Book Review: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, by Kevin D. Williamson

Source: Amazon.com

From the book’s cover:

Stalin’s gulag, impoverished North Korea, collapsing Cuba...it’s hard to name a dogma that has failed as spectacularly as socialism. And yet leaders around the world continue to subject millions of people to this dysfunctional, violence-prone ideology.

In The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Socialism, Kevin Williamson reveals the fatal flaw of socialism—that efficient, complex economies simply can’t be centrally planned. But even in America, that hasn’t stopped politicians and bureaucrats from planning, to various extents, the most vital sectors of our economy: public education, energy, and the most arrogant central–planning effort of them all, Obama’s healthcare plan.

In this provocative book, Williamson unfolds the grim history of socialism, showing how the ideology has spawned crushing poverty, devastating famines, and horrific wars. Lumbering from one crisis to the next, leaving a trail of economic devastation and environmental catastrophe, socialism has wreaked more havoc, caused more deaths, and impoverished more people than any other ideology in history—especially when you include the victims of fascism, which Williamson notes is simply a variant of socialism.

Williamson further demonstrates:

Why, contrary to popular belief, socialism in theory is no better than socialism in practice
Why socialism can’t exist without capitalism.
How the energy powerhouse of Venezuela, under socialism, has become an economic basket case subject to rationing and blackouts.
How socialism, not British colonialism, plunged the bountiful economy of India into stagnation and dysfunction—and how capitalism is rescuing it.
Why socialism is inextricably linked to communism.

If you thought socialism went into the dustbin of history with the collapse of the Soviet Union, think again. Socialism is alive and kicking, and it’s already spread further than you know.

The review:

This reviewer on Amazon.com points out some good arguments against the book.  I noticed some of this myself.  And no, before you point fingers, this is not one of those instances where I cop-out and just use someone else’s reviews to do my own thinking for me.  I’m saving that for next week’s entry.

Kevin D. Williamson, the author. / Source: jamesotteson.com

Oh, and one note further.  The following review of the book came originally from Amazon.com, but I have been unable to find it again and thus cite it properly.  Perhaps it is just an over-sight on my part.   Maybe it is there, plain as day, in the Amazon product reviews for this book.  But nevertheless, I couldn’t find it myself when I went about updating my review notes into content style.  If you are the owner of the following review, please be aware that no plagiarism was intended on my part, and the following information was borrowed from your review because I agreed with it over and above the other reviews I read on Amazon about the book.  Thanks!

The PIG guide to socialism is thought-provoking and easy to read. As a popular level book that reads like a set of blog posts--one that may, admirably, even get readers to continue to pursue the topic of socialism and social justice further--it succeeds. As a scholarly treatment of socialism, it fails. This is so for a number of reasons. (Disclaimer: I have no settled view socialism, or any other political theory.)

First, the author plays the game of taking his opponent to be too hard to define (which exhibits his lack of research on the primary texts in the socialist and social justice traditions) and so explains socialism simply in the ways easiest to refute. Socialism in this book is reduced to an economic theory, one that has a central governmental agency set the prices and distribution of all goods.
However, this is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of socialism, as it is primarily a theory of justice where values like equality (and equality of opportunity, primarily) and community take normative precedence over other public goods, like unregulated markets and libertarian goals like the minimal state. The author doesn't do a great job at killing even his own straw-man here, for he vastly oversimplifies the extent to which governmental agencies (e.g., through hired experts) can and do set prices and distribute goods (and always with the use of incredibly powerful computer programs to model market changes).

Second, the author treats socialism and communism as basically the same, and argues that any (actual) communist state failure is a socialist state failure, and vice versa. So, most of the book is the author pointing to the worst possible socalist and communist states throughout history, ignoring better examples (as well as deeper research on why those states failed). He also takes problems everyone agrees are problems--such as public education in the US--and blames them entirely on "socialism" without much argument. In effect, his argument is that almost everything governments do that sucks in is due to socialism and regulating the markets.

