Small Country vs Large Country Marxism: Small Socialism
Small Socialism
Why does socialism work better in small countries than in large ones? Or does it work at all? Small Socialism is today’s Impertinent Question by John Hayward.
Small Socialism
By John Hayward
September 5, 2010
People sometimes wonder why socialism seems to sputter along in European countries, but crashes and burns in the United States. The blogger known as Ace of Spades recently offered some interesting thoughts about the role of cultural unity in retarding the corrosive effects of the welfare state, suggesting that a cultural penalty for indolence can keep productivity up, after the economic penalty for refusing to work is removed by an expansive welfare state. I would suggest another factor is size.
Why is socialism disastrous in large countries, but somewhat sustainable in small ones?
The answer lies in the nature of socialist programs. They require a great deal of coercive force to implement. The entire purpose of a socialist government is to compel obedience to an ideal of social justice. Compulsion is necessary because ordinary people are too stupid and selfish to take the correct actions on their own. For example, the United States would never have evolved a socialized medical system “naturally.” The system had to be imposed, and its staggering volume of rules and regulations are imposing indeed.
Free people would not voluntarily fund the massive apparatus of a redistributive State, so funds must be extracted from them, through punitive taxation. Much of our tax law is explicitly intended to reward or punish certain behavior, based on whether the State finds the behavior desirable. The insistence on maintain some illusion of personal freedom, for a huge population, makes the programs of American social engineers particularly expensive. Single-payer health care would become more affordable if the government “owned” the bodies of its citizens, and could force them to make healthy lifestyle choices. This exact line of reasoning will be deployed to justify massive power grabs by the federal government in coming years, unless ObamaCare is repealed.
ALSO at DBKP – More Impertinent Questions by John Hayward:
* The Church of the State
* Dollars for Dumps: Apply Obama Economic Magic to Housing Market?
In a large nation, the amount of coercion necessary to maintain statist programs increases exponentially. It’s not just because there are more people to herd around. There is more money to be distributed, which means there are more choices to restrain. The trillions of dollars surging through the U.S. economy represent a vast number of production, investment, and consumption choices. Artificial restrictions imposed upon this complex system produce huge crises and unintended consequences, like bug-riddled program code dumped into a supercomputer.
The State invariably declares these problems will require still more compulsion to correct, since the socialist government will never admit it played any role in creating them. The American government maintains, to this day, that it bears absolutely no responsibility for provoking the 2008 financial crisis. It proceeded to seize vast amounts of money and power from a private sector it described as uniquely greedy, short-sighted, and out of control. Through absurd standards such as “jobs created or saved,” the State asserts that it can be judged only by itself.
When the government expands, the private sector contracts, as you can see from the difference between swelling government payrolls and the unemployment free-fall in the private sector. Compulsion devours choice. The continued employment of that vast horde of highly-compensated bureaucrats does not depend on attracting your business. They will pay no price for delivering years of “unexpected” bad economic news, where a comparably inept and befuddled private firm would quickly lose its customers, and face the wrath of its stockholders. The transfer of resources into the public sector comes with a substantial loss of value, from corruption, inefficiency, and the blind stubbornness of ideology. We feel this loss more keenly across the vast expanse of our fruited plains because we had so much more to lose.
In a large nation, the ruling class is both physically and intellectually distant from its citizens. This makes their decrees more arbitrary, especially when corruption is factored in, along with the ridiculously long careers our representatives enjoy in the absence of term limits. Congressmen from small, safe districts wield disproportionate influence over tax and spending policies which affect the entire nation. Taxpayers in the other 49 states were compelled to fund a decades-long project to rename every building in West Virginia after Robert Byrd.
Our great size also means the United States has no other nation to fall back on, as the socialist countries of Europe have long relied upon us for defense and material assistance. The dismal socialized health-care systems of other nations rely upon American innovation in pharmaceuticals and medical technology. When the single-payer health care system desired by the architects of ObamaCare has killed all the American geese, there will be no more golden eggs for anyone. For decades, desperate Canadians have been able to cross their southern border to find superior care. Americans will never have a comparable option to escape their own degenerating system. No one will step forward to fill the void left by our defunded military… at least, no one you’d want to trust with your safety.
The assertion that smaller nations can make socialism work is flawed anyway. Europe is in meltdown, with fallout blowing west from Greece and Spain. The foreign systems long admired by American socialists are taking hard looks at budget cuts and free-market reforms. Small socialism isn’t “sustainable.” It just decays more slowly. Its collapse is as swift and heartbreaking as the spectacle of fiery riots in the streets of Greece… which is, after all, a very small nation… and a dead one.
by John Hayward
image: dbkp file; People’s Cube
John Hayward writes under the name of Doctor Zero, where his pieces are a staple of Hot Air’s Green Room and a favorite of readers. John also maintains Doctor Zero.org where readers can find his superb collection of essays, Doctor Zero: Year One, available on Amazon.
[...] Questions column is up at Death By 1000 Papercuts. It’s called Small Socialism. Click here to take a [...]
Excellent piece. Although this may be another way to reach the same conclusion, Socialism also seems easier to impose upon nations with a single culture or ethnicity. For example, Finland often seems like one enormous extended family. An individual is much more willing to toss in a few Euros to help an struggling cousin than a dissolute stranger speaking a different language, practicing an odd religion 1,500 miles away. As famously tolerant as Scandis are, ask them what they feel about the Greek work ethic and subsequent bailout.
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[...] Doctor Zero continues his impertinence. [...]
Great work! Thank you for reminding us of what we must stand against in order to continue enjoying our prosperity and freedom. Socialism is nothing but disaster when applied to the bigger picture. While reading this article, I couldn’t help thinking about the abstract ideas and broken logic used to embellish socialism and other lefty ideas at my university. It is especially sad that members of the ruling class, especially the professors in liberal public universities such as mine, remain imprisoned in their ivory towers, overwhelm their students with abstract and impractical lefty ideas, and try to enforce ideological purity among the student body. All in the name of socialism, tolerance, multiculturalism, universal health care, etc etc etc!
Anyways, that was just a side thought while reading this post. This post sums up what I have already observed while living in and attending college in deep-blue California and experiencing all the negative effects of socialism! It is very true that “the State invariably declares these problems will require still more compulsion to correct, since the socialist government will never admit it played any role in creating them.” I still remember the time a socialist tried to tell me that the inefficiency of the DMV was not the fault of the government but that of those “who want to mate government smaller” that supposedly staff it.
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Excellent column.
BTW, when it comes to socialism there actually is an “exception that proves the rule”. The Shaking Quakers. I wrote a little description of this oddity
here.
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Doc Zero: +1000!!
Absolutely terrific essay… you WILL let your fans know when you get hired to write speeches for Conservative candidates, won’t you??
~ DeepWheat
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