Knowing the Enemy: Continuing History of Socialism

The last time that I wrote this blog, I promised to discuss the rise and influences on the forms of collective socialism that became most dominant in Europe and the United States. Like revolutionary socialism, these movements had their roots in the French Enlightenment view of progress and shared many of its views. Evolutionary Socialism, both in Europe and the United States, would also be influenced heavily by both Darwinian evolutionary thought and Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism. 

In Europe two collectivist movements would emerge. One would be extremely nationalistic and ethnocentric. The other would be more internationalist and less prone to racism. In the first, the extreme forms of nationalism and identity politics inspired by Romanticism, especially that of the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, would combine with Darwinian biological thought to reinforce an only natural xenophobia to create a whole new species of Anti-Semitism. The result would be the Socialist political parties known collectively as Fascist in most of Europe and as Nazi in Germany. 

One of the biggest intellectual frauds ever perpetrated in academia has been the false association of these movements with conservative tendencies. Both proudly proclaimed themselves as socialist movements and behaved as socialists in their eagerness to regulate the use of private property to achieve government collectivist and utopian goals.  The real name of the party for which Nazi is the slang abbreviation, was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. 

The Nazis were the most extreme example of the ethnocentrism inherent in this variety of National Socialism. Inspired by the poisonous Jewish conspiracy literature of men like Count Gobineau and the new “science” of eugenics, inspired by Darwinian thought, Hitler came to believe that the creation of the perfect human society could only fully be realized by creating the perfect humans. Part of his program thus included the elimination of those he considered genetically detrimental to humanity from the gene pool. This was the major reason for the death camps in which over six million Jews and somewhat over seven million other people were murdered. Like Robespierre and the others, Hitler believed that the murder of millions was justified if it brought nearer what he considered the perfect society. Hitler too claimed to love humanity in the abstract.

Like its somewhat younger cousin in America, the other form progressivism in Europe would not go very far down the path of ethnocentrism. Instead, they tied social aspirations to calls for democratic equality and interpreted equality in terms of economic results. Being gradualists, and less impatient than men like Mussolini or Hitler, they believed they could work a little at a time through the democratic processes and educational institutions of the West to eventually secure a perfect society, in which there would be perfect “social justice.” They even often called themselves Social Democrats. Like their cousins, the American Progressives, the Social Democrats would have some clearly recognizable characteristics.

While the Social Democracy and Progressive Movements have included a wide and disparate collection of organizations and individuals, there is a matrix of shared beliefs and attitudes that they, for the most part, share. Like the Enlightenment and the Romantic movements before them, they follow the approach of the Greek sophist Protagoras, an approach that makes a human faculty the ultimate judge and final arbiter of morality and truth. For the Enlightenment, it was the intuitive element in human reason. For the Romantics, it was the intuitive power of human emotion. 

One of the key questions the disciples of Protagoras have to ask is which human or humans, since there are so many of us, makes the binding decisions? Thrasymachus, an early disciple of Protagoras, and Friedrich Nietzsche both believed it should be the one who is able to force his will on the others. For them questions of morality and truth are really only questions of power. Modern Deconstructionists follow this same line of argument in their studies to literature, history, and politics. The other problem deals with the transitory nature of human life and the problems of change. Since humans change and are changed by their fragility and mortality does that mean truth and morality change? If truth changes in what sense is it then truth?

The response of Social Democrats and Progressives, to the question of which human or humans should decide for the rest of us, is that experts trained in the social sciences should be in charge of all societal decision making ultimately. Thorstein Veblein thought government should be run by a committee of social engineers with extensive training in the social sciences. Because of this fundamental assumption, Social Democrats and Progressives tend to put government bureaucracies in control of as many of the day to day functions of society as possible.

These movements tend to believe, that for their goals to be achieved there must be central planning and the purposeful creation of order. They believe the only institution with the coercive power to create order and regulate society to such an extent is big government. Therefore, government must grow ever more intrusive by providing all needed social services and regulating all aspects of the economy and environment. Like earlier socialists, they tend to believe that humans and their ideas are merely the result of their education, circumstances, and environment. If all aspects of the society are controlled and regulated long enough the end result will be a much better and unselfish humanity living in a perfect society. (By the way, this is why Progressives and Social Democrats always seem to link all crime to poverty and a lack of education.) Progressives and Social Democrats see one of their most important goals as reeducation. They believe the purpose of education is not the transference of knowledge but the socialization of the individual. By the socialization of the individual, they too often mean making that person agree with their world view. One of the key points of their educational agenda is to instill the assumption that every problem requires a government solution.

While these are not conspiracies, they are, I believe, social movements that have done great harm to our ideals of liberty, personal responsibility, and private ownership. These were, and still are, much of what lured our ancestors to these shores. Our founders certainly would have found the ideals of the Progressives foreign. So, how did this set of ideals, so foreign, to the ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence come to dominate American politics and society in the twentieth century?

NEXT TIME I WILL FOCUS ON THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN PROGRESSIVISM.