Remembering and teaching socialism's 'smaller' failure
How has socialism, once widely viewed by Americans as a failed ideology, regained such new political appeal?
Today, organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America have moved from the political fringes into the mainstream, advancing proposals such as government-run grocery stores, expanded rent control, and sweeping public ownership initiatives. Ideas that once would have been dismissed, now receive serious consideration in city halls, state legislatures and congressional campaigns.
For those who lived through the Cold War, however, the word socialism carries a heavier weight. They remember the Soviet Union not as an abstract case study but as America's geopolitical rival, one whose communist ideology posed an existential threat to the free world. American families lived under the shadow of potential nuclear conflict, while students studied and critiqued the writings of Karl Marx and other thinkers who welcomed the overthrow of existing societal structures.
Older Americans also remember images of empty shelves in Soviet stores and the attendant misery of the Eastern Bloc’s average citizens. Those images drove home how socialism not only provided the economic engine for repressive totalitarian regimes, but also wreaked havoc on the daily lives of ordinary citizens not privileged to live in luxury like the regimes’ elite few.
Over time, these “smaller” lessons learned from history about the faults of socialism and its negative impact on real families seem to have become less frequently voiced.
As socialism has its current moment in American politics, opponents certainly cite a list of oppressive regimes, in nations from the Soviet Union to Venezuela, that identified as communist or socialist and the broader, wholesale death and destruction those governments caused. Less focused upon are the individual stories of the regular indignities suffered by those regimes’ citizens such as the desperate search for milk, bread and other food to sustain their families.
Lack of recent publicity does not make these “smaller” scale harms of socialist policies any less relevant. One must question why more American television screens failed to feature pictures of an unsuccessful government-supported grocery store in Missouri. That government project seemingly failed to recognize the basic economic lesson that providers of products will not happily hand over their goods for cheap sale in such ill-conceived public emporiums.
Not all were silent. Prior to the market’s closing, one major newspaper effectively conveyed the misery of a local resident finding only a single tomato in a store bin. Readers can empathize with such a person, a fellow American who government intervention let down. Maybe if it had been conveyed more widely, the story of this store’s failure that left local residents in search of new supermarkets after its closure might have left New York City voters more skeptical of Zohran Mamdani’s illusory vision of government-controlled grocery stores filled with goods at impossibly low prices.
Perhaps we also might more effectively share tales of other individual Americans previously displaced from housing by socialist-style, rent controlled apartments. Rent control leaves those lacking the luck or influence to secure the specially-priced housing units paying more to offset their neighbors’ government provided boons. Those left out can be a single mother or a grandfather on a fixed income. Textbooks once again could more prominently feature their stories.
Older Americans may remember the hazards of rent control from economics textbooks they read as impressionable students that explained how this poor public policy neglected to recognize basic rules of supply and demand. Governments capping income for owners of housing units offer little incentive for businesses to build or to improve housing stock. Yet with failures like rent control somewhat forgotten or downplayed, socialists’ lofty promises of low-cost housing that defy basic economics may attract voters in the short run until the dreadful results of rent control are realized.
That brings us back to the phenomenon of socialism’s newfound popularity in the face of traditional skepticism that should flow naturally from its past failures. When average Americans vote for socialist candidates, they generally do not cite their affinity for profound socialist economic theory. They more frequently note their general economic concerns and hope for any change to improve their personal financial situations.
Unless voters can be convinced that socialist change can trigger more personal misery, one might expect additional socialist electoral victories. Education is critical. As memories of the Cold War continue to fade, Americans will increasingly encounter these debates without firsthand knowledge of socialism's historical record. Americans need to be re-familiarized with socialism’s terrible past costs. Such costs typically are not felt by billionaire oligarchs and elites in power, but by regular citizens of more moderate means.
These “smaller” stories about those costs can make a big difference in securing wiser voting choices and a more sensible future.
Originally published by The Center Square, a project of the Franklin News Foundation