Socialism is Dead

In my lifetime the American political right has succeeded in labeling all concern and assistance for the unfortunate as socialism. This only increases support for socialism, as it should. We should have concern for the unfortunate and we should provide them with assistance. If we labeled concern for and assistance to the unfortunate as demonic than public support for demons should increase. Concern for and assistance toward the unfortunate is one of the essential features of a truly human life and the fact that the American political right insists on slandering these humane tendencies is all the proof anyone needs that this political movement has outlived its usefulness. Yet it still lives, without being useful. And the American people have responded to the political right’s constant claim that concern and assistance are socialism by embracing socialism. This is as it should be, if the political right is going to insist on this label then they have to live with the consequences. I do not insist on this label. Concern for the unfortunate predates modern political labels and will outlive modern politics, it is an essential feature of the human spirit and will never die. The political tug of war in America over the term socialism is really a proxy war. The political right cannot bring itself to identify culture as the cause of Black poverty as the Blacks are Protestant and this religion must always be protected. Unable to make the legitimate argument they make the illegitimate argument that the unfortunate should not be helped and try to draw some connection between this and Communist atrocities in an incoherent and moronic attempt to duck the real issue. I do not duck this issue, I embrace it. Culture is the main cause of Black poverty and Protestantism won’t help them with this or anything else. Providing assistance to the unfortunate is the essence of humaneness and must never be slandered. I can say these things as I have no religious obsessions to stop me. But the American political right does, as America’s political controversies are essentially religious in nature as is American culture. But for good and bad the whole world is not America. Europe’s culture and Europe’s political controversies are not religious in nature and socialism has real meaning in Europe while in America it is just a code word for political realities that both sides want to go unmentioned. But in Europe it is different, socialism has real and overt meaning. And the socialist dream is dead.

Social Democracy is the flower of Western Civilization and embodies its best attributes and is a permanent addition to human society and its modern form was invented in Europe. This does not mean assistance to the unfortunate is a modern invention. Adam Smith notes that prior to the Reformation there was no need for government assistance to the poor as the Catholic church provided for the poor. There is vast documentation to support this. Before the Reformation the Catholic church was a branch of the government and funded by land grants used these funds to provide assistance to the unfortunate. Modern Social Democracy simply continues this ancient tradition of assistance to the unfortunate. It is telling that in both France and Britain when church lands were confiscated during the Reformation and the Revolution the Church’s lost wealth was a third of the valuable land. In today’s Europe social spending consumes a third of the economy. It’s the same number, the same share of the economy for the same thing, nothing changed. Today’s Europe did not come from outer space, it came from yesterday’s Europe. But there is something new, a dream that socialism was not merely a flower of Western Civilization but a replacement and the final form of human development. That dream has died. This is the time of the dying dreams. The old has to die before the new can be born. The dreams yet unborn need not worry, the old dreams are all dead. Including the dream of socialism. Real socialism, the one that comes from Europe. Socialism is like brie cheese or trappist beer, they don’t make an American version.

The socialist fought a war against the bourgeois and the war won. The socialist dream was that as the bourgeois replaced the feudal knights on horseback they would replace the bourgeois in some sort of turn taking game explained by Hegel in unreadable books and later re-explained by Marx in books so unreadable that the common response to reading Marx is to hope Communist dictators are doomed to reread these books for eternity as their just punishment. The socialist dream was that the Bourgeois Archipelago was a power bloc instead of what it obviously was, a culture. The Roman Empire decays and Europe in practical terms falls apart to mere local administration. In this chaos the normal sea routes are cut off by the Muslims. This makes the land routes more important, especially the north-south land route based on the Rhine and Rhone rivers which enables one to go from the Channel to the Mediterranean. In the chaos merchants banded together into groups for protection and made symbols to identify themselves so as to show their strength to potential attackers. These merchant guilds settled towns along the Rhine-Rhone axis which became the spine of Europe. These towns grew into great trading cities and became the start of the Bourgeois Archipelago. A new culture was formed along the spine of Europe and spread in many directions with many offshoots, Magdeburg Law, Cologne Law, Lubeck Law. This archipelago had its own culture and it was more advanced then what came before it. As Europe overcame the decay of the Roman Empire and slowly pieced nation-states back together from tiny pieces of locally administered territory the Bourgeois Archipelago survived in various forms according to local circumstance. And then the modern era arrived and all areas and all cities were absorbed into the modern nation-state. Absorbed, but not assimilated. Because the cities that had been founded by merchant guilds a thousand years ago in the chaos of disunited Europe remained wealthier than the cities that had not been founded by the bourgeoisie. The newcomers who arrived to the former Bourgeois Archipelago from lesser cities and the countryside never became as successful as the descendants of the ancient bourgeoisie that preceded their arrival. An explanation had to be made.

The socialist explanation was that the Bourgeoisie were not a cultural grouping but a power bloc invisibly coordinating its efforts. The socialism explanation was that the Bourgeoisie were not the flower of Western Civilization but conspirators unfairly succeeding. The socialist explanation was that Europe’s bright future was not for all Europeans to become Bourgeoisie but no Europeans to be Bourgeoisie. The explanation was that cultural advancement was not the cause of success and worthy goal and aspiration of all but that success is a commodity to be divided and the best division would be done by the socialist. This was the denial of culture’s influence on success, the denial of cultural progress, denied, as always because cultural progress is always uneven. The Bourgeoisie were ahead of everyone else, this could be admitted to or this could be admitted as evidence of guilt. The wrong decision was made.

The socialist dream is to give credit for Europe’s advancement to themselves when they are the undeserving inheritors of a brilliant past illuminated by Western Civilization itself. This dream leads to the delusion that the governmental policies of modern socialism are the real cause of what is admirable of Europe and that culture is irrelevant. Because culture is irrelevant exports and imports can go both ways. Socialism can be exported to all cultures around the globe as the final form of human development, as the end point of human history beyond which no further improvements can be made. By denying the importance of culture the socialist dream is that they will turn the world into a mirror and the whole world will become socialist and the whole world will attribute to socialism all good things, praise Europe. And this will be proven with the imports. People will be imported, entire cultures will be imported. Culture is irrelevant, all that matters is socialist government policies. If the Somali lives in Sweden he will live as a Swede. If the Somali lives in Sweden he will have access to the same government policies, the same socialism. How can he not then live as a Swede does? Because the Swede lives according to his culture, and the Somali according to his. The socialist dream dies. Immigration kills the dream of the European left. It kills the dreams of turning the world into a mirror of Europe, of all credit being given to government policies. That dream is dead and never should have lived. The west is only made brilliant by the light of Western Civilization. To the extent that Social Democracy is good it is only to the extent that reflects the essence of the civilization that produced it. With its war on the Bourgeoisie the socialists were an ungrateful beneficiary of an undeserved inheritance. The dream that the inheritor would eclipse the benefactor has died. This is the time of dying dreams.