When writing about Bernie Sanders back in 2016, I put together a flowchart to identify different strains of statism.
In part, I wanted to show that genuine socialists, 
with their advocacy of government ownership, central planning, and price controls, aren’t really the same as other leftists (and I’ve made the unconventional claim that “Crazy Bernie” isn’t a true socialist – at least based on his policy positions).
I’m not the only one to notice that not all leftists have the same approach.
Writing for the Washington Post about the battle between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic nomination, Elizabeth Bruenig opines on the difference between two strains of statism.
What is the difference between Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)? …much of it comes down to the matter of regulation vs. revolution. For Warren, the solution to our economic ills already exists in well-regulated capitalism. “I believe in markets,”…
Warren believes today’s socioeconomic ills are the result of high concentrations of power and wealth that can be resolved with certain regulatory tools and interventions. …for Sanders, those solutions come up short. ,,,Instead, he aims to transfer power over several key segments of life to the people — by creating a set of universal economic rights that not only entitle citizens to particular benefits (such as medical care, education and child care) but also give those citizens a say in how those sectors are governed: in short, democratic socialism.
They both sound like “stationary bandits” to me, but there are some nuances.
Elizabeth Warren basically favors private ownership but she explicitly wants politicians and bureaucrats to have the power to dictate business decisions.
Thomas Sowell points out this economic philosophy is fascism. But I’ll be more polite and refer to it as corporatism.
By contrast, as a self-declared socialist, Bernie Sanders should be in favor of nationalizing companies.
But, as reported by the New York Times, he actually sees himself as another Franklin Roosevelt.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont offered a vigorous defense of the democratic socialism that has defined his five decades in political life on Wednesday… Mr. Sanders cast himself at times in direct competition with President Trump, contrasting his own collectivist views against what he called the
“corporate socialism” practiced by the president and the Republican Party. And Mr. Sanders, 77, declared that his version of socialism was a political winner, having lifted Mr. Roosevelt to victory four times… Mr. Sanders…presented his vision of democratic socialism not as a set of extreme principles but as a pathway to “economic rights,”… He argued that his ideology is embodied by longstanding popular programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, that Republicans have labeled socialist. …Mr. Sanders called for a “21st-century economic Bill of Rights,” which he said would address health care, wages, education, affordable housing, the environment and retirement.
I’ll make two points.
First, FDR may have won four times, but he was an awful President. His policies deepened and lengthened the Great Depression.
And his proposed “economic bill of rights” would have made a bad situation even worse. He basically said everyone has a right to lots of freebies without ever stopping to think about the impact such policies would have on incentives to lead productive lives.
For all intents and purposes, we wanted to turn this cartoon into reality.
Second, I don’t actually think there’s a significant difference between Sanders and Warren. Yes, their rhetoric is different, but they both want higher taxes, more regulation, additional spending, and more intervention.
Heck, if you examine their vote ratings from the Club for Growth or the National Taxpayers Union, it’s hard to find any real difference.
At the risk of making a radical understatement, neither of them is a friend to taxpayers.
But thinking about this issue has motivated me to modify my statism flowchart. Here’s the new version.
As you can see, I created a much-needed distinction between totalitarian statism and democratic statism.
And while Warren is on the corporatist side and Sanders is on the socialist side, I also put both of them relatively close to the Venezuela-style track of “incoherent statism.” In other words, I think they’re guided by vote buying rather than a cohesive set of principles.
P.S. I wrote last week about the emerging “anti-socialist” wing of the Democratic Party. Presumably they would be the “rational leftists” on the flowchart.
[…] I wrote yesterday about the debate among leftists, which is partly a contest between Bernie Sanders-style socialists and Elizabeth Warren-style corporatists. […]
socialist democrats and crypto-communists favor a command economy… sanders and warren are both in that camp… they intend to chip away at the Constitution… and modify the realities of daily life in order to better control people’s personal and economic activities.. the socialists intend to use the judicial system and other backdoor methodologies to “fundamentally transform America” into a nation that Karl Marx could be proud of… socialists are the enemies of personal and economic freedom… they are control freaks… in the short term these folks are obsessed with personal power and privilege… long term they envision a Marxist utopia where social justice rules and total equality of outcome is a way of life… it’s absurd… contrary to human nature… and their stated goals are beyond the performance capabilities of any system of government… if the socialist democrats can neutralize or abolish the electoral college… and effectively transform the nation from a constitutional republic into a majoritarian democracy… they will be well on their way remaking America into a socialist state… add millions of foreign national voters… sympathetic to the socialist cause…and the America we know and love will slip into the pages of the history books… a bold experiment… successful… but ultimately destroyed by self-indulgence and apathy…
The two most striking things about your work are that you still believe that ideology actually means anything and that you still believe that what any politician says has anything to do with what that politician will actually do. These people are all totalitarians. Surely you can see that. Absolute, unrestricted, irresponsible power is all that they care about: it’s all that they live for. And you dither about vaporous details instead of sounding a general alarm about these interchangeable tyrants.
[…] « The Left-Wing Debate Between Socialism and Corporatism […]
I would instead contend communism, socialism, fascism, corporatism and the American importation of the same we call progressivism are all merely different flavors of totalitarianism, which share the same four cornerstones and many of the same policies.
The four cornerstones of totalitarianism are:
(1) Unlimited Government: Classical liberalism assumes we all enjoy natural rights to be free from government direction which limit government power. Totalitarians do not recognize any natural limits on government power to direct our lives to achieve a favored policy goal. This does not mean totalitarian governments must direct every facet of our lives, but rather they see no limits on their power to direct what they think is necessary. Occasionally, totalitarians will recognize a limit on government power, but only as a matter of convenience to advance their preferred policies. (See, for example, the “right” to abortion)
(2) Absolute Bureaucracy: Classical liberalism generally believes in electing and often dividing the executive and the legislature in order to further limit government power. Totalitarians govern primarily through an unelected bureaucracy exercising absolute power (executive, legislative and judicial).
(3) Direction of the Economy: Classical liberals and totalitarians recognize that most of our lives are dedicated to the creation and trade of goods and services which makes up the economy. Thus, the government’s easiest and most effective method of directing our lives is by directing the economy. For this reason, classical liberals believe in basically free markets and totalitarians seek to comprehensively direct the economy.
(4) Redistribution of Wealth: Classical liberals believe the people should broadly share the burden of providing generally available public goods. In contrast, after totalitarians direct the economy (the production and trade of goods and services), they seek to redistribute the resulting product (taking from those who produce wealth and giving to those the government prefers, beginning with the government). Mafia government.
The first and/or second cornerstones are what distinguish totalitarianism from nearly all past tyrannical or statist political economies like dictatorships or absolute monarchies and make totalitarian direction of the economy and redistributing of wealth far more invasive and effective. The closest historical analog was the mandarin bureaucracy running ancient China.
The second cornerstone is why there is little effective difference between “totalitarian statism and democratic statism.” Any elected body and most dictators in a totalitarian government are generally little more than window dressing. The absolute bureaucracy decrees the vast majority of law and decides whether and how to enforce the enactments of dictators or elected bodies.