The Fallacy That Won’t Die

     Our Gentle Readers may have noticed that one of the two major political parties has nominated socialists for president and vice-president of these United States. Kamala Harris’s socialism isn’t perfectly overt, though her inclinations and her totalitarian impulses are quite open. Still a comparison of her advocacies with the 1928 platform of the Socialist Party would make it hard for her to disclaim the label. As for “Tampon Tim” Walz, the less said the better.

     The worldwide failure of socialism has never been more blatant. The Communist nations, with one exception, are all gone; the exception lacks enough calories to keep its subjects alive. The “softer” socialist nations have all been forced to restore at least some measure of capitalism to ward off complete economic collapse. You’d swear that the evidence against socialism is enough to kill it and nail its coffin shut.

     But it is not so, as the socialist subversion of the Democrat Party makes clear.

     I’ve strained to explain to others why socialism refuses to die. The essay below, which I wrote in November of 2003 and which first appeared at the old Palace of Reason, is a good example of my efforts. Perhaps the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch can help me to understand why such explanations remain insufficient to kill the beast.

     At The Brazos de Dios Cantina, proprietress Sharon Ferguson declaims as follows:

     Since when did ideologies like Socialism and Communism become “good” things?

     Am I the only one who seems to notice that more and more people have not only embraced these antiquated ponsi schemes for the elites of society as desirable lifestyles, but display incredible amounts of hatred for ideologies of republicanism and individual freedoms and civic knowledge?

     Have we passed that point of no return in America where students have no education in citizenship, but seek out group philosophy as a means of self-identity?

     Have we allowed the words socialism and communism to become so innocuous and benevolent in our minds that their true and terrible inheritance has metastasized into blatant and defiant agendas?

     Have Socialists and Communists become that brazen, knowing they have had our children in thrall for two generations now?

     These are things I have been wondering about for some time now, reading various blogs that never defend socialism but waste bandwidth in attacking opposing views, hearing actors like Ed Asner praise Stalin and Castro, watching Congressmen play number games not so much to reassert Constitutionality, but to spell the difference between central government as matters of lesser or higher rates.

     Worthy questions all, and not easily answered.

     In the natural sciences, when a proposed theory is disproved by relevant counter-evidence, the theory is usually junked. If it held sway for some significant interval, it’s relocated to the Museum of Illuminating Mistakes. There, knowledgeable tour guides (professors) explain to the visitors (students) how the proponent went wrong, and what significance his idea had for the overall history and development of his field.

     It is not so in the soft disciplines, such as economics and political science. The unique hybrid of these called political economy continues to drag every discredited theory in human history behind it, like the trail of a slug — because no theory in political economy is ever sufficiently discredited to flense away all its adherents.

     In part, this is because there are no controlled experiments in the social sciences. Human societies cannot be experimented on like lab rats. Therefore, all evidence of any sort is open to objections to its real significance. But in larger measure, it’s because of the hybrid nature of political economy, which is of occupational interest to two disparate groups:

• economists,
• politicians.

     These groups diverge widely, unbelievably so, in their motivations. Economists seek to understand the way societies structure themselves as individuals pursue their various visions of happiness and fulfillment. Politicians seek power. They bring those orientations with them to their considerations of socialism, which is first and foremost a model for political economy.

     But there are other divergences that matter, too.

     Human decisions, including decisions about ideological allegiances, descend from human motives. Therefore, the enveloping question — why are so many people so friendly toward socialism? — must be decomposed into lesser questions, according to the motives of those to whom it applies.

     The ranks of socialist loyalists contain:

1. people who are motivated by a desire to help others,
2. people who are motivated by a desire for power over others,
3. people who are greatly envious of others who have more than they.

     Despite socialism’s perfect record of failure, there are still millions of people in group 1, the Good Intentions Brigade. Your Curmudgeon will refrain from any wisecracks about asphalt or compasses, for what we see here is among the most poignant of tragedies: a laudable concern for the well-being of one’s fellow man, harnessed to an idea that has intensified poverty wherever it’s been tried. That the idea keeps being tried testifies both to the power of good intentions and to their insufficiency. Wishing that socialism would work will not make it work, but that won’t stop the well-intentioned man from thinking with his wishes rather than his logic center.

     Of course, like the poor, power-seekers will always be with us. Some fraction of humanity seems to be born with the libido dominandi in control of its soul. Whatever socialism’s faults as a system for economic development and the distribution of society’s products, it’s unparalleled as a rationale for the concentration of irresistible power in the hands of a few. This raises the tragedy of the Good Intentions Brigade to a towering height. To rise to the station they covet, the power-seekers in group 1 uniformly require the support of the good guys in group 2. To get that, they must conceal their real motivations — something at which the professional politician is unusually good.

     Regarding the envious, there is much that can be said. Nearly all of it has been said brilliantly and definitively by Dr. Helmut Schoeck in his 1969 book Envy: A Theory Of Social Behaviour. All your Curmudgeon need do for the purposes of this discourse is to emphasize that the envious man willingly accepts damage to himself and his interests, if he can thereby damage those whom he envies. Socialism, which degrades the condition of all, is a perfect fit to the psyche of the envious man.

     We must now consider the inadequate resistance of those who have no love for socialism. Some of these are simply numb to political economy, or to ideology of any sort. Others, while interested, might lack the knowledge or the analytical skills to penetrate the matter. Still others are more clear-sighted, considering socialism a threat to freedom and prosperity and a betrayal of the nature of Man, but they can still be less than effective as opponents of it. Here in America, these persons easily outnumber the socialists, yet for more than a century, the socialist tide has advanced steadily and the sphere of freedom has steadily shrunk. Why?

