In Why You Should Be a Socialist, Current Affairs magazine founder and editor Nathan Robinson discusses the merits of socialism and its solutions for the problems of the modern world. Robinson is a persuasive writer, and this book not only does a good job of explaining the benefits of socialism but also of explaining the causes of some of our current social ailments.
Why You Should Be a Socialist is cleverly considered in its method of attack and arguments. Robinson realizes that most voters are not interested in purely rational argumentation about what economic or social system produces the best returns or any of that nonsense. For example, many studies have indicated that if we made healthcare freely available it would actually save the country money in the long-run through improved average health, higher productivity and other benefits. But arguing a point like this isn't likely to persuade too many voters, in part because most voters do not choose rationally between various candidates or platforms. Many voters are openly and shamelessly emotional in their choices. Therefore, Robinson does the intelligent thing and argues at the level needed to persuade these voters. In the opening chapters, Robinson details a litany of current social woes and why our existing economic and political system has routinely failed to prevent or remedy these. Many of the chosen stories seem calculated to disgust the reader with our current state of affairs. Later in the book, Robinson goes through ways that socialism can solve these problems. And all the while, Robinson includes anecdotes that demonstrate the callousness of the right with regards to these issues. It's a very emotional argumentation style, not typical for Robinson. In Current Affairs, Robinson is typically more objective in his writing. He's certainly opinionated, the emotional tone is less evident. It's clear that Robinson has studied what works in political writing, and has written a book attenuated to that.
While the book is primarily intended as a work of proselytism to those skeptical of socialism, it also has value for the believer. Robinson's writing is clear and direct, and many of his arguments are honed and optimized for maximum persuasive ability. Robinson is also capable of sidestepping much of the intellectual hemming and hawing that characterizes so much discussion of what socialism is and should be. Rather than getting bogged down in the minutiae of whether socialist should support or fear government, or exactly how Marx was wrong (if at all), Robinson avoids most of this and discusses in broad strokes those things that socialists can almost all agree on. This “big tent” view of socialism is refreshing and much needed at this period in time, when fascism is on the rise and socialists are still infighting about whether the construction of the Berlin Wall was justified or not. Who gives a shit? Move on and discuss real issues that exist today, and debate the Berlin Wall in your free time as a hobby since you seem to enjoy it so much.
Robinson is also very good about playing to the ingrained prejudices of the average American voter. Robinson wastes no breath defending authoritarian socialist or communist regimes, preferring to expediently relegate them to the dustbin of history. Quickly dispatching voter fears about North Korea or Venezuela, he describes the goals of socialists as being far different from these authoritarian regimes. While this may not sit well with some leftists (a disturbing number of whom have a fondness for North Korea), it is calculated for maximal effect on the typical American voter. Robinson understands that overturning American views on authoritarian regimes is a far, far harder task than simply educating them on what socialism is. It's a poor strategy to say “Actually North Korea is good and you're all wrong” right out of the gate. Better to gradually bring Americans into the fold by playing to their present views as much as possible and only challenging the essential ones.
Robinson makes a perceptive point that I hadn't considered deeply before. Robinson claims that the things many people (at least liberals) look for in a political candidate are simply qualifications. We often consider those candidates with the highest qualifications to be the best choice for the position. About Hillary Clinton, Robinson says:
Clinton shared the worldview of many contemporary liberals, who don't actually have a real sense, beyond vague abstractions about “change,” of the kind of transformations they want to effect. This kind of politics is far more interested in whether an individual is “qualified” for office than in what they're actually going to do once elected. Clinton didn't need a plan because she was so clearly the “best” person for the job.
This at least partially explains why Hillary was the Democratic Party's anointed nominee. She was indisputably the most qualified. She had been Secretary of State, First Lady, Senator from New York, held multiple smaller positions in government, knew every political operative under the sun, and had spent a long, long time preparing for the role. It was her turn! So the liberal political apparatus selected her, without a thorough examination of what policies the American voting public wanted. And it cost us all the election in 2016. Many Americans share this view, that it doesn't particularly matter what you get done or whether you're effective or not, but that the most important things that could be said about a politician are that they “reached across the aisle”, “believed in compromise” or were “always civil.” This kind of discussion is vapid and entirely spineless, so to see Robinson so succinctly summarize it is very helpful.
I think anyone who is a socialist ought to get a copy of Why You Should Be a Socialist, not only to read it, which I think they should, but also so they can loan it out to their friends or family who are curious about socialism. And maybe even to those who aren't. The book is very persuasive. It's also a reasonable length, neither so long as to be off-putting for the book-shy, nor too short to effectively argue its points.
At the end of the book, Robinson gives a list of his ten essential leftist books. These works are:
- The Dispossessed – Ursual L. Le Guin
- A Testament of Hope – Martin Luther King Jr.
- Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell
- The Second Sex – Simone de Beauvoir
- Collected Essays – James Baldwin
- An Autobiography – Angela Davis
- Memoirs of a Revolutionist – Peter Kropotkin
- Living My Life – Emma Goldman
- Bread and Wine – Ignazio Silone
- Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy
And in addition to those, here are some cited or mentioned books I found interesting.
- Understanding Power – Noam Chomsky
- Foundations of Economics – Yanis Varoufakis
- Capitalism vs. Freedom – Rob Larson
- Progress and Poverty – Henry George
- The Rights of Man – Thomas Paine
- Essays in Humanism – Albert Einstein
- Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman
- What is Property – Pierre Proudhon
- Saving Capitalism – Robert Reich
- At the Cafe – Errico Malatesta
- Economics Without Illusions – Joseph Heath
- My Disillusionment in Russia – Emma Goldman
- Our National Parks – John Muir