Ignorance: The Fertile Soil of Socialism

undermining the love of liberty

One of the enduring puzzles of our time is not why socialism fails, but why it continues to attract believers. From Stalin’s Soviet Union to today’s academic institutions in the West, socialism has shown a peculiar resistance to the lessons of reality. Its appeal persists not because it works, but because it is judged by its intentions, not its outcomes. And at the root of that disconnect lies ignorance—widespread, moralized, and cultivated ignorance.

Let us be clear: this is not ignorance as a lack of intelligence, but rather a failure—or refusal—to understand the world as it actually functions. Socialism depends not on reasoned understanding but on emotional rhetoric. It speaks in slogans—“free healthcare,” “economic justice,” “abolish poverty”—and thrives in societies where people have little grasp of economics, history, or human nature. In short, socialism finds its home in ignorance.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the modern Western classroom, where socialism is increasingly fashionable among students and academics. The average college student who proclaims himself a socialist often cannot explain how prices allocate resources, how profits direct investment, or how supply and demand determine wages. He likely has never studied the failures of collectivized agriculture in the USSR, or the hyperinflation of Zimbabwe under Mugabe, or the government-imposed famines in Maoist China. He may know nothing of the Berlin Wall, except that it was “divisive.”

But this ignorance is not random—it is taught. Western education has, in many cases, replaced economic reasoning with emotional narratives. Capitalism is presented as exploitation, while socialism is idealized as justice. This is the luxury of people who have never had to depend on government rations or wait in line for toilet paper. As Thomas Sowell often noted, it is easy to imagine utopias when you are shielded from the consequences of your own policies.

Consider one of the most telling examples: Venezuela. In the early 2000s, Venezuela was one of the richest countries in South America, flush with oil wealth and growing rapidly. Then came Hugo Chávez with promises of “21st century socialism.” Industries were nationalized, prices were controlled, and wealth was redistributed. The rhetoric was noble: helping the poor, empowering the people. The results were catastrophic. Inflation soared into the millions of percent, store shelves were emptied, the currency collapsed, and millions fled the country. And yet, even as the country descended into economic ruin, Western intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and celebrities praised its “bold” approach to social justice. They believed the speeches—not the outcomes.

This is the essence of socialism’s appeal: it sounds noble, and the consequences are either ignored or excused. The Soviet Union provides another prime example. It was built on Marxist promises of equality and prosperity. Instead, it delivered mass starvation, censorship, labor camps, and over 100 million deaths across the communist world in the 20th century. Yet to this day, Western students wear Che Guevara t-shirts and quote Marx as if these ideas had never been tried—and failed.

The economic ignorance here is stunning. Socialism ignores the role of prices in transmitting information about scarcity and demand. When government fixes prices below the market level, it creates shortages—as happened with bread in the Soviet Union and gas in the 1970s United States. When it sets them too high, surpluses pile up. Capitalism, for all its flaws, operates within a framework of incentives, information, and voluntary exchange. It allows for error, but it also allows for correction. Socialism institutionalizes error and makes correction politically dangerous.

Moreover, socialism depends on the fantasy that wealth is a fixed pie—that the rich have what they have because the poor do not. This economic fallacy persists because it is emotionally satisfying. It allows people to envy without understanding. Yet wealth is not merely distributed; it is created. The same Karl Marx who railed against capitalists never explained how wealth is generated in the first place. Why did Hong Kong, with no natural resources, become richer than China, its massive, resource-laden neighbor? The answer lies not in redistribution, but in free markets, private property, and limited government—concepts that socialism resents, and ignorance prevents people from understanding.

As Sowell often emphasized, “There are no solutions—only trade-offs.” The beauty of capitalism is not that it is perfect, but that it acknowledges reality. It understands that resources are scarce, people respond to incentives, and decisions have costs. Socialism promises to eliminate poverty but ends up eliminating prosperity. It claims to liberate the masses, but instead enslaves them to the state. And yet, none of this registers with those who are economically illiterate or historically unaware.

In a world where people are educated in grievances rather than in facts, it is no wonder socialism continues to seduce. It is easier to chant slogans than to study opportunity costs. It is easier to demonize billionaires than to understand capital formation. It is easier to imagine utopia than to deal with reality.

Ignorance, then, is not merely an accident. It is the foundation on which socialism is built. As long as people are unaware of how markets work, how history unfolded, and how incentives drive behavior, they will remain vulnerable to ideas that sound good and do harm. Socialism is not the future—it is a recurring error. And the only vaccine against it is knowledge.