Civil Liberties and Socialism Dont Mix

-Source-Reason- In 1981 the socialist economist and best-selling author Robert Heilbroner took to the pages of the democratic socialist magazine Dissent to answer what would seem like a rather academic question What is Socialism? His answer was a raw honest and devastating critique of democratic socialism from a man wrestling with his faith. In his essay Heilbronerreminiscent of a similar definitional debate today among progressives and socialistsexplained that socialism is not a more generous welfare state along Nordic lines. Instead it is something entirely different an economic and cultural configuration that suppresses if not eliminates the market economy and the alienating and selfish culture it produces. If tradition cannot and the market system should not underpin the socialist order we are left with some form of command as the necessary means for securing its continuance and adaptation Heilbroner wrote. Indeed that is what planning means. Command by planning need not of course be totalitarian. But an aspect of authoritarianism resides inextricably in all planning systems. A plan is meaningless if it is not carried out or if it can be ignored or defied at will. As Heilbroner reluctantly acknowledged socialist planning cannot co-exist with individual rights an achievement of Western culture he wanted to preserve. Instead under socialism culture must produce some form of commitment to the idea of a morally conscious collectivity. This however was antagonistic to bourgeois culture which encourages and breeds the idea of the primary importance of the individual. And bourgeois culture devoted to the sovereignty of the individual he wrote naturally asserts the rights of individuals to speak their minds freely to act as they wish within reasonable grounds to behave as John Stuart Mill preached in his treatise On Liberty. A socialist culture Heilbroner feared correctly couldnt abide this celebration of individualism because it is directly opposed to the basic socialist commitment to a deliberately embraced collective moral goal.