[This is the Foreword to Murphey’s book Socialist Thought.]
FOREWORD
The subject of socialism is hardly new. If all the material written upon it by philosophers, economists, statesmen, politicians, journalists and others were laid end to end, it would no doubt satisfy the legendary test of encircling the Earth. If to this were added the product of the spoken word, and if we could travel to the end of our galaxy, we might hear the word socialism already there, echoing its way on to the next galaxy. Yet here comes Professor Murphey to instruct us anew on the meaning and character of socialist thought.
The new instruction is much needed. For all the mountain of words written upon the subject, which of us has a clear picture of the manifold facets of socialism? Or a grasp in depth of the ideas, a few self-consistent, many self-contradictory, and many more part-self-consistent and part-self-contradictory, which claim to be socialist? The more that one or more of the many socialist notions have gripped men’s minds, the more has the result been confusion, intellectual confusion compounded with moral confusion.
Consider,
for example, the predicament of Western socialists or social democrats as they
contemplate the only countries which claim to operate socialist systems, the
Other Western socialists in those days opened their eyes a millimeter or two to express regret for these horrors. But, as the enemy of man was capitalism, they concluded that the horrors were in part the eggs which had to be broken to make omelets, and in part the unfortunate excesses of peoples which had been catapulted from feudalism to socialism without any intervening experience of liberty and democracy. Still, therefore, the socialist countries were the light of the world, even if it had to be admitted that the light was somewhat smudged.
Now that has all changed. The tyranny and poverty of red and yellow socialism have become so unmistakably obvious that most Western socialists have decided that it is not socialism at all, but a monstrous parody of it, or a fraudulent misrepresentation. The only true socialists thus turn out to be the Westerners themselves, which means that we have to look to the countries still called capitalist to find authentic socialist thought. Of course they do not accept the proposition that it is because these countries are still capitalist that they provide the free intellectual environment which is necessary for the development of authentic socialist thought.
This change now extends to Marxism itself. The growing tendency of Marxist opinion in the West is that red and yellow Marxism are betrayals of the Master’s true doctrine. Having to find a figure to personify their loyalty to true doctrine, activist Western Marxists increasingly describe themselves as Trotskyists, to distinguish themselves from the alleged post-Lenin-Trotsky perversions of Stalin and Mao. As for intellectual Marxists, it is both true and important that they can be found only in the West and its universities. Behind the Iron Curtain the bill of fare offers only Marxist slogans, not Marxist ideas.
Consider the Western socialists’ further predicament in contemplating Fascism. It is true that here they do not admit, and are not conscious of, any predicament. They admit that Stalinism did have socialist genes in it but, they aver, it became a non-socialist monster. Fascism, they insist, was not a perversion of socialism, because it never had any socialism in it at all, even though Mussolini was born and bred a socialist, and Hitler called his Party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. However, the predicament remains, even if only the independent observer can see it. For the tests established by Western socialist thinkers themselves, Fascism easily earns a passing grade. Indeed, when socialists take over Governments in the West, it turns out that, despite their pious and wonted internationalist verbiage, their plans and policies are always national socialist in character, even if, to begin with, they are free from the barbarities of Hitler or Mussolini. There is no better example of intellectual and moral confusion.
Clearly the true intellectual has a duty to seek to understand the phenomenon of socialist thought. Its influence on Western civilization is, and long has been, deep and wide. Furthermore, duty or no duty, there is a fascination in it for men of ideas. To dissect its occasional or partial glimpses of truth from its many misunderstandings and distortions provides a marvelous exercise for the analytical mind. If socialist ideas had never existed, the intellectual in his ivory tower might have had to invent them for use in his ideological training.
Who is likely to be best qualified to present a true picture of socialist thought in its many manifestations? Respectable analytical ability is not uncommon among socialist thinkers, and it is not impossible that a socialist might have the independence of mind and the scholarship which are necessary. But it is unlikely. A much more likely candidate would be a classical liberal of high analytic capacity and scholarship. For classical liberalism is the only system known to man, or at least to modern man, which by its nature tends to breed a goodly measure of impartiality, objectivity, independence of spirit, fairness in debate, and tolerance in face of opponents’ ideas.
Professor Murphey is such a candidate. In these pages the reader will find true scholarship, calm, dispassionate, thorough, and informed by wide reading and perceptive insight. Always Professor Murphey offers the reader the compliment of assuming that he is interested in truth, not dogma or propaganda. I am honored to be able to commend the work to him.
Arthur Shenfield
Ludwig von Mises Distinguished
Visiting Professor of Economics
October, 1982