Vol. 42, No. 09
Is Some Socialism a Good Thing?
AT A GLANCE
• Many who’d reject full-blown communism are still supportive of democratic socialism.
• What is socialism? Is some socialism a good thing?
• Many countries have adopted democratic socialism.
The problem with socialism is that nobody can agree on exactly what it is. For the Right, most of the bad policies of the Left, whether political, economic, or cultural, can be characterized as socialism, while for the Left, socialism embodies all that is virtuous about politics and government. But very few are willing to define it.
In France in September 1848, a year that saw radical revolutions in many European countries, French legislators were discussing ways to alleviate the problem of unemployment in the newly minted Second Republic. The economy was in a perilous state following the overthrow of the monarchy earlier in the year. Many legislators favored “make-work” programs, whereby the new government could allegedly wipe out unemployment and give the economy a boost by putting unemployed Frenchmen to work on grandiose public-works projects.
What is today widely regarded as standard public policy — the use of public funds and resources in an effort to create jobs and redirect market energies — was in the mid-19th century very radical stuff. During a September debate in Paris, one famous legislator, Alexis de Tocqueville, dared to call such measures socialism. Even more importantly, he defined the term for his colleagues in the French Assembly:
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