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PORTSIDE CULTURE

SOCIALISM: A LOGICAL INTRODUCTION  
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Matt McManus
September 3, 2024
Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
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_ Reviewer McManus calls this new book "a lucid defense of American
democratic socialism." _

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_Socialism: A Logical Introduction_
Scott R. Sehon
Oxford University Press
ISBN 9780197753347

Scott Sehon’s new book _Socialism: A Logical Introduction _is both
an estimable contribution to a burgeoning scholarly literature and a
lucid defense of American democratic socialism. It is one of those
rare books which might become essential to both seasoned left
intellectuals and beginners who have just cracked open ‘Letter from
Birmingham Jail.’

Sehon opens his book logically enough by defining capitalism and
socialism. Capitalism is a system where the ‘means of production are
typically privately owned and controlled’ (21). Sehon says typically
because while there are some businesses owned by workers in the US –
Sehon gives the example of Publix super markets – unless we worked
for the _Daily Wire _most of us wouldn’t call the US a socialist
state. By contrast, Sehon claims a ‘system is socialist to the
extent that it has more of each of these two features – more
collective ownership and control and more egalitarian distribution of
wealth’ (20). The thrust of Sehon’s book is that we would be
better off moving closer to socialism, and he offers to main classes
of reasons for this, one negative and one positive. Sehon defines
himself as offering a ‘very broadly utilitarian approach to
questions of political justice, tempered by allowing the possibility
that there are rights that can take precedence over utility
calculations’ (42) His main negative arguments consist of claiming
that socialism does not violate the rights of individuals, while
agnostic on whether capitalism does. Sehon’s positive arguments are
consequentialist claims that socialism will do a better job of
promoting human well-being than capitalism, combined in what he calls
the ‘master argument for socialism’:

* Socialism better promotes human well-being than extant alternative
styles of governance;
* socialism does not violate the moral rights of individuals;
* given two styles of governance, if the first better promotes human
well-being than the second, and does not violate the moral rights of
individuals, then it should be chosen over the second;
* socialism should be chosen over extant styles of governance.

Sehon’s main arguments about rights are, as indicated, largely
negative. His aim is to prove that socialism does not violate basic
rights while asking whether the same can be said for capitalism. His
main foils here are classical liberals and libertarians, starting with
Locke and moving through Robert Nozick and John Tomasi.

Sehon notes that there is an important strand of libertarian though
‘stemming from Locke’ that starts with the ‘idea of
self-ownership and then draws fairly strong consequences for economic
rights. The basic idea is that I own my body and any labor I perform
with it, and that I should thus likewise fully own whatever wealth I
can produce with my labour’ (73). The classic exposition of this is
in Locke’s _Second Treatise of Government_. Locke doesn’t in fact
argue that we ‘own’ ourselves, since we are in fact the creation
and effectively the property of God. But he does argue that property
rights flow from mixing one’s labor with the matter of the world,
with the big caveat that we leave enough in common for others.

Sehon notes that in its basic form, the idea that one has an absolute
right to self-ownership and property is one that (almost) no one would
accept, pointing out that if ‘someone is holding a shopkeeper at
gunpoint’ and a police officer runs in, it would be a bad joke for
the gunman to say ‘Hey, that’s my gun! You can’t take it.’
Libertarians therefore usually lean on more sophisticated arguments
like the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) outlined by Roderick Long,
which holds that interference with an individual’s person or
property is a violation of their rights  ‘unless the act is a
response to forcible interference (or threat thereof) by that
person’ (75). As typically interpreted, this is held to be an
argument about taxation, which is presented as ‘theft’ by a
coercive state. But as Sehon points out, even most libertarians would
blanche at applying this principle with absolute consistency since it
would mean taxation to provide for ‘police, courts, and national
defense’ would become illegitimate. While some ‘hard
libertarians’ may be content with this, most anyone else would think
this would generate such a bad set of circumstances so as to give very
good reasons to be skeptical of such a muscular form of the NAP.

Sehon also draws from Ben Burgis to point out that the NAP largely
ignores the problems entailed by legitimate acquisition. Burgis
imagines a scenario where someone steals a painting from me and gives
it to his friend Bob. Would I then be entitled to force Bob to give
the painting back to me? This is of course not just a hypothetical
problem since the United States, Britain and many other countries used
force to seize the land and resources of millions of indigenous
peoples; not to mention employed mass slavery to exploit Black
Americans. Sehon isn’t singling out the Anglosphere, but merely
pointing out that required since humanity has a long history of
committing injustice against humanity we can probably conclude that
almost no property was legitimately acquired along the lines required
by the libertarian NAP – meaning it cannot really be mobilized as an
argument against socialism or redistribution.

One important point Sehon doesn’t discuss is how the NAP largely
takes for granted the ‘naturalness’ of rights to property. But
this has always seemed far and away the most mysterious point of
argumentation. Property is a legal concept requiring a state to
enforce a scheme of entitlements, meaning that a strict and radically
anti-statist application of the NAP would preclude even those
institutions needed to establish and coercively compel all individuals
to acknowledge and then respect the chosen scheme of private property.
Some libertarians try to get around this by insisting à la Locke that
property is, somehow, a pre-social or pre-statist entity which the
minimal state comes into existence to protect. But, beyond being just
transparently ahistorical, it isn’t convincing. Possession may exist
in nature, but property – as a bundle of legitimate and enforceable
rights and powers over a thing which other people feel obligated or
obliged to respect – certainly does not. Indeed such a strange
position runs counter to the typical libertarian claim that the
existence of property is a clear sign of advancing civilization.

