The Hot Air Machine

            SOCIALISTS  have a very high view of themselves because they have a very low view of capitalism. Capitalism, for them, is an exploitative, aristocratic, and chaotic ideology that promotes might-makes-right morals and feudalistic tyranny. That socialism promotes the fulfillment and humanity of the worker, that capitalism commodifies and alienates people , these ideas are represented in the posters, logos, quotes, and articles of socialism (just browse the Jacobin or WSWS). Socialists are the moral Übermenschen of human civilization/philosophy, while anyone who does not endorse their noble, egalitarian, collectivist ways are evil greedy bourgeois ; yes, even if you are a poor proletarian yourself .           Yet, despite the very confident and endearing self-image they possess, socialists seem to have time and time again contradicted basic morality. Many socialist regimes launched pogroms and pu...

  IN response to the repeated failures of socialist countries - whether from economic or political crises - the favorite rescuing device of far-left apologists is to cry, “It wasn’t real socialism!” Since it, ostensibly, wasn’t true, orthodox socialism, then we don’t know what it’s like for true socialism to be implemented, meaning we can’t critique practical (in contrast to theoretical) socialism. This recourse is, of course, fallacious, and can be refuted in three easy ways: Noting how socialists, in other contexts, will refer to these countries as sources of socialist pride. Noting how historical socialists, contemporaneous with these regimes, affirmed their socialist nature. Responding in kind, “Well, they certainly weren’t capitalist!” The final point is my favorite, especially since I made it. Socialist apologists might assert that these nations had capitalist characteristics, or were forms of “state capitalism”. However, you either have - exclusively - capitalism or so...