To Each From Each?

OK, so, the latest political boogeyman is The Democratic Socialists of America, DSA. Full disclosure: I have not read the official platform of the DSA. It is not a new political party in America, although until recently it has functioned mostly as an activist organization and not one that runs candidates in elections. A long time ago I read Socialism by Ludiwg von Mises. At a time in my life when the phrase ‘ hold your friends close, but your enemies closer’ was my credo. Quite the tome, it takes up nearly two inches on one of my bookshelves. I hauled it down recently and fanned through the pages. It felt like a walk down memory lane – I found dog-eared pages, scribbled marginalia, whole paragraphs highlighted in yellow. I’d devoured that text, the scholarship impressed me, required reading for every would-be libertarian. Along with Socialism, there are certain books on my shelves by libertarian-adjacent writers (e.g, Hayek, Rand, Nozick) that I will never part with. One of the main takeaways from these books was that Socialism, as a political system, is not one any freedom-minded citizen should ever want to live under. For the uninitiated, reading von Mises’ Socialism as a young adult was like the eye-opening experience of being skeptical that certain substances are really as poisonous as people claim, and then reading a meandering treatise on the toxicology of Ricin. I’m suspicious why this American variant of socialism prepends ‘Democratic’ to its moniker? Possibly it’s a gimmick, a kind of spoonful of sugar intended to ease the ideology into the heads of TheAmericanPeople who will hear ‘Democratic’ and think, That doesn’t sound so dangerous

Does the DSA pose a real threat? Many people say no, they point out that the DSA is popping up here and there like zits on a teen’s face, but there’s no reason to think it’s going to become full blown acne. Only 34% of polled Democrats say they align with DSA ideals. Even if some DSAers win their general elections and go to Washington, implementing their goals into law will be next to impossible. Bernie Sanders is nominally an Independent, while in spirit he’s an ideological Democratic Socialist, in a similar way that Rand Paul is nominally a Republican but in terms of political advocacy more an ideological libertarian (notwithstanding the recent charade with Fauci). In all the many years these two have served in the Senate, neither has meaningfully shaped policy. Even so, a lot of people are saying the DSA represents the Democrat’s version of the Republican’s Tea Party problem, we shall see

People I listen to describe the composition of the DSA party as mostly wistful college grads whose socioeconomic goal is to reinvent American life as a collection of fraternity and sorority houses complete with a planned economy, which the DSA would control. Basically, through the magic of nostalgia, they want to revive and relive their cushy college campus experience where everything was provided for them, where the grounds were kept neat and clean, where one was free to attend instruction (or not), or seek out a safe space where freed of the avarice wrought by Capitalism one might self-actualize in any way she sees fit. (By the way, this does not characterize my college experience during either of my two tours of duty in academia)! People like this are ideologues with no understanding (have never learned) how productive work gets done by wage-earning workers within the complicated socioeconomic system called America. They resent the present-day house of horrors in Washington D.C., sure, fine, we all get that, but unable to control their impulses they want to wholesale replace it with a system of government that would transmogrify the nation into a single amorphous organism maintained on life support via the magic of a planned economy. Each indivisible part of the organism will have its own, specific needs, of course, and yes, some parts will need to work longer and harder to fulfill the needs of others. To each’s need…from each’s ability… kinda thing

P. J. O’rourke once wrote about his experience on a Russian cruise. The story goes that many of his fellow-passengers trumpeted how great this or that Russian amenity or service was, and then, come to find out, to a one each of them had brought along his own toilet paper. There’s just no evidence that a planned economy has ever turned out well, kids. There are things called books, maybe download a few to your smart-reader and learn some history during your post-graduate honeymoon of self-actualization on some Grecian beach, or wherever

I can hear it already….eff off Boomer!

By now nearly everyone can at least understand the revolutionary zeal of the DSA. Toppling MAGA – starting in November with its metastases in both houses of congress, then continuing on in 2028 with the executive branch, followed by the DOJ and all the infected downstream agencies of government – is job one, no question. Yet almost nobody believes this will happen by nominating normie Democrats. And forget about normie Republicans coming to the rescue; DSAers, I’m sure, likely view them as part of the same elderly cabal of Do-Nothingers. Not to mention the fact that normie Repubs have all been banished or gone extinct

Reading about the Spanish civil war, I found myself sympathetic to one of two goals of the Anarchist faction, to get rid of Franco and fascism. But their subsequent ambition to abolish the State entirely, not so much. Today, the government of Spain is neither an Anarchy nor is it Socialist, it is a constitutional monarchy whose power is actively checked by a non-sycophantic, multi-party legislature known as parliament. Imagine that