The problems of socialism

A CRITIQUE OF THE CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF SOCIALISM

The contemporary resurgence of socialist language in political discourse is curious given the unpleasant history of that doctrine. There are likely many reasons for this resurgence, some being characteristics of the ideology itself and others being characteristics of the population that adopts it. The former includes pleasant sounding aspirations such as equality and justice, and the latter consists of such things as confusion and ignorance regarding socialism's past. One would think that a working knowledge of the socialist histories of the National Socialist German Workers Party, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the Khmer Rouge, the Communist People's Republic of China or the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela would create obstacles to adoption of socialist theories. It is likely that there is a significant measure of ignorance regarding the body count, general misery and economic failure associated with 20th century socialist regimes. However, ignorance in itself is not persuasive. Proponents of socialism promote their doctrine by defining the atrocities away from other elements of socialist beliefs. Nazi aggression and genocide, the Holodomor, the gulags, the Killing Fields, and the Cultural Revolution are either not acknowledged or presented as historical accidents coinciding with socialist practice.

It is not unfair to say that history has not been kind to socialism and vice versa. It is not hyperbole to note that the results of socialist government have been simply evil. It is also reasonable, and in fact necessary, to conclude that many of the failures of socialism were due to inherent weaknesses in its doctrines and philosophies. Stated simply, the history of socialism as a large scale governing principle is one of misery and failure. There must be something other than the objective historical record and semantic skill in describing what socialism is and is not that accounts for its ability to insinuate itself into current political thought.

The theory of Socialism has much to recommend it if one is willing to neglect its practical effects. The ideal of Socialism seems to address a problem that needs addressing, i.e. the observable inequitable distribution of resources and wealth within a society. Socialism, with its de-emphasis of competition appears to promote a more cohesive and agreeable community. It also has an intuitive appeal in that it presents as an extrapolation of the types of behaviors that are necessary to succeed in a society and which are taught in early childhood: sharing, concern for others, and empathy for the struggling and disadvantaged. In a related manner there are many socialist institutions that appear to function well within non-socialist societies. There are also practical appeals that, theoretically at least, endorse a socialist approach. For example, using the authority and access to force that is conferred upon government provides a shortcut to constructing a social safety net. Finally, there is a defect in capitalism, against which socialism is frequently counter posed, and that is described in Chesterton's observation that "too much capitalism results in too few capitalists." Capitalism creates a problem of concentration of wealth as a by-product of economic growth, a problem that socialism pretends to solve.

When these appeals are made to a audience that is largely comfortable, and in fact complacent given the relative affluence and lack of existential threats, it is easy to indulge uncritical acceptance of them if for no other reason than the self flattery that results from the adoption of nice-sounding, and theoretically virtuous ideas. Until the unpleasant realities that intruded upon earlier socialist experiments arise, socialism can remain fashionable. Socialism will always appear more attractive as an idea than it becomes in reality. This is not a defect of either socialism or its proponents; it simply reflects the truth that ideas may promise more than does experience, and that one is naturally prone to aspire to more than what the world will ultimately deliver. Anyone who cannot imagine a utopia, even with no prospect of ever achieving it, does not have much of an imagination. Thus the appeal of the socialist ideal is compelling even though it is false.

Some of the appeal of socialism is due to its proponents selectively disavowing socialism's past failures while also adopting successes that are not socialist. It is common to hear that the mass deaths that accompanied the socialist enterprises of the 20th century and the ongoing economic catastrophe that is Venezuela were not part of socialism per se but rather an artifact of circumstance. In a similar way it is claimed that public financing of endeavors such as roads, schools and public services are species of socialism when they are in fact methods of allocating the benefits of private enterprise to public purposes. Medicare for example is not socialized medicine, as it is a method of financing health care that is provided by a variety of public, private, charitable, for-profit and nonprofit entities. Robust public enterprises, such as are seen in Scandinavian countries, are presented as triumphs of socialism even though the economic systems that produce the ability to fund them are market-based and reliant on protection of property rights. 

