Debunking the No True Communism Fallacy

In case you missed it, Jonah Goldberg did a really nice job dismantling the New York Times gauzy, nostalgic take on communism.

It’s an incredibly useful debating tactic to say that every failed socialist country wasn’t really socialist because it had a ruling class. The problem is that there will never be a “true” socialist country because ruling classes are inevitable. The unapologetic reds should spend a little less time reading Marx and read more Max Nomad, Milovan Djilas, Max Schachtman, James Burnham, and other Communists and former Communists who understood that any attempt to create a “true socialist” society runs into the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Every organization requires some small group of people to make important decisions. They may use their special knowledge and power to help people, but it’s also a sure bet that they will use it to help themselves as well. A society without democratic institutions and market mechanisms by its nature will invest bureaucrats with enormous power to make choices about how other people will live.

Read the whole thing. And if you run into any leftists spouting the “No True Communism” fallacy, you could do worse than to point them to that essay and this video:

“How many millions of people have to die before you might admit that you’re wrong? Obviously more than 100 million.”

“Think again, sunshine!”

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