I think I know why Socialism doesn’t work.
Socialism is a tremendously appealing system. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t have global proponents to this day, people who loudly and confidently proclaim that Socialism is the way of the future despite the mountains of evidence that tells us that Socialism is a catastrophic failure.
It takes a special kind of idea to make people embrace it even after it has been proven bankrupt. That’s the kind of idea Socialism is. It promises great things – equality, prosperity, peace, love, understanding, good shoes. It also promises a lot of things that the poorest of the world want, like sticking it to the rich guys, bringing down corporations, and making everyone an equal player in the global economic machine.
Let me interject at this point and say that I think Socialism exists in America (and the west) today, in a better format than anywhere else. By this I do not mean the existence of “social programs”, which do not meet the standard of Socialism, which is defined as:
1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.
In America, people do own the means of production. The idea that all of our factories are owned by big fat men in three-piece suits is outdated – not that this has kept the radical Left from propagating this myth, either through ignorance or dishonesty. The people own the means of production now, and they didn’t need the Socialist revolution to get it. True, people are not economically equal, and the people with the most money own the most production, but the core requirement of Socialism has been met nonetheless, except that a centralized government distributing the booty is not present.
I think the reason Socialism doesn’t work is that nobody cares.
Socialists think it will work because Socialists think that people will work for the common good, and ignore their own desires. Nothing in history supports this utopian idea. People have never worked for the common good simply because they care about the people. People have worked because they have been forced to, or are afraid of something, or because they cannot survive without the income that comes from work, but never for an idealistic goal like Socialism.
The Soviets in World War II (as well as other societies) worked collectively due to the fear of annihilation by the Germans. In this way, they were able to pull of an impressive defense of the USSR and produce a great deal of military equipment. However, once the war was over, their living conditions never improved appreciably, and other than their military, the USSR was a basket case. Someone once described the USSR as a Third World country with a First World military, and that about sums it up. Once the threat of Nazism was gone, they did not turn to working for the common good simply because they cared about the society. Their economy essentially stagnated.
Not all people work, even for their own benefit, certainly. But – and this is a critical point - the ones who do not work for themselves do not work for the common good. If you choose not to work for your own benefit, you almost certainly won’t work for everyone else’s.
Not everyone is able to work, of course, but we must concern ourselves with those who do. The socialist argument is not that people can’t work, but that they can, and will, for the common good.
Of all the people who are able to work, we have three groups. 1) People who work for their own benefit and advancement. This is the vast majority of all people in the world. 2) People who don’t work, and subsist on the charity of others. This is a minor section of society, but a persistent one. 3) People who work for the common good. This is a very tiny minority, and usually consists of people working for a religious goal.
It can be argued, however, that even these people are working for their own benefit. Going to heaven sounds like a benefit to me, and if you believe that work for the common good will get you there, that is why you do it. Even if we assume that these people are indeed selfless, they are such a small number that they could never be relied upon to support all of the rest of us.
The Socialist error is in believing that people can be motivated to work for the common good. Human experience dictates otherwise. If you don’t have to work and perform well, chances are very good that you won’t work, or you will work at a substantially reduced efficiency.
Consider this case: A man lives in the perfect Socialist utopia. All of his needs are met. He has a home, food and a wife that is terrific in bed. He is given a choice where to work. Let’s say, for example, that this man is me. I choose me as an example because I am the only person I have any experience being. I have been brought up all my life to believe that I should work for the common good. So what do I do? That’s easy. I stay home and play the drums. I also play a lot of computer games. I particularly like the game “Capitalist Hunter”, where I blow up evil capitalists with a ray gun. Why, you ask? Well, why not? Why should I go to work at the factory (or office or school or whatever), and do things I don’t really want to do?
Socialists answer that people will work in vocations they choose. This obviously will never work. Who really wants to be a PR manager or an accountant? Who really wants to be a janitor? Who really wants to be a garbage collector or a sewer cleaner?
If everyone will choose a vocation that they truly want to do, you will have a worker distribution that looks like this:
Job % of population
Philosopher 10
Artist/Musician 25
Interior Designer 5
Political Pundit 5
Baked Goods
Taste Tester 15
Movie Star 20
Airline pilot 2
Science Fiction Author 5
Race car driver 10
All Other Occupations 3
Who’s going to be a farmer? Who wants to get up that early? Not me, that’s for sure. Who wants to be a truck driver, even? I mean, who really wants to do that for a living? Some people tolerate it, some people may even like it, but who truly wants to have to drive 100,000 miles a year?
