I've had my fair share of engaging with definitional troubles re: capitalism recently (#1434507, #1435754, #1416952), reading crazy Marxist established Harvard history professor Sven Beckert.
Turns out, the American public has a similar trouble understanding what the words mean.
Public opinion surveys consistently find that Americans prefer capitalism to socialism, but often by margins that are disturbingly close given how much misery socialism has inflicted upon the world. A new Harvard-Harris poll at first seems to offer another set of findings in this vein, with especially troubling responses from Democrats.
When you ask people whether they prefer capitalism or socialism, the answers are, largely speaking, pretty bad given the wonders of modern economic growth under (mostly) private property and free(-ish) markets and the absolute horrors of socialism.
When pollsters play with the phrasing, most of that toss-up or two-thirds majority support evaporates entirely.
Support for socialism "is concentrated among people who don't know what it is"Support for socialism "is concentrated among people who don't know what it is"
Even better: when you ask people whether they should be able to buy and own their own houses, an overwhelming majority say yes -- and almost as many say the private sector ought to run grocery stores:
On this question Harvard-Harris finds Democrats even slightly more in favor of private ownership than Republicans and independents—93% of Democrats want freedom for homeowners. This is perhaps due to the margin of error. The bottom line is that across the partisan spectrum, there is massive support for property rights in housing. The same 91% support holds when voters are asked about private property in general.
As for the idea associated with comrade Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s new mayor, government-run grocery stores enjoy a little more popularity than government-run housing, but not much. Eighty-four percent of respondents think grocery stores should be privately run, compared with just 16% who want them run by the state.
Red America is some ways afar yet
archive: https://archive.md/VYzp7
My guess is the functional meaning of socialism in most young peoples' heads is:
"Rich people / oligarchs need to have more of a social conscience"
and that they somehow think government policy can achieve this. (In general, there is just way too much misplaced belief in the government's ability to make things better, see my comment here: #1445554)
Given the whole Epstein fiasco, I can forgive someone for thinking that the wealthy need to grow a conscience. I wish they didn't think that somehow you can regulate that in.
Ding, ding, ding, DING!
With the whole Epstein fiasco how do these people think government is a vehicle they wanna get into?
This is where I blame everyone. The masses are a product of their parents, public education, and media / entertainment. Everyone likes to blame but few want to own what we have and focus on what they are doing about it or the mistakes they've made.
I almost never let someone advocate for socialism without asking a lot of questions and this story rings very true to me. The number of people that understand what socialism actually is is much lower than the massively low number of people that understand capitalism.
I'm a broken record on this. We (the American people) never actually rejected the ideas of Marx. Just implementations. Even the right wing are socialist-lite and have been going back to WW2.
This has always been my frustration with the good progressives, like Greenwald or Dore. How do they see and understand the corruption so similarly to us but still want the government in charge of vast swaths of society?
Its a massive blind spot.
To be clear. I'm not so naive to think that simply getting rid of the state or shrinking it makes all our problems go away. It won't. But centralizing so much power in one place is like a magnet for evil. Evil is with us. We just need to stop lying to ourselves that because people vote for it that makes it legitimate.
The problem of evil is not solved by removing the state. But is sure does break it down to size. And, I know we are no where near being ready as a species for freedom/responsibility. Its gonna take a LOT more time.
Even those that speak against it in theory often don't understand WHY it fails. They say things like, "eventually you run out of other people's money". They don't say... where did all this wealth come from? The don't talk about the price system. They don't talk about the knowledge problem. They don't really understand why socialism will never work and why social welfare doesn't tank an economy. It only neuters it and makes people feel better.
I've went back and watched propaganda films during the cold-war about Marxism, Communism, and the USSR. Its pretty pathetic. They focus on the freedom and military threat mostly. Thing is... you can be a non-socialist country and live in a hellscape of tyranny. As someone that grew up during the cold war and watched the wall fall this has confirmed my "lived experience". This failure to teach is why young people fall for this democratic socialism crap. As if the problem was just the wrong people. Or that people didn't vote for it.
Its not hard to bury socialist ideas. If it were taught in government schools it would be dead. If we had entertainment that targeted socialism like it does free-market capitalism it would be a dead idea. But no. Its not. Its propped up by all of these. Its propped up by well meaning Christians even.
I think we fail to realize the all out assault on freedom and responsibility we have lived under for the last 100 years. Envy is used to control us. You aren't responsible for this we are told. You did your part. You voted.
The main reason I think we won't see a stake driven through the heart of socialism is because statists can't accept the truth. They are afraid that their belief system (statism) which the vast majority of them deny as a thing, will be weakened. We can't have anarchy!
Its especially tiresome to see Christians that fall into this thinking. As if the state, a separate man made system is the vehicle for doing the work Jesus commanded the Church to do is one of the biggest failures of our time. Then, on top of that to expect this godless system to drive morals and enforce some kind of cultural pattern. Its absurd. And you see it on the right and the left in Christianity.
You will never get a moral and right society from the state. At best, the state will follow the morals of society or lack thereof. Just as in liberty and responsibility. It starts with us. The plebs.
But we aren’t moving the needle on reducing the socialism that’s already present.
I firmly believe that socialism kills itself if left to its own path. But, in the process a massive number of people also die. That's the rub.
Free markets are very resilient. Capitalism is the host that the leach of socialism feeds off of. Socialist never seem to talk about where all the wealth comes from. They use straw men and point to colonialism but that's about as weak of an argument as saying the problem with the USSR was Stalin being a monster.
The alternative question is phrased somewhat disingenuously, or at the very least skews answers heavily by placing the word "free" in the category they (presumably) want to see improved results for.
It would've been interesting to see comparative results for the same question with a tiny change:
I strongly suspect the word free alone would tilt it in favor of socialism. Whether that makes the actual question nonsensical or not wouldn't even matter.
As next experiment, you could possibly break some brains by adding "patriotic" to the other side. Then your classically indoctrinated American may be facing an almost impossible task choosing one over the other.
What would you say "free socialism" entails?