It is poor literacy and understanding that leads people to label themselves as “democratic” socialists. Socialism is the collectivization of the means of production. This means resources are owned in common and it needs to be decided how they are to be allocated. Now you can argue that rather than having an authoritarian government handle the economic planning, the planning can be done through direct or representative democracy on a larger scale. However, that misses the point. It actually doesn’t matter if the central body of planners are democratically elected, selected by merit, or dictatorial party members. One might be better than another but all of them fail in the end because of the “Knowledge Problem” as explained by F.A. Hayek. Planning still means one idea flowing downwards in the economy as to what needs to be produced or not produced. Although central planners could grasp the scale of a village economy (such as happens on Israeli Kibbutzim), historically, it has not proven possible on a national scale. It is impossible to have the required knowledge to interfere in such an equilibrium. People’s preferences change on an individual level not even daily but by the minute based on many external factors like environment, culture etc. No socialist tool such as “surveys” and the like can fix that. Those methods are simply ineffective at accurately relaying necessary information and accomplish the satisfaction of the needs of even the minority of society. This is why market economies have been successful because they are a decentralized model where everyone expresses their preferences by their own volition through purchasing or not purchasing goods and many entrepreneurs are in constant competition to fulfill those needs or be expelled from the market altogether. This is why the comrades in the USSR produced a lot of jeans but not enough buttons for them because the arbitrary planners allocated that resource elsewhere. Whereas in the market you have a constant trial to increase the efficiency of production methods.
Now a lot of socialist revolutions are initially democratic as the well meaning people get together to take down the “tyrants” and create the equal utopia. However they soon realize the problems of the system. This is why we should promote individual talents in a way that it collectively benefits society rather than make everyone less productive. At this point, the bulk of the population is tired being told what to do and what reward they will get in spite of all the inefficiency in their economic life. But the revolutionaries who are now in power don’t want to relinquish control. After all they have a near dogmatic belief in the greatness of socialism, and the evil of capitalism. Thus it is natural that eventually almost all socialist societies end up oppressing their populations while the rules of socialism itself don’t apply to the new great class of revolutionary-bureaucrats. I don’t even have to quote examples of this you all know that 20th century has been the history of collapse of all the societies I’ve just described. Thus it is no surprise there eventually are only two roads. Either you liberalize like a lot of “socialist” countries already have done or a strongman takes control.
An alternative is market socialism which states that co-operatives can compete in a market. Co-ops already exist under market economies. Demanding that every firm function as a co-op is just limiting free competition and thus reducing productivity. For a completely co-op based economy the factors of production would still need to be centrally allocated as there is no private property and this also opens the stage for nepotism, bribery and corruption. Some failures could be considered exceptions but historically the above has been the rule if you aren’t deluded enough to not see it. Excuses don’t work to defend what has been true for almost every socialist experiment.
People hear politicians proclaim that they are “Democratic Socialists,” but history has proven that all socialist societies, by which I mean “pure socialist,” usually deliver on what they promised to get into power, but ultimately the trade off for free housing, free food, free whatever has been your civil liberties. “You shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you” takes on a whole new meaning here. It means if you do “bite” (criticize, engage in civil disobedience, strike, picket) you may well end up in a gulag.
People, even those raised in Western Democracies, may fall victim to the rhetoric of “Democratic Socialism” because they believe it to actually mean “Social Democracy” such as the Scandinavian countries have actually achieved.
(This is Part One of Two Parts. Read Part Two HERE)
