries that have taken the same path.
In the final analysis, socialists are people with whom historical Americans will never have much in common. They are a nasty lot that look at uncompliant Americans as a deplorable population segment that must be literally whipped into shape through more intruding and voluminous regulations, more enforcement agencies (i.e. govt guns in the street), an enlarged ‘criminal justice’ system to house the recalcitrant, re-education programs for those still malleable, and finally, their version of ‘the wall’ – the one they put you in front of, not the one to keep our borders secure.
“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” This quote has been mis?/attributed to Norman Thomas, long-time leader of America’s Socialist Party and six-time candidate for President. Well, those days are gone; today our union-educated younger generation is knowingly adopting socialism, but still without knowing for what they have really voted.
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