The inhumane economy of Bernie Sanders

By Glen A. Sproviero | February 24, 2016, 6:49 EST

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks during a rally in Greenville, S.C. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)

Bernie Sanders thrives on the language of morality and ethics, yet his vision of economic policy is anything but humane. He sees wealth and income inequality as the great injustice of our time, yet he fails to see the social disintegration caused by a burgeoning bureaucratic state, increasing dependence on government, and the rise of an omnipotent yet isolated political elite.

In propagating crude class warfare, he does not address the genuine problems confronting most Americans; rather, he erects a brotherhood of Cain in which each man’s hand is raised to his neighbor. He trades in avarice and envy: his vision is one of an inhumane economy.

But this is not to say Sanders is evil or immoral. I have little doubt that Sanders has genuine faith in the propriety of his ideas and that he sees the implementation of his moral vision as the critical social battle of his age. To his credit, unlike most politicians, he asks the right questions. But he nevertheless lacks the imagination to find the right answers.

Sanders is an intellectual, but in the worst sense of the word: He is enamored with ideas and believes that his narrow vision of the world is an unimpeachable blueprint for the birth of an enduring Utopia. But as any student of Greek knows, Utopia means nowhere, and if he is elected president, that is precisely where Sanders will take America – and that’s if we are lucky.

In Sanders’s view our nation is engaged in a struggle between “haves” and “have nots.” Sanders believes that the erection of an omnipotent State will serve as the great equalizer – a vehicle through which he can take from the rich and give to the poor, or any other class he believes to be more worthy. From on high, he will play the role of economic god and reshuffle our nation’s wealth in accordance with his unmoored notion of fairness.

Although the concept of absolute equality of condition is appealing to some, and especially to those who have not shared in our nation’s prosperity, the eradication of such inequality will only result in greater political centralization wherein a new bureaucratic elite will displace the so-called “top one percent.” Replacing Adam Smith’s invisible hand with the all too visible hand of the tax collector, Sanders’s economic system will demand the rise of a political oligarchy endowed with the power to confiscate private property in the name of the public good.

As Justice John Marshall noted in Marbury v. Madison, “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” Sanders knows this concept all too well and is willing to use it as a blunt weapon to wage war upon the most enterprising quarters of our society.

Is Sanders wrong to question the merits of capitalism as a moral enterprise? Hardly, for there is much to criticize.

Like socialism, capitalism does not provide a viable cure for every social and economic ill. The atomization of individuals and the separation of people from the community of which they are a part is as much a socialist idea as it is a capitalist one. Both systems are premised upon the abstractions of economic efficiency and mass society, or what the economist Wilhelm Roepke called “the cult of the colossal.” It is hardly surprising, then, that the term “capitalism,” like it supposed ideological opposite “socialism,” originates with Karl Marx.

But if we are to create a truly just, humane economic order in which the needs of individuals and communities are met without sacrificing freedom and the incentive to produce, contemporary political economy must turn away from the false dichotomy of socialism versus capitalism. Both are extreme forms of Marxist dogma and neither will liberate mankind from its terrestrial struggles.

In contrast, Roepke’s political economy offers a sound alternative. Roepke was one of the principal architects of the post-World War II European economy, and like the American founders, he believed that limited governmental power, and the diffusion of those powers to the lowest level, was a necessary component of a healthy political order.  It makes individuals accountable to their communities and forges local bonds so that people work together toward the economic health of their neighborhoods without abdicating power to a cold, centralized bureaucracy. To that end, Roepke opposed centralization and mass society, yet his opposition was not premised on the libertarian idea that the promotion of individual liberty is the highest social good. He rejected faith in abstract individualism as socially destructive and naturally disordered.

With Sanders, Roepke understood the dangers of private monopoly, but unlike the senator from Vermont, Roepke did not believe that the proper remedy was to replace it with a flawed government monopoly whose powers of coercion were even more consequential and destructive. For Roepke, monopoly was immoral and counterproductive whether it was orchestrated by Chrysler or the centralized government. But where the government is involved, the power to manipulate and punish, to isolate and destroy the most productive parts of society, becomes unlimited and is placed in the hands of an elect few.

While Roepke believed in the primacy of the good of the community as a basis for any economic order, he rejected the lure of collectivism and a socialized economy. Community and collectivism were two different ideas, often opposed. He stressed that any just economy must be humane in scale, entail a large degree of economic freedom, and respect the legal status of widespread private property. It must view people as ethical and moral animals, for economies are meant to serve people and provide for human needs.

Conversely, in the bureaucratic state governed by a small class of central planners – precisely the type of government envisioned by Sanders – we will all serve the economy and the new managerial class. Dissent will be penalized and ambition crushed. We will see the beginnings of a new totalitarianism whose genesis was modest and supported by naive social justice crusaders who would rather be equal in hell than unequal in heaven.

Glen A. Sproviero

Glen A. Sproviero is a commercial litigator in New York. Read his previous columns here.