The Red Flag

Socialism is an interesting creature, seemingly always on the fringes, ready to burst into global revolution. My strongest criticism of socialism is that it emerged as a philosophy from various sociologists in the nineteenth century—a time when human behavior had not yet been quantified or mapped. My contention is that socialism is fundamentally posited against human nature. Status, dominance, competitiveness, territorial perceptions, and the acquisition and hoarding of objects that are perceived as valuable or status enhancing are innate, natural, and universal traits of the human animal—as they are self regulating functions of the species. Socialism’s critique is that wealth is socially wrong if it is not collectively shared, and supposedly, once the evil capitalists are overturned and wealth is redistributed, everybody will conform to a new behavior and everything will be fine and dandy.

The problem with this is that it is an ideology that requires everybody to accept its terms—much more so than democratic-capitalism. Essentially you are bound to the community, belong to the community, and what you possess belongs to the community—status is bad so excess is bad. In theory, everybody abides by this utopian ideology, everybody is equal, everybody benefits equally, and there is little need for a corruptible government. In truth, this utopian vision is against human nature and so much so that it simply cannot work—and is to the point of denying human nature, that it is dangerous.

If socialism prevailed, there would ultimately be individuals—status driven individuals, who make themselves symbols of socialism and revolution. The mechanisms of status and dominance become monopolized and the concentration of socialized power with charismatic leaders becomes extreme. Furthermore, this is bound to happen because status, dominance, and the acquisition of status objects and excess resources are natural impulses of alpha individuals and arise from group dynamics.  Not only will status driven individuals monopolize socialism’s standards but socialism needs status driven champions because there will be plenty of status driven dissent for them to combat—and they (socialism’s champions) are the icons—demigods well beyond Hollywood actors, CEOs, and politicians.   

The lure to impose one’s righteousness onto an entire community is bound to attract the most authoritarian and charismatic alpha types. Marx, Engels and other socialist zoomed in on something they didn’t like (class differentiation) and then became so obsessed with this that they could never step away and look at the larger picture. More importantly, they failed to consider human nature or else believed they could engineer an entire civilization into homogeneous conceptualizations—and while their intentions were good—for the underclass—their sociological construction sets the psychological stages for an even greater totalitarianism, social dissent, repression, conflict, and status monopolization.

Meanwhile, the charismatics and prophets promise that utopia is around the corner— but before this can occur they insists on the assassination of Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse, and the Scarecrow of Oz.