Socialism/Communism
SOCIALISM WITH A NEW YORK FACE
A brave and intelligent New Yorker recently wrote “a thought experiment” about the results of socialism in New York City. Excerpts from his article are presented here.
What follows is a tale told in the future tense, an attempt to imagine how the “unconstrained vision” of socialism might play out in an unconstrained New York. It’s speculative fiction, not prophecy. No actual socialists were harmed in the making of this experiment.
​
Our imaginary new mayor is a proud member of the Democratic Socialists. His first order of business, upon taking office, will be to turn the organization’s ideas into reality. Profit-making, for example, will be deemed criminal. Property will be regulated so thoroughly that it will, in effect, belong to the city. A new planning body—staffed by experts and technocrats—will be established under the mayor’s office. Let’s give it an evocative name: the Central Planning Authority, or CPA. Its mission will be to craft the practical blueprint for socialism with a New York face.
​
Almost immediately, we run into a contradiction. Socialism promises to place resources under “popular control”—so that, for example, tenants rather than landlords take charge of the buildings they occupy. Yet implementing a “planned economy” requires concentrating immense power in the hands of a small group of government specialists. The two approaches are incompatible. So which path leads to equality?​
This contradiction is an intellectual phantom that vanishes in a puff of smoke on first contact with reality. “The public” is an amorphous entity, incapable of organizing anything. Socialism has always been a top-down system, in which a far-seeing vanguard, acting on the public’s behalf, commands the resources needed to achieve the proper degree of equality. The mayor and his planners will embody this new class of visionary leaders. Their mandates will fill the vacuum left by the abolition of the private economy. Tenants who once dreamed of ownership will find that they’ve traded their landlord for a political commissar.
The CPA will set out to control the means of production; it’s the first commandment of socialism. But the means will quickly overwhelm the ends. You can’t control New York’s material resources without also controlling the direction of its 8.5 million private lives. Individual goals and plans must be suppressed. Individualism is hateful to the socialist because it breeds inequality. So, if you dreamed of opening a little bodega in Washington Heights, the mayor will say, “Sorry, no.” And if you already own one, you’ll be made, in effect, an employee of the CPA.
Resistance is expected and even welcomed. It will flush capitalist grifters into the open, where they can be preached at and admonished into extinction. Inevitably, a certain amount of conflict will accompany the equalizing process, as hordes of homeless individuals invade formerly private homes and the poor appropriate the goods they need. Violent criminals, the existence of whom the mayor has dismissed as a “capitalist construct,” will seek to settle scores, no doubt with the local police.
​
The vaunted democracy of the Democratic Socialists will turn out to be anti-majoritarian and obsessed with juggling the right proportion of “race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, age, religion, and national origin.” In this spirit, the mayor will amend the city’s ranked-choice voting system so that persons of color will count as 1.58 votes—the exact ratio of income disparity with whites. “New York’s democracy,” he will boast, “has today reached mathematical perfection.”
The eternal recurrence of socialism, despite its historic failures, has a simple explanation, “People like free stuff.” If that’s true, our mayor is on the right track. He won election by promising all kinds of free goods and services: mass transportation, child care, gender transitions, rent control, and food giveaways—organic, meatless, and locally produced—for poor neighborhoods. And that’s just the beginning. Once the CPA gets to work, the entire economy of New York City will be manipulated to humble the mighty and exalt the marginalized.
​
Socialists love redistribution. They take from one and give to another—that’s what they were born to do. But what of production? How, in a planned economy, is the wealth created to pay for all the free stuff? After all, the city bus system costs more than $800 million a year to maintain. Money must come from somewhere to keep it running.
​​
​Workers, now liberated from drudgery and placed in charge of their own shops, will supposedly feel inspired to boost both the quantity and quality of their output, thereby growing the city’s wealth. But this assumption rests on a fallacy. Control of the economy will lie with the planners, not the workers. Production quotas will likely be assigned by the CPA, much like teachers assign homework. Drudgery will persist—and once salaries are equalized, productivity will plummet.
​
The great question becomes how to plan for equality in an economy that is rapidly shrinking. From postwar Britain to present-day Cuba, the socialist answer has always been the same: the ration card. The allocation of goods and services will complete the city government’s chokehold on daily life. The CPA will decide who gets what, where, and for which bureaucratic reasons. When it comes to medical care and access to hospital rooms, it will decide who lives and who dies. To simplify planning, mobility in jobs and housing will be discouraged. Investment in innovation and new technology will be frowned upon as too disruptive.
Standards will be abolished to create the illusion of radical progress. All students, regardless of effort, will graduate with A-plus averages. Every IQ test administered in the city will identify a genius.
​
One thing socialists reliably enjoy is donning keffiyehs and pushing Zionists around. Our mayor is no exception. He regards Israel as a uniquely genocidal nation and harbors a righteous urge to punish those who refuse to accept that premise. We’ll know when one of his policies has collapsed because at that exact moment, he’ll launch a blame campaign, targeting subversive Zionists, the Mossad, the IDF, Benjamin Netanyahu, West Bank settlers, and—why not?—those ever-handy capitalist spiders, the Rothschilds.
​​There’s a fundamental reason socialism fails: the pursuit of equality exacts a price. On the spectrum of democratic values, freedom and equality stand at opposite ends: the more of one, the less of the other. Total freedom is the state of nature, where the big fish swallows the small.
​
I believe that many Americans now inhabit a spiritual desert. We have lost faith in God and church, family and community. Some of us aren’t even sure whether we are men or women. The deep sources of meaning have dried up, leaving us shriveled and desperate for sustenance.
​​
​As a secular Christian heresy, socialism offers submission and sacrifice in service of a political Eden, where the lion lies down with the lamb. It’s spiritual fool’s gold, but at least it’s something. If you are young and eager, or old and regretful, you might well follow the Democratic Socialists to the mountaintop—and over the cliff.
If you want to read the entire article, go to: https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-city-socialism
​
kln
Be sober [well balanced and self-disciplined], be alert and cautious at all times. That enemy of yours, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion [fiercely hungry], seeking someone to devour. But resist him, be firm in your faith [against his attack—rooted, established, immovable], knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being experienced by your brothers and sisters throughout the world. [You do not suffer alone.]
1 Peter 5:8-9
Amplified Bible