Feb 19, 2022 3 min read

Lysa Holland and Diane Ebken correctly titled their sophomoric letter to letter of Feb. 14, “American socialism misunderstood,” for they certainly have no understanding of what socialism is as a political or economic construct. They mislabeled or just do not know the difference between the results of “the common good” and socialism. Public roads, schools, post offices are a result of the common needs of citizens in society. As a philosophical concept, the common good is best understood as part of an encompassing model for practical reasoning among the members of a political community. Citizens stand in a “political” or “civic” relationship with one another and that relationship requires them to create and maintain certain facilities on the grounds that these facilities serve certain common interests.

Socialism, on the other hand, is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterized by central ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. Communism practiced in the old USSR and socialism are umbrella terms referring to two left-wing schools of economic thought. Our fears were the military might of the USSR, as the writers suggested, but even more dangerous was their form of a restricted social and oppressive central economic structure.

In a purely socialist system, all legal production and distribution decisions are made by a central controlling government and individuals rely on the state for everything from food to health care. The government determines the output and pricing levels of these goods and services. Socialists contend, but have never been substantiated in real life, that shared ownership of resources and central planning provide a more equal distribution of goods and services and a more equitable society.

We do have two perfect test cases: North and South Korea and East and West Germany. The perfection of these examples come from the fact that in each case we are dealing with the same people, same background, same culture, merely two rival economic systems. North Korea was socialist; South Korea, capitalist. East Germany was socialist and West Germany, capitalist. When the results came in, they were decisive. At the reunification of Germany the gross domestic product in socialist East Germany was one-third that of West Germany. South Korea is some 20 times richer than North Korea. South Koreans are freer, taller, healthier and live about 12 years longer than their cultural counterparts in the North.

In America, we are guaranteed equal opportunity to succeed or fail in this great country of individual freedom, and private property rights. We do not guarantee equal outcomes.

I suggest the writers spend time reading Joseph Schumpeter’s “Capitalism Socialism and Democracy” to begin to understand of what they speak. I conclude with these quotes:

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”- Thomas Sowell

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” – Winston Churchill

Tom Flickinger

Washington