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by David Snoke
One of the problems with discussing socialism is that many Americans have, for some reason, a different definition of it from anywhere else in the world. Many Americans call European “social democratic” governments “socialist”. Europeans would vehemently deny the charge, and would even be offended by it. What some Americans define as “socialist” would be basically fairly high spending by a government on social benefits, such as transportation, education, healthcare, etc., which are characteristic of many western European countries, accompanied by high personal taxes and a reliance on the US for national defense. But these countries are also strongly capitalist— in many cases, lower tax rates on corporations than the US, and strong influence of corporations and the wealthy on government policies. In terms of social spending and policy, the US, Japan, and Europe are on a continuum— all have personal taxes that range from 30%-50%, all have many government regulations on business, all allow private property accumulation, all have governments that try to constrain the behavior of the markets and economy, all spend large amounts on various social-welfare and infrastructure programs. The differences at present are matters of degree. But none would be “socialist”; all would properly be called “regulated capitalist” systems. The exact levels of social spending, regulation, and taxes are matters of reasonable debate. The fundamental tenet of capitalism is in the word “capital”. Capital is the accumulation of wealth by individuals or private corporations. Think of it this way: there are many tasks that require a huge upfront cost before any profit or benefit is seen. For example, a train system requires millions or billions spent on railways, train cars, hiring people to run them, etc., before a single ticket can be sold. There are only two ways to fund such an endeavor: either allow private people to accumulate such capital, or have government do all the large-capital projects. Capitalism is defined by saying that we should allow and encourage many private organizations to have such capital. Socialism says we should allow only one—the government. Capitalism is therefore fundamentally not about “greed,” but about distribution of power, instead of accumulation in one place. Regulated capitalism says that the government has the right to regulate these other powers, but their existence is not bad and in fact is to be encouraged. There are two ways that capitalism grows (and grew historically) out of a Christian world view. One is the express allowance of private property, with no upper bound, in Scripture. The 10th commandment, which often is neglected, is the foundation of this— “you shall not covet”. Not only shall that other person be allowed to have property you don’t have, but you should not even resent that fact. The balance to this is the set of strong commands put on the rich to be generous, which historically led to great societal benevolence by the rich in Christian Europe. The second is an awareness of the sinfulness of all people, even those with good intentions: “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Anti-capitalists seem to think that an elected government will be benevolent although it has a monopoly on wealth and power, but history says otherwise. Division of power is one of the most pragmatic ways to prevent tyranny. I still have not defined socialism yet. There are two central tenets. One is opposition to the accumulation of capital in the hands of private individuals, that is, anti-capitalism. Bernie Sanders makes this explicit— no billionaires should be allowed (since he is worth multiple millions, the rule always seems to be that a capitalist is someone with more than me). Defined this way, no European government is socialist, as I have discussed. The second characteristic of socialism is a mindset— no upper bound or constraint on anything government wants to do. At its core, it says “We have a right to take your property” or “We have a right to tell you what to say,” or “We have the right to tell you what to do with your property if we allow you to keep it temporarily.” This right derives from the power of the “mob”— we are more than you, and we will use our power to get anything we want. You simply can’t miss this in the rhetoric of the socialist left. Saying “healthcare is a right” is saying, “doctors and nurses have to do what we say, for the pay level that we approve”. One might argue that all government ultimately comes from the consent of the governed, as the founding fathers did. But there is a big difference between the majority of the people saying, “We agree that this system is a just one” versus saying, “The definition of what is right is whatever we want.” That is another Christian influence— the idea that the people try to reach, with various approximations, an ultimate standard of what is right and wrong, versus saying there is no ultimate standard other than power—whoever has power is by definition right in whatever they do. This is why true socialism always leads to violence and tyranny. One can talk of democratic socialism (not so jokingly, “one man, one vote, one time”) but the fundamental mindset of socialism is that if we can’t accomplish what we want through the ballot box, we will accomplish it by any means necessary, because we are fundamentally in the right and all who oppose us must be overpowered. Now, one might imagine a situation where everyone gets on the same page and all agree, and therefore there is no longer a need for violence. But the problem comes when the mob decides it wants something that violates a law of reality, i.e., a law of nature or a law of economics. Suppose that people decided that gravity was an offense, because too many people break bones. They then declare that anyone who talks of gravity is to be punished, and anyone who designs things that involve gravity must be stopped. Because gravity actually exists, the situation will just get worse and the