Judging by recent headlines and the fervent hopes of overflowing crowds at Bernie Sanders’ rallies, you’d think socialism was on the rise. But it isn’t. American disdain for that ism remains unchanged.
Just 35 percent of 1,500 adults polled recently by Gallup had a positive image of socialism. Sixty percent felt positively about capitalism. Both numbers are unchanged from six years ago.
Gallup also found that most of the public has an overwhelmingly positive view of small business, entrepreneurs and free enterprise, for which socialists express contempt. Even big business, which is flogged daily by Sanders, is seen positively by most people.
Democrats are unsurprisingly more likely than Republicans to view socialism favorably (58 percent to 13 percent), while Republicans are more likely to favor capitalism (68 percent to 56 percent). Again, those numbers have not significantly changed since 2012.
And for all the talk of millennials lurching Left, Gallup finds higher percentages of young people approving capitalism and big business.
This may surprise people following the presidential campaign. Sanders is a socialist who promises to break up big banks and oblige taxpayers to provide “free” college and healthcare to this country of 320 million souls. He has won nearly 10 million votes and 20 primary states, and he is scaring one of the most powerful political machines in history.
It is taken for granted that Sanders’ popularity is due to his socialism. But is that right? Do those feeling the Bern really know what socialism is? Most voters, and millennials in particular, don’t have a clue, according to polls.
If they want one — a clue, that is — they should look south to Venezuela, which after 15 years of socialism is in a state of utter misery, with people lining up for basics such as toilet paper and supplementing their diets with dogs, cats and pigeons. Mortality and crime rates are soaring, as are many other social ills.
Conservatives and Democrats alike find it difficult to discern differences between socialism from Democratic Party policy; Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz both have proved themselves unable to distinguish between the two when asked.
So let’s help them out. An insightful piece in The Weekly Standard explains, “Real socialists want the government to seize the means of production — the factories, the machines, the land. They want an economy in which there is no private enterprise, everyone works for the state, and the state runs the economy.”
What Sanders is calling for is not state ownership but for state control — regulation so heavy and pervasive that ownership by our overlords is unnecessary. It’s a sublimated form of socialism that might be best referred to as statism.
But although this distinction involves real differences, the similar outcomes of each justifies confusion between the two. Both are determinedly ideological rather than practical, and indifferent to or disdainful of individual freedom and aspirations, both elevate theory over facts, deliver a falling rather than rising standard of living, and are inimical to the dignity that inheres to being human. Yet, although they are not gaining adherents in this country, they are, sadly but assuredly, not going away.
