I wrote this in conversation on facebook. I’m not an expert on the subject of economic ideologies, but I thought this critique of “taking things to a logical conclusion” was worth re-posting.
I think it is ultimately useless to take the terms “socialism” or “capitalism” to their extreme, ideologically “pure” conclusions. To say socialism is absolute authoritarianism is to thus imply capitalism is total anarchy.
Neither is a particularly good way to live.
In this starkly dualistic world, we are all fettered under the yoke of authoritarianism once you add a little government regulation to rein in the anarchy. Societal models shouldn’t be managed like food safety, where a gallon of milk is spoiled by a drop of cyanide.
Conservatives tend to conflate socialism with communism and its worst excesses. They enjoy drawing a straight line between government run medicine to re-education gulags, while balking at any such of similar absurdist response on the other side.
There’s no room for pick up basketball in a public park, sponsored by the theft of pure capitalist earnings.
Personally, I am not comfortable with the recent adoption of the term “socialism” by the left, even if it is is a loud and proud reappropriation of an overused slur by the right after the pendulum has swung so far towards unfettered markets. But many folks have pointed out that American liberals would be considered free market conservatives pretty much anywhere else on this planet so I’m not to scared of the bogeyman of socialism in US politics.
Like many other things in life, government is a exercise in balance, not purity. Logic exercises can only take you so far.