Okay, the title might be a bit -- I say, a bit -- hyperbolic, but it's no less valid a critique than its obverse, the oft-cited pseudostatistic, "Socialism has failed everywhere it's been tried." In neither case is there much more than a modicum of truth, as it can be said that pure economies have never endured, though mainly because pure economies have never been tried.
All economies are mixed, and all economies require some measure of individual incentive to innovate and assume risks, as well as populist assurances that failure isn't a death sentence. Too much of one or the other, and you have a stagnant economy in which citizens are either discouraged from taking chances because the consequences are too grave, or because life is already comfortable and safe, and no need to strive materializes.1 Not enough of either, the same.
This subject, the greatly exaggerated death of socialism, is never very far from my mind. It's a premise that rises near the end of every verbal beatdown I've ever given the apparently infinite Internet queue of wingnuts and cranks who inevitably line up to take their lumps. As I put these mouthbreathing malcontents in smaller and smaller boxes, as their agitations against whatever shiny object Cato or Heritage or Reason has put in front of them that week fall flat against the brick wall separating their hermetically sealed wingnut fantasies from the open air of actual experience, their rhetorical swan song almost invariably sound that final plaintive note, "Socialism always fails!"
But how could it be? How could these engaged, passionate if misguided citizens of the greatest social experiment in history actually believe that somehow America and socialism are anything but inextricably linked? Of course some credit should be given to that chainsmoking speedfreak patron saint of glorified teen angst, Ayn Rand, whose final act of hypocrisy sent bootstrappers everywhere scrambling to find some philosophical justification for her enrollment in Medicare and Social Security.2
But I'm loathe to put too much stock in the worship of Galtian übermenschen as a catalyst for this particular meme, at least in the wider electorate. Certainly there exists in the circles of power a juvenile fascination with the notion that wealth and morality are directly proportionate. Paul Ryan and Clarence Thomas are known to forcefeed this horseshit directly to their subordinates, there's a substantial difference between these men who fancy themselves heroes of their own Objectivist narrative and the ragtag band of psychotic stormtroopers . While these rank and file Republicans seem to have bought into an upper class of job creators and morally righteous billionaires, there's something that this analysis lacks, the actual reality of these people's lives.
Deep, deep (all the way to page 7) in the bowels of a detailed article on the "submerged state," Cornell University's Professor Suzanne Mettler found that about 40 percent of Medicare and Social Security recipients were of the opinion that they had never received any government assistance in their life. Now, an attendant correllation of political ideology wasn't done in Professor Mettler's survey, but I'm of the opinion that people who are obviously receiving government assistance while simultaneously denying that reality are almost certainly going to be people who are ashamed of that fact. Given the stark contrast between the political left and right on the issue of the social safety net, my hunch is that we would find a strong correllation between political ideology and the tendency to lie about accepting government assistance. In other words, that 40 percent of folks who somehow forgot that they get a monthly check from the Social Security Administration, a very large portion of them, at least the ones who aren't suffering from dementia, are going to be the very same kind of people who support politicians like Paul Ryan, who got where he is today with government assistance he has conveniently forgotten since.
So the very premise, "Socialism has failed everywhere it's been tried," falls flat on its face when juxtaposed with the life stories of the very people tempted to utter it. Paul Ryan was sufficiently selfish to use Social Security funds to attend college. His heroine, Ayn Rand, was sufficiently selfish to apply (albeit under her husband's surname) for Social Security and Medicare when she needed it. 40 percent of the Americans who are sufficiently selfish to take government assistance simultaneously deny doing so. These people aren't against socialism at all. Turns out, they're just too selfish to want socialism for anyone but themselves.
1Actually, that's bullshit. No civilization in history has ever offered so lavish a social safety net that its poorest citizens could be described as "comfortable."
2The last one I saw was an opinion rendered that claimed the act of accepting help from social programs was sufficiently selfish that it was consistent with Objectivist "principles," I shit you not.