people angrier. The same applies to laws of economics. An economic law is that markets set wages and prices. If a system denies that reality, it will kill its economy. A simple example: one person can make one wooden chair in an hour, and another person can make four identical wooden chairs of equal quality in an hour. The second person has four times the market value of the first—no matter whether he is sinful, or works hard or lazily, or whatever. Suppose we deny this reality and say that each person gets paid for one chair per hour. A black market will arise for the chairs of the second person, or alternatively, he will stop producing as many, in which case there will be a shortage relative to what was before. A nation that says, like Venezuela, you doctors and engineers are not allowed to get paid a lot more, will see them flee, and if they can’t flee, they stop working so hard. When you lose those people’s work, you get shortages, which drives up prices. The natural response is then to pass laws to enforce low prices, which creates a back market. If the government then uses force to stamp out the black market, economic collapse will occur, as has occurred in every socialist country that did not allow a black market, as well as the violence of goons who take all the contraband goods for themselves. Thus economic collapse and governmental tyranny are not accidents, but directly tied to the socialist program. One might say that we will not prevent doctors and engineers from getting paid a lot more, as in communist Russia or Venezuala; we will just stop there from being billionaires. But in either case, one has a cutoff (as I said, the cutoff always seems to be a little more than what I have), and there is nothing to prevent that cutoff from being lowered to include ever more people. In fact, it is likely, because as government income drops when the economy collapses, the immediate temptation is to widen the net to confiscate from ever more people. Historically, communism and socialism are the same movement, and only Americans draw a sharp distinction between them. Communism is socialism with the added feature of communes— forcing people to live in communal living arrangements with communal work goals. As we know, that has also been a disaster everywhere it was tried. It just goes one step further to say that even a house or home is too much private property. Given the two different definitions of socialism used in America, which is Bernie Sanders? I think it is clear he is the second type, as defined by the rest of the world. He has recently said he is not a communist, and only wants something like Denmark. But in citing Denmark, he is either utterly naïve or deliberately trying to deceive. Denmark has plenty of billionaires, and has a corporate tax rate of 22%, compared to the US corporate tax rate of 21% plus corporate tax by individual states. In the past, he has been outspoken in favor of communist Russia, Cuba, and more recently, Venezuela, and has never disavowed any of these remarks. He specifically affirms the two points I list above, namely a cap on personal property (and a national registry in which everyone has to report their total wealth to the government, not just their income) and the rhetoric of no intrinsic limits to anything that the government wants to do. He wants to nationalize most major industries such as health care, creating government monopolies. In other words, he is not preaching European-level social spending; he is preaching real socialism. Socialism always requires walls to keep people in (as opposed to capitalist countries which typically have pressure of people wanting to get in.) Not allowing people to get a market wage selectively makes people with more market value flee a country; in the same way, taxes on wealth cause wealth to free the country and be invested elsewhere. One might argue that the whole world could be made socialist, so that there is nowhere for people and wealth to flee to, but if even a small fraction of the world is free, that small fraction will gain at every socialist nation’s expense, unless socialist countries use warfare to conquer those regions. If it looked likely that Bernie Sanders would actually be elected, the stock market would crash as funds fled the US, and retirement funds would be gutted. If one simply wants more government spending and higher taxes, one should just say “I am for higher taxes and higher spending,” not “I am for socialism.” But Bernie is clearly advocating the type of socialism I have described here, which indeed is the historical and global definition of it, and there is no reason to expect that the outcome would be different from the countries he has praised for it. By contrast, “capitalism” is not a term to be embarrassed of, as though it were synonymous with “greed.” It is about the right to private property, the accumulation of power in multiple private hands instead of a monopoly on power by the government, and intrinsic limits on what government may try to do. Regulated capitalism (as opposed to laissez faire capitalism, which has not existed since the 1800s anywhere) allows the government to restrict but not abolish private freedoms including the right to private property.
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DAVID SNOKEDavid is a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He received his bachelors degree in physics from Cornell University and his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has worked for The Aerospace Corporation and was a visiting scientist and Fellow at the Max Planck Institute. His experimental and theoretical research has focused on fundamental quantum mechanical processes in semiconductor optics, i.e. phase transitions of electrons and holes. Two main thrusts have been Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons and polaritons. He has also had minor efforts in numerical biology, and has published on the topic of the interaction of science and theology. Archives
April 2021
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