One of my favorite posts of the early days of this blog was “The influence of immigrants on American political thought”. My basic thesis was that each cohort of immigrants has left its mark on American politics. The Irish brought us machine politics; the Scandinavians progressivism. About the most recent cohort I demurred from making a judgment:
Most of our new immigrants are from Mexico and they will be no different in this respect than their predecessors: they have arrived with political ideas and beliefs they’ve brought from their homeland. I know nothing whatever of Mexican politics and will leave the commentary on that for other more knowledgeable people. But, as Mexican-Americans gain more political influence here, I suspect we’ll be learning a lot more soon.
I think we have enough information to start making a judgment now. The two most notable new developments in American political thought today are a newfound respectability of claiming to be a socialist and a loss of confidence in American political institutions. The most prominent of those who are claiming to be “democratic socialists” are either immigrants or the children of immigrants so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suspect that it’s an exotic foreign import that is becoming fashionable.
That’s all the more remarkable considering how poorly socialism has performed over the last 75 years. Germany under Hitler, the Soviet Union under Stalin, and China under Mao murdered more than 100 million of their own citizens in the pursuit of socialism. Cuba is poor and dilapidated; in a little less than 20 years Venezuela has gone from relative prosperity to the point of collapse Chavismo; the examples do not stop there. There’s North Korea, Somalia, and North Yemen as well. To add insult to injury Castro’s children are prosperous and Chavez’s daughter is rumored to be a multi-billionaire.
More than a century ago, when asked if he were a socialist, Elbert Hubbard replied, when more people want to give rather than get I’ll be a socialist. The utopian community he started in East Aurora was more eccentric communal capitalism than it was socialist. Eschewing personal enrichment or that of your children would seem to be a prerequisite for espousing socialism but, apparently, that is not the case. To my ear today’s variant seems more closely allied to a highly American sentiment—the belief that there’s a sucker born every minute, which sounds to me more like self-interest, red in tooth and claw, than it does like socialism.
I do not believe that our problems in the United States are caused by insufficient socialism. I think they’re caused by inadequate social cohesion, a factor likely only to become worse, and, ironically, not nearly enough capitalism. As Chesterton observed, the problem is not with capitalism but that there are too few capitalists.
I think socialism has become a meaningless term. Those claiming a new respect for socialism are, I think, looking at the Scandinavian countries or Germany. You, like conservatives, equate socialism with the USSR. Big difference between the two.
If capitalism worked the way it’s advocates say it should work, it would be wonderful, but then that is true even of communism. For better or worse people don’t behave the way existing economic models predict.
Steve
Steve,
What would a behavioral/economic model have to offer, in a predictive/descriptive sense, in order for you to take it seriously?
Please, anyone else chime in as well.
It would help if the programs they espoused resembled those of the Soviet Union less and those of Sweden or Denmark more. Less in the way of their obvious repressive instincts would help, too.
As I have said before, I think that Sweden’s and Denmark’s cradle-to-grave welfare states rose from Lutheran social teaching and are dependent on a social cohesion and restraint that has never been a feature of American society.
It also bears mentioning that both Sweden and Denmark have been narrowing their welfare states for decades. They made sense under specific social, economic, and political conditions and, once those conditions no longer obtained, they made less sense.
I equate the USSR with communism, and the Scandinavian countries with expansive welfare states.
To riff off the observation that Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others, capitalism is the worst form of economic system, except all the others. In tinkering to improve shortcomings in capitalism the pendulum has swung in favor of the starry eyed notions of naïve utopians.
Shorter: a mechanism that takes one mans money and gives it to another can be dressed up to sound good, but the details and results are generally awful, and the mechanism can almost never be reversed.
Scandinavian cradle-to-grave welfare states were created during a period of rapid economic growth and high social cohesion in a context of Lutheran social doctrine (which included a culture of not taking more than you need). We don’t have those conditions in the United States.
“Shorter: a mechanism that takes one mans money and gives it to another can be dressed up to sound good, but the details and results are generally awful, and the mechanism can almost never be reversed.”
That is where we are now with capitalism. We are taking money and giving it to the already wealthy. We make it difficult for the wealthy to lose money if they screw up. You are correct that it is difficult to reverse. I have said several times that I am not that optimistic about correcting this problem since the wealthy now directly control our politics AND our media. I appreciate your trying to make it sound good, but I think that the level of discontent we see even with UE so low reflects that the sales job is not working so well.
Piercello- I take most current models pretty seriously (except MMT gives me headaches). I think predictions are pretty hard, especially about the future. (Wasn’t that what Yogi said?) I think we should analyze current models in the light of their results.
Now, if someone came up with a new model I think I would, of course, look at the basic math and see if it made any sense. Beyond that, I would want to know if it relied upon people behaving in a particularly well circumscribed manner. “From each according to his ability and to each according to his need” really should work well if people actually behaved that way, but they dont. They often put their own needs first. Capitalism shouldn’t fail if people act like homo economics, but they dont. They are sometimes emotion driven. It works if people always behave ethically, but they dont.
Finally, I would really like to see models that address their own shortfalls, and the likelihood they can be addressed. I think it pretty clear that pure capitalism and pure socialism dont work, but until recently capitalism has needed less fixing.
Steve
“pure capitalism and pure socialism don’t work”
That’s a truth I’d like to hear spoken more often. Capitalism is the engine and socialism is the brake. The brake needs to be applied gently and with varying pressure as needed. This is NOT an either or system.
and the reason is that both run afoul of human nature. The difference between them is that, to paraphrase Madison, if people were angels a market economy would work fine but even if people were angels a command economy would still not work because it would obscure the price signals the economy needs to function efficiently.
I am neither an anarcho-capitalist nor a socialist. I hold a much less popular view: government is hard. It requires constant reconfiguration and that can’t be delegated to bureaucrats. There are aspects that could be delegated to an algorithm but look at the enormous resistance the Fed governors have shown to that.
IMO this will increasingly be an issue. The jobs ripest for disruption are the Fed BoG followed by the federal bureaucracy.
“I am neither an anarcho-capitalist nor a socialist. I hold a much less popular view: government is hard.”
I prefer capitalism, but with the understanding that it has deficiencies and that in some cases government can mitigate those. Look at our public health efforts. The problem is, as I think you identify, it is difficult to do this well. Sometimes the cure might be worse than the disease. Overall, given the past success of our country and our economy (compared with the rest of the world) we have mostly gotten things right, or at least right more often than most others. I think we have to grade on a curve.
That is why I have generally been optimistic no matter what was going on in our politics. It is only lately that I have been turning pessimistic as I have seen the procession of billionaires directly taking over our government. Add in the rejection of the free press, especially by the right, and I think we are actually in trouble.
Steve
Sadly, true anarcho-capitalists don’t believe that the market has any deficiencies while true state socialists believe that the government’s choices are always optimal. I don’t believe that either of those positions tallies with experience.