Socialism is bad, social conscience is good
The current worldwide COVID-19 crisis has brought a lot of issues to the surface. Here in the Cowichan Valley, as elsewhere, we are adapting to this new way of social interaction with our friends, neighbours and fellow citizens. Inside of all this, as I connect with people by telephone and through social media, I have discovered that there is an ideological struggle taking place. I am talking about the confusion between “socialism” and a “social conscience.” These two concepts are not the same, and yet it seems the line between them is being blurred. For example, a popular contemporary myth is that socialism somehow imbues its proponents with a superior moral and social conscience. It does not.
Socialism is a top down political system that promotes dependence on government. It supports the control and redistribution of earnings, regulates labour and permeates labour unions encouraging them to support its mandate. It is deeply committed to controlling almost every aspect our lives, not in our names, but in the government’s. It is detrimental to charities by overtaxing the middle class to the point where they have little left to give, while it increases society’s dependence on the state. In the end it just succeeds in inhibiting the growth of free enterprise by controlling people’s lives and freedoms as it ensures its own security. History has shown us that eventually it drives society and the average person into an inevitable sense of apathy and mediocrity until, finally, it engineers its own destruction.
“Social conscience,” however, is different. It is pure. It has no political agenda and seeks to control no one. It’s just compassion. It is merely motivated by a sense of concern for our fellow human beings, independent of government power and any attempt to inhibit one’s freedoms. We can all participate in exercising our “social conscience”. A sense of unrestricted empathy, purely given, without conditions.
So, when I hear someone say they are a socialist I wonder what that means to them. Do they mean to project that they have a social conscience, or do they mean they endorse the dogma of state control and restricted freedoms that characterizes socialism? Being a socialist in the political sense and having a social conscience are two different things. One does not insinuate the other.
Diane Moen
North Cowichan