Liberty Expose: The ‘Socialist’ Indictment Needs Reevaluation
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A Tough Habit To Break
If conservatives tend to favor the term “liberal” to neutrally characterize their left-leaning rivals, the term “socialist” is for many the favored term of disparagement. At the slightest suggestion of corporate regulation or the expansion of federal agency to address issues of the common good, many conservatives find it difficult to resist denouncing such suggestions as “socialist,” viewing the indictment as a time-honored method of delegitimizing proposals that the conservative sees as dangerous or un-American.
There is no denying the rhetorical power of this strategy. It instantly puts one’s interlocutor on the defensive by clouding their proposals in a specter of moral suspicion, and awakens skepticism in one’s listeners by igniting their deepest fibers of patriotic concern. If used effectively, it is a sure fire method of rhetorical delegitimation that compels the would-be socialist to fight an uphill battle which, notwithstanding the actual virtues of their argument, is more likely than not to fall short.
However, for all its rhetorical allure, the time has come to reevaluate the usefulness of this indictment and whether it really gives us leverage on the real challenges facing American democracy in our day. Given the history of its usage and the shifting responsibilities now facing our political leadership, I think that a reevaluation of the term “socialist” along the lines of a principled, democratic conservatism befitting the upcoming generations will chasten us to use it more sparingly.
This may seem like a strange argument for a conservative commentator to make. Why give up a rhetorical strategy that works really well? Why violate the principle of minimal deviation and tinker with the tried and true? The reasons proceed from a concern both for the health of our democracy and the long-term vitality of its conservative identities.
Like GOP liberty talk, reliance on anti-socialist language not only leads to a lack of proportion in diagnosing political dangers, it has the tendency to stir up an unwarranted amount of fear in conservative constituencies. Though we rightly expect our leaders to articulate dangers to public liberty, the repetition of provocative language meant to induce uncritical antagonization tends to undermine our self-possession and obscure our political relations. In consequence, we run the risk of cutting ourselves off from opportunities to participate in a wider political life marked by freer relations and stronger coalitions.
If American conservatism is to answer its highest calling as a guardian of American democracy and divest itself of those limitations that consign it to a marginal role in the real work of the 21st century, then it has to face up to the fact that its current “winning” strategies often serve to obscure more than genuinely advance the national interest. It has to come to terms with the fact that its current role is that of the reactionary whose strategy will only become increasingly limited as time goes on.
Anti-Socialist Rhetoric Obscures The Conservative Heritage and Limits The Scope Of Its Imagination
By the 1910s, laissez-faire conservatives were already accustomed to using the term "socialist" as a disparaging term for their opponents. Threatened by the progressive movement and its inroads on the laissez-faire order of the Gilded Age, conservatives were apt to characterize their opponents in as unfashionable a light as possible, and few comparisons were as effective as that of the collectivist ideology taking hold in Europe.
Considered in this historical context, the aversion to socialism is understandable, if overblown. The example of Russian Bolshevism later in the 1910s rightly made Americans wary of the kind of authoritarian collectivism that would animate many of the humanitarian catastrophes of the 20th century. That being said, true socialist schemes were never the most likely options entertained by Americans. From a philosophical and electoral perspective, alternatives like Woodrow Wilson's "new freedom" or Theodore Roosevelt's "new nationalism" were better aligned with the political consensus of the time—and neither of these alternatives betrayed any viable seeds of socialist revolution.
Yet even Theodore Roosevelt—an indispensable figure of the American tradition, and the closest we might get to an authentic integration of collectivist and libertarian values—had to defend himself against charges that he was a socialist. According to some laissez-faire advocates of his time, his proposals for bolder national agency to mitigate the expansion of oligarchic power (e.g. through the prohibition of corporate money for political purposes) were sufficiently threatening to warrant the charge. This is especially striking given that he precedes the post-New Deal consensus and the real ascendancy of anti-communist sentiment by decades, and given that few conservative voters today would take issue with his fundamental political principles.
That someone like Theodore Roosevelt could be indicted as a socialist should lead us to question the motives behind the charge and the liberality of its usage. Measured against the libertarian order of the Gilded Age that he responded to (and that is still extolled by many Republican libertarians today) would any genuine attempt to protect the national interest through proactive government agency not count as socialist? Shall we, over a hundred years later, continue to repeat a charge that misinterpreted one of our most prescient presidential figures, and at that, someone whose guiding principles have for the better part of a century been generally affirmed by the political mainstream?
Furthermore, indictments of this sort have the effect of distorting the conservative heritage because they create the impression that conservatism has always been against strong federal power (even to protect the functioning of our democracy) and grand national visions. Yet to accept this is to accept a very paltry view of the tradition we claim to inherit. What would American conservatism be without the indispensable nationalist figures of our heritage? If we can't find a place for Theodore Roosevelt (or his predecessor Abraham Lincoln, for that matter) in our consensus, and merely denounce their inheritors as socialists, then we've cut ourselves off from the best of our tradition and lost sight of what conservatism can be beyond a perpetual No to the refinement of America’s social contract.
Conservative leaders must transcend the habit of mischaracterizing opponents as socialists and the perpetual naysaying that this strategy implies, if not for the sake of historical continuity, then for the sake of the constituents that bestow their trust in them. Their constituencies deserve a more capacious and affirmative programmatic vision for the future of the country, and should have ample opportunities to recognize common ground with moderates and progressives alike. Given the tumultuous state of our democracy and the unprecedented challenges we already face in the opening decades of the century, we have to prioritize opportunities to bring Americans together under the banner of strong national vision protective of the common good. Conservatives should play a meaningful part in that project and, to that end, resist narratives that would cut them off from fellow working and middle-class coalitions across the aisle.