After Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral primary, conservatives dusted off their favorite insult: socialism is just “free stuff,” and Mamdani only won because that’s what he promised. (See here and here.) Donald Trump Jr, echoing his dad, sneered that no amount of “free stuff” will fix the city.
Yes, Mamdani’s program does have the audacity to offer New Yorkers free bus rides and free childcare. But it’s curious that the Trumps are so quick to ridicule the very idea, since Donald Trump himself received over $400 million of free stuff from his father. More broadly, as much as 50 to 60 percent of wealth in the West is simply inherited. Inheritance is the purest form of free stuff: you don’t earn it; you just get it because of who your parents are. Strangely, conservatives never seem to mind that. Free buses are socialism run amok; a trust fund is the American dream.
What’s going on when critics scoff at “free stuff”? I’m a philosopher. It’s my job to look for arguments and carefully analyze them. So let’s look to see what sense we can make of this ubiquitous conservative refrain.
Maybe it is just the old saying: there is no such thing as a free lunch. Even if a bus ride or childcare is free to the user, someone must pay for it. But nobody, least of all Mamdani, is under the illusion that these programs cost nothing. If that is all the conservatives are getting at, then they are attacking a straw man.
Senator Rand Paul takes it further. In his book The Case Against Socialism, he warns against the “siren call of free stuff” and says we should put our “faith in the individual, and in liberty.” He claims that a capitalist free market system means that wealth is “to a large degree, based on merit,” whereas socialism hands out benefits to people who haven’t earned them.
There is at least an argument here. Put in utterly explicit form:
Anti-Socialism Argument
Premise 1: Any system in which free stuff goes to people who did nothing to earn it is bad.
Premise 2: Under socialism, free stuff goes to people who did nothing to earn it.
Conclusion: Socialism is bad.
But if this is really the argument, then it actually demonstrates more about the hypocrisy of the critics than it does about alleged faults of socialism. Given that Western capitalist systems allow inheritance (and, indeed, the United States barely even taxes that particular form of income), it is certainly a system in which free stuff goes to those who have done nothing to earn it — unless you think that these people deserve credit for having chosen the right parents.
The logical point is that anyone who actually believes the Anti-Socialism Argument must also affirm this argument:
Anti-Capitalism Argument
Premise 1: Any system in which free stuff goes to people who did nothing to earn it is bad.
Premise 2: Under capitalism, free stuff goes to people who did nothing to earn it.
Conclusion: Capitalism is bad.
Unless the capitalist wants to abolish inheritance, the second premise is undeniably true. The first premise of the Anti-Capitalism Argument is exactly the same as the first premise of the Anti-Socialism Argument. Therefore, the critic cannot affirm it when thinking about socialism but then conveniently ignore it when it comes to inheritance under capitalism.
So at least at first glance, the only proposed argument against socialist free stuff is hopelessly bad: if the capitalist is thinking with even a moderate degree of consistency and rationality, they must see that their premises would undermine capitalism as well.
Perhaps the capitalist will say I have misunderstood their argument, for their claim is about what governments do rather than individuals. The revised argument:
Anti-Socialism Argument 2.0
Premise 1: Any system in which government gives free stuff to those who did nothing to earn it is bad.
Premise 2: Under socialism, government gives free stuff to those who did nothing to earn it.
Conclusion: Socialism is bad.
This avoids the inheritance issue, since that’s family money, not government. But now we have a new question: Why should we believe the narrower edition of the first premise rather than the more general version?
Perhaps the thought is that government always does things badly and that it is always best to leave economic transactions to the market. That simply begs the question: the critic presupposes that the free market is always best and government should stay out of it. That’s just to assume that socialism is wrong. Talk of “free stuff” masquerades as an argument when it is only a misleading rhetorical flourish in what is actually just a statement of faith about the superiority of capitalism.
For the conservative argument to hold any water, there needs to be a reason that free stuff from the government is bad but free stuff from individuals is not. Why would that be? When people like Senator Paul rage against free stuff, the concern seems to be the effect it will have on the recipient — that handing out free stuff promotes laziness. Why would a free bus ride turn working-class people into freeloaders but a trust fund make rich kids into innovative entrepreneurs? This makes sense only if you have already decided that poor people are lazy and rich people are inherently better.
Any capitalist who doesn’t want to abolish inheritance rejects the first premise of the first version of the Anti-Socialism Argument. Unless you have either simply presupposed that capitalism is the better system or have assumed that rich people are genetically superior, you have no reason to believe premise one of the revised Anti-Socialism Argument 2.0.
So let’s be clear: The “free stuff” line isn’t an argument. It’s a smoke screen. It’s a way to sneer at programs that help ordinary people while keeping quiet about the much larger freebies that flow to the wealthy every day. Mamdani’s win shows that more and more New Yorkers see through the hypocrisy.
Great Job Scott Sehon & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.
