Socialism versus Virtue

The Orthosphere argues that socialism is a system rather than any individual policy, and that both apparent acts of socialism and of authoritarianism are necessary when public virtue is not high.

As a general rule, using the government to economically reward some people and punish others is a bad idea. This often occurs under systems that are socialistic.

But sometimes the conditions of the current world require us to think differently. Doing something that in more normal times would be part of a socialistic system is not necessarily bad... 

If the population is virtuous, socialism is at best unnecessary and at worst destructive. If the population is non-virtuous, maintaining a tolerable society requires leaders to apply numerous carrots and sticks. The carrots are generally called socialism, and the sticks are generally called authoritarianism.

So one could accurately say that “socialism” and “authoritarianism” are always necessary when the population lacks virtue.

The term 'socialism' is Modern. The association of socialism with atheism, which the Orthosphere asserts is a necessary condition for socialism per se, seems to me to be a 19th century innovation adjacent to Marx himself. They idea of redistributing wealth for social goods is much older.

Both virtue and redistribution were live issues in the Ancient Greece of Aristotle's era. What Aristotle says about virtue in the EN, as you all know from our reading of it together, is that it's great for that part of humanity that is motivated by doing what is worthy of honor because it is worthy of honor: but for most people, virtue has to be impelled by laws. This is why he closes the EN with a ramp to the Politics, to examine the compulsory systems he thinks most people will need to attain the minimal 'complete virtue' that comes from his theory of justice -- i.e., laws that force people to behave as if they were virtuous even though mostly they are not. That would cover the 'authoritarian' wager the Orthosphere is putting down.

For redistribution, however, the question that motivates Aristotle's reasoning isn't whether the population is virtuous -- mostly a human population won't be -- but whether political power is widely or narrowly distributed. This is covered in Politics V. In a democracy, with wide distribution, the rich must be protected from such things or they will use their wealth to hire mercenaries and overthrow the state. 

In democracies the rich should be spared; not only should their property not be divided, but their incomes also, which in some states are taken from them imperceptibly, should be protected.  

If political power is constrained to the rich, however -- as it mostly is in America these days -- redistribution is then indicated as a way of keeping the powerless poor from rising up to overthrow the state.

In an oligarchy, on the other hand, great care should be taken of the poor, and lucrative offices should go to them; if any of the wealthy classes insult them, the offender should be punished more severely than if he had wronged one of his own class. 

CATO holds that three-quarters of the US budget is redistribution, if you want a measure of how far down the path to oligarchy we are. This is both direct distribution from taxpayers to the poor -- both citizens and not, it turns out -- and also redistribution among the states, as when things like Medicare payments are covered by Federal grants to state agencies. 

The question of equality in light of virtue Aristotle treats in Politics III.9, reiterating what he said about it in the EN. Equality is for equals: if you don't have the virtues, you don't deserve equality with the virtuous. 

For all men cling to justice of some kind, but their conceptions are imperfect and they do not express the whole idea. For example, justice is thought by them to be, and is, equality... but only for equals. And inequality is thought to be, and is, justice; neither is this for all, but only for unequals.

What Aristotle doesn't say is that justice is equality; what he says is that justice is fairness. Fairness entails getting what you deserve. Those equal in virtue deserve equality with each other; the unequal deserve inequality. That might go in either direction: you might deserve less than others, but you also might deserve more. 

Thus, I don't see the argument that virtue is improved by 'sticks and carrots,' the latter being a sort of socialism-that-isn't-socialism-if-not-atheist; virtue isn't really improved by either one. Sticks might compel people to act as if they were virtuous when they are not really. Carrots, which could include having the wealth of the rich protected from a powerful public, or alternatively the wealth of the rich redistributed among a powerless public, are mostly about avoiding political instability rather than increasing public virtue. Indeed, in both cases it is about bribing the disempowered class to accept submission, and that seems not to be virtuous at all -- virtues are strengths, not learned powerlessness.