The inevitable confusion that results from these loose definitions of what is and is not socialism makes socialism appear more appealing that it otherwise would be. The disclaiming of responsibility for socialism's more spectacular human and economic catastrophes, as well as its claimed association with enterprises that are simply good public policy, but not socialism, do not function to hone socialism into a useful doctrine; rather they obscure the inherent defects of the ideology.

The observable fact that socialism in general, as opposed to isolated examples of socialist institutions within larger non-socialist ones, is unable to produce the socialist ideal is due to fundamental defects rather than poor execution. The benefits of ideal socialism are often highlighted against the real-world drawbacks of capitalism, thus offering socialism as a preferred alternative. In practice, capitalism does what capitalism is intended to better than socialism does what it is intended to do. There are certainly some things that capitalism leaves undone but these deficiencies are not endorsements of socialism.

The fundamental and unremediable flaw of socialism is that it lacks an optimizing mechanism. The complementary flaw in capitalism is that it's optimizing mechanisms work too well. Capitalism contains two such mechanisms that are largely responsible for the human progress and improved quality of life experienced by humankind over the preceding three centuries. These are the market and competition. The market is the mechanism by which matters of value are communicated among members of a society such that the total value of items in that market are increased by the transactions that occur there. One party to a transaction gives up something that is of less value to him for something that he values more and the other party to the transaction does likewise. The market is indispensable to people improving their lives because the value of a particular item is subjective and varies among different persons. Markets allow people to obtain those things which are most valuable to them, as opposed to acquiring those which an authority tells them should be valuable to them.

Competition can be understood by comparing it with collaboration or cooperation. These latter processes are most useful when allocating limited resources, for which hoarding would be disadvantageous to the larger society. Competition is an optimizing mechanism for processes. It is the method that nature has chosen to achieve optimization in evolution. It is also the process by which one identifies the most and least promising methods for accomplishing a particular end. It is the process that allows one to determine what is best with respect to objective criteria, rather than sentiment, ephemeral emotion or fashion. Furthermore while cooperation and collaboration may initially provide a rational basis of allocation of limited resources, competition may produce a process that most efficiently uses those same resources.

Socialism lacks the objective processes of optimization and improving efficiency. Instead, it seeks to determine relative merit and improve processes by planning and resort to "experts." This creates an endless regression of shortcomings in that there is no optimizing mechanism for planning or choosing experts. More particularly, there is no optimizing mechanism for choosing who should be given control of the process, and those who attain such positions often do so because of abilities largely irrelevant to the claims of the socialist ideal. Particular attention should be paid to selection of leadership. Human history has not yet identified the optimal mechanism for choosing leaders. Large institutions with ancient and successful histories, such as the Catholic Church have taken approaches that were not universally successful. Democracy has some laudable attributes and some drawbacks as a method for conferring power and authority. Native American Indian tribes, hereditary monarchies, Mafia families, and various other sorts of organizations have used different and often changing methods for selecting leaders. The lack of emergence of an optimal method for selecting leaders is not surprising. If a person attains the position of leader to which he has long aspired, such as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, or Mao Zedong, he would not be friendly to optimizing processes that may depose him as not being the optimal leader. In this circumstance these leaders attention must be allocated to remaining the leader and to accomplishing whatever agenda the leader may prefer at any given time. It should not escape notice that many of the socialist regimes that were associated with mass death and economic calamity had leaders whose terms were limited only by their deaths or forceful removal following war.

The success of socialism depends on leadership whose selection is, in reality, not based on their ability to bring about the ideals of socialism. Those who successfully obtain leadership do so largely on their ability to exploit political weaknesses and understand inefficient and insular bureaucratic machinery, rather than their ability to improve the overall quality of life of others. The inherent dependence of socialism on bureaucracy is another weakness of the doctrine. Bureaucracies have interests beyond their stated purpose. The longer they exist, the more self perpetuating they become for their own sake. They become risk averse, complacent, inefficient and possessed of interests that do not coincide with a larger society. This has the tendency to stifle innovation. In a similar manner it neglects the fact that innovation and progress often involve significant risk-taking and does not compensate people for the assumption of risk. Socialism in fact does the opposite, encouraging risk avoidance.

