Late Socialism

In 1925, German economist Werner Sombart coined “late capitalism” to describe conditions in Europe following World War I. In 1972, Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel authored Late Capitalism for conditions following War II. Both economists imply that capitalism is on the way out, to be replaced by socialism, now making a comeback in its own late phase.

Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), now in triumphal mode. New York mayor Zohran Mamdani touts the “warmth of collectivism,” with support from Sen. Bernie Sanders. As this surge confirms, late socialism lacks a rear-view mirror. Consider conditions in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the first socialist state.

Malcolm Muggeridge, raised in a socialist home, went to the USSR in the early 1930s as a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. At the time, visiting dignitaries came to witness socialist progress firsthand. Not much progress was going on, and journalists held a contest to see who could pass off the most outlandish story.

Muggeridge convinced Lord Marley, a Labour peer, that long lines for the purchase of literally everything were official policy to give eager Soviet workers a chance to rest. At the time, Stalin sought to collectivize agriculture and set out to eliminate the kulaks, independent farmers, as a class.

Muggeridge broke the story of Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine while Walter Duranty of the New York Times denied that any famine had occurred. Muggeridge told the story in his magisterial Chronicles of Wasted Time, hardly the only book to escape the attention of late socialists.

In The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek explained that economic knowledge was widely dispersed, so a top-down managed economy was bound to fail. On the other hand, such a command arrangement allowed the worst people to get on top. Hayek also explained that the National Socialism then going on in Germany was indeed real socialism, not some “right-wing” ideology as late socialists contend.

Hayek’s book was published in 1944, at the height of Stalinist adoration. Released in 1945, George Orwell’s Animal Farm was rejected by several publishers, including T.S. Eliot on behalf of Faber and Faber. They believed the brilliant satire was too unkind to Stalin and the whole socialist project. Following their triumphant revolution, the farm animals must decide what to do with the wild, non-domestic critters. They duly vote that rats are comrades, which bears out in experience.

Stalin confiscated the grain of the kulaks and targeted anyone who had ever earned anything. So it’s not out of line to claim that socialism is theft. Witness California’s so-called “billionaires tax,” Proposition 40, which enables politicians, who produce nothing, to loot just about anybody who produces anything.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its colonies never matched the output of the capitalist states they derided, and socialist consumer goods were decidedly third-rate, or worse. See Top Gear’s “Communist Cars,” and recall the Soviet Lada and East German Trabant, doubtless the worst automobiles ever produced.

Socialist failure was not limited to Europe. Under the Stalinist Fidel Castro, Cuban socialism imposed food rationing and drove thousands to flee, at great risk to their lives. Those who remained found a way to explain their plight.

In the late 1980s, as the joke goes, Soviet boss Mikhail Gorbachev visits Cuba, and Castro invites him to fight a bull. The massive beast chases Gorbachev around the ring, and he must retreat to the stands. Castro then enters the ring and calmly whispers in the bull’s ear. The bull collapses, and the crowd goes wild. Gorbachev asks Castro what he said, and he replies, “socialism or death.”

Late socialists, by contrast, seem rather humorless. They are constantly calling for confiscation of wealth others have created, and they ignore the record of socialist failure. As French historian Hippolyte Taine noted, nothing is more dangerous than a general idea in narrow, empty minds. So the general idea, in this case socialism, leaves them literally possessed.

Late socialists are not stupid people, but as Saul Bellow noted, a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. In 2026, the illusion is that socialism, a bust from the start, can promote prosperity, human rights, and all the good things to which socialists have allegedly dedicated their lives. As they should know, it’s not too late to dump socialism and let freedom ring.