When I was a teenager, more than half a century ago, I was an ardent socialist. I knew that socialism was the wave of the future. It was the only intelligent form of social organization; the only one that placed social interests above private greed.
How did I know this? Had I read Karl Marx? No, I hadn’t. Had I studied any other progressive thinkers? Here too the answer was in the negative. So how did I know? The answer was that my ideas came mostly from my high school teachers. They were my authorities. They were the ones who indoctrinated me on the validity of left-wing beliefs.
Something else came along with this ideological baggage. It was the conviction that socialism was inherently intellectual. It had plainly been created by the intelligentsia and propagated by them. In other words, smart people fashioned—and sold—socialism on the basis of irrefutable science.
Anything less than complete agreement with this legacy was a sign of boorishness. It was proof that the dissenters did not have the brains to understand the way the world worked. Unwilling to learn from academics, they were destined to remain ignorant to their last days. I, of course, had already avoided this fate.
Contemporary socialists are, in fact, as arrogant as I was. Their attitudes eerily mirror those of my adolescent self. They too are convinced of their infallibility based on little or no evidence. They too depict those who disagree with them as uninformed ignoramuses.
Senator Kamala Harris recently provided a sign of how shallow contemporary socialists are. In explaining one of her political positions, she opined that capitalism was theft. That the rich should own much more than the poor was proof they had stolen from others.
This was nothing less than a restatement of the fiery rhetoric of Pierre Proudhon. This eighteenth century French revolutionary denounced property on the grounds that everything should be owned in common. It was brilliant sloganeering then; it does a serviceable duty today.
What grabbed me was that this was the very same language I used as a teenager. I too was inspired more by its drama than economic insights. Apparently this is true for senator Harris. If so, it is an indication that her intellectual roots are as deep as mine were.
Or consider the brilliant cerebralism of congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In describing how her tax proposals would be applied, she explained that the rich would not pay seventy percent of every dollar they earned, but that the highest marginal rates would apply only to what they earned above a particular level.
This lesson in progressive taxation came straight out of my high school economics class—only it was less sophisticated. My teacher would never have referred to the wealthy as “the tippy-top.” He would have regarded this formulation as insulting to his students.
But Ocasio-Cortez, despite her pretentions of understanding what is best for America, is more juvenile in her thinking than I was. This grandiose naiveté is, unfortunately, epidemic among socialists. Most assume they know more than they do.
I got lucky in college. My conservative friends introduced me to a literature I did not know existed. In fact, this discovery accelerated my journey toward the political right. I felt betrayed by my erstwhile mentors. They had sought to manipulate my allegiance by distorting the record. This censorship was not intellectual; it was not science. Rather, it was propaganda.
Contemporary socialists are as narrowly informed as I was in my youth. Many of them, however, also have tunnel vision. Yes, intellectually dishonest authorities have led them astray, but they contribute to their lack of knowledge by refusing to listen anyone who disagrees with them.
Socialism cannot work! The evidence that it cannot has been available for a long time. Socialists are unfamiliar with it because they actively reject it. Take taxation, for instance. Experiments in raising marginal tax rates to astronomical levels invariably fail. They do not being in more revenue, but less.
Confiscatory taxation also produces economic recessions. During the 1930’s it kept the Great Depression going for a decade. This did not help the poor, but exacerbated their distress.
So how is soaking the rich going to pay for Medicare for all? Or for extreme environmental regulations? You guessed it: it won’t. Why don’t the socialists realize this? It is because they are as vainly ignorant today as their predecessors were in the past!
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Kennesaw State University
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