Bernie: Real Socialism Has Never Been Tried
By David Harsanyi
March 10, 2020 12:28 PM
After being hammered for his long history of defending Communists — specifically for praising Cuba’s “literacy programs†— Democratic Party presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is now employing the other age-old, and equally deceptive, defense of socialism.
At a Fox News Town Hall on Monday, Bernie was asked by a Russian immigrant and student from the University of Michigan: Could Sanders assure her that his brand of “democratic socialism†wouldn’t cause the same kind of harm that socialism always causes?
“What happened and existed in the Soviet Union was not socialism. It was authoritarian Communism,†Bernie replied, inducing a bunch of his historically illiterate fans to applaud.
“And Communism,†Bernie goes on, “whether in Cuba, whether in the Soviet Union or whether in other countries was marked by totalitarianism, was marked by throwing millions of people into the Gulag.â€
The fact that there were varying degrees of socialist disasters is, of course, inarguable. Israel’s early socialistic experiment merely kept many people poor, while Russia’s socialism kept many people starving. Neither worked.
But leftists like Bernie like to act as if socialist ideology is incompatible with totalitarianism, when the opposite is true. The nationalization of industry and dispensing with property rights — necessary for any genuine socialism to occur — can’t be instituted without coercion and a centralized authoritarian effort. And even if the effort to redistribute property is first supported by the majority, as soon the state comes for your stuff — and it always does — the “democratic†part of the equation starts to dissipate.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bernie-real-socialism-has-never-been-tried/