Where Has Socialism Ever Worked? The Answer May Surprise You

Not so long ago, I read a friend arguing a left-wing cause online and was not surprised to see someone rather rudely disagree and demand, ‘when has socialism ever worked?’ This is one of those questions that actually makes no sense but sounds impressive, which is why it is often shouted on the internet. The more I have thought about the answer though, the more I have come to a surprising conclusion.

The reason that the question is nonsense is that it is one of those that relies on how you define its terms and the questioner has already defined them in the narrowest sense possible. He takes a policy that he dislikes, he takes a country which he dislikes and he takes a definition of failure that appeals to him. That way no-one can ever answer the question in a way that will satisfy him. It is usually ‘him’ in my experience. For this reason, we have to start with definitions but stay with me, we will be talking about rubber plantations and forest fires soon enough.

I rather like John O’Farrell’s rather simple definition of terms in his book ‘Things Can Only Get Worse’. ‘Capitalism’ is a system where ‘capital’ (or money) is the most important thing and everything in that system is done to maximise money. We are all economic units and we are seen as always needing to create as much money as possible. ‘Socialism’ is a system where the most important things are ‘social’ and everything is done to maximise the potential of each human being to contribute to society. The clues are in the names.

Of course, anyone who has thought about politics (and that rules out a lot of people on Twitter) will realise that there are no countries that follow one ‘system’ or another. Especially during the twentieth century, there has been a balance of maximising money and aiming for other goals. As an example, in 1927 there were vast floods across the southern states of the USA. The federal government’s Commerce Secretary, future President Hebert Hoover, was proud to declare that the government had not contributed any funds to the relief effort. The privately-raised relief fund provided twenty dollars per person affected and Bill Bryson in his book on 1927 in the USA notes that it is the last time that a natural disaster strikes the USA and the federal government sees it as none of its business to be involved.

In other words, for the rest of the twentieth century, it was understood that American whose homes had not been washed away should contribute to supporting those whose homes had been washed away. America is still a country with an economy based around the maximisation of money at the expense of other goals, but it would be a harsh person who would see the sacrifice of paying taxes to help relief efforts as unnecessary. I hesitate a little to write that because of Donald Trump’s appalling record with regards to disaster relief in Puerto Rico, but given that he appears not to believe that Puerto Rico is part of the USA, that may be a different issue.

This is socialism in action. It is putting a goal other than money first and it is people being prepared to sacrifice some of their own wealth for a common good. You can see it in many other policies, I am sure. The National Health Service is usually given as an example in the UK – you pay into it through your taxes in return for knowing that it will be there to care for you when you need it. You do not ask for a refund if you are not ill one year because you know that having a service that cares for everyone is good for everyone. You can look at it as a selfish transaction, but on the other hand most people understand that having free healthcare is generally beneficial to the country as a whole. The healthy make a sacrifice to support the sick and no-one goes bankrupt or starves while trying to pay their medical bills.

Once you understand this principle, you start to realise that it is the underpinning of all government (and hence the sheer hatred of any form of government that you find on the far right of politics). You pool your money and some of your autonomy for a greater good which provides schools, libraries, parks, pavements, parking wardens, late night bus services, leisure centres and so on. You may not use all these things, but you accept their value. All of them could be sold off to private operators and run only for those willing to pay for them (as has happened in some places since the start of austerity politics in 2010), but in general we stick to a principle that sharing the cost and provision of these services is a good thing. As my A-level Politics & Government course started, ‘Man is a social animal – Aristotle’ (that would be ‘people’ but I studied my A-levels a long time ago now).

Hopefully you can see from this that saying that any one country follows a particular system of political and economic government exclusively makes no sense. Even in the extreme cases, you will find exceptions. However, where the people who argue that ‘socialism never works’ tend to go next is the idea that capitalism somehow evokes a ‘natural’ order of things. I have news for them and yes, we will reach the paragraph about rubber plants soon.

Some years ago, there was a study done of what motivated people. It was carried out in the US and at some point I will put the link to the YouTube video that explains it in detail. People were set tasks and money was used to incentivise them to work better, harder, quicker or whatever point was used to mean ‘success’. What the researchers found was that when people had the basics of life – a roof over their head, food on the table – they could not be motivated by money. No-one worked harder to get more money once they had their basic needs covered. At this point the video asks the viewer what kind of Marxist organisation carried out this research. The answer was the US Federal Reserve.

