A nearly 1200-word article at The Epoch Times exploring linkages between the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and what DSA members call “Chinese socialism” reminds me of two concepts:
- “Useful idiot”; and
- What happens to socialism after communism fails.
The article is more exploratory than incendiary. Only a few DSA activists have taken part in the party’s China Working Group, visited China, or signed a public statement in support of the “continued survival of Chinese socialism.”
These “democratic socialists” qualify as “useful idiots” because they do not seem to realize that “Chinese socialism” — called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” by the Chinese themselves — is not democratic. The government is run by the Communist Party, a single entity, no competition allowed.
Why would people who insist on calling themselves “democratic” support this?
Because, as with all democratic socialists, at some point one is required to choose between the two ways of doing government. If you call yourself “socialist,” you’ve committed yourself, and you will have to choose tyranny at some point, or give up the
Democratic socialists in America are certainly useful to the Chinazis. And they are idiots. Thus the old term for moon-eyed westerners supporting Asian anti-democratic regimes carries on, still applicable after all these years.
But remember that China is not run as a centrally planned economy. It’s run like a fascist state, with party members working within businesses, only occasionally taking full control and ousting (even executing) owners and entrepreneurs and “uncooperative” managers . . . when the State requires. Just as did the National Socialist Party during Germany’s “Third Reich” period. As Peter Drucker sagely noticed, “Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”
Democratic socialists may think they are not fascists, but fascism is indeed what they are pushing in America . . . and applauding when seen in China.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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One reply on “This Stage of Democratic Socialism”
When various left-wing movements sought to displace the limited state of liberal orders, two of the important ploys of the left were to confuse democracy with freedom and to treat democracy as sacred and as sanctifying. Individual rights could then, as a practical matter, be ignored if the general public could be persuaded to want something.
Now-a-days, the left still tries to get mileage from the words “democracy” and “democratic”; but the left finds actual democracy getting in the way of their projects. So discussion is censored, candidates are prohibitted from running, elections are voided, and specious criminal charges are brought, all the while supposedly to protect something called “democracy”.
The rank-and-file of the left now use “democracy” to mean rule by a majority if the majority were [what the left imagines as] enlightened. When the majority would choose something that the left believes to be unenlightened, well, the left rejects calling that “democracy”, and believes itself entitled to proxy their imagined democracy even if going contrary to actual votes.
So … when a group stylize themselves as “Democratic Socialists”, of America or anywhere else, they just don’t mean the “Democratic” part. They tell themselves that they mean it, but their talking about something else.
But this new thing called “democracy” is still supposed to be sanctifying. Sure, previous socialist orders failed to perform as promised, but the left tells us that those orders weren’t “democratic” — as if something called “democracy”, being sanctifying, could address anything that would otherwise be an essential flaw of a socialist order.
Once again, the left looks away from the Problem of Economic Calculation.