Can three percent of the population support the rest of us with the manufacturing, service, food production, construction grunt work that is necessary in a modern society? Of course not. In America, we start to freak out if unemployment gets above six percent. Imagine an effective unemployment rate of 97%. The society would collapse before the inauguration party was done.
So obviously, we can’t just let people be whatever they want to be. The idea is patently absurd. So we are forced to come to one immediate conclusion; some people, in fact the vast majority, will be forced to do something else for a living.
And therein lies the rub. This is why Socialism always ends up in dictatorship and tyranny. In order for it to work even at a perfunctory level, Socialism cannot have a democratic political system, and cannot have any significant liberty.
So there goes freedom. There can be no freedom in a society that dictates to its people what they will do, and since in a Socialist society this is a requirement, it follows that Socialism is inherently absent of any real freedom.
Then, after you’ve given up your freedom, you’ll go to work in your business of un-choice. How good are you going to be at it? After a while, you may become proficient, but even then, what motivates you to be productive? Nothing! And we don’t need a hypothetical case here, in the former USSR, economic growth screeched to a halt, not because there weren’t people to do the jobs or because the government didn’t force them to, but because they just didn’t care. Productivity in Socialist nations is pathetically low compared to capitalist nations. Sure, you may go to work at the drill press every day, but what happens if you figure out an efficient new way of doing things? Do you enact this just for your own personal satisfaction? Or do you just find the absolutely easiest way to get your job done? In the USSR, it was the latter. If you don’t care, have no reason to be efficient and aren’t even working where you want to in the first place, your productivity is going to suck. And in the USSR, it did, in spades.
You should pick up some books by a former Red Army tank commander, Viktor Suvorov, who wrote a series of them in the 1980’s. They’re mostly out of print now, but they shed a lot of light on Socialism and why it was so destructive. He once recounted an incident in which a fertilizer plant was dictated by the government to produce a certain amount of fertilizer. The plant did so, but in the end, there weren’t enough trucks to haul the fertilizer to farms. So what did they do? They dumped it all out onto the ground, that’s what. And why not? They fulfilled their obligation to the state, and were left with no alternative when the trucks never showed up. If the truck people can’t come get your fertilizer, that’s their problem.
I also might note that sites like this exist all over the former Eastern Bloc, amounting to tens of thousands of what would be called Superfund toxic waste sites in the US.
In fact, one of my favorite tools to use when arguing with Socialists is to ask them where they’ve successfully implemented their great system. “Where,” I ask, “are Socialists solving these problems? In what country does Socialism alleviate the ills of capitalism?” It’s a great question because Socialism has never worked in any nation. Socialism has never set the workers free, it has never resulted in an equal society, and it has never improved the living conditions of its citizens. Instead, in almost every case, it has resulted in massive starvation, genocide, dictatorship and tyranny. When you look at poverty-stricken Cuba, don’t feel too bad for them. They actually did extremely well for a Socialist country! Most of them even survived!
Most Socialists won’t even try to convince you that Socialism has been proven to work. This is because it hasn’t ever worked. Socialists would be in a great position if they could just point to one country where socialism actually improved upon capitalism in any meaningful way. But they can’t, because such a successful implementation has never happened.
They instead say things like “Socialism has never been correctly implemented.” Well, that’s reassuring, isn’t it? Socialism results in massive genocide in almost every country where it comes to power, but in the meantime, I guess we’re supposed to just keep trying to make it work. If we kill off too many people in one country, we should just move to another one, tweak the formula a bit, and hope it works. If we have doubts, I guess we’re just supposed to trust the People’s Committees and Politburos to make things work, and never mind about those missing relatives, they’re probably just on vacation in the Crimea.
These are the kinds of problems Socialism faces, and the kinds of inherent contradictions that exist when people think up ways to run a society instead of letting it run itself. The argument for Socialism can be compelling. By pointing out everything that is wrong with Capitalism, Socialists appear to take the high ground in the argument. What they can never do, however, is explain how their system will work. It’s always magically fantastic, with people working at what they want to do for short workweeks, living in clean houses and riding wonderful mass transit to work. They never get into the reality of the problems that would face such a system.
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