What Is Asymmetric Socialism?
The left is now arguing that Obamacare is actually a conservative policy rather than socialism because health insurers are still privately owned. How is a conservative supposed to respond to this contention?
Now this argument has superficial appeal because most Americans believe that socialism is where the government owns businesses to direct the economy and redistribute wealth. This is indeed the definition of classical socialism, but classical socialism is not the only kind of socialism.
The two necessary parts of socialism are the government directing the economy to redistribute wealth from the folks who create it to those the government prefers. However, the government does not need to own an industry to accomplish these socialist goals.
After the United States won the Cold War and the Soviet Empire collapsed, American socialism evolved into an asymmetric form where the government declined to nationalize businesses in favor of abusing its regulatory, taxing and spending powers to reduce businesses to the status of civil servants. While a business may remain privately owned, the government directs its administrative operations, tells it what to produce, and orders the rest of us to buy the resulting product. American socialists then tell us that the resulting policy is actually a reform of capitalism rather than socialism.
In Chapter 10 of my book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste , I describe the historical roots of asymmetric socialism, how Obama employed it to enact Obamacare and his "clean energy economy," and why these policies are not progressivism and certainly not capitalism. You can read Chapter 10 for free here.
I would enjoy hearing your opinions of my theory of socialism.
Now this argument has superficial appeal because most Americans believe that socialism is where the government owns businesses to direct the economy and redistribute wealth. This is indeed the definition of classical socialism, but classical socialism is not the only kind of socialism.
The two necessary parts of socialism are the government directing the economy to redistribute wealth from the folks who create it to those the government prefers. However, the government does not need to own an industry to accomplish these socialist goals.
After the United States won the Cold War and the Soviet Empire collapsed, American socialism evolved into an asymmetric form where the government declined to nationalize businesses in favor of abusing its regulatory, taxing and spending powers to reduce businesses to the status of civil servants. While a business may remain privately owned, the government directs its administrative operations, tells it what to produce, and orders the rest of us to buy the resulting product. American socialists then tell us that the resulting policy is actually a reform of capitalism rather than socialism.
In Chapter 10 of my book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste , I describe the historical roots of asymmetric socialism, how Obama employed it to enact Obamacare and his "clean energy economy," and why these policies are not progressivism and certainly not capitalism. You can read Chapter 10 for free here.
I would enjoy hearing your opinions of my theory of socialism.
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