Three and a half years ago, in January 2016, I
posted a piece titled China’s
Recovery from Socialism vs. Bernie Sanders, The Most Evil Politician in America, in which I said:
Mao’s grand utopian experiment is estimated to have killed 40-60
million people. Keep that gargantuan famine in mind when you consider Bernie
Sanders, the openly self-described “democratic socialist” who has a real chance
of becoming America’s next president. China under Mao’s collectivism is what
real socialism looks like. Sanders’ policies are actually far from undiluted
socialism. But by dressing up his comparatively benign welfare state agenda in
the garb of socialism, Sanders is creating in many people’s minds—in particular
the uninformed minds of the young—the false idea that socialism isn’t so bad—and even good; in effect, camouflaging socialism’s blood-drenched history under
a cloak of respectability and even compassion.
This sanitization of socialism, to the extent it takes hold in American
culture, will make it easier to push through more and more socialist “reforms”
in the future, accelerating an unsuspecting America down the road to full,
totalitarian socialism.
Given the bloody, authoritarian, impoverished
history of socialism in all of its manifestations, including the democratic and
nationalist brands, Bernie Sanders’ sanitization of socialism makes him, in my
view, the most evil politician in America.
Since then, the Democratic Socialist movement
has taken off. How far it gets is to be determined. But my warning about
Sanders appears to be on target. As Reason’s Robby Soave observes, Socialism
Is Back, and the Kids Are Loving It:
[P]eople like Sanders have studiously worked to get a softer
definition of socialism into circulation. Throughout the 20th century, the
word evoked either the working class directly seizing the means of production
or the government nationalizing industries, setting prices, and reducing or
abolishing the right to own private property. The latter was much more common
in practice, and the countries that took that route—the Soviet Union, mainland
China, the Eastern European states, etc.—had horrific human rights records.
Socialist regimes found it necessary to negate a whole host of individual
rights and to arrest or murder dissidents in order to realize their ends.
But the founders of the DSA rejected Soviet-style socialism.
Despite his own advanced age—and even though he's not a member of
the group himself— Sanders is by far the person most responsible for bringing
this wave of young people into the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America]. His
groundbreaking 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination helped
spread socialist ideas to a generation born after the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
"Bernie Sanders is who introduced me to socialism," says
Alex Pellitteri, co-chair of New York City's chapter of the DSA's youth arm,
the Young Democratic Socialists of America. "I was a Democrat, I was a
liberal, but I had never really crossed that line to socialism."
Essentially, Sanders has done for democratic socialism what Ron
Paul did for libertarianism in the late '00s: make it an exciting, cool,
radical alternative to the mainstream parties' staid orthodoxies.
How did Sanders and his proteges sanitize
socialism? By ignoring the essential totalitarian nature of Marxian socialism.
Soave:
When today's most prominent democratic socialists are asked to
explain their ideology, they tend to skimp on the substantial structural
questions and lean on paeans to dignity, generosity, and equality. Sanders has
defined democratic socialism as "the understanding that all of our people
live in security and dignity" and "a government and an economy and a
society which works for all." Ocasio-Cortez defines it as "democratic
participation in our economic dignity."
It shouldn't be surprising that democratic socialism, reduced to a
set of pleasant-sounding buzzwords and some proposals to give more people free
stuff, is having a moment.
Soave asks, “How dangerous is the democratic
socialist resurgence?” Very. “So far, the strategy is working,” he concludes. “If
you assumed that socialism's appalling 20th century failures would relegate it
permanently to the ash heap of history, you were wrong.”
I agree. We have to learn to “see through” the
pleasant-sounding buzzwords and slogans and get to the structural
questions--the essentials--of democratic socialism. For example, “the
economy” is the sum of the efforts of productive people working and trading in
pursuit of their own individual well-being. For the government to ensure “an
economy and a society which works for all,” it must control the work, property,
and lives of productive members of society; i.e., establish a totalitarian
slave state. There is no other way. Either individuals are free to live for
themselves (capitalism), or they live for the state (socialism).
This is the challenge. Think through the
slogans. Ask how they will be achieved. Don’t be suckered by the DSA’s
rejection of Soviet-style socialism. In every respect, the means to their
benign-sounding ends grows out of the barrel of a governmental gun. In the end,
whatever “style” emerges, socialism is totalitarian. It can be no other way, or
reach any other destination.
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