The new way forward posited by so called democratic socialists is nothing more than another false dichotomy within a political establishment offering more of the same collectivist tyranny. True liberty comes from opposing the state!
Republished from The Free Thought Project
In mainstream political discourse a big shift is currently taking place towards the favor of “Democratic socialism” as Americans are becoming more disenfranchised with the capitalist status quo. That is, the status quo of state-capitalism, otherwise known as corporatism, wherein government intervention in the form of corporate welfare on behalf of big business stifles the market in favor of monopoly, in direct opposition to the true free market principle of voluntary enterprise, as explained by economist Murray Rothbard some decades ago.
This swing of the pendulum from one side of the statist paradigm to the other is a subject we here at The Free Thought Project have discussed for years now, and it is one that the people should not be fooled by. Yet, with the permeating influence of old guard progressives the likes of Bernie Sanders, and in more recent years rising figures like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, state-socialist sentiment has grown to influence the rise of a new wave of self identified democratic socialists, the most prominent among them being New York City’s recently elected mayor Zorhan Mamdani, along with a few other self styled democratic socialists making headway in their runs for office.
On the other side of the aisle, with midterms approaching, Republican talking heads have been ramping up their own fear mongering rhetoric akin to Cold War “Red Scare” propaganda in an attempt to drag their sullied reputation out of the mud enough to maintain some kind of political momentum. Such as with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s recent remarks deriding the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform, that unintentionally came off sounding more like an endorsement than genuine condemnation; Or President Trump doing his best Joseph Mccarthy impersonation when recently espousing that “communism is the greatest threat to our country”, despite the fact that to date there is no meaningful communist movement to be found anywhere in the United States.
As journalist Caitlin Johnstone explains:
Democratic socialist politicians are still a small minority in US politics, and conflating them with communists is absurd. Communism seeks the complete dismantling of capitalism and the imperialist world order it holds in place at gunpoint, while western “democratic socialists” typically just seek a gentler, more photogenic capitalist empire where things like healthcare and public transportation are funded by taxes.
More to the point, former Libertarian presidential candidate Jacob Hornberger astutely outlined in his recent column ‘None Dare Call It Socialism’ that when it comes to state-socialism and centrally planned programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the police state and immigration-control system, public (i.e., government) schooling, and the fiat monetary system, the Republicans and conservatives, and even many libertarians, often embrace socialism just as much as their Democratic counterparts, with the caveat of falsely labeling such government interventions as “free-enterprise”.
One may have noticed, by now, throughout this piece we have used the phrase “state-socialism” with deliberate intent, and for that there is good reason. Many people often fail to fully grasp the multifaceted nuance of political ideologies, often lumping concepts like socialism, capitalism, anarchism and so forth into broad categorizations without any further examination of the meanings behind these terms or the various subcategories that exist within them. As such, the contemporary understanding of the oversimplified clash between socialism and capitalism exists as yet another false dichotomy utilized by the ruling class to facilitate division.
When too much focus is placed on the horizontal axis of the political spectrum, left versus right, it often results in a total disregard for the existence of the vertical axis that acts as a scale measuring freedom versus tyranny. This is where the true complexity lies, and where the realization exists that it is the oppressive and exploitative apparatus of the state, rather than any one political ideology, that is the primary cause of despotism.
Free Thought Project contributor and co-founder of The Conscious Resistance Network Neil ‘Liberty’ Radimaker elucidated upon this concept in his article titled Voluntary Systems vs. Authoritarian Control: Rethinking The Clash Between Socialism and Capitalism.
In it, he concludes:
The debate between socialism and capitalism is often reduced to a false binary, where proponents of each ideology accuse the other of immorality. However, the real divide is not between left and right but between authoritarianism and liberty—between coercion and voluntarism. Both socialism and capitalism can be moral systems, as long as they operate voluntarily and respect the Non-Aggression Principle.
R.J. Rummel’s concept of democide reminds us that state power, regardless of ideology, leads to mass murder and oppression when unrestrained by moral principles. The lesson is clear: no system, whether socialist or capitalist, should rely on force or coercion to achieve its goals.