It is also unclear from where this ‘natural right’ to property
would even derive. Locke’s theistic infused claims that just as God
has rights to his creation, so too do we have rights to ours, is too
theologically loaded. The labor theory of entitlement is woefully
unconvincing for all the reasons Nozick mentions, and also leads
pretty quickly to socialist arguments that workers should own the
products or surplus value they create with their labor. One could
argue that a natural right to property flows from the benefits it
produces; but then this places the utilitarian onus on the libertarian
to prove that there are absolutely no circumstances where abridging
property would produce better consequences. And this is exactly what
Sehon disputes through his evidence that more socialism would enhance
human well-being.

Sehon’s main area of interest are the consequentialist arguments for
socialism, and they’re without a doubt the heart of the book. He
marshals an impressive amount of data to show that in many cases
countries which are more socialist do better on indexes of well-being
than countries which are more capitalist. His main examples here are
the Nordic welfare states, which are often presented by American
socialists as ‘examples of the general ideas they are talking
about.’ Sehon acknowledges that some critics would deny this as a
point for socialism, since the Nordic states are still capitalist
countries. But Sehon points out that this is largely a ‘semantic’
issue, since his view is that there is a spectrum of possibilities
between ideal type socialism and capitalism and the question is where
best to land. On that basis the Nordic states are considerably more
socialist than the US. Moreover, if it is the case that the Nordic
model is a pure form of capitalism, then market zealots should have no
problem embracing it in the US if it in fact works.

Countries like Norway own as much as 56% of the national wealth;
government spending accounts for 56.5% of the GDP in Finland; the
Nordic countries employ over 80% more of the workforce in government
than the US, and in all cases inequality is far lower. One could add
that union density is also far higher, with about 70% of workers in
unions in Sweden, 67% in Denmark and so on. There are benefits to
these alternatives. Countries that are more unequal experience more
mental illness and more health problems generally, score lower on
indexes of child well-being and are less socially mobile. This last
point truly stings since, as Sehon points out, social mobility in the
US is nothing to brag about relative to competitors. For the most part
where you come from is where you end up. Sehon also points out that
all of the Nordic countries score better on issues of public trust,
with 73.9 % of Danes and 72% of Norwegians saying ‘most people can
be trusted’, compared to only 37% of Americans.

Finally, these kinds of states are ironically ranked as being
‘freer’ than the US than more militantly capitalist countries.
Freedom House currently ranks Finland as the ‘freest’ country in
the world, followed by Sweden, with Norway in fourth place. This is
where the ‘democratic’ part of being more socialist kicks in.
While there have undoubtedly been authoritarian socialist regimes,
there are plenty of states which have moved in a socialist direction
while expanding basic individual and political liberties. Sehon thinks
this is quite natural given that allowing immense concentrations of
economic inequality will invariably enable the wealthy to exercise
more power over everyone from their employees to consumers. Extending
democracy into the workplace would help counter that.

Of course Sehon doesn’t think that we should adopt a principle where
those impacted by a decision get a say in that decision in all
circumstances. Yet decisions which are sufficiently impactful on
thousands of people should be subject to democratic constrains. And it
is indeed strange how such an intuitive idea has been gaining traction
for such a long time. If the average American were told that the
government was now going to decide when they wake up, when they go to
the washroom, when they can socialize and what they can wear, there
would rightfully be riots in the street. But all of us accept that
upon entering the workplace these kinds of conditions are not only
acceptable, but to be expected. This is despite the fact that many
people will spend far more time interacting with their employer than
with all the different levels of government combined.

There are nevertheless some problems with Sehon’s book. He is too
wary of the possibility for constructing a rights-based argument for
socialism. Almost all Sehon’s discussion of rights centers around
the idea that socialism wouldn’t violate them. But we can do a lot
better than that. Following John Rawls, it is possible to construct a
plausible argument for a liberal socialism that takes seriously how
economic democracy can secure equal value to political liberties and
make good our obligations to the least well off. On the other hand,
the inner Marxist of the reader could legitimately be wary of the lack
of materialist analysis in Sehon’s _Socialism. _Even with the
importance of offering moral arguments for our positions, with
diminishing patience for hardened materialists who insist the only
thing we should be doing is analyzing society and its contradictions,
Sehon’s book very much moves towards engaging purely in ideal
theory. Not coincidentally, the strongest parts of the book are the
ones that pair moral and empirical analysis, and it would have been
nice if this were further accompanied by an account of power and
domination.

Yet despite these problems, _Socialism: A Logical Introduction _is a
treasure trove of clear thinking and pointed arguments for socialism
and against the worst talking points lobbed by adversaries.

Matt McManus is a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of
Michigan and the author of _The Political Right and Equality_ amongst
other books. His forthcoming monograph is _The Political Theory of
Liberal Socialism _(Routledge). Matt can be reached at
[email protected] or added on X @Mattpolprof.

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