A recent Foundation of Economic Education
article by James Davenport argues that Democratic
Socialism Doesn't Exist: Like the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, Democratic
Socialism Exists Only in Myth. I take issue with this
terminology. Republican socialism doesn’t exist. Democratic socialism certainly
can. But that is an issue for another column.
Davenport’s main argument is that socialism is
(or inevitably leads to) totalitarianism because socialism by definition
eliminates private property, which means “the end of individuals and
corporations owning, improving, and exchanging resources, goods, and services,”
leading to ever-increasing central control of all economic activity. (The socialist
abolition of private property can be accomplished through outright confiscation
or totally controlled, though nominally privately owned, property.) Davenport
makes a point that I want to address:
The entire notion of democratic socialism is simply a fiction.
By hailing certain Nordic
countries as successful examples
of democratic socialism, these candidates mislead people about the true nature
of both socialism and capitalism.
The fact is that the very countries Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez
praise have market-capitalist
economies.
Not only are they market-capitalist systems, several of them rank
higher than the U.S. in economic freedom comparisons.
What Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and their supporters label as
democratic socialism is actually market capitalism with a robust (some argue
unsustainable) social safety net.
I don't believe Sanders et al are making an
innocent mistake.
The creation of the so-called "social
safety net" has always been the means by which
socialists could gradually transform capitalist
America into a socialist state. "The American people will never knowingly
adopt Socialism," said six-time US Socialist Presidential Candidate Norman
Thomas. "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."
But the welfare state has its limits, inherent
in the very notion of a "safety net" for capitalism. The socialists
have taken the welfare state as far as it can. To complete the transformation,
a new rationale was needed.
Enter democratic socialism. We are now being
told that our welfare state has been socialism all along. Do you collect Social
Security? Send your kids to public schools? Support food stamps to help feed
the poor? Well, that's socialism--democratic socialism! See? That's not so bad,
is it? But unlike the social safety net, democratic socialism implies no
limits. Get people to accept democratic socialism, and the road to totalitarian
socialism is cleared.
I believe the miss-identifying of the Nordic
mixed economies as socialist is deliberately intended to sanitize socialism's
actual nature and record in order to pave the way for actual totalitarian
socialism in America. Once Americans begin to identify its comparatively benign
welfare state with socialism, real socialism can continue to be smuggled in
piece by piece, so that by the time Americans catch on, it will be too late.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,"
imposed by the guns of state, will have arrived--along with its inevitable
consequence of economic paralysis and collapse, and the total state.
With important midterm elections approaching, it's imperative to know what the Democratic Party is up to.
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