(1:56 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Juxtaposition

It is strange now to have to recall this amalgam of ideological perversions [i.e., right-wing fundamentalisms] that grew out of the socialist concept of representation, but today we can finally preside over its funeral. The democratic hopes of socialist representation are over. And while we say our farewells we cannot but remember how many ideological by-products, more or less fascist, the great historical experiences of socialism were condemned to drag in their wake, some merely useless sparks and others devastating infernos.

The second and more pervasive change is the death of socialism. Everybody can see how the collapse of the socialist dream has transformed left-wing parties like the British Labor Party. But, as David Frum observes, the death of socialism has transformed the Republican Party just as much as it has transformed the parties of the left.

For most of the 20th century, the conservative movement and the Republican Party were built to combat the inexorable spread of big government. Faced with that great threat, Republicans became Jeffersonian. If the left was going to embrace larger welfare states, the Republicans were going to become enthusiastic decentralizers, suspicious of concentrated power, the foes of big government. Anti-government sentiment was the glue that held the different factions of the American right together. And in that great cause the G.O.P. -- from Coolidge to Goldwater to Reagan -- was successful. Conservatives and libertarians defeated socialism, intellectually and then practically.

Socialism has stopped its march. Now almost every leading politician accepts that government should not interfere with the basic mechanisms of the market system. On the other hand, almost every leading official acknowledges that we should have as much of a welfare state as we can afford. Now the debate over the role of the state takes place within much narrower parameters.

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