Both socialists and capitalists use the ‘That’s Not Real X’ argument fairly frequently, but there are big differences between how the argument is used by the two camps. I certainly do not agree with the people who cry ‘no true Scotsman fallacy!’ and think they have won the argument, as there are legitimate situations where you can say ‘this isn’t an example of X’ and be completely correct. However, I would argue that while the capitalists in general have good reasons for using this argument, the socialist’s use of it is more of a result of the misuse of concepts.

One standard argument is as follows: the capitalist claims that Venezuela is an economic disaster due to socialism, to which the socialist responds that Venezuela isn’t actually socialist, as the workers don’t have control over the means of production. The reason for the mix up is that there are two different concepts of socialism being used in this argument. The socialist is using the word ‘socialism’ as a political/economic term, meaning worker or democratic control of the means of production. The capitalist, on the other hand, is using the word Socialism (with a capital ‘S’) to name a political movement, with all the complex differences in objectives and methods that implies.

I believe that describing countries like Venezuela as socialist is accurate and justified, because they are products of Socialism as a movement. Socialists around the world are generally in favour of nationalised industry, high taxes and price controls, so it is legitimate when these things cause economic disaster in a country to blame Socialism itself, even if the majority of socialists do not consider such a state as ‘socialist’ in the economic sense. Every argument for socialism or communism, whether arguing for a state or for no state, necessarily has a transition stage that will rely on nationalising industries, taxing the rich and distributing welfare to the people – either that or they simply plan to ‘smash’ the capitalists and worry about what to do next afterwards.

Now onto capitalism. The standard argument is as follows: The socialist claims that bankers have ruined the economy with their greedy ways, which is the fault of capitalism, to which the capitalist responds that the bankers are not operating under capitalism, as there is massive government regulation in the banking sector. Why is this a justified response in this case? Because the capitalist political movement does not argue for any of the policies that dominate the banking system – it argues for complete deregulation. It argues against the federal reserve, against too big to fail, against quantitative easing – against all interventions in the banking system. Conservatives often argue for interventions in the economy, but they rarely describe themselves as ‘capitalists’ any more, and if they do they almost always acknowledge that capitalism must be ‘moderated’ in some ways, i.e. that these interventions in the economy are not examples of capitalism – that capitalism itself is the complete absence of regulation.

An analogy: If a man says ‘don’t drink any alcohol and you won’t get drunk’, and then another man spends half the day drinking water and the other half downing shots of vodka, he can’t then say ‘but I didn’t drink any alcohol all morning! How did I get drunk?’ Capitalism, in this example, advocates against all drinking of alcohol, so cannot be blamed for the results of doing so, even if you do spend half the time not drinking alcohol.

The socialist argument in this analogy would be as follows: The ideal is to only ever drink straight vodka, which will make you feel brilliant, but until we reach that goal drinking vodka and orange juice is a step in the right direction. At which point a man spends all day drinking vodka and orange juice and asks ‘why do I feel so terrible’, and the socialist says ‘You weren’t drinking straight vodka! This isn’t real vodkaism’. Here the man can justifiably say, ‘you said drinking vodka and orange juice would be fine, and it wasn’t. I feel terrible, and I blame Vodkaism’.

Furthermore, capitalists can and do point to actual examples of pure capitalism within the current systems we have. For example, the technology industry is largely unregulated and continues to produce amazing technology while cutting prices year on year. Essentially, the closer one gets to capitalism the better things are, and capitalists can show this in reality. Socialists, on the other hand, have nothing to show to the world except a series of complete failures – they can’t even get their system as they define it into the world in any form, let alone have it succeed.

As a final point, the fact that some socialists don’t advocate for nationalised industries, high taxes and price controls doesn’t change my argument. Since Socialism is a political movement, the criticism applies to the movement as a whole, even if a minority of members do not support the policies mentioned above. For the same reason, defenders of capitalism should be very careful about who they identify and associate with – for example, members of the so called ‘alt-right’ must be kept at arms-length, despite areas of agreement, because if the alt-right ever became seriously entwined with pro-freedom movements it would be perfectly legitimate to criticise both groups as a whole, and capitalists would have to repeatedly say how they aren’t racists or xenophobes – something which is already happening to a certain extent thanks to the likes of Stephan Molyneux.