Around a year ago, I deconstructed Soviet planned economy system into individual components to better analyze what aspects of the system worked and what did not (separate article here). I concluded that a hybrid system using best parts of both market and planned economies is not only viable but desirable for our future.
Economic aspect of Socialism is well covered in the above-mentioned article. However, it falls short of addressing another glaring issue with this system, socialist values.
Economic aspect defines how money is made. Economic models can be discussed in terms of fairness, but they also can be discussed in terms of how efficient they are, how much money they can or cannot produce. One can compare economic models based on rational metrics to see which preforms better or worse.
On the other hand, values determine how money is spent. Who gets what, how much and why. While some may rationalise their values by listing various arguments why one is more deserving of money than the other, it all is fundamentally a rationalisation of either one's own self-interest or believes.
Values of any kind are a touchy subject, when someone even suggests that everything you hold dear in you hears as universal principles that makes one human, is nothing more than utter nonsense, many would respond with violence. Nonetheless the issue of values has to be addressed if we are to really understand socialism and move forward towards a solution that actually works.
After all, as Gregor Strasser showed us, you can take socialist economic model and merge it with Nazi values. If it can be wedded to Nazi values, then it can also be merged with other value systems, conservative, liberal, social-democratic, hedonist, transhumanist, anything really.
So, in this article I will look at communist values separate from their economic model and draw conclusion.
To put it mildly communist values are unpopular with majority of people. Yes, they have their supporters who stand by them against all odds. Sometimes such supporters form a closed echo chamber associations where everyone agrees with each other and further amplifies their erroneous perception that everyone in the entire world, with exception of billionaires, are in agreement with them in principle.
What inhabitants of these, sometimes rather large echo chambers fail to realise, that would outside these echo chambers is larger than the chamber itself and people out there do no share their values in the slightest. A common mistake all echo chambers make.
It's simple to test it. Take a simple question of say: "should we help a starving person by giving them free food?" Worded this way most will agree. However, this is not how reality works. To give a starving person food, one has to take it from somewhere. So, when you instead word it like: "should we all eat less and share with the starving, so they do not starve?" you are going to get very different answers. Sure, some will still be on board and say such sacrifice is a universal human duty, but most will be against it. It will soon devolve in accusation of classism, racism and more. All the things we so often see in online debates around various socialist topics.
As you can see socialist values are unpopular with public. It's not that people fear that billionaires will lose their money if socialist take over, what they fear is that socialist will take some of their food to feed never-ending starvation countries in Africa. Because of that no matter how much socialist will continue to bash billionaires and expose issues with capitalism, the public will not switch to their side for one simple reason. They do not want to eat less so that African kids do not die of hunger.
Take Social Democrats, who abandoned socialist values and said they only care for wellbeing of members of their unions and working class in their country, not just everyone who starves. They by far more popular than communists who maintain hardline stance on both capitalism and values.
In view of the above, the biggest obstacle toward socialism are socialists themselves and their values that majority simply does not share. Because they do not share these values, they do not want to volunteer and sacrifice for the cause they could not care less.
One may even say that every communist system failed not because economic system in itself was inefficient but because government, guided by socialist values, spend money on things people did not care about and wasted it all. People embraced capitalism and democracy not because laisses-fare capitalism better than planned economy, but simply because a more liberal system allows them more disposable income to spend on whatever they please, not what government believes is important.
People are fundamentally selfish and no amount of 'education', brainwashing, shaming or even psychiatric treatment aimed at changing psychology will ever change that. Communism fails simply because communist values contradict this basic principle of human nature. It's a failure of values, not of economic model.
As Marx prophesized, future will be economically communist, but it will not be built around communist values. UBI models merge economic model of communism with liberal value system. This will be the future. Meanwhile cultural communists and their values will forever languish on the ash heap of history.
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