When socialist schemes fail, as they inevitably do, our attention is immediately drawn away from the destruction they cause to the “good intentions” behind the schemes.
They meant well. Their good intentions override their disastrous results. One reason why good intentions are important to both sides of the political divide is that good intentions play well to voters. A good example of this is the national debt crises in the USA. The economist Samuel Gregg points out that while both parties pledge to resolve the growing national debt, both parties regard the measures necessary to resolve the situation as electoral suicide:
America’s National Debt challenge constitutes a political iron cage for Democrat and Republican legislators alike. While they can talk a big game about courageously tackling the problem, the political consequences of actually doing so are deeply unattractive for both parties.
Politicians’ desire to present voters with some obviously well-intentioned schemes overrides their commitment to resolving the problem. They are well aware that any subsequent failures will be overlooked or forgiven in light of their good intentions.
In his book Socialism, Ludwig von Mises argues that socialist good intentions are “nothing but a grandiose rationalization of petty resentments.” They depict the politics of envy as a quest for justice, and discount any cost as necessary for the pursuit of the higher goal of justice. But as Mises points out, the assertion that socialism promotes justice is “merely an arbitrary assertion.” He explains:
In fact Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it …[it] raises the consumption of the masses at the cost of existing capital wealth, and thus sacrifices the future to the present … The increasing difficulties of maintaining the higher standard of living are ascribed to various causes, but never to the fact that a policy of capital consumption is being followed.
In highlighting the inherently destructive nature of socialism Mises’s point is not that socialists necessarily set out to destroy society, but that this is the inevitable result of their schemes: “Socialism has not consciously willed the destruction of society. It believed it was creating a higher form of society. But since a socialist society is not a possibility every step towards it must harm society.” Faced with the destruction of society it is futile to divert our intention to the supposedly good intentions behind the destruction.
The destructionism of socialism is pervasive: “our whole life is so given over to destructionism that one can hardly name a field which it has not penetrated.” The contemporary significance of this concept is illustrated by Tom DiLorenzo in “Misesian Destructionism: then and now”, showing how destructionism takes effect through the “cultural Marxism” of the Frankfurt School. DiLorenzo observes:
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