A deeper problem is that the author at no point interacts with (critiques, summarizes, evaluates, etc.) actual socialist philosophers. At times he quotes random anonymous comments on blog posts, other times he cites blogs or, at best, news articles. As a result, the book is about as scholarly as a stock political ad on TV.

The author is also highly uncharitable to many parties whom you might well think would be his main supporters, namely, Christians, and makes unsupported and sometimes stupid claims in the book, such as his claim (chapter 6 AFAIR {note - I believe this stands for "as far as I remember"} ) that class size has no impact on student learning.
For readers interested in the topic of socialism and social justice, I recommend starting with the works of G.A. Cohen, such as his very short book "Why Not Socialism?" 

Albert Einstein was apparently and advocate of socialist principles. / Source: izquotes.com

The reviews for PIG on Socialism on Amazon.com seem to be either love it or hate it.  The argument made is that socialism is being maligned, or that it is in fact actually evil.    Personally, I think both sides of the coin have merit.  For instance, the examples given in the text about India are compelling, as the history of the nation shows when viewed in the lens of the problems caused by the Indian policy of "self sufficiency" lead me to conclude that there really were problems there.  A socialist democracy?  Yeah, right.

I did like the author's point about how Russia under Communism was Russia under Communism, just as Cuba is Cuba, and China is/was China (whatever you may call China now is anyone's guess), and how Sweden could be seen as Sweden under its own form of socialism.  The nature of the state and its leaders, as well as the way a given people tend to run things, determines what you get from any particular flavor of socialist system.  But then on the other hand, there are reasons to dislike the idea of the so-called "milk mafia" in the U.S., or the destruction of food stuffs to keep prices artificially high so that producers get more income.  What do you do?  Socialism is not a good system (in this author's opinion), but neither is rampant capitalism either.

Steinbeck seems to have pegged the U.S. pretty well. / Source: reddit.com

I guess I would say that Williamson's argument that socialism has been tried and has failed just didn't seem too convincing to me.  I also agree with the above cited review's argument that the author's use of specific terms is a bit iffy.  Socialism is a shade on the scale; its not black or white. 

Then again, there are inherent dangers to trying to regulate human activity based on morality, which Socialism tends to do.  People will always tweak the system.  Incentives work, and value in production doesn't take into account the value of the materials, the end value to the consumer (the high water market of capitalist economy), or a number of other issues relevant here as well.  What would it be like if we paid for things based on how much value they had to our daily lives, rather than just what the market would bear?  What if education was priced higher due to its value to make lives better, and cigarettes were less valuable due to their harmful effects on our bodies?  Or reverse that.  Is that socialism too?  An interesting paradox, to my mind.

Then there is the book's foray into the public school debate.  The author points out how U.S. public school system is based on Prussian model from 19th century, and how it is failing.  He says smaller class size leads to less teacher work load, but has not been shown to improve student performance (which I have read elsewhere and believe).  He says schools need money to fund programs like pensions and other non-educationally directed things of the like.  This is the whole "the freight team is not as valuable as the sales team because they aren't actually selling the items"-argument, if you ask me, but at the same time, there is a kernel of truth to it.  If you'll forgive a semi-personal observation there, since when I wrote that line, I was freight team for a major hardware retailer.

For those of you who don't know, a little over one hundred years ago, there was actually a socialist party ticket bid for the presidency of the United States.  According to Wikipedia, Debs and his running mate, Emil Seidel, got 901,551 popular votes, but zero votes from the electoral college, and carried no states.  Incidentally, this was the election that brought Woodrow Wilson into office.  1912 was a strange year, it appears. / Source: CulturalPolitics.net

I do agree that the public school system needs reform.  A more college-like system, which people come from all over the world to attend school in the United States for, would be beneficial.  But you can't just change the system overnight.  Nobody would buy it.  As a politician, you'd be kicked out of office.  That is why nobody has done it yet.  We keep putting fingers in the dyke instead of heading to higher ground.  Perhaps a system where there is a "public" school in which peoples' kids with certain income levels can get into more easily than they could into the more prestigious private schools (witness state college/universities vs. private college/universities).  But if your income level is higher, you have to pay higher rates to attend that public school, thus incentivizing people to support private schools, which by their nature would be "better" (and yes, that quality level is is debatable, but it is debatable in higher education as well, so...)  Yes, it increases social class tension, but what do you do about that?  The system is unfair already.  I don't know a good way to make everybody get a good education and everybody do their best, including teachers, administrators, parents, and especially students.

