A majority of liberals favor socialism: Gallup

In a recent Gallup poll a surprising result emerged.  Asked about their feelings toward divers economic systems, a stunning 53% of Democrats and 61% of liberals indicated a favorable view of socialism.¹  That explains much about the intentions behind the programs the administration and Congress have been trying to foist on the American people.  Fortunately, the same poll confirmed 58% of all Americans have a negative view of socialism, which undergirds the sudden and visceral rise in populist resistance to those very programs.

Do they teach socialism in school anymore?  It was only 20 years ago that the Soviet Union and communism, an extreme form of socialism, collapsed.  If we take for granted that during that time educators assumed socialism was dead forever, today’s young voters could not have lived through its abject failure, even vicariously, and the most susceptible among them might be subject to seduction by its false promise.  There is scant debate today on the causes of the collapse of the auto or mortgage industries, for example, as a function of the industries' deviation from pure capitalism in contrast to an analysis built on the unproven assumption that capitalism failed.  Is it un-American to conclude that GM just wasn’t making products that the market valued, or that government interference in mortgages, through Fannie and Freddie, skewed prudent management of financial risk?

No one likes to speak of communism today, and in polite society accusing democratically elected representatives of being sympathetic to socialist policies is repulsive even to the accuser.  Yet, when the majority of a major political Party favors socialism, we must take notice and be alarmed.

A common definition of socialism is “central planning by government of economic activity”.  Communism adds state ownership of economic activity.  The United States government now owns all or part of companies in varied industries: automobile manufacturing, insurance, mortgages, banking, student loans, railroads, broadcasting, property management, energy production, and legal services.  The government extends its reach over our private economic lives in many other ways.  The Federal Register “the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents” contains close to 80,000 pages.²  And when a President, Republican or Democrat, claims we should be getting more energy from fuel cells or switchgrass, we should be shouting from the highest hills, “Leave the science projects to venture capital!” for otherwise these are the ultimate manifestations of central planning.

Cataclysmic change in our economic system to pure socialism or even communism is practically not likely today, but we must be vigilant against the insidious creeping transformation that is largely irreversible and that brings us closer to economic darkness.

First, because Marx’ description of socialism, “from each according to his ability to each according to his means” is egalitarian in aspiration but economically impractical in implementation.  It assumes that those who are able will continue producing wealth, knowing it will be perennially confiscated; and it assumes that those who receive from the fruits of labor of others will eventually become producers.  With neither reward for labor nor profit for invested capital why would the first group continue their behavior or the second give theirs up?  The Soviet system collapsed because of that very absence of incentives and sanctions implicit in the Marxist doctrine.

Second, we should be vigilant because the flawed theory of socialism presupposes an omnibenevolent, omnipotent government: the entity that does the from-to distribution of goods and services in the Marx definition.  To make socialism work, we must exchange indiviudal choice for state authority with faith in the state's noble and moral intentions.  The price of this exchange is freedom; the cost is the inevitable inefficiency and errors that transpire from a government staffed not by gods but by humans susceptible to everyone else’s foibles and temptations.

Third, as a derivative of the first and second reasons, socialism cannot be moral; or, more precisely, it does not permit individuals to choose moral acts, the complete expression of which requires man’s free will.  Communism, because it is total and complete, is clearly akin to enslavement and clearly immoral.  By comparison, socialism’s throttle on freedom is commensurate to the proportional size of government relative to the economy.  Because the government cannot produce a single product or a solitary service without taking resources from the free economy, it should be apparent that the size of government and an individual’s access to freedom are in inverse relationship.  Socialism is concentrated in small, illusively benign degrees, and its affect on moral action is anesthetic by slowly growing levels.

It is not enough, therefore, to oppose formal establishment of socialism to protect our freedom.  It is not even enough to simply stop the growth of government.  It is necessary only to make government smaller. 

John Maynard Keynes, no pure proponent of free markets, observed, “Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion — how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.”

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[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/125645/Socialism-Viewed-Positively-Americans.aspx

[2] http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/