Socialism Means Central Control of the Means of Production: A Blast from the Recent Past.

You know, I keep running into people, even nominally right-leaning people, who are apologists for Socialism. No, the problem isn’t that it wasn’t “done right.” The problem is built into the very foundations of the concept.

Let us be clear on one thing. “Socialism” whatever form it takes: International, National, “Democratic”, “Market” (whatever that’s supposed to mean, but it was apparently a thing back in the 1940’s), whatever, cannot escape from the definition of socialism itself: an economic system where the economy is centrally planned and where the means of production are owned or controlled by the state. “Control” is the key element that makes it socialism. That is the core element of ownership. If one remains an owner “on paper” but the decisions about use are dictated by the state then it’s socialism. Because the real ownership is by those who make the decisions, whatever some piece of paper says about ownership.

Now, this is the important part. Tattoo it on your eyelids, add it as the welcome screen on your computer, whatever it takes to get you to learn it and remember it deep down in your gut:

YOU are a “means of production.” And that means that you need to be “controlled/owned” by the state. You. Not just your neighbor. Not just “the wealthy”, the “1%”, “cishet white males”, or whatever other group you want to bring down. You.

In socialism, the state decides what use you will be put to. Not you, yourself, not the nice party leader in your neighborhood, some bureaucrat a thousand miles away who doesn’t know the first thing about you personally except as a number in his spreadsheet…and cares even less.

Totalitarianism isn’t the result of socialism gone wrong. It’s the very core of socialism, following from the simple fact that the most important means of production, the most important capital, that needs to be centrally controlled by the very definition of socialism, is human capital.

And human capital means you.

It’s slavery. That the slaves–you and me–are owned and controlled by some vague collective (really someone who claims to be acting on behalf of that collective) instead of individual slave-owners does not change its essential nature. All the promises in the world about “fairness” and “equality” do not change that. Slavery that’s equal is still slavery.

A socialist society is a slave society. The only difference between it and other slave societies is that no one (except possibly a few nomenklatura–the handful claiming to act on behalf of the collected and being able to enforce their dictates) is free.

To advocate for socialism is to advocate for ones own slavery. (No, you won’t be part of that nomenklatura.) Well, if you want to make yourself a slave, that’s on you.

The problem is, you want me enslaved right alongside you.