One person's socialism is two people's neighborliness. . .

If the two people are Tim Walz and Howard Zinn

During a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call, Tim Walz stated that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” But that’s true only if the other person has a badly distorted view of neighborliness.

It’s neighborly to lend someone a box of eggs or, if you trust the person, some money. It’s neighborly to babysit for a neighbor or to call a neighbor at work if there’s something of concern happening on his property. Or to shovel snow for an elderly neighbor.

On the other hand, it’s not neighborly to resent a neighbor who is wealthier than you. And it’s certainly not neighborly to want the government to redistribute a neighbor’s wealth. Nor is it neighborly for a core group of neighbors (the vanguard) to dictate to boss the rest of the neighbors around.

The notion of socialism as neighborliness is bizarre enough to make one wonder where Walz picked it up. Stanley Kurtz thinks Walz probably picked it up from Howard Zinn, the radical leftist author of A People’s History of the United States.

Stanley admits that this theory is speculative. However, the evidence points squarely in its direction.

First, Zinn articulated a vision of “neighborly socialism”:

Toward the end of Zinn’s [People’s History] there’s a chapter called “The Coming Revolt of the Guards.” In that chapter, Zinn leaves off his history and speaks instead about his hopes for America’s future.

Zinn sees America as a kind of prison, with the poor as the prisoners and the middle class as the prison guards. Zinn looks forward to the day when the prison guards — the middle class — turn against America as we know it, thereby releasing the prisoners. [Paul notes: That view of the “guards” may be just about here.]

Zinn calls what he’s looking for “a general withdrawal of loyalty from the system.” That, he says, would bring about “a new kind of revolution,” one that might involve only a limited amount of violence, because the vast majority of people would support it.

What would the new system look like? It wouldn’t be what Zinn calls the “false socialism” of the Soviet Union. Instead, says Zinn, it would be a “neighborly socialism.” “Decisions will be made,” says Zinn, “by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods—a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another. . . .”

This sounds to me like neighborhood socialism, not neighborly socialism. As Stanley points out, it also sounds like “the governance of local ‘soviets,’ or workers’ councils, in the early stages of the Russian Revolution, before that local rule was displaced by a dictatorial and centralized Communist Party.”

Thus, Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat,” with some middle class collaboration, rather than Lenin’s dictatorship of the party, seems to be the version of socialism Zinn (and Walz) prefer.

Second, it’s almost certain that Walz was familiar with Zinn’s “People’s History.”

Walz was a social-studies teacher. What social-studies teacher nowadays — especially what progressive-Democrat social-studies teacher — would not have at least some familiarity with Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States?. . . .

Did Walz ever teach Zinn’s book? I don’t know, but it’s assigned in many American history classes. Some years ago, I wrote about Zinn’s use in a College Board teacher-training seminar for AP U.S. History.

But whether Walz assigned some Zinn or not, it seems likely that a progressive social-studies teacher like Walz would have at least read the book. And if the connection I’m making speculatively here is valid, it would probably mean that Walz was quite taken with Zinn’s socialist dream.

It’s possible that Walz picked up the concept of socialism as neighborliness from a third person who picked it up from Zinn’s book. It’s even possible, though highly unlikely, that Walz came up with the concept himself.

If anything, the latter possibility is the most frightening scenario of all. But the likelihood that Walz is taking his ideological cues from Howard Zinn is frightening enough.