In a previous article about socialism, I outlined the basic reasons why profit-seeking capitalists are essential to the productivity and income of workers and to satisfying the desires of consumers, why increasing government controls over the economy plays into the hands of exploitative corporatist elites, and why socialization of the means of production ultimately requires central planning to coordinate production and preserve a division of labor, which in turn necessitates the evils of totalitarian tyranny in spite of the democratic aspirations of many well-meaning socialists. In brief, ordinary people cannot gain a greater voice and a freer life through curtailment of private ownership; socialism necessarily leads to the mass poverty and mass regimentation of totalitarian tyranny.
Such a characterization of socialism is far from being new, and of course there has been ample historical experience of numerous socialist states over a little more than a century that dramatically illustrates just how horrible socialist-induced mass poverty and mass regimentation can get in practice. In spite of all that has been learned about socialism over the past century (including well over 100,000,000 civilians murdered by socialist regimes), socialist ideas have had an increase in popularity lately, especially among recent college graduates who, if they had ever gotten a real education, ought to know better. So what’s up with that? Why does anyone still take socialism seriously?
A rational analysis of the dangers of poverty, regimentation, and concentration camps do not necessarily resonate with those who have been taught to disdain straightforward economic and political reasoning (and even to disdain elementary biological facts about the binary nature of inherited human genders) and have been taught to deny outright historical facts about the horrific crimes of totalitarian socialist states—apart from Nazi Germany, where instead the socialist character of the horrifically criminal state is denied.
Increasingly since the 1960s, students have been taught to view culture and ethics solely through the lens of power struggles and differences in social identities. In an intolerant atmosphere of identitarian special pleading, dissent is seen as a dangerous threat to be deplatformed and kept out of ideologically-pure “safe spaces” and not as an opportunity for engaging in a civil dialogue that mutually advances a better understanding of reality among everyone involved. Speech is denigrated as a mere tool of power which only the politically correct should engage in.
The zeitgeist prevailing in academia today favors the principle that mere individuals ought to sacrifice their natural yearnings for material prosperity and personal autonomy, instead becoming intolerant zealots engaged in a crusade to reprogram every aspect of society, striving to stamp out the hobgoblin of “oppression” everywhere. This “oppression” is not defined in terms of actual violations of personal autonomy (i.e., as aggression against an individual’s ownership of oneself and one’s peacefully acquired possessions), but rather in terms of allegedly “systemic” obstacles to society achieving utopian visions of group “representation” and intergroup “equity.”
In reality, a free society necessarily poses insuperable obstacles against any holistic vision society, as autonomous individuals stubbornly refuse to give up their own personal values and spontaneously-propagated norms. As Ludwig von Mises explained, “all varieties of universalistic, collectivistic, and holistic social philosophy” can only beget wars and civil wars precisely because their doctrines are not subject to individual rational scrutiny and judgment, thus ruling out peaceful persuasion as a means for harmonizing values. A socialist economy is but one dimension of a power-lusting ambition to dictate lifestyles and dictate relationships outside of the sphere of production as well.
Slogans like “social justice” are intended to impose uniformity upon society instead of establishing rules which give self-directed individuals their own space to pursue their own choices and to render their social interactions contingent upon voluntarily-shared values. Instead of being educated to observe, think, speak, and act for themselves so they can function as independent adults, contemporary college students are indoctrinated to believe that asserting personal independence through peaceful expressions of moral judgments like criticism, discrimination, etc. constitutes a crime against the dignity of others and a perpetuation of a system of “oppression” against them and their cultures.
To understand socialism’s appeal, we must examine how four basic socialistic premises systematically exploit ignorance and psychological weaknesses.
