Portside

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 mattmcmanus300@gmail.com or added on X @Mattpolprof.