Libertarians do a terrible job fighting against socialism, but the tragedy of it is that we think we’re winning. In the end, though, it’s impossible for us to win as long as we fail to understand our opponents, which is the key problem; libertarians devote so much time to fighting against Bernie Sanders and Kshama Sawant and their idiotic promises of free this and free that that we come to identify the "free stuff" mentality itself as the heart of the socialist ideology. Don’t get me wrong, now; Bernie is wrong, as any fule kno, and it’s important that we keep pointing that out, but smashing dopey politicians is playing the short game. The long battle is fought by the philosophers, and no serious Marxist philosopher bases his philosophy on a foundation of "rich people will pay back your student loans."
We libertarians are often fooled into believing that we can smash the socialists forever by pointing out that socialist economies are notoriously unproductive, and that a hundred million people starved to death under their reign in the last century. While that does pretty effectively blow up the bumper-sticker socialism of a Sanders or a Sawant, it should be noted that, as a philosopher, Bernie Sanders makes a great long-distance runner, while "Kshama Sawant" is a Hindi phrase meaning "intellectual lightweight." Just because those two goobers have literally no comeback at all when faced with the obvious failures of real-world socialism doesn’t mean that the serious thinkers haven’t considered the problem. They have — and the answer they’ve come to is so far afield of what libertarians are used to dealing with that we basically don’t even realize it’s there.
Before we get to that, though, it’s important to consider one other thing libertarians do wrong, which is ceding the moral high ground to the socialists. How many times have you heard somebody say some variant of "sure, socialism is a lovely idea, but it just doesn’t work?" Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself. Well, stop saying that. Not only is it a stupid thing to say — no, I’m sorry, but socialism is not a lovely idea, totally independent of whether or not it works — it’s giving away the whole game. You’re unsuccessfully understanding how the socialist mindset works, and you think you’re going in for the kill, but you’re really admitting defeat.
The key is that the proper philosophical Marxist — as against stoner college kids who just think "rich people" should buy them stuff — already knows that socialism doesn’t work. This is not new information. Pointing out the economic failures of socialism to a serious Marxist is exactly of a piece with people asking libertarians "who will build the roads?" The failure is not that he hasn’t considered this painfully obvious observation; rather, the failure is in the questioner not taking the time to understand the Marxist philosophy, which fully accepts that modern capitalism has proven many times over that it is vastly more productive than socialism in the real world. Allow my good buddy Herbert Marcuse another few moments of your time and he’ll make this abundantly clear:
This same trend of production and consumption, which makes for the affluence and attraction of advanced capitalism, makes for the perpetuation of the struggle for existence, for the increasing necessity to produce and consume the non-necessary: the growth of the so-called “discretionary income” in the United States indicates the extent to which income earned is spent on other than “basic needs.” Former luxuries become basic needs, a normal development which, under corporate capitalism, extends the competitive business of living to newly created needs and satisfactions. The fantastic output of all sorts of things and services defies the imagination, while restricting and distorting it in the commodity form, through which capitalist production enlarges its hold over human existence. (An Essay on Liberation)
We see here that it is indeed the very affluence of capitalism that the Marxists despise most! People who approach this issue with that mindset obviously are not going to be persuaded by statements that reinforce it. The thing libertarians often fail to understand is that the true, hardcore socialist is not an economic utilitarian; he does not desire socialism because he believes it leads to greater economic productivity, he desires socialism as an end in itself. By treating socialism purely as an economic system, we fall directly into the socialist trap, and especially so if we make the foolish mistake of granting the socialist the moral high ground, even if only "theoretically."
Libertarians who have read Marx often come away from the experience thinking that Das Kapital is an awfully odd economic treatise, given how little time it devotes to economics and how much time to eschatology. Therein lies the rub. Dismissing Marx’s offputting metaphysics is a grave mistake; far from being beside the point, it is the point. Socialism, in Marx’s hands, became not a simple economic system but a system for the transcendence of man into a greater type of being — after which transformation, mind, socialist economic policies will begin working. Marcuse again, describing the purpose of socialist revolution (because, let’s face it, he’s a heck of a lot more concise and readable than Marx):
The old story: right against right — the positive, codified, enforceable right of the existing society against the negative, unwritten, unenforceable right of transcendence which is part of the very existence of man in history: the right to insist on a less compromised, less guilty, less exploited humanity.
That, my friends, is the true socialism. That is what we are up against. Much less easily refuted than "$15 minimum wage" foolishness, to be sure, but very, very important; while we cannot afford to abandon the fight against Bernie-style lowest-common-denominator socialism, we’ve lost the battle in the long term unless we also understand, and refute, the mystical, transformative ideas that lie at the true heart of Marxness. Remember: the philosophers of today rule the world of tomorrow. The politicians are merely their instruments.