Redoing Socialism

On this day:

70
The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans.
1265
Second Barons’ War: Battle of Evesham – the army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies.
1327
First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas leads a raid into Weardale and almost kills Edward III of England.
1704
War of the Spanish Succession: Gibraltar is captured by an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles.
1789
In France members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.
1914
World War I: Germany invades Belgium. In response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States declare their neutrality.
1964
American civil rights movement: civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
1964
Gulf of Tonkin Incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.

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Good news. We now know Sydney Sweeney's voter registration thanks to a crack reporter's intrepid investigations. Trump has weighed in.

And if anyone is interested in the more global and intergalactic implications of this insightful discussion, there's this, from CNN written, apparently, by grown-ups:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/02/entertainment/sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-ad-dunkin-drama-cec

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“I think it's important to emphasize first that if we make a trade involving a player on a contract, as we did in the case with Ke’Bryan, we would never make a trade in order to save money. That's never part of the calculus.”--Cherington

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U.S. states have built less than 400 electric vehicle charging ports through April under $7.5 billion federal infrastructure programs, the Government Accountability Office said .

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Redoing Socialism

There is an interesting article on the socialism revival by Kristian Niemietz. This is a portion:

"This socialist revival is, of course, neither a homogeneous movement, nor a fully worked-out policy program. But if there is a common thread, it is the belief that emerging forms of socialism could be completely different from anything that has flown under that ideological banner in the past. For these new socialists, socialism doesn’t necessarily mean a society run by large, hierarchical government bureaucracies. Nor does it mean a command-and-control economy, directed by a distant, technocratic elite. It means experimenting with new forms of social ownership and democratic decision-making, devolving power to the grassroots, and empowering ordinary working people.

When explaining away the failures of the past, it was assumed that the hierarchical, stratified character of failed socialist projects had been a result of some deliberate political choice. Which is to say: It was believed that previous socialist experiments had failed because the leaders of these movements caused them to be centralized and autocratic as a matter of design—as opposed to a democratic socialist system based on mass participation and a radical decentralisation of power.

But the truth is that mass participation and radical democratization always had been idealized by socialists, including by socialist leaders who led successful national movements. But these dreams never survived, because it simply isn’t feasible to run a large society and a complex economy in this kind of participatory way. Democratic socialism works perfectly fine in small, self-selecting and homogeneous high-trust communities with relatively simple economies, the prime example being the Israeli Kibbutz. But that model is not scalable (and hasn’t even aged particularly well in Israel itself). There is a reason that, even at the height of the Kibbutz movement, Kibbutzim never grew beyond a certain size. There seems to be an upper limit of around 1,500 people, and even that is rare: Most Kibbutzim have fewer than 500 members.

Regardless of what socialists say they want to build, socialism can only mean a society run by large, hierarchical government bureaucracies. It can only mean a command-and-control economy directed by a distant, technocratic elite. The reason it always turns out that way isn’t because revolutions are “betrayed” by selfish or undisciplined actors, but because no other path is possible. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that every generation needs to learn for itself..."

As Mr. Williams says, "Sharing is fine when you know everybody's name."

So socialism's problem is a lot bigger than its cruel, unmanageable, and unachievable distribution system. It is believed that socialism, in its implementation, somehow becomes inexplicably bent. Distorted. There persists this curious search for what goes wrong with socialism, why it turns on those it says it wants to help, and why, on a large scale, it becomes so dangerous, as if this were not the very nature of the beast. Sure, socialism is adopted as a crusade by homicidal, self-obsessed psychopaths, but certainly not all socialists are nuts, they say.

This is similar to the search for why dogs bite; they are so cute and playful when they are young.