In Princess Bride, Vizzini keeps trying to kill the Man in Black. Each time the Man survives, Vizzini cries out, “Inconceivable!”
Inigo Montoya, an uneducated mercenary, finally questions Vizzini.
[Vizzini has tried cutting the rope to kill the Man in Black, who now clings to a rock]
Vizzini: He didn’t fall?! Inconceivable!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. But I do not think it means what you think it means. (Wiki)
Canadian Socialism
People say ‘socialism’. I do not think it means what they think it means.
- A business colleague said, “Well of course I’m a socialist. I care for the social good.”
- A very un-socialistic physician said, “We’re all socialists.”
- An American expat said, “I can’t believe anyone wouldn’t love socialism.” But she works to counter the state system.
Canadians think socialism means: be nice, kind, share social goods. Canadians are nice, ergo Canadians are socialists.
Confused Meanings
If we use The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
A transitional stage in the progression from capitalism to communism.
OR
A broad outlook on the human condition that promotes:
Equality
State as administrator
Elimination of systems of control, privilege, inequality.
When people call themselves socialists, they seem to mean socialism as a broad outlook, not a step towards communism. However, big Labour, and much of the media party, promotes the values of traditional, Marxist socialism.
Critics say socialists confuse impossible ideals. A state powerful enough to eliminate all forms of control and privilege becomes its own form of power and privilege. We just get a new bully.
Better Options? One Example
Traditional liberalism offers a popular alternative. It emphasizes the individual. It places individual rights against those of the sovereign power. Note that liberalism:
- shares a history parallel with ideas about limited government
- attempts to curtail state powers
- seeks to secure for individuals charters, statutes, institutions and forms of representation
- works to guarantee individuals rights against the invasion of the sovereign power.
- is expressed in the Magna Carta, but usually thought of as a 17th and 18th century creation
Traditional Liberalism Promotes:
- Supreme value of the individual, freedom and rights.
- Individualism in its metaphysical variant.
- Individual has natural rights which exist independently of government and which ought to be protected against government
- Recognition of the supreme value of freedom
- An anthropocentric, rather than theological, view of human affairs… human potential and achievement as the principal locus of value.
- Universalism – a belief that rights and duties are universal and stem from a human condition that transcends place and time
- Toleration in matters of morality and religion.
Liberalism cares about, and for, people because it cares about individuals, not vague concepts like equality. It moves to help people because it values people over utopian ideals about political systems.
Again, other options exist.
Canadian Socialism
Western democracies grew up inside liberalism. Political parties – Conservatives, Liberals, Democrats and Republicans – are just different flavours of liberalism.
Socialism stands outside the fold of traditional liberalism. It does not value individuals over political ideals. It cares more about political systems than individual patients. If doctors care most about individual patients, they should stop calling themselves socialists.
photo credit: villians.wikia.com
Extended Quotation from the second edition, The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
Socialism (pages 515-517)
A wide term, with two principal related meanings
- In Marxian theory and official communist language, …system of production relations that is supposed to characterize the transitional stage between capitalism and full communism. The means of production are taken into social ownership, and the state persists as an administrative machine, up holding a new order of legality, & a new system of Rights, in such a way as to permit the emergence of true common ownership and the eventual abolition of the state.
- The theory and practice of ‘socialism’, construed as a broad and comprehensive outlook on the human condition. Socialism envisions a political system that will be, not transitional, in the manner of 1, but permanent, and fitted to the changed conditions of life since the industrial revolution. As a political theory, socialism is a relative newcomer, and probably lacks both the system of traditional liberalism, and the pragmatic character of conservatism. But it has emerged in the present century as an increasingly ambitious set of doctrines…
The principal ideas:
- Equality – this may be variously stated in terms of equal opportunity, egalitarianism, etc. The main consideration is that human beings have equal rights since they are equal in every respect relevant to their rights.
- The state as administrator. The state is seen not as the legal and ceremonial manifestation of civil society, but rather as a complex administrative device, designed to guarantee individual rights and to distribute benefits among the citizens in accordance with those rights. This state is therefore, primarily concerned with distribution, and must provide and maintain the institutions which ensure that human goods – food, medicine, education, recreation – are made available to everyone on terms that are as equal as possible. Law is necessary as a means to good order, and to effective administration. But neither it, nor any other aspect of the state machinery, is an end in itself. Moreover the state should be confined to administrative functions, and not, for example, set up as the propagator of religious doctrine, or nationalist ideology.
- The elimination of systems of control. People exert control over each other in various ways. For example through the class system, public institutions, political institutions, and hereditary privileges. All systems violate the fundamental axiom of equal rights. Private property is permissible… should not be allowed to accumulate inordinately, lest vast systems of private control should emerge and prove damaging to the interest of society as a whole. Hence the state must always be prepared to nationalize major assets, and should curtail or forbid the transactions that lead to large-scale private accumulation such as gifts and inheritance.
In particular the attempt to eliminate privilege in all its forms, the opposition of hereditary principle, and the defense of the welfare state. Historically socialism has had strong affiliations with the labor movement, for the obvious reasons that, well it promises very little and threatens much of the class of property owners, it promises much and threatens little, or seems to threaten little, to the workers. …Some would add that the attempt to combine number 1 to number 2 with the commitment to representative democracy is what is distinctive of Western, as opposed to communist, socialism, and that this parliamentary road to socialism is a fact is in fact a creature so different from socialism of the communist states has to be only misleadingly called by the same name.
Critics of socialism have argued, for example, that there is a potential conflict between principles 2 & 3. The mass of control that needs to be exerted by the state if it is to be seen as an administrator with full responsibility for everyone’s welfare is incompatible with the attempt to free people from the control of others. All that would be achieved is the transfer of control from an old ruling class of aristocrats to a new elite of bureaucrats. Moreover, some add, a ruling class with a monopoly of government is a better guarantee of freedom and justice than a bureaucracy of self made men…. Finally, it has been argued with great force (e.g., by economists of the Austrian school) that economic failure is generic to the socialist idea of a state-supervised economy. These arguments together with the experience of socialist governments in Europe, have recently led to a decline in support for the socialist idea.
Liberalism (pages 312-314)
In contrast, traditional liberalism, along the lines of j.s.mill, denotes an emphasis on the individual and his rights, as against the sovereign power and the duty towards it, and the shaping of political aspirations. The history of liberalism is contemporaneous with the history of limited government, that is with the successful attempts of those subject to government, to curtail its powers, and to secure for themselves charters, statutes, institutions and forms of representation that will guarantee the individuals rights against the invasion of the sovereign power. There are recognizably liberal thoughts expressed in Magna Carta although the modern idea is usually thought of as a 17th and 18th century creation partly because of the political theory that produced in support of it partly because of the rapid changes in political institutions
The following ideas are fundamental to most forms of liberalism
- belief in the supreme value of the individual, his freedom and his rights.
- individualism in its metaphysical variant.
- belief that the individual has natural rights which exist independently of government and which ought to be protected by and for against government
- recognition of the supreme value of freedom
- an anthropocentric, rather than theological, view of human affairs regarding human potential and achievement as the principal locus of value.
- universalism a belief that rights and duties are universal and stem from a human condition that transcends place and time
- advocacy of toleration in matters of morality and religion.