One of the most pernicious and profound defects of socialism is that incentives within a socialist system are incompatible with human nature. The fundamental point was expressed by Schopenhauer's observation that a man can do what he wants but cannot want what he wants. A person is motivated by those things that he inherently values. and he expends his time and resources in the manner that is most meaningful to him. This applies to truly selfish interests as well as to public minded ones, such as charitable giving and service in the military during time of national emergency. These are things that arise from the interplay of socializing instincts, self-interest, personality, spiritual beliefs and how each interacts with the community around him. They are not taught, and cannot be instilled on command. The socialist cannot tell a man what is important to him and expect it to be so. This is why black markets arise in planned economies and why socialist enterprises of any scale, such as the Israeli kibbutzim and Plymouth Plantation were forced to reform their economic models.

The socialist enterprise relies on appeals to what the socialist thinks that the people should want rather than what they actually do want. Since these appeals predictably do not work, the socialist authority necessarily must resort to threats of and use of government force. Force, and all of the negative consequences that it inspires is inherent to a system that is so much at odds with individual values and human nature. This, probably more than anything else is what explains the atrocities associated with socialism in the 20th century.

The above observations apply to socialism as an over-arching political and economic system. The historical record indicates that large scale socialism does not work. This is not to deny that there are some communities within market-capitalist societies that function quite well on socialist principles. In addition, some societies that have market-based economies have socialist institutions that function reasonably well as part of their social welfare systems. The choice between capitalism and socialism is often presented as a false dichotomy, that a society must be either one or the other. This is contrary to both experience and common sense. There are alternatives that seek to incorporate the practical benefits of capitalism with the ideal aspirations of socialism, such as Distributism advocated by Dorothy Day and Hillaire Belloc. While the goal of Distributism had much in common with socialism, e.g. redistributing the resources of a society in an equitable manner, it recognized the importance of private property.

Capitalism and socialism may be ideologically opposed but in practice they have a great deal in common. Economic prosperity is produced by capital. In the capitalist model the capital is held by private citizens and the socialist model is held by the government, but it is nonetheless capital. In the capitalist model there is a disparity in the wealth accumulated by those who provide value and those who do not, and in the socialist model there is a disparity in the wealth accumulated by those who rule and those who do not. In both cases wealth accrues to those who control the capital.

One of the claims of socialism's proponents is that it produces more "equality" than does capitalism. This is likely true, however it is not at all certain that this equality results from improving the bad as opposed to degrading the good. One institution that may fairly be described as socialist in the United States is the public education system. Yet one cannot reasonably claim that the outcomes of this system are even arguably equal. There are vast discrepancies in the outcomes of wealthy suburban school districts compared to their impoverished inner-city counterparts. Even within the same socialized school building the outcomes vary markedly. This is not a shortcoming that is unique to socialism. It is an inescapable fact of human life. If one were to go to an explicitly socialist country one would also observe discrepancies and outcomes between various identifiable groups, such as the children of government leaders and the children of less prominent status. This is true not only of education but of a great many other things that are presumed to derive equality by adopting some socialist characteristics. There is no society on earth that has a single tiered education system. There is no society on earth that has a single tiered health care system or justice system. This does not result from any inherent, fixable flaw in a political or economic doctrine, is a natural consequence of the fact that hierarchies are inherent and immutable. This is simply a practical observation of Orwell's aphorism that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

The resurgent approval of socialism does not result from improvements in the doctrine of socialism over that which has such an unhappy history. It does have something to do with disregard of that history. Just as it is easier to assume that an iconic image of Che Guevara represents revolutionary heroism than it is to do the minimal investigation necessary to see that he was a psychotic killer, it is easier to be seduced by the platitudes of socialism than it is to inquire into its reality. Socialism is most appealing where it is least understood. Socialism, for all of its appeal to virtue, and even given its occasional successes in limited environments, cannot be scaled up to a workable governing principle. It has its place, but it is a small one. One does not need to believe capitalist propaganda to realize this, or dismiss the claims of socialism's defenders outright to arrive at this conclusion. One needs only investigate the historical difference between what the socialists promised and the misery that they actually delivered.