Kimberley Strassel recently examined socialism’s long history of failure and its advocates’ habit of introducing new versions they insist will work. The names change, the promises get refreshed, and we are asked to believe the next attempt will avoid the failures of the past.
Which raises an obvious question: With a consistent record of failure, why does the idea keep coming back? The answer is simple – because the promise remains attractive even when the results have been disastrous.
Consider a restaurant. A restaurateur opens an Italian restaurant, but the food is mediocre and the service is lousy. It fails. He opens a Mexican restaurant with the same management problems and gets the same results. Now he announces a fusion restaurant, complete with new advertising and an exciting menu.
Before making a reservation, wouldn’t you want to know what he had actually changed? Changing the sign over the door does not improve the food, train the staff, or fix the management. Why shouldn’t we demand the same explanation from politicians selling a new version of socialism?
The political sales pitch, however, has an advantage. It speaks to needs that never disappear – fairness, security, and relief from hardship. Tell someone struggling to pay the rent that he deserves affordable housing and you will get his attention. Then tell him the wealthy are standing in his way, and government can correct the imbalance, thereby supplying both a villain and a solution. Whether that solution works is another matter. Identifying a problem is not the same as solving it. And promising something does not explain how to produce it.
Who pays for all these promises? Who decides what constitutes someone’s “fair share”? And what happens when the people doing the work disagree with the people making the decisions? Those questions rarely fit neatly on a campaign sign. But they matter considerably more than the slogan printed on it.
Socialism is a broad term. So what specifically would the proposed system put under government control? What would remain in private hands? How would decisions be made? And most importantly, what evidence supports the promised results? The disastrous record of socialism gives us ample reason to question proposals that concentrate economic and political power in the same hands. Benevolent intentions do not protect people from greed, favoritism, or the abuse of authority.
The reality is that each generation encounters history differently. And someone worried about this month’s grocery bill may find a promise of immediate relief more persuasive than a warning about a system that failed before he was born. That does not make him foolish. But it does imply naivete and gullibility.
Then there is the uneven comparison.
Capitalism is judged by what people experience: expensive housing, layoffs, financial crises, dishonest businesses, and people who get rich without appearing to contribute much. Its flaws are there for everyone to see.
The alternative is often presented as an ideal. Everyone contributes. Everyone receives what he needs. Corrupt officials, shortages, favoritism, and bureaucratic incompetence somehow no longer exist. And the people in charge always make wise decisions. Really? Where are these people and what happens when their replacements are less wise?“
Compared to what?” is the question we ought to ask whenever someone proposes replacing an economic system, that while imperfect has produced more prosperity and more freedom than any system before it. We need to compare systems operating with actual human beings—people with ambition, prejudices, competing interests, and imperfect knowledge.
Capitalism does not require business owners to become saints. It needs competition, enforceable laws, and consequences for failure. Those safeguards may not be perfect, but they give us ways to challenge misconduct without depending entirely on the goodwill of politicians.
One reason socialism survives its failures is that advocates always explain them away. The wrong leaders were in charge. The country was not ready. Outside forces undermined the experiment. This version will be different. Circumstances matter but explanations for previous failures are not evidence that the next attempt will succeed.
There is something soothing about believing the right people will finally be in charge. Yet institutions must survive the arrival of people who are neither competent nor responsible. Handing today’s leaders more power does not guarantee existing problems will be solved.
Socialism keeps returning because hardship persists and its promises remain attractive. “This time will be different” is a sales pitch, not evidence. Before handing over more power, we should ask what has changed—and ask for evidence that this time we should expect a different result.