Socialist Destructionism

There's a place where the light won't find you
Holding hands while
The walls come tumbling down
When they do, we'll be right behind you
--Tears for Fears

In the first part of this article, Tom DiLorenzo reviews Mises's masterful critique of socialism w.r.t. the objective of destroying existing society. After that has been accomplished, so the socialist mindset goes, then promises of a vague utopian alternative can commence.

But that utopian alternative never materializes. It can't, said Mises, because socialism "does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership of the means of production has created...each step leading toward socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists."

As DiLorenzo observes, this situation has played out over and over again in socialist regimes--from yesterday's Soviet Union to today's Venezuela. The primary mechanism of destruction is capital consumption. "Socialism and destructionism...propose to use up capital so as to achieve present wealth at the expense of the future...The policy of destructionism is the policy of the spendthrift who dissipates his inheritance regardless of the future."

Gaining support for destructionism requires inciting the masses through agitation, begging for votes, stirring up electoral excitement, street riots, and terrorism. Intellectuals and intelligentsia become "recruiting agents for socialism." They must call for the righteous destruction of all cultural values that block progress toward the socialist ideal.

Viewed in the light of destructionism, modern day attacks on Western culture institutions should not be surprising.