The Socialist Moment?
Socialism is clearly having a moment in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America have been making steady, if somewhat uneven advances in their quest to take over the Democratic party. Zohran Mamdani’s ascension to the mayor’s office in New York as well as victories by young socialists over more centrist Democrats in a slew of primaries has convinced the left that their moment is here.
More under the mainstream news radar is the Trump Administration, and with it the Republican party’s embrace of socialistic policies. The U.S. government now has stakes in over 30 companies, as well as claiming the right of veto over new AI tech company products. This is on top of all the tariffs and directed spending that is going on currently.
I can hear the progressive left objecting already. I am sure they would view calling anything Trump does socialism as sheer blasphemy. That being the case it would be helpful to remind everyone of the two main types of socialism that can afflict a society.
The Two Patterns of Socialism
There are two types of socialism as defined by the economist Ludwig von Mises. There is socialism of the Russian pattern, and socialism of the German pattern. The treatment of this by Mises can be found in his magnum opus Human Action (Part VI, ch. XXVII, §2).
The Russian pattern of socialism sees the state legally own all the means of production. This is de jure legal ownership of these means. In the old Soviet Union, you worked for the state steel company, or the state agriculture collective or the state auto manufacturer. Even the retail shops were all legally owned by the state.
Mises contrasts this with the German pattern in which there is nominal private ownership of the means of production. Think Oskar Schindler from Schindler’s List. He was nominally the head of his company but all the key decisions about what to produce and how to distribute were made by the government. This is why in the movie he starts out as a pot maker but ends up making munitions.
Let’s also clarify something about modern socialism; it is almost universally socialism of the German pattern. Other than North Korea, Cuba and perhaps still Venezuela there are virtually no Russian pattern socialist states. Current serious socialistic proposals all fit the German pattern, from both Right and Left. I will exclude the more strident and extreme outliers of the Democratic Socialists who blather on about abolishing all private property as, for the moment, irrelevant outliers.
That the Left brands the Right as fascist or corporatist should not obscure the fact that all socialists are in sync regarding the legal form of their policies. There is, of course, no effective difference between the two as ownership goes with control, so if the state exercises control it exercises ownership. The German pattern runs headlong into the socialist calculation problem as much as the Russian pattern which is what makes it just as much socialism as the Russian version. The economy cannot work without genuine freely formed prices for capital goods. This means that the central planner is only guessing not using vital information provided by those prices.
Of course, neither pattern can be implemented without an inflationary credit policy. This leads to all sorts of ancillary problems like the boom bust cycle as well as a massive shift of resources from the productive economy to the government. This, of course, includes the funding of the warfare state.
I would here point out an important distinction Mises made about the German pattern. He did go to some lengths to differentiate between socialism, of the German pattern, and mere interventionism. Things like farm subsidies, export-import bank lending or other such transfer programs were to Mises not socialism. They were bad policies and distortive and wealth destroying but not socialism. That the Trump administration is busy taking stakes in companies and directing trade flows, etc., and that the left is busy with rent freezes (Mamdani), and price gouging laws, and utility rate setting at the state level, says that on both the left and the right we are moving beyond interventionism toward what Mises would recognize as socialism in the German pattern.
There Are Only National Socialists Today
Let’s be clear, today virtually all socialists are National Socialists. No, not that they are all Nazis but that there is no international socialist movement uniting the proletariat of all nations. The Comintern is dead. While worldwide worker solidarity may have been a genuinely held belief of Karl Marx, in the hands of actual governments it was replaced with a tribal sensibility. Even before its actual death the Comintern was little more than a tool of Soviet foreign policy.
Socialists such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are also nationalistic in their approach. They want restricted trade to benefit U.S. workers, as Sanders clearly states in this interview; they want any trade agreements to provide the same worker benefits and environmental policies as in the U.S., in other words price foreign labor out of the market. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform does not even mention free trade or tariffs, which given how important this is to Trump this would be an obvious point of difference to highlight, if in fact you disagreed with him. Many socialists favor managed immigration flows in order to stifle foreign wage competition. It is true that the DSA folks are internationalist on issues like Palestine and human rights abuses, yet they remain nationalistic on economic policy. All of these economic notions are beggar thy neighbor nationalistic policies that differ very little from Trump.
Vive l’uniformité
Is there, then, any moral or practical difference between Right socialism and Left socialism? Nope. None. Both forms will expropriate vast quantities of your wealth for use by the State. Both forms will reduce individuals to a level of vassalage and social control befitting their worldviews. Both forms will not hesitate to use violence to enforce their view of the “good”. Both forms will distort and damage the economy as both will direct capital flows to where the political class, not the market, desires.
