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Why Isn't Socialism Dead?

I owe this title to writer Lee Harris. Last month Harris posed this
headliner question in a piece he wrote for Tech Central Station's Web site,
TCSDaily. Harris is right to ask; socialism's track record is abysmal.

The milder forms of it have yielded economic stagnation where and whenever
tried: England in the 1970s; France today. The more impatient
strains--"socialism in a hurry," as Lenin reputedly called communism--did
nothing but plunder economies and destroy lives. Their fine leaders ordered
the deaths of more than 100 million people--Lenin and Stalin (40 million),
Mao (60 million) and Pol Pot (2 million), not to mention that syphilitic
dictator of the German National Socialist Party, Adolf Hitler (11 million
directly, another 35 million through the war he started).

By all rights socialism should be dead, sealed in a steel vault and buried
in Hell. Yet the disease lives. You might even say it's spreading when you
look at the ascent of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Ken
Livingstone in London and the "progressive" American Net-based left (which
says Hillary Rodham Clinton is too far right). What accounts for socialism's
reappearance? To discover the answer, we must ask another question. Why do
so many people around the world hate its opposite--free-market capitalism?

Denial on the Left

Old news, but worth repeating (since the mainstream press is in denial):
U.S. GDP growth for the first quarter clocked in at a whopping 4.8%.
Remember that this figure is typically revised upward weeks later. Look for
a final tally of 5.0+%. Gosh, what else is there to say about the roaring
U.S. economy? Oh, yes. Unemployment is safely below 5%, and--wonder of
wonders--even the New York Times admits that wages are rising faster than
inflation.

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And the bad news? Let's see. Could it be the crunch in U.S. manufacturing
jobs, such as in the auto industry? Actually, no, says heartland economy
expert Jack Schultz. In 1990 there were 955,100 Americans employed in the
auto sector, compared with 956,200 in 2005. Thank you, Toyota (nyse: TM -
news - people ), Nissan (nasdaq: NSANY - news - people ), Honda (nyse: HMC -
news - people ) and BMW. The stock market likes what it sees. The Dow has
been flirting with its high of 11,723, set in January 2000.

No matter how you look at it--from business starts to job growth to salaries
to share prices--the American form of free-market capitalism delivers the
goods. But you'll never convince socialists and their fellow travelers on
the trendy Left that anything good has occurred. Or that freedom--in the
form of reduced regulation and taxes--is responsible. Take this recent post
from the leftist Daily Kos (the Web site that thinks Hillary Clinton is too
far right):

"The Bush tax cuts were designed to stimulate the economy by giving huge tax
cuts to the wealthy. But Voodoo economics (trickle-down economics or, as we
like to call it here, trickled-on economics) has been proven over and over
again to NOT WORK.. Demand will dry up if there's nobody out there who can
afford to pay for your goods and services.. This is a simple law of
economics."

The only thing atypical about this brain-dead Daily Kos post is the lack of
four-letter words beginning with "f."

The Revolutionary Myth

Back to writer Lee Harris, who also asks: "Why are the people in Bolivia and
Venezuela responding so enthusiastically to the socialist siren-songs of Evo
Morales and Hugo Chávez, instead of heeding the eminently rational counsel
of [free-market proponent] Hernando de Soto? Why are they clamoring to give
even more power and control to the state, instead of seeking to free
themselves from the very obstacle that stands in the way of any genuine
economic progress?

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"It may well be that socialism isn't dead because socialism cannot die. As
[the early 20th-century French revolutionary writer Georges] Sorel argued,
the revolutionary myth may, like religion, continue to thrive in 'the
profounder regions of our mental life,' in those realms unreachable by mere
reason and argument, where even a hundred proofs of failure are insufficient
to wean us from those primordial illusions that we so badly wish to be true.
Who doesn't want to see the wicked and the arrogant put in their place? Who
among the downtrodden and the dispossessed can fail to be stirred by the
promise of a world in which all men are equal, and each has what he needs?

"The whole point of the myth of the socialist revolution is not that human
societies will be transformed in the distant future, but that the
individuals who dedicate their lives to this myth will be transformed into
comrades and revolutionaries in the present. In short, revolution is not a
means to achieve socialism; rather, the myth of socialism is a useful
illusion that turns ordinary men into comrades and revolutionaries united in
a common struggle--a band of brothers, so to speak."

Harris says free-market capitalism needs a "transformative myth of its own"
to fight the myth of revolutionary socialism. But don't we have that? I
thought that's what entrepreneurial heroes were all about. Bill Gates and
the Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) boys are still heroes to millions
of Chinese and Indians, if not to the French or Bolivians. That's why,
though I share Harris' concern about socialism's odd new vitality, I think
capitalism will win the battle for men's minds.

You can find Harris' terrific piece at www.tcsdaily.com/
article.aspx?id0506I.


Read Rich Karlgaard's daily blog at http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules or
visit his home page at www.karlgaard.com.

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