Photo Attribution: Gage Skidmore, retouched by Wugapodes / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Many Americans probably let out a sigh of relief when Bernie Sanders dropped out of the election. He was an extremely radical politician who wished to fundamentally reshape American life. Although he is now out of the race it is important not to forget that he was a surprisingly popular candidate in many circles. It was alarming to see the fast rate at which Bernie Sanders moved up in the national 2020 presidential polls. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll found that Sanders was at a whopping 32 percent which was 15 percent above Biden who was then standing in second place.
The more Sanders talked about his proposals the more and more it could be seen that he was merely a remnant of the cold war era in which intellectuals argued over the merits of capitalism or socialism. According to the Washington Post, he actually went on a ten day honeymoon to the Soviet Union in 1988 in which “he was enthralled with the hospitality and the lessons that could be brought home.” Because many of his ideas were very popular it is important to remind anyone who espouses his viewpoint are actually endorsing.
Although many may seem to think he has shed his belief in the need for radical implementation of socialism because he uses the word democratic socialism, there is no way in which democratic socialism can be brought about. The word democratic implies that all economic decisions will be decided by the people, but this is untrue and Sanders knows it. The reason he wants to expand government activity and government agencies is because they have almost limitless power. In the book The Road to Serfdom, which decried socialism (a book which Sanders almost certainly read because he attended the same university where its author worked), F.A. Hayek correctly stated that, “the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans” (Hayek 158). The point being that while Sanders may still believe in democratic elections, a governmental superstructure that has no limited power and is necessary for socialism will be untouchable by the people.
Democratic socialism can be compared to the principle of democratic capitalism. In democratic capitalism there are individual actions upon which the economy runs that should not be interfered with, because human interaction should not be prevented from taking its natural course to improve the economy. And on the other hand, democratic socialism is also a set of values where the government directs which people can sit on the boards of companies and make financial decisions. Both consist of ultimate values on which the economy rests and a both consist of ultimate frameworks that cannot be changed. For example, in our constitutional democracy which was built on capitalism, even if most people in a state believe that a baker is wrong to refuse a same sex couple a wedding cake, there is no way that they can force him to make the cake, even with a majority, because the constitution provides a set of ultimate values. Democratic socialism would consist of the same principle in which certain overarching values could not easily be changed by the people.
Not only his plans for the economy, but also his plans for the future of journalism, have an authoritarian note to them. In an op-ed he published for Columbia Journalism Review Sanders explains how the government will take a more active role in journalism right after he laments the fact that people are not talking about the issues he is concerned about as much as he would like. Interesting how a man who believes his viewpoints aren’t being expressed enough in the media would have his administration take a more active hand in it. I can’t help but recall how Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman stated that, “From 1933 to the outbreak of World War II, Churchill was not permitted to talk over the British radio, which was, of course, a government monopoly administered by the British Broadcasting Company” (Friedman 19). Governments should never have a hand in the dissemination of information, especially when they decry the fact that the viewpoints that they wish to see are not being propagated enough. This will inevitably lead to the government spoon-feeding the people information that will keep them in power while trying to stop the spread of controversial information.
Despite the fact that Sanders uses the guise of democratic socialism to disguise his true motives, the end result will have the effect of removing our political and civil freedoms for the service of his faulty conclusions. Bernie Sanders is either ignorant or intellectually dishonest and I am inclined to believe the latter given that Paul R. Gregory who has a PhD in economics from Harvard writes that the Democratic Socialists of America want “to abolish capitalism as we know it.” The fundamental assumption of capitalism is that you have control over where you employ your labor. Who decides where we employ are labour in a government run society? Most likely the government.
Although Sanders is out of the race it is important to recognize that even though his ideas seem radical they are extremely appealing to many people. Let’s not forget about the Bern, because if we discard him as a crazy old man, we may forget that his ideas carry real weight. It is important to spread the world left, right, or center, that these sorts of ideas are tyrannical and should have absolutely no place in American politics.
Your humble servant,
Silence Dogood
