Why Socialism Has More Lives Than the Phoenix

Socialism, in its purest and most advanced form, is a political and economic system in which the means of production and the distribution of goods and services are owned, controlled, or directed by the government. In one form or another, it has been around for more than two centuries. It eventually disappears or degenerates into autocracy, only to reappear after those who had to contend with it have passed away as did the fearful Israelites described in Numbers who rebelled against God and Moses out of fear of entering the Promised Land and were punished by 40 years of meandering.

Like the Israelites fear is the driver of socialism’s constant rise from the ashes of failure. Fear of not succeeding in a competitive world drives its recrudescence. In capitalism there are winners and losers. People are free to take risks and succeed based on a combination of merit and luck. They are also free to fail. Freedom or liberty is the operative word. Another reason for its cyclical reemergence is the inchoate desire to make life better. It’s very easy to change things, but making them better is much harder. It often requires knowledge of such amount that no individual or group of individuals possesses.

Few aspects of human interaction are more fraught with peril than the inadequately informed desire to do good. This compulsion is usually the combination of virtue signaling and a decent, but inadequately reasoned, wish to help the unfortunate.

As Kant observed, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” Hence, capitalism will be contaminated by rent seekers, crooked politicians, cheats, and other assorted villains out to rig the system to their advantage at the expense of the public good. The failure here is not that of capitalism, but of humanity.

The same human beings will exist under any system of government, including socialism. Thus, the choice is always to find the least flawed structure for government. Socialism is, as stated above, a system where essentially all commercial intercourse (and much more) is run by the government. The government is not a machine; it’s a conglomerate of leaders of varying power and status and armies of bureaucrats. For now, at least, they are all human.

Since there is no individual or corporate profit motive, the leaders of a socialist society will focus exclusively on maintaining or increasing their power. The bureaucrats will similarly want to preserve their jobs and any perks that accompany them. The main difference between capitalism and socialism is individual liberty. Human cupidity contaminates both systems. But irrespective of whatever else accompanies it, do not underestimate the inestimable value of liberty.

As Adam Smith famously observed, tradesmen provide goods – like a baker baking bread – not out of a desire to feed their neighbors out of the goodness of their hearts, but to make a living. In doing so, their pursuit of personal profit inadvertently fulfills consumers’ needs. In a socialist system, the baker and his like have quotas unrelated to profit and thus no incentive to make more bread than they are required to – often they make less.

Since all-out socialism sets limits on freedom of action and assumes all power worth mentioning to the government, it often degenerates into autocracy. Governments that try to combine aspects of socialism with capitalism often find that their welfare programs and other activities, dependent on what can be extracted from the baker and his like, run out of money as they exceed what is being produced.

If men were angels, we could have socialism. But then we wouldn’t need it. Its flaws are so obvious that only intellectuals and their pupils could find them attractive. It also appeals to fools and knaves who wish to control the actions of mankind according to their vision of the correct structure of life. Typically, it is the latter who leads the former.

To paraphrase Churchill, capitalism may be the worst economic system known to man except for all the others. While it’s easy to say how it should work, we must concede that human nature will contaminate it as it does virtually everything else. But we can try to make it better.

Governments, by their size, scope, and intrinsic nature, don’t do anything well. Regardless, there are a few rules, observed most often in the breach, that we should try to follow. The government should provide only those services necessary for the well-being of its people, services that they cannot reasonably be expected to do for themselves. It should provide for the national defense. It should pass laws that are designed to improve the condition of its citizens and not to further the desires of special interests looking to raid the public treasury or to gain powers not congruent with the nation’s good. .

The legislature should not cede to the executive powers that are clearly assigned to it by the Constitution. All elected officers should be term-limited. If the president is term-limited, all other officials whose job is by definition less complicated should likewise hold office for only a specified term.

The judicial branch should interpret the laws according to their texts and intent, not for partisan purposes. Of course, most if not all of these will not happen because of Kant’s two and a half century old aphorism. Nevertheless, as the perfect is the enemy of the good, we should try to do the best we can, given our intrinsic flaws.

We should also recognize that socialism is so laden with dross that it can only make the human condition worse. The current fascination with it will run its course, and we’ll go back to our less-than-perfect ways of muddling through in a free society – if we’re lucky.