HOW TO BE A SOCIALIST WITHOUT BEING AN APOLOGIST FOR THE ATROCITIES OF COMMUNIST REGIMES

Opposing economic exploitation doesn’t mean supporting authoritarianism…
by NATHAN J. ROBINSON
It’s incredibly easy to be both in favor of socialism and against the crimes committed by 20th century communist regimes. All it takes is a consistent, principled opposition to authoritarianism. I don’t like it when bosses mistreat and abuse their workers. And I don’t like it when governments mistreat and abuse their people. A system in which people must work for low wages, struggling to afford housing, healthcare, and education, is abhorrent and should be gotten rid of. A system in which people must either work or be sent to forced reeducation camps is even more abhorrent. We can dream of a world that has neither gulags nor indentured servitude, and I am such a romantic idealist that I believe such a world might even be possible…

Bret Stephens, in The New York Times, wants to convince readers that the choice is binary. The millennials who criticize contemporary capitalism (i.e. the majority of them, who identify more strongly as socialists) have forgotten the history of the 20th century, he says. They know that Nazis and Apartheid South Africa were bad, but they don’t have the same horror at Stalinism and the Khmer Rouge. “Why is Marxism still taken seriously on college campuses and in the progressive press?” Stephens asks. “Do the same people who rightly demand the removal of Confederate statues ever feel even a shiver of inner revulsion at hipsters in Lenin or Mao T-shirts?”