Miscellaneous Rambling: Socialism
I wanted to comment more on that Harvard communism link that I posted yesterday, but I try minimize Sunday blogging (six days a week with my ego is enough). I am stunned at socialism's comeback among college kids today. The evil is baked into its ideology; the evil manifested itself immediately; the evil never left it. Each of these three are addressed immediately below.
Re: The baked-in evil. It comes from three sources:
(1) Socialism immanentizes the eschaton: seeks to bring paradise to earth. Religion's higher purpose has a serious defect in its DNA: it's self-righteous . . . and often ruthless or cruel . . . in its
pursuit of that higher purpose. Religion, however, is more concerned about the after-life. Heavenly concerns trump earthly ones. In a proper religion, all earthly endeavour must be informed by the heavenly, with the result that religious people try to excercise the proper virtues: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, fruitfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity (just to name twelve of them . . . smile). If the transcendent pull--the Ultimate "Check" on Ambition--is eliminated, all that's left is the self-righteousness . . . and ruthlessness and cruelty. Because here's the thing: If you eliminate, or deny, the transcendent pull, it's there nonetheless, so some other "religion" will replace it in your life. That's what happens with socialists. They deny God or any transcendent pull, but they nonetheless continue to experience it, so they replace it with their political schemes . . . and are self-righteous about it . . . and often ruthless or cruel.
(2) Elimination of the pricing mechanism. In a free market, prices provide information. They reflect an uncountable number of factors that every person can consult to determine how to structure his or her daily economic life. Socialism eliminates, or cripples, the pricing mechanism by giving control of the economy to government. Without the pricing mechanism, the economy doesn't work. It's that simple. As the economy starts to break down, the socialist has to implement other controls to make things go the way he or she thinks they should go. This furthers the breakdown as market forces (not to mention individual desires) conflict with the socialist's ideas. The socialist then starts seeing the highest goal--to immanentize the eschaton--evaporate, so he gets ruthless in efforts to bring it about.
(3) Politics always attracts the worst because politics gives a person the right to rule others through the use of government power. It attracts the ambitious . . . the self-centered jackoffs of society. Socialism requires a large and powerful government, so when the jackoffs acquire control of government, they have a lot more power than they would have in a small and weak government.
Re: The evil manifested itself immediately. Marx's personal life, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and all the rest. There is no such thing as a good successful communist, and it's no coincidence (because of the above). I will give more examples at a later date.
Re: The evil never left it. Every time socialism won, it became more and more cruel. The USSR, China, Cambodia, North Korea. The only possible exception I can think of is Vietnam, but that's not even an exception because they started to bring back the free market, like China has. It's way too early to know where these free market reforms will end up, but eventually, they will overthrow socialism as the pricing mechanism undermines government control, though there might be nasty repressions and backsliding incidents along the way.
I don't believe it's a coincidence that two things we thought were dead in the west--socialism and liberal Catholicism--are now showing signs of life.