It is true then that certain socialist principles when engaged with voluntarily do provide the opportunity for positive benefits to the populace. The same can be said for free market principles, and in fact when applied in tandem the two can coexist quite well in the form of mutualism ― a concept, also sometimes referred to as libertarian-socialism, which arose in the French socialist movement of the 1840s, systematized by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as a synthesis between certain elements of stateless socialist organization and voluntary free market exchange in what is considered to be the first explicit form of anarchism.
In the United States, going back to the days of staunch liberty advocates the likes of Emma Goldman and Benjamin Tucker, both self-described socialists, and others such as Josiah Warren and Lysander Spooner, individualist anarchists whose work intersected with the efforts of socialist organizations (and all of whose work played pivotal roles in influencing the development of anarchist and libertarian philosophy), it is clear that certain branches of the socialist movement have effectively championed causes such as abolition, women’s suffrage, civil rights, fair labor policies, and anti-imperialism for the benefit of the people, without whom such progress would have been encumbered.
However, while these aforementioned political movements were not causes exclusive to socialist or even anti-state schools of thought, the efforts of key figures such as Goldman, Tucker, Warren, Spooner and others should be understood in the context of an anti-statist endeavor, the foundations of which rest explicitly within the ideological confines of a non-hierarchical, classless, stateless framework; relying unequivocally on willful, consensual, voluntary engagement and mutual cooperation, wholly rejecting state-socialism and it’s centralized, collectivist authoritarianism.
In regard to such state-socialist schemes, we would be remiss to forget past “Democratic Socialist” policies like that of President Roosevelt’s disastrous “New Deal”, which directly facilitated the deterioration of US economic stability and declining quality of life in the decades after, exacerbated by the state-capitalist mercantilism of corporate welfare embraced by later administrations.
So, it goes without saying that the people ought to understand that this modern push for “Democratic Socialist” policies in response to the encroachments of MAGA fascism simply represents yet another false dichotomy no different than the fake tribalist paradigm of “Republican versus Democrat”.
Surely the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America may seem alluring to some discontent with the establishment, undoubtedly just the same as the enticements of any other statist attempting attain political power, all too keen on abandoning their principles and breaking their promises once said power is firmly in their grasp.
The state can never offer solutions to our woes, for the state in its capacity as a violent monopoly against personal sovereignty is the crux of the problem. Government intervention, no matter what form it takes, will offer little restitution to a proletariat burdened by the boot of involuntary servitude, or the yoke of any indignity against the autonomy of the individual. Just as Mikhail Bakunin expounded in his arguments against the work of Karl Marx (see Statism & Anarchy, Bakunin, 1873), replacing one set of ruling oligarchs with another is a fool’s errand that will only result in more abuses of bureaucracy and less liberty for the people. Rather than simply being reorganized under new rulership this inherently oppressive system ought to be dismantled outright.
Put plainly, if it is not voluntary, it is tyranny. Embracing the machinations of the “democratic socialists” who will for certain continue to utilize state power for their own bureaucratic ends, and upon its inevitable weaponization to enforce the technofascist agendas of technocracy will only result in more of the same despotism that we’ve already faced. Hence why we will continue to contend that the only viable solution is to exit and build. To step out of the statist paradigm and come to the understanding that no true freedom can ever be achieved under coercive forms of control, and put one’s efforts towards establishing alternative systems and parallel societies.
So long as a hierarchy of domination is in place, oppression will exist. As long as institutions of exploitation remain, inequality will persist. These systems of collective slavery operate and are enforced exclusively via the machinery of the state. As such they are not something that can be reformed as it is inherently predicated upon a monopoly of violence. They must be abolished outright.
The liberation of the human condition can only be realized through radical revolutionary anti-statism, achieved by way of nonviolent means. The people must exercise their self-determination and abandon systems of hierarchy, coercion, and domination, instead choosing to establish parallel systems firmly based on voluntary cooperation, mutual aid networks, and agorist counter-economics. These are the solutionary tactics outlined in the Exit and Build strategy, akin to what Emma Goldman referred to as “a new social order based on the free grouping of individuals”. Only then can we as a people lift each other up to a higher quality of life where each persons basic needs are met and prosperity is the standard, not the luxury.
Abolish the state. Free the market. All power to the people.