Denouenment

'Civility': The Denouement - The liberal elite grows even angrier and more desperate.

Socialism is driven by a moral-political vision of the Good Society, and it has a redistributive economic theory of how to achieve it. If the economic theory worked, the whole world would have become socialist long before now.

But, without exception, the economic theory of socialism has been demonstrated not to work, and so the moral-political vision never gets implemented. It exists only as an abstract ideal, the socialist dream.

And that's a good thing, because the moral-political vision of socialism, were it ever to be instituted, would be found not to work, either, because it's based on a deeply unrealistic view of human nature. Socialists know that, but they presume that if their dream could ever be made real, the Good Society would then produce people with a new and higher kind of human nature.

It has always been the socialist lament that they are forced to work with human beings as they are, not as socialists believe they should be. The various failed attempts to create the "New Socialist Man" have been noteworthy for their brutality and vast toll in human lives, what Lenin described as breaking eggs to make the omelet. What gets made in reality are wrecked societies and vast piles of corpses.

Market capitalism was a natural, evolutionary development, not a theory imposed. It grew from the realities of our human nature, as the economic expression of the hierarchical, competitive species that we are. Adam Smith provided its theory and rationale long after the fact; he and Ricardo merely described something that had already evolved on its own, as a natural consequence of trade, and the specialization trade encourages. Incredible increases in living standards, societal wealth, and human freedom are the natural result, as we've seen wherever markets are allowed to flourish.

Byron