In a speech delivered in Paris, France on May 4, 2009, Howard Dean, until January of this year the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, declared that the debate about whether to “have” capitalism or socialism is over. “We are going to have both,” said Dean.
After comparing President Obama with John F. Kennedy and taking pride in the multiculturalism of modern-day America, Dean claimed that both capitalism and something he calls “communitarianism” are part of “human nature.” According to Dean, all people feel the urge to care for others besides themselves or, as he puts it, all want to be “part of a community.”
Apparently Dean sees no contradictions between capitalism and socialism for he innocently suggests that America ought to figure out “which proportion of each” it is going to have “in order to make this all work.” In Dean’s words, this is the “sensible” thing to do.
In fact, there is nothing sensible about it. Capitalism and socialism are almost perfect opposites of each other and cannot coexist. Where the first depends on the individual, the second is concerned only with the wellbeing of the collective; where the first promotes ingenuity, the second demands conformity; where the first favors freedom, the second relies on cohesion because altruism, regardless of what Dean might say, is not part of human nature. Rather altruism, although the foundation of any collectivist ideology, goes against it; it goes against the most primal human will: the will to live.
Socialism has held so many nations under oppression; it has condemned so many people to self-destruction and death that is almost unimaginable that an American of all people, a citizen of the very country that resisted socialism with reason and with force for half a century, should now champion it in blissful ignorance of its cruelties and hardships.
Whether you hold capitalism as a system responsible for the current recession or not, socialism is most certainly not an alternative. No socialist state has ever prospered economically for it denies the very human qualities that drive progress. Denying that is inexcusable.