Christopher Hitchens debates Dinesh D'Souza on "Is Socialism Obsolete?" 1989

Christopher Hitchens debates Dinesh D'Souza on the question: "Is Socialism Obsolete?"

This is a debate from 1989 between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza.
This is a very interesting, if dated exchange. I post it for those Hitchens fans who wonder how he came to position he is in now. Hitchens was long a Marxist/Trotskyist, and adopted that position, IMO, as a stance of opposition to and criticism of the political establishment. This gave him great experience debating from the outside and delivering criticism.

Hitchens has since abandoned his socialism, and this reveals a Hitchens that is very much on the defensive, and seeming dated, even for 19 years ago.
I feel that Dinesh D'Souza pretty much owns Hitchens in this debate, in contrast to their more recent confrontation on religion, where the result is clearly the other way about.
Christopher Hitchens has often said that he has learned the most from arguing with people that he disagrees with. I wonder if this debate led him to abandon his socialist ideology.

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Category:

Education

Tags:

• Christopher Hitchens
• economy
• Dinesh D'Souza
• Socialism
• debate
• economics
• communsim
• capitalism
• Marx
• Milton Friedman
• politics
• government
• welfare
• empire
• imperialism
• dawkins
• history
• Soviet Union
• human nature

[HSAdestroy]

I doubt this debate taught him anything he didnt know.

[TheEmptyHunter]

@najnasserio those countries are more like the welfare capitalism that D'Souza described. This being said, I don't think it's really right to call the soviet union and the eastern bloc communist in any true sense of the word.

[najnasserio]

What about Scandinavian countries? Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Holland? Aren't all these highly social-driven countries? Lowest poverty/unemployment figures in the world. Common people, Socialism rules...

[gsguns1]

portuguese translation please!!!11!!

[UtopiaMinor666]

@SallyMorem Socialism was forever destroyed after stalin came into power, purged his "comrades" and then other revolutions: korea, indochina, china, vietnam, etc... took appeal to stalinism. You could look at the Spanish Civil war where trotskyist and anarchist almost succeeded in a "collectivized" society before it was destoryed by germany. True socialismt has never occurred, but i wouldnt call it a fiction.

[omnicontrarian]

@SallyMorem True. But if you really want to be pedantic, and you define capitalism as a system whereby a free market allocates resources, then there has never and will never exist a truly capitalist economy. Every single market in the world is regulated, taxed, subsidized, or interfered with to some extent. Thus one could just as easily assert that capitalism is a fiction.

[SallyMorem]

If there are no socialist countries now, and none in the past, doesn't this make socialism itself a grand fiction? One that has all sorts of opportunities to come into being, but hasn't? If so, why? Why hasn't this grand fiction ever come true? I suggest that the flaw lies in the mismatch between desire and productivity. Those who desire being rewarded for their desire, those who produce being punished for their production.

[Morclaw]

@pizzawar First of all do not change the course of our argument. I really agree with Andrewh313 on this issue. My argument with you was that there were no socialist countries in history. We can agree we will disagree on that one. Now it seems to me you hold free market not responsible for any international wrongdoings. Google Bhopal , then google Salvador Allende. In a funny turn of events a socialist regime was overthrown by a free market sponsored and initiated dictatorship.

[Andrewh313]

@pizzawar

Ok, the US is doing better in the numbers with this years' overal HDI, I admit. But I would urge you to realize that life is good in modern socialist nations, and the US is NOT doing good at all in specific numbers. 34th in infant mortality, 20th in life expectancy, 37th in overall healthcare. Surely you can understand why I envy socialist nations.

And blame Stalinist Communism for the gulags. Modern socialists don't support Stalinism, obviously!

[pizzawar]

No, I do not. US is #4 on the 2011 HDI. Not bad, out of a field of 150+. Norway is a mixed economy with state ownership in strategic areas - such as we already have, in public transportation and elsewhere. Australia is a G20 and WTO member we have a free trade agreement with. Holland is one of the most lasseiz-faire economies in the world.

And, the free market doesn't even have any gulags or forced labor camps to answer for, such as socialism does.