It Beats Working

I just finished reading "Why Isn't Socialism Dead?" by Lee Harris over at Tech Central Station Daily. A bit of a read, but worth it in my view.

The article speaks to what could be described similarly to Dianetics almost as a "religion without divinity", in that the reason Socialism doesn't die in spite of many catastrophic failures is due to the hope engendered by its core myth:

"[T]he revolutionary socialist's life is transformed because he accepts the myth that one day socialism will triumph, and justice for all will prevail."

"The myth of socialism is a useful illusion that turns ordinary men into comrades and revolutionaries united in a common struggle -- a band of brothers, so to speak."

The well-known reasons for the failure of Socialism are not addressed, except in passing:

"The Nazis regarded themselves as genuine revolutionaries, and they call themselves revolutionaries, just as they always referred to their take-over of the German state as their revolution: for the Nazi, their revolution, and not the Bolshevik revolution, represented true socialism -- national socialism."

And the conclusion is that like the promise of immediate gratification in Protestantism from spiritual satisfaction on Earth vs. the Catholic promise of redemption in the afterlife, that:

"[U]ntil capitalism can come up with a transformative myth of its own, it may well be that many men will prefer to find their myths in the same place they found them in the first part of the twentieth century -- the myth of revolutionary socialism."

Libertarianism is a poor model for organizing the masses and Capitalism is not the promise of an easy life that Socialism is. Marx believed that because Socialism was the natural out-growth of Capitalism, revolution was unnecessary. But the myth of Hope for Justice under Socialism seems much more of a lure than the hope for prosperity under Capitalism.