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IPFS News Link • Politics: Democratic Campaigns

When Socialism Works

• fee.org

In a March 17 feature at FEE.org, economist Sandy Ikeda offered some strong reasons to doubt it (see "'Democratic Socialism' Is a Contradiction in Terms"). What Ikeda says is right, but notice what his argument does not imply: that democratic socialism will fail in all contexts. His critique addresses the application of democratic socialism to a large-scale heterogeneous group. But if we think about very small, more homogeneous groups, something like democratic socialism can work. Not only can it work; it largely does work within such small groups all throughout the modern liberal, capitalist order. In fact, the liberal order can be seen as the unplanned interaction of lots of little socialist institutions.

To see this point, we need a brief detour into the long history of humanity to explore an important distinction that F.A. Hayek makes in his later work: We humans spent most of our evolutionary past in small, kin-based groups of several dozen people. As a result, our brains evolved in ways that were adaptive for that environment. (See Mike Reid's "The Myth of Primitive Communism" on why communal property was also a cultural adaptation.)


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