Prohibit Socialist rather than Racist Speech

Since socialism has been more murderous than racism, pro-socialist speech  should be prohibited before pro-racist speech.  As evil and murderous as racism is, the record on socialism is worse.  For instance, the commencement of World War I, called the August Madness, was heralded as a triumph of communitarianism over selfishness, of gemeinshchaft over geselleschaft, of community over market. The communitarian death count during World War I was 20 million, and an additional 20 million were maimed and disfigured. The renaissance of communitarianism meant the invention of nerve gas, mass killing, and scorched earth policies.  The racism of the Ku Klux Klan never came close.

Subsequent socialist, totalitarian models were based on World War I and its war economy, and the mass murders associated with twentieth century socialism were modeled on measures taken, especially by the Germans and Turks, but also by the British, French, and Americans, during the Great War. The degree to which Nazism influenced Swedish  socialism is rarely discussed, but in his book The New Totalitarians, Roland Huntford describes Gunnar Myrdal's admiration for Nazism.

The death counts due to Soviet, Chinese and other communist-linked socialisms are disputed, but Josh London's estimates on this page, based on the Black Book of Communism, are as follows:

U.S.S.R.: 20 million deaths; China: 65 million deaths; Vietnam: 1 million deaths; North Korea: 2 million deaths; Cambodia: 2 million deaths: Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths; Latin America: 150,000 deaths; Africa: 1.7 million deaths; Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths; The international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power: about 10,000 deaths… The total approaches 100 million people killed.

The numbers in the USSR may have been much higher.  As well, the Black Book of Communism excludes non-communist socialists such as the national socialists of Nazi Germany and the left-inspired socialists of fascist Italy.  The word "fascist," which has its roots in the fasces or tied rods, which Romans used to signal imperium or the right of command, was first used as a symbol by democratic socialists in the 19th  century, most importantly by the militant socialist group Fasci Siciliani. Mussolini himself was for much of his life an active socialist.  The distinction between fascism and "progressive" models in the US is difficult to defend.  Fascism was a nationalistic ideology, much like American Progressivism.

No other ideology in history comes close to the horror and murder committed by socialists. The number of dead, when one includes the crimes of right wing socialists such as Hitler and Mussolini, is likely in excess of 200 million. 

Yet, lying on behalf of socialism continues to be a preoccupation of the American left. Prohibitions on speech are ill advised, but if we are protect ourselves from the horrific consequences of ideology, then the most realistic place to start is socialism.

World War I and the Era of Bounded Rationality

I just finished listening to a Great Courses lecture series about World War I by Prof. Vejas G. Liulevicius of the University of Tennessee.  The course is a great learning experience. Understanding the tragic miscalculations of World War I is necessary to understanding the history of government, management and economics during the last century, including the expansion of state power and the rejection of classical liberalism on behalf of state activism, which is necessarily militaristic despite ideologically motivated claims to the contrary.  

 March and Simon’s concept of bounded or cognitive limits on rationality, which is usually applied to business strategy, is omnipresent in the history of World War I.   Bounded rationality, or the physical, financial, and mental constraints on rational choice,  is tightened with respect to the larger-scale decisions of government.  

Many aspects of the Great War suggest  a sharp expansion in the importance of cognitive limits on rationality.  These include the mistaken enthusiasm of the August Madness, i.e., the international public enthusiasm about the war when it first began; the difficulty of strategic and tactical adjustment to the technology of mechanized warfare; the resultant failure of many of the military strategies such as at the Battles of Verdun, Gallipoli, and the Spring Offensive; the Germans’ secretive propaganda efforts, which led to the stab in the back theory (itself reflecting limited rationality); the Germans’ strategic miscalculation with respect to the harshness  of the the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Russia, which led to the Allies' greater harshness at Versailles; both the reasoning for starting the war (leading to the termination of the Empires, which had seen the war as a means of expansion) and the Allies’ treaties, which led to the next war; and the naïve post-war idealism of both Lenin and Wilson. 

I would conclude that the Great War was a comedy of errors, except that few narratives are as tragic, and few have made me more pessimistic about the human condition.