Sunday, November 4, 2018

Democrat[s] Against Socialism?

The New Jersey Star-Ledger posted a guest column by Mark Dunec, the 2014 Democratic candidate in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District. In I'm a Democrat who ran for this N.J. Congressional seat. I'm supporting the Republican on 10/31/18, Dunec explains his several reasons for his decision to endorse Republican Jay Webber over Democrat Mikie Sherrill. This sentence caught my attention:

Over the last several years I have had increasing concerns that the mainstream Democratic elected officials and candidates have embraced a socialist ideology.

I don’t know much about Dunec other than what he wrote here. I left these comments, slightly edited for clarity:

The increasing embrace of socialism by the Democratic Party is a sea change away from the “liberal” welfare state Democrats, so it’s important to get this understanding right. Welfare statism is different in crucial respects from socialism, democratic or otherwise. The limited socialism of the welfare state, while rights-violating, is supposedly intended only as a “safety net” for capitalism, not a replacement. Under the modern welfare state, individual rights and free enterprise are still fundamental.

Unlike welfare statism, socialism leaves no room for freedom. The distinction is important. Honest socialists like Robert L. Heilbroner acknowledged long ago that socialism is utterly incompatible with personal freedom, requiring the brutal repression not just of economic freedom (markets, property rights), but also of political and intellectual freedom. Dissent cannot be tolerated. “Moral commitments ... to the rights of individuals [and the] celebration of individualism [are] directly opposed to the basic socialist commitment to a deliberately embraced collective moral goal.” Socialism is not a bigger welfare state. It is the complete regimentation of society administered by the unrestrained brute force of the state. Once a government acquires the power that socialism requires, it will not tolerate any threat to that power.

Socialism is totalitarian by ideological design, and in practice. The Democratic Party’s new democratic socialists will scream their denials. But socialism’s intellectual leadership knows better. As Heilbroner bluntly admonishes, it is a “delusion” to think “we can have a socialist cake with bourgeois [capitalist] icing.”

In terms of protection of inalienable individual rights, the Republican Party is a mixed bag. But the emerging metamorphosis of the Democratic Party toward socialism is pure evil. So I hope Dunec represents a new movement--Democrats Against Socialism. We need it.

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2 comments:

Mike Kevitt said...

Robert L. Heilbroner must be the same Heilbroner who, along with Lester Thurow, co-authored the book, Economics Explained (with long sub-title), with several editions during the '80's and '99's. If so, I didn't know he was an out-and-out socialist. From reading Economics Explained, I thought he was a very thorough mixed economy liberal. This might increase my ability to judge these things.

Mike Kevitt said...

Robert L. Heilbroner must be the same Heilbroner who, along with Lester Thurow, co-authored the book, Economics Explained (with long sub-title), with several editions during the '80's and '90's. If so, I didn't know he was an out-and-out socialist. From reading Economics Explained, I thought he was a very thorough mixed economy liberal. This might increase my ability to judge these things.