Even worse, however, is the resilience of the idea of
socialism. If ever in the history of human affairs there was decisive evidence
against something, it is the evidence against socialism, especially as compared
with the history of capitalism. Yet, somehow, the faithful refuse to be deterred
by the facts and remain undeterred by the mounting dismal failures of socialism
and the absence of even one single example of success. Meantime the benefits of competitive capitalism are
spectacularly obvious for anyone who cares to see them. The resilience of the
belief in the virtues of socialism is nothing short of miraculous, a testament to
the capacity of human beings to create their own reality, a major refutation of
the assumption that the scientific method will always win out in an argument
involving intelligent, well-meaning individuals. It is not stupidity or
meanness that is to blame. It is something much deeper and more insidious; it
is the power of hard-wired human presumptions to endure in the face of massive
evidence to the contrary.
The presumptions of socialism are intuitive and appealing.
The logic of capitalism is counterintuitive and harsh (at least
harsh-sounding). In the course of modern human history they bounce against each
other and wax and wane. Just a little while ago very few politicians would have
been prepared to adopt the label ‘socialist’. To call someone a socialist was widely
regarded as an insult, an accusation of untenable extremism. Suddenly it is completely different. While
self-proclaimed socialists have all the while continued their prominence in our
academic institutions, hardly diminishing over the years, socialism’s cause has
most recently been taken up by our youngest, most ignorant and inexperienced voters,
with the result that young politicians and other demagogues, sniffing the
opportunity, have risen to national prominence on the socialist banner. The
young cannot remember the horrors of socialisms past, they were not alive. And
they pay no attention to the lessons of history because studying history takes
effort and we have told them it is unnecessary and all wrong anyway. So, in
part, it is a failure of collective memory and the downgrading of knowledge
about history that is to blame. These, indeed, it seems to me, are important
explanations in the re-embrace of Keynesian doctrines as well. But, they cannot
be all there is to it when it comes to socialism. Those intellectuals who cling
to socialist dreams are neither short on memory nor ignorant of history. Quite
the contrary, some of our most intelligent and well-informed intellectuals are
among them.
Now, every day, we get news reports on self-identifying
socialist politicians proposing to collectivize aspects of our economy – from healthcare
to the environment and in between. How then does one explain this disturbing
development?
A new book from the Institute for Economic Affairs (in London) provides an illuminating explanation and I highly recommend reading it. It is Socialism:
The Failed Idea That Never Dies, by Kristian Niemietz, which can be downloaded
for free from here.
An informative subtitle for this book may have been The Intellectuals and
Socialism were this not associated with F. A. Hayek’s famous article by
that name. “Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen
attempts to build a socialist society” (p. 21). Niemietz provides chapters on
seven of them – the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, North Korea, West Germany
(the GDR, perhaps the most informative chapter), Albania and Venezuela. Each chapter provides a brief outline of the
history, followed by detailed evidence of the predictable pattern of
intellectual assessments that were published at the time. That pattern starts
with praise and optimism about the new attempt to create a ‘true socialism’,
followed by disillusionment at what actually transpires after the honeymoon
period, for which various explanations and excuses are offered, usually
suggesting that those in charge failed to follow through, and this in turn is
followed, once failure is abundantly evident and abuses are impossible to deny,
with condemnation and explanation that this particular historical case was
clearly not one of ‘real socialism’, so socialism as such cannot be condemned
by it. It was driven by the wrong people or by people who were not able and
willing to stay the course. It could have and should have been different. Commonly
they point to the absence of democracy that seems to characterize all these
cases.
This pattern is repeated over again, with variations, in each
case of actual socialist experimentation. First the euphoria, encouragement and
praise that accompanied pilgrimages to the new promised land by the
intellectuals, including some of the western world’s most prominent
intellectuals, then the backtracking by degrees and the making of excuses,
followed finally by disillusionment and disavowal – although this last phase is
also characterized by a remnant of unrepentants who continue to defend the
integrity and the achievements of the experiment, its blemishes notwithstanding.
For example, Jeremy Corbyn, who features in just about every chapter, continues
to defend the Soviet Union in spite of the extermination of around 20 million
people and the brutalizing and abuse of many more, as a noble experiment that
was largely successful. According to him nothing good would come from the
collapse of the Soviet Union (p. 88).
These case studies are found in chapters 2 through 9 and
make up the heart of the book, a valuable source for those seeking an overview
of each of these historical experiments. Bracketing these chapters are chapters
1 and 10 which can be profitably read even if the reader reads nothing else in
the book. Chapter 1 lays out the problem. Socialist ideas are pervasive. There
is a strong knee jerk reaction toward fixing things by putting the government
in charge, nationalizing it, especially in vital areas like education, healthcare,
and the environment, but in other areas as well. Zero-sum thinking appears to
be the default. By contrast, a general understanding of how competitive
capitalism works is seriously lacking. The contrast between the miserable
failures of tried socialism and the achievements of actual capitalism have
somehow produced the opposite of what might be expected, namely, a dissatisfaction
with the latter and a hankering after the promises of the former. This, in
spite of the fact that, as explained, socialism has been tried over and over
again and always ends in disappointment and often disaster.
Some people point to the Scandinavian countries as examples
of successful socialism. This borders on the absurd. In fact, apart from the
fact that these countries have high levels of taxation and high levels of
government involvement in basic services they are very capitalist in nature.
There is no widespread state ownership of property. Private property and the
pursuit of profit is the norm. Sweden experimented briefly with socialist style
tax and regulate policies but abandoned them when they failed. It is now one of
the fastest growing economies in the world and one of the most capitalist
judging by the rules of production.
Chapter 10 explains this curious situation by indulging in a
bit of social psychology, borrowing ideas from the work of Jonathan Haidt and
Bryan Caplan. The common brain evidently
sees in the aims of socialism – equality of outcomes, comradery, compassion,
the absence of scarcity, financial security, …, - a ‘cure’ for all the ills
plaguing our society. And this perception gets insulated against refutation by
various (conscious and unconscious) stratagems. For example, the intellectual
case for socialism never actually spells out in concrete terms the specific
social institutions that will have to be put in place in order to achieve the
socialist nirvana and exactly how this is to be done. The blueprints are
confined to the articulation of highly abstract outcomes. And then, with the
failure of every ‘new’ attempt to achieve these socialist ideals, the attempt
is declared not to be what socialism really is. At bottom every socialist
experiment is judged to be socialist or not by its outcomes not by its
objectives. So, the fact that there has never been a successful attempt to
establish the objectives of a satisfactory socialism is not seen as a
shortcoming of socialism as a set of ideas or policies, but rather as evidence
that the attempt cannot be labelled as real socialism. It is a perfect strategy
for keeping the faith in the face of a challenging reality.
The final chapter (Epilogue) catalogues the pronouncements over
the decades of the newspaper The Guardian on matters socialist and makes
for fascinating reading as to just how wrong you can be and yet keep going.
There is much more, read the book.
