Yep, the Groan:
If China’s search for socialism under Mao was not wholly bogus, why did it prove such a disaster?
Here’s a radical thought. Perhaps it was the search for socialism, not the methods used in that search, which were to blame? To refute this argument all that is needed is an example of a successful search for socialism. Points will be awarded to anyone who can provide such an example.
In
Easy, Israeli kibbutz.
Some were pure collectives. Property held collectively, children raised collectively, and the place run democratically.
The thing which made them different, the thing which mattered, no one joined who didn’t want to, no one stayed who didn’t want to. Not even a majority forcing the system on the minority.
If it ain’t compulsory, it ain’t socialism as the word is commonly understood. After all, capitalism has no objection to volunteers settinh up kibbutzim (if that’s the right plural).
dearieme: nope. compulsion is not a sine qua non of socialism. It only becomes a component when the buggers get control of a government. Voluntary socialism, on the small scale, really can work. Compulsion only becomes necessary when members aren’t volunteers, like those who didn’t vote for the buggers to get into parliament. And you are right, in a free liberal society people may choose to live as socialists, it is just another use of their capital. It can be an efficient use too. In a socialist society I am prevented from living as a free liberal. That is one of the places where socialism’s claimed moral superiority collapses.
erm, the smurfs?
seriously, didn’t von Mises wrap this up years ago? One of the essays I wrote for either the economics or the politics part of my degree (i forget which) was ‘did socialism contain the seeds of its own destruction?’
admittedly, I got a crap mark for it, because I wrote a 5,000 word polemic which may or may not have ridiculed the person who ended up marking it, but either way, the argument was rather simple to anyone with a grasp of ‘economic calculation’ (which apparently John Dunn does not possess ;))
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