Let’s Have a Good-Faith Argument About Socialism
A serious conversation should examine data from modern Nordic states, not horror stories about Stalinism
By Elizabeth Bruenig
Last week, I wrote a column arguing that liberals concerned about ongoing failures in the American experiment should consider socialist remedies. I knew there would be quite a bit of disagreement. And I knew that most — though, crucially, not all — of it would unfold in bad faith.
What is bad faith? It’s a term coined by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre that means, in the helpful gloss of George Mason University anthropologist Roger Lancaster, when you tell a lie and you start to believe it, then forget it was a lie. In the argumentative context, engaging in bad faith means to engage without really trying to understand or address the opposing view, which usually manifests in profound mischaracterizations of the other side. At that point — especially when caught up in the thrilling energy of group condemnation — it’s easy to forget that you’re arguing against a position of your own invention.
In the case of my column, this meant many interlocutors taking socialism to mean something along the lines of Soviet communism or the Venezuelan system, genocides, calamities, disasters and all. I don’t…
