According to a new article by scholars of the leftwing Brookings Institution, critics who are fond of deriding socialism’s supposed failures are the ones who fail, in that they stubbornly refuse to see “the big picture.”
While pointing to the material defects of socialist states like Cuba, the former Soviet Union, China under Mao, and more recently, Venezuela, these critics miss the larger and more significant wave of progressive success in building the foundations of a more egalitarian world, even if that entails less material wealth for some. Well of course, the authors admit! You cannot have a more just or egalitarian society if some are rich and others poor. With wealth comes power, and since it has not proven possible to make everyone equally wealthy, wealth per se must be understood as an enemy to be defeated, even at the cost of a lower standard of living for all.
And therein lies a hard but necessary truth, the authors insist. Why waste time fruitlessly refuting the fascist talking point that socialist programs and policies lead to a more general state of poverty, when it would be better to simply admit the obvious and be done with it.
But the Brookings authors go further down this well-trodden path to reach some new and startling conclusions. Eliminating disparities of wealth, they argue, is only the first step on the road to a more cooperative society where no man or woman stands taller than his neighbor.
They argue persuasively that it will also be necessary to systematically eliminate all other sources of power and privilege that divide one man from another and thereby redefine the notion of "humanity" to remove all the sharp edges of so-called individualism. A just and equal society can no more tolerate eccentric and harmful forms of self-expression (e.g., verbal expression, sartorial expression, belief systems, etc.) than it can tolerate a world of billionaires and paupers living side by side. So-called “free speech,” in particular, is a wicked thing, arising, from an utterly selfish competitive instinct that values the individual unit above the collective mass. As if only by standing apart from his brothers can a man or woman have value; when of course, the opposite is true, since no one can stand alone.
Likewise, any intellectual or physical capacities that tend to raise one person about the other must be systematically rejected. Of what use, for example, is a superior intellect if it is placed in the service of a selfish individualism that harms those who are less superior? Socialism acknowledges that most of us are not superior and encourages us to pursue the median and the average in all things. Lest one think this impractical, consider the successes of certain Nordic companies like Ikea, which many hold out correctly as a model for the socialist future. Ikea furniture can be bought and assembled by anyone of average or below average intellect and the company likewise makes absolutely no claim to exceptional design or quality, and yet the products work and the masses are happy to own and use them.
In a similar vein, the current educational establishment is increasingly moving in the right direction if we are to make progress toward the egalitarian socialist future, abolishing so-called aptitude tests as a basis for advancement to higher education, and only allowing children to be taught by those teachers who have no demonstrable claim to be exceptional in their intellectual capacities, knowledge or skills. So called “gifted and talented” programs in schools are thankfully a thing of the past. Advanced placement classes are increasingly under attack and SAT scores are no longer used as criteria for admission to universities. But more still needs to be done. Not until the most average among us are able to become engineers and brain surgeons will the era of undue privilege be finally over. Will more bridges collapse and brains die on the operating table, you ask? Of course, but the achievement of a truly egalitarian world will fully justify the occasional failure of this sort.
Yes, these are harsh truths, but socialism is nothing but harsh truth. It is time to be brutally frank with our fellow citizens and with our enemies, the authors say, explaining that the world is out of patience with infantile capitalism and individualism generally, both of which are manifestations of humanity’s passing toddler stage of social development. It is time to move forward, regardless of the nostalgic objections of the sentimentalists to a future world where we can look to our left and then to our right and feel that we are looking into mirrors, seeing others just like us, where nothing is strange or unknown or threatening. Once human beings have finally freed themselves of the decadent need to “be all that we can be” and learn to be content with “being like everyone else”, the world will enter a new era, a state of human social maturity which sets as its ideal the common good. In that day we will all live in the same kinds of accommodations and do work for the same pay and share the same opinions about everything. We will dress alike and eat alike, and no one will dare to claim any superiority or indulge in novelty. We know this is possible because we can see glimpses of this future even today in places like Cuba, where everything is free, precisely because there is nothing one man can buy that sets him apart from his fellows.
Once all individualistic excess has been wrung from the system, the authors conclude—even if that requires a brief sanitary period of forcible adjustment to eliminate incorrigible elements—the whole world will finally know peace and justice. And in that state where all are alike and there is no striving for advantage among men or nations because there is nothing to strive for, death itself will have lost its sting and humanity at large will barely note the passing of this man or that woman, since everyone will be a near copy of everyone else. And what vision could be more utopian than that, the authors ask, rhetorically?
