In 1789, shortly before his death, Benjamin Franklin penned a letter to French physicist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, telling his friend that, “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
At the time, Franklin was correct because socialism simply did not exist then as we know it today.
Based on its track record over the past two centuries, there is a third certainty in this world: “socialism fails.”
If failure is defined as not meeting an expected objective or outcome, socialist governments have not come close to creating Marx’s workers’ paradise. Some have barely lasted more than a few years.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which existed from 1922 to 1991, is the quintessential case study of socialism’s shortcomings and insurmountable flaws.
The Soviet Union was supposed to follow the path set forth in The Communist Manifesto, which would result in a perfectly equal stateless, classless, and moneyless society.
Lenin and Stalin fully embraced Marx’s theory of scientific socialism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Obviously, the Soviet Union utterly failed to meet these lofty expectations. It became an economic basket case due to the inherent inefficiency and ineptitude of centralized planning. Rationing, breadlines, and shortages were common. Corruption, misery, and poverty were widespread.
Even worse, the USSR was a police state from its inception and remained so until the end because imposing socialism requires brute force and coercion.
After World War II, the Soviet Union seized Eastern Europe and unfurled the Iron Curtain. The Berlin Wall was built to keep East Berliners under socialist tyranny from fleeing to freedom-laden West Berlin.
It was not just the bourgeoisie that fled. Anyone who valued the freedom to think and control their own destiny escaped. The USSR suffered severely from brain drain. This included countless workers, who were mere cogs in a command-and-control, totalitarian nightmare.
It also bears mention that the leaders of the Soviet Union, like nearly all socialist states, routinely ordered mass execution, surveillance, forced labor, torture, and other awful things under the socialist modus operandi that the ends always justify the means.
Under socialism, everything from the Holodomor to the Gulag is for the “common good.”
The Soviet Union’s collapse was a triumph for freedom, morality, human dignity, and righteousness.
The defeat of Adolf Hitler’s national socialism, Nazism, will be cherished forever.
So should the end of the monstrous Khmer Rouge’s socialist regime in Cambodia in 1979.
Although Cuba is a failed state, it is still clinging to socialism.
North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has been ruthlessly and dreadfully ruled by the Kim family since 1948.
Before it went socialist under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela was a thriving nation.
Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China, under the iron fist of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has been a bastion for state-based mass murder and tyranny.
Frankly, the only reason the CCP has held absolute power over more than one billion people is because it made common cause with the Western capitalists in the 1990s, joined the World Trade Organization, enticed U.S. companies with slave labor, stole U.S. intellectual property, and embraced capitalist opportunity zones in certain places while applying a social credit scoring system and mass surveillance state that keeps the people on their “best behavior.”
What if China applies AI magical wizardry to its centralized, top-down society? What if China develops AI and quantum computing to effectively micromanage its people? Could a technological leap stop socialism’s losing streak?
I hope AI does not aid and abet the CCP’s totalitarian grip on more than one billion souls.
Aside from socialism’s woeful current impact on the people of China, North Korea, and Cuba and the horrific devastation it has wrought on those no longer with us, there are many in the United States who believe socialism is the answer to all of America’s problems.
First, believe it or not, socialism has been tried (and failed) in the United States.
In the early 1820s, before Marx advanced scientific socialism, Robert Owen developed what he called utopian socialism.
Owen, a super-empathetic industrialist, made speeches on behalf of utopian socialism before the U.S. Congress and prominent leaders.
Then, like socialists do, he put someone else’s money where his mouth was, when he created his socialist pet project: New Harmony.
Owen bought 20,000 acres in Indiana to show that he could single-handedly create a society “without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold.”
New Harmony survived for only two years before it ran out of food, shelter, and other essentials.
After it failed, Owen’s sons, who were left in charge while their father opened new communities, concluded that, “All cooperative schemes which provide equal remuneration to the skilled and industrious and the ignorant and idle must work their own downfall.”
“For by this unjust plan they must of necessity eliminate the valuable members and retain only the improvident, unskilled and vicious,” they determined.
Unsurprisingly, all the utopian socialist societies founded by Owens failed soon after they launched.
This should serve as a reminder for all Americans who currently support or are considering supporting the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
In the current zeitgeist, the DSA is hip, urbane, chic, and social media savvy. They even have a youth outreach program: the Young Democratic Socialists of America.
The DSA has demagogues like Zohran Mamdani and AOC, who are experts at class-warfare rhetoric. They have cultural influencers like Hasan Piker spewing collectivist, anti-America propaganda.
Best of all, the DSA’s Workers Deserve More agenda will do exactly what Owen promised to do a century ago.
The DSA will deliver a “classless society…without war or poverty” where “everyone is free, equal, and cared for.” The “common good” will be “the guiding star.”
This is dangerously effective because it preys upon young people’s appetite for endless empathy and their sheer ignorance regarding the history of socialism.
Their diabolical agenda seeks to “transform society: to win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.”
In 1787, when Benjamin Franklin described the character of the government under the Constitution, he said it would be a “republic, if you can keep it.” I guarantee he did not intend those words of wisdom to include “democratic socialist republic.”
We the people must make sure the DSA’s agenda goes down in flames because if it succeeds, America will cease to exist as we know it. Under the DSA, America will certainly fail.
Chris Talgo ([email protected]) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
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