Posted on 04/29/2005 4:46:26 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
The Man Who Told the Truth
Robert Heilbroner fessed up to the failure of socialism
David Boaz
Robert Heilbroner, the bestselling writer of economics, died early this month at the age of 85. He and John Kenneth Galbraith may well have sold more economics books than all other economists combined. Alas, their talents lay more in the writing than the economics. Heilbroner was an outspoken socialist; if only a libertarian could write an introductory book on economics that could—like Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers—sell 4 million copies.
Reading some of Heilbroner's essays over the years, I admired his honesty about the meaning of socialism. Consider this excerpt from a 1978 essay in Dissent:
Socialism...must depend for its economic direction on some form of planning, and for its culture on some form of commitment to the idea of a morally conscious collectivity....
If tradition cannot, and the market system should not, underpin the socialist order, we are left with some form of command as the necessary means for securing its continuance and adaptation. Indeed, that is what planning means...
The factories and stores and farms and shops of a socialist socioeconomic formation must be coordinated...and this coordination must entail obedience to a central plan...
The rights of individuals to their Millian liberties [are] directly opposed to the basic social commitment to a deliberately embraced collective moral goal... Under socialism, every dissenting voice raises a threat similar to that raised under a democracy by those who preach antidemocracy.
Few socialists outside the Communist Party are willing to acknowledge that real socialism means trading our "Millian liberties" for the purported good of economic planning and "a morally conscious collectivity."
He was not entirely impervious to new evidence, however. In 1989, he famously wrote in The New Yorker:
"Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won... Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism."
In The New Yorker again the next year, he reminisced about hearing of Ludwig von Mises at Harvard in the 1930s. But of course his professors and fellow students scoffed at Mises's claim that socialism could not work. It seemed at the time, he wrote, that it was capitalism that was failing. Then, a mere 50 years later, he acknowledged: "It turns out, of course, that Mises was right" about the impossibility of socialism. I particularly like the "of course." Fifty years it took him to grasp the truth of what Mises wrote in 1920, and he blithely tossed off his newfound wisdom as "of course."
Alas, in that same article he went on to say that while socialism might not in fact produce the goods, we would still need to reject capitalism on the grounds of...let's see...I've got it—environmental degradation. Yeah, that's the ticket. While he had managed to wriggle free of the ideas he learned in the 1930s, he was still stuck in the 1970s when, like Paul Ehrlich, he issued dire predictions about the imminent exhaustion of natural resources. In his 1974 book An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, Heilbroner wrote, "Ultimately, there is an absolute limit to the ability of the Earth to support or tolerate the process of industrial activity, and there is reason to believe that we now are moving toward that limit very rapidly."
On the big issue of capitalism vs. socialism, though, he did continue his rueful acknowledgment of error. In 1992, he explained the facts of life to Dissent readers:
Capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure. Here is the part that's hard to swallow. It has been the Friedmans, Hayeks, and von Miseses who have maintained that capitalism would flourish and that socialism would develop incurable ailments. All three have regarded capitalism as the 'natural' system of free men; all have maintained that left to its own devices capitalism would achieve material growth more successfully than any other system. From [my samplings] I draw the following discomforting generalization: The farther to the right one looks, the more prescient has been the historical foresight; the farther to the left, the less so.
He also noted then that "democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist."
May the socialists in Cambridge and Cambridge, and the people struggling to create decent societies around the world, especially in Africa, the Arab world, and the ex-Communist countries take the frank (albeit delayed) honesty of Robert Heilbroner to heart.
David Boaz, is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of Libertarianism: A Primer.
An honest leftist is hard to come by. It's good to see such a prominent one admitting Socialism has failed. If only the Democrats would get the message.
What catches my eye here is the graceful shift of emphasis from "better for the worker" (now proven false) to "better for the environment" (ignoring the environmental horrors of the former East Bloc).
Environmentalism is truly the last great hope for socialists.
Bump!
Good article, Snarks. Thank you for posting it.
He only admitted it after millions died. The damage has already been done, and the disease still infects whole societies.
Still, the confession of a true believer is useful.
Socialism sucks until you die bump.
Good post.
If only the REPUBLICANS would get the message.
They are reacting to their constituents, too bad so many have been brain-washed by leftist socialist communist loving educators.
Socialism is worse for the environment than capitalism.Europe is more polluted than the USA. And with a worse economy.
Thanks...
I think the key element he missed in all the essays listed here is "Freedom!". IMHO, you can't have capitalism without it . Not only that, it's a natural outcome when you do have freedom.
read later
Every socialist I have ever talked to had a common trait -- they were convinced that they are much smarter than other people. In fact, they consider themselves so smart, they are capable of planning (or dictating) how others should live better than those individuals could do on their own. Seems this guy just lived long enough to realize that he was not all that smart.
IMHO, the psychology of Socialists really boils down to vanity and arrogance.
We live in quite a socialist country here, just not as socialist as some others.
With new advances for socialists every day, we could end end with less freedoms than China in 50 years.
Bump for a good read.
Not 50 years, just the next time the demonrats (neo-communists) get control of the legislature and White House with the help of the MSM. In other words it's just around the corner. Better stock up on arms, ammo and food before the '08 elections. Call me paranoid but for warned is for armed.
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