Only under socialism could Fidel Castro become the richest warlord, relative to his subjects’ wealth, in recorded history. (And that was the least of his sins.) Only under socialism could Maria Gabriela Chavez, daughter of socialist tribune of the people Hugo Chavez, beloved by the American left, waltz off with a $4 billion fortune. But then, she was a piker: Chavez’s Minister of the Treasury stashed $11 billion in Swiss bank accounts.
One way to acquire enormous wealth is to be perceived as an egalitarian.
One way, but not THE way. As a dig at socialism, this is weak stuff.
Do the sharks on Shark Tank have a reputation for being egalitarian? Not at all. But Mark Cuban (heh) is worth approximately 3 billion. The attitude Americans have toward those of his ilk isn’t one of “gee, he sure is a nice socialist type,” and Cuban et al. could beat a blowhard Global South socialist over the head with their stacks of cash any day.
And one way to preserve enormous wealth is to befriend perceived egalitarians (see every contributor to the Clinton Foundation/Money-Laundering Operation).
Doesn’t this violate “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree”?
Bernie Sanders clearly believes the things he says, even if those things are wrong-headed. I’m not sure about Chavez or Castro, hard to know what those guys really thought. But one thing I’m fairly sure about- neither one thought of themselves as a criminal mastermind defrauding a poor populace.
Thinking about Socialism as a fraud is neither accurate nor useful. Almost everyone who advocates for Socialism is genuinely confused about the World.
Hitler didn’t think of himself as a criminal, either (if you think that example too extreme, use Nixon and his cohorts instead). For that matter, if you talk to prison inmates, none of them is a criminal, either. And, of course, slaveholders claimed that slavery benefited the slaves.
It’s one thing to restate the best case for your opponent’s ideas, but what’s really “neither accurate or useful” is the hairshirt Arnold has unilaterally imposed on himself of being “charitable” to ideological adversaries. I see nothing to be gained in assuming the good faith of political actors who reap fortunes by creating totalitarian police states. Or, more prosaically and close to home, reap fortunes by foisting bad policies on the American people.
We should separate leaders from followers. While it depends on the individual leader, socialist leaders of history by and large knew exactly what they were doing.
For example, Stalin and Mao knew in advance that their agricultural changes were going to starve people by the tens of millions. As well, Lenin differentiated himself from previous Marxists by being willing to kill people en masse to rise to power.
While it’s theoretically possible that there is a pacifist core to socialism, the word in history so far has been used otherwise. It’s been largely used by vicious totalitarians who use mamby-pamby brother-to-brother talk to get intellectuals behind their causes.
Which is where the followers come in. I don’t understand it, but even today, socialist leaders such as Stalin, Lenin, Castro, and Chavez still have broad support among intellectuals of today, and even broader support among youth and among others who just haven’t seen much of the world.
The word you are actually looking for is authoritarian, not socialist. In an authoritarian government of any kind, those on top can put away big bucks.
Steve