In hundreds of cases, people have tried to live in communities with socialist and/or communist ideas being the basis of their social and economic activities. For all practical purposes, which means excluding religious orders, they have all failed. Even religious orders have their problems. One reference to these failures, and there are many more, is this paper, written in 2012.
The only way that such experiments can survive the problems caused by their inherent faults is if there is a strong enough common religious or moral glue to overcome the failings of the methods attempted.
There is absolutely no doubt that in the sense of material survival and success, VOLUNTARY socialism and communism are total failures as a basis for organization.
If our or any social/political system were working properly, socialism wouldn’t last 10 minutes on a freely-chosen and voluntary basis. At most there would be small communities destined to fail. The only way in which socialism and communism retain any presence whatsoever is because they are forced upon us.
The remarkable fact is that socialism still remains highly visible within our current social and political system. We are not free, because if we were we’d not voluntarily or willingly have such elements. They’d fail and we’d reject them. The socialists have so far successfully infiltrated our governments, which have defects all their own, and we as peoples have supported their programs as well as been unable to stop them.
Democratic republican governments of all sorts have proven highly vulnerable to socialist appeals. It’s an outcome of their makeup, their constitutions, and their powers. Although voluntary socialism fails, coercive socialism has succeeded in gripping our lives. Socialists today are all coercive socialists, just as conservatives are coercive conservatives and liberals are coercive liberals.
Ignorance and false teaching go partway to explaining this coercive socialist success under the cover of coercive democracy. All our systems need a more accurate identification with the adjective “coercive” or equivalents like “immoral”. We disallow coercive behavior by individuals but we allow coercive behavior by ourselves as a group through government. Our basic failing is a moral one.
The voluntary socialist experiments failed for very basic reasons that are not widely appreciated. The paper linked to above is good as a reference but it does not pinpoint the problems that arise when communal living on a voluntary basis is tried while suppressing prices for labor, prices for goods, and private property. Anti-capitalism was the problem with these communities. People will not freely work for the benefit of other people by producing a pool of goods to be distributed to all equally. Jim will get angry when John works 2 hours a day while Jim works 6. Paul will feel wounded if he produces 10 widgets an hour while Alec produces 3. Mary wants a hat and Jenny wants a dress. William wants to raise carrots and Herman wants marshmallows. The inherent diversity in tastes, labor and abilities cannot be reconciled without capitalism, private property and free markets. Socialism invariably produces discord, and in our system socialist elements produce constant discord and politics.
The current socialist fashion is “diversity” and “equality” in pay, in positions and in opportunities. This is simply New Harmony, one of the signal failed socialist utopias of the 19th century, all over again in disguised form. Diversity is a socialist concept. Completely. It is a coercive socialist idea. It has no merit at all.
On a voluntary basis, diversity will not be regarded as anything worthwhile in and of itself. If diversity has a positive price, it’s because it proxies for some factor of knowledge, brainpower, intelligence, training, accomplishment or skill; but it won’t be because skin color, sex, religion, ethnicity or some such thing has inherent value. Goldman Sachs will no longer underwrite new company issues unless their boards meet its diversity criterion. It has its reasons for boarding this bandwagon, and it has even claimed that companies with diverse boards outperform those without them. A serious study will not show that value will be enhanced merely by hiring a woman for the board or a transgender or a bisexual or an Eskimo.
Economists have long recognized division of labor, specialization, and complementary factors of production. They have recognized different groups with different tastes for goods. They have recognized people with different skills. None of this is what “diversity” means today and what the coercive socialist slogan “diversity is our strength” means. Today these are schemes to share wealth, redistribute wealth, gain positions without having the merit to occupy them, and create well-paid “jobs” that are unproductive.
9:02 am on January 29, 2020
