Bumper Sticker Anti-Socialism

With simplistic bumper stickers like these so popular with unhappy conservatives, what Michael Polanyi wrote in 'On Liberalism and Liberty' (1) seems especially relevant. Near the end of the essay, he talks about the waning influence of the ideologies which produced so many of the disastrous events of the 20th century. He then points out that despite their passing, there are those who cling to the illusion of their continued existence.

However, the souring of old illusions does not necessarily produce a fresh appetite for reality. There is still an ordinate amount of political hysteria about. Much of it is the hysteria of anti-capitalists who nurse their unchanging resentment of existing society, even though they no longer see any radical alternative to this society. But in part it also stems from excited anti-socialists who still keep confusing public life by their hypochondriac fears. With their gaze fixed on the lands stricken by Communism, they detect incipient symptoms everywhere of 'creeping socialism': an obsession quite widespread in America. Too many people are still glaring at each other through the angry masks of obsolete ideologies.

I totally agree, and I think if we hope to ever move past this nonsensical debate in America between so-called capitalism and socialism, we need to stop oversimplifying things and labeling them what they are not. Polanyi continues:

Moreover, our discarded costumes have become the raging fashion among hundreds of millions of Asiatics and Africans, deluded by our past examples and precepts. The theory of Marxist Socialism, about to be forgotten in the countries of their origin, are fast becoming the centrepiece of Asiatic and African folklore. The violent sentiments of the illiterate native masses--universal hatred of the white man, Moslem fanaticism in the Arab countries, orgiastic frenzy in Africa--are all harnessed without difficulty by a Westernised native intelligentsia to their own sophisticated conspiratorial projects.

This last statement is really disturbing in that it speaks of a reality that is rarely if ever acknowledged in American political discourse. By pretending that our political & economic choices are as simple as capitalism versus socialism, and by ignoring the underlying cultural traditions which are the basis for American democracy, we only aid those who would use bankrupt ideologies to pursue their ends to the detriment of mankind.

 1. 'On Liberalism and Liberty' Encounter IV March 1955 pp. 29-34.