     Again, no single explanation will cover all the facts. There are many persons who are simply not knowledgeable or articulate enough to mount a defense of the free market or a coherent assault on the inherently static logic and Utopian visions of socialism, and therefore give way before the verbal nimbleness and erudition of socialism’s promoters. There are others who suffer from undeserved guilt over their own prosperity, and see socialism and comparable redistribution schemes as a way of doing penance. There are those who, while not consciously friendly toward socialism, distrust freedom — others’ freedom, not their own. And there are those who can be seduced with a public-spirited rationale, of which we’ve heard God’s own plenty this century past.

     In our own time, it can be very difficult to sustain the necessary interest and perspective to appreciate the failures of socialism. This applies with particular force to the “micro-socialisms” inherent in government control of specific industries or activities. For example, not many people have enough breadth of experience or historical knowledge to grasp just how completely educational socialism — the highly privileged, near-monopoly status of the government’s schools and the bureaucrats who operate them — has ruined American education. Acquiring that sort of knowledge takes concentration and determination. Most people have other things on which they’d rather spend their time.

     In consequence, when a “for the greater good” rationale carries the day, and an area of life is socialized, few will bother to collect the necessary baseline information that would buttress later negative evaluations of the socialized system’s performance, vis a vis the displaced free-market alternative. Meanwhile, the socialized area will acquire an Iron Triangle: bureaucrats who work for the system, vendors who sell to the system, and persons who contrive to acquire direct benefits from the system even though they’re outside it. The members of these communities of interest will mount a fanatical defense of the system whenever it’s questioned. Because they have a short, coherent agenda and strong personal motivations, they nearly always manage to stand their ground. They use tactics such as the Washington Monument Defense to discourage anyone from attempting even to trim their areas of control.

     Against opposition this staunch, the typical, indifferently-knowledgeable, indifferently-motivated citizen, even if he has no love for socialism or schemes for government management of parts of the economy, will usually step aside. He’ll award the benefit of the doubt even when there is no doubt. He’ll defer to “experts,” who, being part of the Iron Triangle, always side with the socialist forces. Even the clearest-eyed, most knowledgeable and most passionate anti-socialist will usually fail. He has other things to attend to; he doesn’t make his living defending freedom, after all.

     How does the socialist message manage to predominate in our freedom-oriented, capitalist society? Do the socialists have a special set of techniques they can use to glamorize their message well beyond its objective virtues?

     Yes and no. It’s not a matter of special technique, but of special technicians. Nearly everyone who goes into the communications or entertainment field will tend to sympathize more with socialism than with freedom.

     Some years ago, a retired computer salesman named Marshall Fritz formed a freedom-promoting organization called the Advocates for Self-Government. In his researches, Fritz discovered that certain political opinions tend to correlate strongly with certain psychological predispositions. In particular, those who were most receptive to the socialist ideology also tended to be most driven by emotional considerations, as measured by the famous Keirsey-Bates personality inventory.

     The emotion-oriented personality also dominates the communications and entertainment industries. Apparently, an emotion orientation either produces communications skills or predisposes one to acquire them. So the very persons most adept at conveying ideas and attitudes to others are naturally receptive to socialist ideas.

     Numerous implications radiate from this, but two stand above the rest:

• There’s no conspiracy involved. The natural communications skills of the emotion-oriented person simply correlate with a predisposition toward governmental — i.e., socialist — solutions to “problems,” however defined.
• Any promoter of any concept who can “enlist” the professional communicators and entertainers will gain a huge advantage in the marketplace of ideas. Therefore, for conservatives and libertarians, there’s no alternative to the attempt to enlist them; no other consideration could be as large.

     This recalls the strategy consciously conceived by Sidney and Beatrice Webb and the British Fabian Society, which promoted socialism in Britain. The Fabians targeted the communications organs of the Labour Party, and gradually came to dominate them. Once so ensconced, they were able to control Labour’s “internal” messages to its adherents, and in time gained control over its policies. What happened through planned action in Great Britain has happened through unconscious, spontaneous action in the Democratic Party and the major media in the United States. (It’s also an illustration of Conquest’s Second Law: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”)

     Though Ann Coulter and others who have decried the censoriousness of the Left, which holds the power seats in broadcasting, journalism, and publishing, are entirely correct, there is little to be done about it. The “mature” forms of those industries are essentially closed to change. Their barons are uneasy about (if not outrightly hostile to) freedom and its outcroppings, and cannot bear to let the voices of freedom’s promoters reach the public unfiltered. These strong points for the dissemination of socialist ideas cannot be brought down by siege; they’re simply too well defended. They must be bypassed by the creation of alternative channels of communication.

     National Review columnist Florence King used to say that, when a pundit approaches the Last Graf, he’d better have some suggestions to present. His readers will expect them.

     Sadly, your Curmudgeon, while passionate about freedom and horrified at the inroads socialism has made on the liberty of Americans, has no suggestions to make. Generally speaking, he hews to Nock’s Dictum that the only way to improve society is to improve yourself. In part, that’s because it’s a good idea, but it’s also less likely to annoy the neighbors than stomping around with a placard and a bullhorn. Swapping ideas with like-minded others, and writing essays such as this one, with whatever persuasive power they might possess, is all he knows how to do.

     One hopes more penetrating minds are at work.

     CODA: My dear and brilliant friend Duyen, after reading the essay above, had something ominous to say:

DK: We’re in deep shit, Flashy.
FWP: Why do you say that?
DK: Because the forces that keep socialism alive are inextinguishable.
FWP: You don’t think they can be successfully countered?
DK: Not a chance. And about that “more penetrating minds” bit?
FWP: Hm?
DK: You know perfectly well there aren’t any.

     Duyen has a damnable habit of being right.