The Natural Right to Vote
In the 2018 elections 40 candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America won at the national, state and local level, a result that was announced as “the rebirth of the American socialist movement after generations in retreat.” The most significant of these elections were the victories of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and Rashida Tlaib (MI) to the US Congress. But many other avowed socialists did not fare so well. Nevertheless, the DSA was able to drag the entire Democratic Party further to the left. But it takes more than the word “democratic” in the name of your political faction to make you actually democratic.
Democracy and the right to vote arises from natural rights that Enlightenment philosophers declared each person derived from nature or nature’s god. These are rights that exist in a state of nature. Certain natural rights must be constrained if a person wants to live in a society rather than a state of nature. This is because the other people in that society also have equal natural rights and the exercise of a person’s rights should not infringe on the rights of others. Governments are constituted to secure these natural and unalienable rights and, because each person is endowed with equal natural rights, each person has an equal vote in how the government and society are configured.
The so-called Democratic Socialists believe in social rights such as housing, jobs, healthcare and retirement benefits. Social rights (sometimes called positive rights or entitlements) differ from civil rights (sometimes called negative rights or liberties) in that they do not originate from natural rights. No one in a state of nature has a right to housing. He or she has to go out and find it. And protect it from others seeking housing.
Social rights are not inherent to the individual. Social rights must be provided by the government to the people it deems worthy of receiving the entitlement. And these social rights to be provided by government must be funded either by the government owning the means of production (pure socialism which is the ultimate goal of Democratic Socialists) or by taxing the economically productive people within the country (an intermediate stage that will ultimately lead to pure socialism).
If rights are granted by government then the right to vote is not inherent to the individual by natural right, but granted to individuals by the government in order to serve government purposes. Socialists cannot say that people have a natural right to vote but not the other natural rights inherent to individuals (well they can say it but it doesn’t make any sense). Civil and social rights are antithetical. Civil rights are freedom from the predation of government. Social rights are dependence on that same government. That’s why it doesn’t make sense.
Socialist regimes have a spotty record with democracy. The Soviet Union, Communist China and Cuba stepped onto the road toward socialism through bloody revolution and imposed a dictatorship of the proletariat led by the Communist Party. And Socialism along with communist dictatorships was imposed on Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Second World War.
But many people have been seduced by the promises of the socialists. Avowed socialist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile with only 36% of the vote and immediately took a sharp turn to the left despite lacking a majority in the legislature. We will never know the outcome of Allende’s socialist programs as he was overthrown and killed in a coup d’état by the Chilean military.
Hugo Chavez attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela in 1992 but failed miserably and was thrown in jail. However having served only two years for the attempted coup d’état that killed 15 people, he was freed and ran for president in 1997 and won. He immediately set about to change the nature of Venezuelan democracy, under which he had been elected, to a form more suited to his socialist programs. Only death could remove Chavez from office and Venezuela continues to be run by his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro. Although the opposition won the 2015 parliamentary election but they have been unable to function as Maduro created a phony constitutional convention packed with his supporters that he claimed superseded the elected congress. So much for democracy.
Likewise, in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega was democratically elected as president in 1984 after the Sandinistas had overthr