One important variety of socialist thought is scientism (or “positivism”), which was derived from Plato’s idea that progress requires the conscious, intentional domination of society by an intellectually-superior elite (the “philosopher-kings”). The modern technocratic version of this ideology began in Napoleon Bonaparte’s military engineering school, the École polytechnique, and was promoted in the early 19th century by such figures as Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte. Later in the century, this rationale for central planning fused with the moral crusading of Protestant postmillennial pietism (particularly its social reforming “Benevolent Empire” variant, which arose from the ethical doctrines of 18th century Calvinist theologian Jonathan Edwards) to give rise to American Progressivism.
A second variety that first arose in Germany in the early 19th century is historicism, the fatalistic notion that social changes are dictated by impersonal forces that mere individual decision-makers can’t control. History proceeds inexorably from one stage to the next of its own accord, with individuals being mere puppets of destiny. Conservative versions of historicism stress that some existing state already represents the pinnacle of progress if not social perfection; any opposition to state authority constitutes an unholy rebellion against social goodness. The most famous champion of this view, G. F. W. Hegel brazenly proclaimed that “the State is God’s Will.”
Revolutionary versions of historicism, on the other hand, proclaim that society is inexorably regressing towards an dark, apocalyptic crisis that will ultimately lead to a new and better stage of history. One can only choose to be on the winning or losing side of the climatic revolutionary struggle, so anyone who wants to flourish in the next stage of history would do well to blindly follow the ruthless vanguard of the revolution and the god-like providence that is guaranteeing its inevitable success. The “scientific” prophet Karl Marx famously championed this view, giving rise to the Communist movement.
A third variety posits that a desire for private ownership is mere vanity and the resulting property-based civilization an immoral departure from the peace and simplicity of life in a state of nature, a view popularized in the 18th century by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Envy and a disdain for civilized life are reimagined as virtues in spite of the fact that radical egalitarianism and primitivism are severe obstacles to an individual’s happiness.
A fourth variety is based on moral skepticism and relativism. If “good” and “evil” are just subjectively-chosen constructs where unchanging facts regarding our common humanity are seen as irrelevant to optimizing one’s pursuit of happiness, then one can arbitrarily decide what is “good” while manipulating or forcing everyone else to submit to one’s will, thus reimagining oneself as a kind of quasi-god who is above all moral restraints. This “will to power” repudiation of ethics was popularized in the late 19th century by Friedrich Nietzsche.
These four varieties of socialist illiberalism are not mutually exclusive, nor are their intellectual origins and underlying premises clearly spelled out to most students. Instead, contempt for intellectual inferiors, a fatalistic sense that individual purposefulness (and by extension individual rights) don’t really matter, manufactured moral outrage about accumulations of wealth and about the demands that civilized life imposes upon natural wilderness and upon war-mongering tribes of hunter-gatherers (romanticized in the tradition of Rousseau as being culturally superior “noble savages”), and delusions of godhood are often presented in various combinations as unspoken premises that aren’t to be questioned, let alone seriously examined or disputed.
In his books like The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality and Epistemological Problems of Economics, Mises explored some of the psychological motivations driving the acceptance of such premises. While success under capitalism demands service to the desires of others, those who are convinced of their own intellectual superiority deeply resent consumer sovereignty. While private ownership implies that independent adults must face adversity and take personal responsibility for realizing their values, people who lack the self-confidence to function as mature adults instead project their infantilized tendencies onto others, fearfully clinging to the state as a kind of substitute mommy to care for the needy and substitute daddy to impose discipline upon the naughty.
While competition preferentially rewards those who are better at serving consumers, the less successful often find it more satisfying to embrace envy and blame the system instead of blaming themselves for their personal shortcomings. While cooperation under capitalism requires moral self-restraint and observance of common norms, those who chafe at such social constraints yearn to cast them off and dominate others instead.
Popular socialist premises, in other words, appeal to primordial vices like contempt, cowardice, envy, and intemperance—the irony of labeling centralized control over production “socialism” is that its popularity is derived from profoundly anti-social dispositions. A devaluation of one’s fellow humans based on irrationality and sheer ignorance is the dark truth underlying socialism’s appeal.
