The selfishness at the heart of socialism
Does our impulse to help others start with a socialist impulse or any ideology? Or is the truth entirely different? Is socialism, which I think of as a set of arrangements by which central government delivers goods and services (of varying quality) to the public, actually an outgrowth or distortion of the deeper instinct of compassion? I don t suggest that socialists are more compassionate than others, much though they often think of themselves that way. They obviously aren t. But there s a link between the political ideology and the human instinct, no matter how misshapen the connection has become.
In 1985, singer Bob Geldof was interviewed backstage at London s Wembley Stadium about the massive Live Aid rock concert he d organized with fellow musician Midge Ure both there and simultaneously at John. F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. They were raising money for famine relief in Ethiopia and did so on a stunningly huge scale. Copycat concerts took place all over the world, linked by satellite, and the combined events were watched in 150 countries by nearly 2 billion people.
At this moment, the greatest triumph in his already successful career, Geldof remarked with a note of bitter irony that Live Aid involved the privatization of compassion. He didn t mean it as a compliment. Privatization had become a dirty word in the left-wing lexicon, as industries previously taken over by socialist governments were released from central control and sold to the public as businesses quoted on stock exchanges.
Geldof s comment struck me forcefully at the time, for it was the precise opposite of what I took then and still take to be the gem-like truth stated by columnist T.E. Utley that one of the cruelest aspects of socialism is that it delegates compassion to the state. Socialism encourages individuals to think caring for their neighbor is not their responsibility but is, instead, a function of government.