I liked the information about Sweden.  Very informative.  The author says Sweden stinks.  People call in to work sick a lot.  The incentive to work is lower than it is in a tougher market economy.  It would be worth reading more about this problem, as  from what I have heard, Sweden is so often held up by socialism's advocates as such a model state.  Williamson says Sweden's employment system is a ticking time-bomb.  Work levels are dropping and racism in the job market are quite bad.  And yet some Americans say: "Why can't the U.S. be more Swedish?"  Well just look how homogenous Scandinavian countries are.  It makes people secure and lets them work together better, which greases the wheels of socialism.  Plus Swedes are naturally industrious, according to PIG to Socialism (and this makes sense, based on what I know of Swedish immigrants to the United States over the past two centuries).  Poverty rates among Swedish-Americans and native Swedes is concurrent with these trends. 

And there is also the ObamaCare problem.  I have always said that I didn't agree with the exact form of ObamaCare (it seemed wrong somehow, even though I couldn't put specific finger on why in most aspects - except for the mandatory insurance, which makes sense in a backward sort of way [author's note: when I first wrote this review, ObamaCare was still in the work-up stage.  Now I am less than thrilled with it, but that is another story]), but this book makes a strong case against it.  I wouldn't say the author's attacks are fully damning, because they don't make any argument to replace the system, other than waving the capitalism/free market flag.  There is an under-the-surface cry of :" Let the market sort it out."  We certainly don't need Britain's 1970s socialized medicine system though, and based on the U.S.'s experience already, I bet we'd get the worst abuses of it in spades.  So we need something better.

A good quote from Margaret Thatcher about socialism.  The lady  makes a good point. / Source: PoliticalHumour.org

Getting really off on my own tangent here, PIG to Socialism got me thinking that it seems that there is a need for some social programs, as pure capitalism is dangerous to people's well-being, seeing as it is easy to go to excesses there.  Yes, some make high profits, but others suffer great poverty.  Capitalism has helped the U.S. become strong, and should be allowed to continue to do so.  Just the same, too much socialism, especially in a dishonest and Leviathan world, is not good either.  What we seem to need is better incentives, and more creative thinking, as well as a greater desire to "do good."  Good can be used to excuse a lot of evil, but if people really work together, we can accomplish many positives, if well motivated and working for something we really believe in.  It is my fear that a true autocrat, a real dyed-in-the-wool dictator, is what is needed to set things back on track, and a type like that can do as much harm as good, unless really well balanced.  It's a really dicey situation.  Either that, or we fall into chaos, and then have a painfully slow recovery.  And lots of people die in the process.  Witness Socialist regimes since the days of Lenin for the veracity of that fact.

There were just a couple other points that came to mind as I was reading PIG to Socialism.  These were as follows:

* The arguments of Sweden and North Korea do make a convincing statement against socialism, as author has presented it.

* The author points out how badly some Socialist states have polluted the Earth.  But my counter to that is, socialism/communism isn't the only bad guy on this topic.

* Finally, are political monsters like Lenin, Stalin, Kim Il-Sung/Kim Jong-Il,  and even Adolf Hitler accidents, or are they simply embracers of bad ideas that then follow monstrous paths?  This is a moral question, I know.  But it bears thinking about.

To sum up, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism is an interesting book, and raised some viable questions for debate in my mind.  I agree very much with the added review I have included above, in that the book does have some fundamental flaws that should not be overlooked.  I would say PIG to Socialism makes a good ancillary reading on the topic of socialism, but should certainly not be taken as a definitive resource.  Or I should say more clearly, if you want to know about socialism, this should be in the "additional reading column," and not the first place you turn.

Learn more about The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, by Kevin Williamson, on Amazon.com

The parting comment:

See.  They had this figured out years ago.  Nothing really changes.