This does not mean that all supporters of socialistic policies or candidates are haters. They may be low information voters. They may be confused or frightened. They may be justly angry at the way that decades of immoral and imprudent policy choices have degraded them economically and socially. Regardless of their relatively benign intentions the philosophy of socialism is itself coercive and violent.
The Left will object, of course, that Trump and his racist supporters are clearly more violent. It is evident enough that they are more openly thuggish than the left. Although there is plenty of militancy among liberals, if not as much as on the right. Let’s grant our liberal friends that Trump himself more openly acquiesces to violent tendencies than leftist leaders. I would argue that this makes those leftist leaders more dangerous. The button-down violence of Pete Buttigieg or even a Gavin Newsom provides a veneer of respectability that hides coercive tendencies and policies. Does anyone doubt the punishment that awaits those who defy the regulations of a Newsom or Buttigieg administration? Does anyone think Hillary Clinton, or Kamala Harris would have been better for civil liberties than Trump? If so then read this. Does your tax burden feel different under a Republican than a Democratic administration? Does jail feel different if Newsom put you there or Trump? Most remember what Trump has done in his two terms, but have we forgotten the authoritarian policies during Covid under Gavin Newsom?
A Difference Without A Distinction
The only difference between left and right is the object of their enmity and coercion. Right socialists will often, if not always direct their anger at racial and ethnic minorities. Left socialists usually direct their hostility at those in a different class, the industrialist or the landowner for instance. You only have to listen to the seething anger that animates Senator Warren as she talks about how much everybody “owes” the government to understand that there is the same kind of animosity in her veins that there is in Trump. The envy with which Bernie Sanders speaks about commerce and wealth is not morally different than the vitriol Donald Trump spews about Mexicans or Muslims. All of this anger by both right and left just causes and/or exacerbates society’s problems. They all seek to defeat others rather than reach them.
All socialists seek a political solution to what they see as society’s problems. Politics is about winners and losers, power and control, domination and subjugation. These are values antithetical to that of the voluntary market which produces non-violent win-win outcomes and a clear tendency to break down social barriers.
Why would Jim Crow laws be needed if the market were not breaking down social barriers that so angered the racists? Why do we need immigration restrictions unless the market is openly accepting different people from foreign cultures? Markets are about peace; politics is about demonizing the other and it matters not whether it is Right or Left socialists in power. You will be just as oppressed under a strong man authoritarian model as under a politburo bureaucratic model.
Socialism and History
Social science does not lend itself to neat, controlled experimentation. However, history does get us close to this when we study the similarities between Right and Left socialist regimes from the 20th century. Hitler’s Nazi regime exterminated around 10 million, mostly on the basis of their racial background. The Soviets killed roughly 3-5 million Ukrainians in the terror famine of 1932-1933, simply because they were Kulaks (small landowners) or those the Soviets wanted to place in agricultural collectives. Mao killed at least 30-45 million in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution for being of the wrong ideology. Pol Pot murdered a quarter of Cambodia for being too educated, or of the “wrong” ethnicity. Were any of these victims less dead because they were hated for reasons other than race?
The other piece of history to remember is that both right and left socialism is violent. It is easy to focus on the 21st century of mostly Republican wars. Although Obama and Biden got in some licks too. However, when we look at the 20th century what stands out is that the three great “progressive” eras of expanding governmental power in the U.S.; the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society all produced a Democrat-led war, and in LBJs case produced a guns and butter policy that led to the ending of what was left of the gold standard in the U.S. and the arrival of an untethered fiat currency. This is not a coincidence. Power never ends at the shore, and the creation of ever greater coercive power will end up overseas. It becomes imperative to the peace movement to strip left and right of this immense power.
Also, do not be deluded into thinking that “this time it will be different” and the DSA led cadre of young socialists will bring down the corporate power structure that actually runs both parties. To disabuse yourself from this idea, think about how long it took for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to fold (be coopted) into the mainstream power structure. Even if you had a bottom to top revolution you just created a new power structure and those on the outside get screwed.
Reject Earthly Power Altogether
Power is as power does. The use of power is about denigrating and destroying the rights of the other. In short it is violence with a permit. Socialism or any other form of statism of the Right or the Left is equally odious and must be rejected by those who wish to follow the Gospel. Jesus has shown us a way of peace, forgiveness, toleration of differences, and cooperation. Jesus saved, and changed the world forever, not by taking up arms and committing violent acts of coercion, but by serving others up to the point of laying down His life for humanity. We will never match the perfection of His earthly life, but God’s people can surely do better than the two shades of trash thinking that are today’s right and left socialism.
Praise Be to God
