Labels can help explain the views of various political groups, but they can also reveal more about a group’s adherents than they would have you believe.
Democratic socialists are a perfect example of a political group that appears to represent freedom and democracy, when in reality, they’re playing the same broken record that socialists have played for decades.
Simply put, socialists, realizing they had a centuries-old problem of putting forth a failed ideology, decided to reinvent their brand and slapped the word “democratic” in front of it.
We aren’t dealing with just socialism, you see, it’s democratic socialism, which gets rids of all the bloody, revolutionary problems of the past. It’s supposed to be a kinder, more gentle form of socialism that, according to the Democratic Socialists of America, argues that “both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few.”
And when you get them to point to countries they support, the DSA followers agree with Bernie Sanders in idolizing Denmark and Sweden as examples of what could be the United States.
But the small problem with that contention is that both Denmark and Sweden reject socialism.
Moreover, those countries benefit from the U.S. military subsidizing the defense of the Western world. If they did have to fork over significant portions of their budget to protect themselves from Russia, Turkey, or China, the story would change dramatically.
If you want to pinpoint real socialist countries, you’re left with places like the Soviet Union, Cuba, and modern Venezuela. And when you’re looking at real socialism, one thing becomes abundantly clear: there is no democracy to socialism; there is no democracy to controlling choice in a capitalistic world.
Perhaps the most unsettling thing about democratic socialism is that they have to tell you, with the word “democratic,” that this is the version of socialism that’s okay with freedom. Socialism by itself is antithetical to democracy, because socialists control everything. And you get a feel for this with the crazy tirade that is the Green New Deal, which would regulate everything from airplane emissions to cow farts.
Even liberals don’t have to throw “democratic” in front of their beliefs. Nor do conservatives, libertarians, or most political groups in the United States. It’s presumed that if you hold beliefs within Western civilization that some form of democracy is involved. (Capitalism doesn’t need democratic thrown in front of it either, because it is inherently about choice in the markets.)
People don’t flee for their lives out of conservative, liberal, libertarian, or capitalistic countries. People flee socialist and despotic countries. They escape because very often socialism and despotism converge to destroy a country and people. As Jason Brennan put it:
Socialism is not love or kindness or generosity or oceans of delicious lemonade. Socialism is not equality or community. It’s just a way of distributing the control rights over objects.
And that’s why democracy and socialism are utterly incompatible. Socialists want control of your life in some capacity. And when they claim that it’s just putting power in the hands of the people, they’re saying then that either mob rule or bureaucratic institutions will control your life.
Socialism is where choice goes to die, and without opportunity, there can be no freedom. When others predetermine what is best for you, you are not free. It’s an imposed form of social solidarity from the top down, as Jonah Goldberg writes:
The theoretical gobbledygook and philosophical argle-bargle change from place to place, era to era, but what holds constant is this passionate conviction or feeling that social solidarity, tribal togetherness, must not only triumph, but beimposed from above. The cultural references that prompt us to ask the social question change from age to age, but the answer remains the same: The system that breaks up society into individuals by letting them compete freely in a rule-bound marketplace creates a chasm that must be refilled, primarily by the state. This is what binds social-ism and socialism, and why both must be resisted.
In a genuinely democratic system, people are free to choose the paths, commodities, and lives they want. In a free capitalist society, you are free to be anything, including a socialist. But in a socialist order, you have to lock into the state-driven solution and can’t fall outside those lines.
And that’s why you may be able to vote your way into the socialist system, but you end up having to shoot your way out. Socialism is a one-way ratchet of power that only empowers socialists, and the “democratic” part is always a misnomer.
If you don’t believe that, ask the Venezuelans who are starving while their socialist leaders burn international aid sent to help. To those on top in Venezuela, power is more important than helping people.
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