Obviously the US Federal Reserve was not going to settle for the idea that money did not motivate people and so they tried it with different people., in different countries and with different situations all over the world. Each time the same answer came back – when people’s basic needs are met, money stops being what motivates them. Anyone familiar with Maszlow’s Hierarchy of Needs will know how this fits the idea that we have basic needs as a priority but that once those are met we start to move towards wanting things like ‘self-actualisation’.

The weird thing is that you know this already. If you pick up your guitar on a Sunday afternoon and play it without thinking that the purpose is to become a vastly wealthy rock star, then you know it. If you buy a recipe book because you want to try something new with haddock tomorrow without imagining that you are going to become a wealthy Michelin starred chef then you know it. All the time we pursue things that make us happy but do not make us richer. If we are all economic units trying to maximise our wealth, then this makes no sense. You should also note that people who say ‘socialism never works’ also assume that ‘works’ can only be measured in terms of how much money people have.

I was sitting in the living rainforest at the centre of Melbourne Museum when a thought struck me (and yes, we are close to the rubber plant story now). The rainforest teemed with life and, of course, there was a food chain and species competed for light and soil and water. However, none of those species existed in a vacuum (symbolically and literally). All of them relied on other species to thrive. Indeed, the regular fires in Australian forests are part of a cycle of life which allows new plants to grow. There are some plants that rely on fire as their chance to reproduce or develop. It struck me that human beings had got it wrong. We have been looking at nature and seeing ‘survival of the fittest’ when actually what makes a species survive is its ability to co-operate. It is diversity that makes everything thrive.

This finally brings us to the rubber plants. Sitting in the cafe of Melbourne Museum, I was taking a pause to read Bill Bryson’s book about the summer of 1927 in the USA. I have already mentioned it before and it brings up some startling examples of how the world was changing. However, the chapter I was reading was about Henry Ford’s obsession with setting up a rubber plantation in the Amazon and a town around it modestly called ‘Fordlandia’. Spoilers – Fordlandia was a disaster.

There were lots of reasons why Fordlandia was a disaster and, to some extent, it is the usual story of people with no familiarity with the Amazon thinking that they could simply turn up and apply the farming methods that they knew to a foreign crop and climate. However, what jumped out at me sitting in the Melbourne Museum canteen was that one reason for the failure was that they tried to grow rubber trees as a single crop with no other plants around. This failed because rubber trees needed to be in the forest environment to prosper. In other words, humans had made them the fittest to survive artificially and they had not survived. Plants prosper in diversity.

I wrote earlier that you know that money is not the prime motivation of human beings without being aware of it. I am now going to tell you that you are aware of equality and co-operation without knowing it. Having flown for eleven hours from Qatar to Perth, the plane stopped on the airport tarmac for what seemed like hours and left me and my fellow passengers desperate to leave. Yet what did we do? Without any command or organisation, we all waited for the woman with three small children to leave. There was no need to communicate it, but we all appreciated that keeping three small children entertained for eleven hours meant that she and they should leave first. You can see that kind of arrangement happening everywhere and defying the idea that we are all looking to act for our maximum advantage.

A friend gives an example on a grander scale. He says that the parking arrangements outside the sports stadium in Wigan are an example of socialism at work. Indeed, it is. When you park there, you sacrifice a little bit of your autonomy and money by agreeing that after the match in the stadium, you will be told when you can leave and in which direction. You pay more to park there because you are paying for officials to do this and by choosing to wait for them to tell you to leave, you accept that it will not be your choice. In other words, you know that if left to unregulated competition, it would take longer to leave so you make sacrifices that benefit everyone.

However, it is not the car park of the stadium in Wigan that is the really surprising conclusion with regards to socialism. Do you remember my definition? People pool their own interests and make sacrifices to achieve a common good. I will suggest to you that there is an arrangement of people that involves people giving time, energy, money and autonomy in exchange for security, stability and promotion of their interests. In fact, this arrangement is so well-ingrained in our society that if one person in the arrangement abuses their position, everyone disapproves. It is not an arrangement of equals, some people have more knowledge and power but they too make sacrifices to benefit others.

What is this socialist arrangement and why has it not been banned, you ask? I am talking about the family. Consider it for a minute, the family is the perfect model of where people pool their interests for common goals. There is plenty of debate about what those goals are, but all co-operation demands sacrifice. The man who might once have gone to the football on a Saturday is happy to sacrifice that to carry out domestic chores to help his family, to support his wife or to look after his children. The same is true of wives and children. Anyone who has been in a family has made compromises and will be quick to criticise those they hear about in other families who do not make those sacrifices.

Next time someone writes ‘when has socialism ever worked’ then forget mentioning the NHS or an example or two from Scandinavia. The surprisingly simple answer is the family. We are part of the natural world, after all.