Murray Rothbard on the new egalitarian Left vs. the old socialist Left

I submit that... the Left are, in their bones, “progressives,” that is, they believe, in Whig or Marxoid fashion, that History consists of an inevitable March Upward into the light, toward and into the Socialist Utopia.  They believe in the myth of inevitable progress; that History is on their side.  As Social Democrats or Mensheviks, as kissin’ or sometimes feuding cousins of the Communists or Bolsheviks, they have a similar, though not the identical ideal goal: A socialist, egalitarian State, run by bureaucrats, intellectuals, technocrats, ”therapists,” and the New Class in general in collaboration with accredited victim pressure groups striving for “equality."  These groups including, blacks, women, gays, Latinos, the disabled, and on and on.  They believe that History is marching inevitably toward that goal. A vital part of that goal is the destruction of the traditional, “bourgeois,” two-parent, nuclear family, and the bringing up of all children by the State and its New Class of licensed counselors, childcare ”givers,” and therapists.

The Utopian, march of History, goal of the Social Democrats is similar to, but not quite the same as, that of the Communists.  To the Commies, the goal was the nationalization of the means of production, the eradication of the capitalist class, and the coming to the power of the proletariat.  The Social Democrats realize that it is far better for the socialist State to retain the capitalists and a truncated market economy, to be regulated, confined, controlled, and subject to the commands of the State.  The Social Democrat goal is not ”class war,” but a kind of ”class harmony,” in which the capitalists and the market are forced to work and slave for the good of ”society” and of the parasitic State apparatus.  The Communists wanted a one-party dictatorship, with all dissenters stamped out or confined to the Gulag.  The Social-Democrats far prefer a ”soft” dictatorship, what Marcuse called, in another context, “repressive tolerance," with a two-party system where both parties agree on all fundamentals and joust politely over minor issues. (”Should we increase taxes by 5, or by 7, percent this year?”)  Freedom of speech and press will be tolerated by Social Democrats, but again only within minor and trivial limits.  Social Democrats shuddered at the naked brutality of the Gulag; what they prefer is sending dissidents to endure the “soft,” ”therapeutic” dictatorship of ”sensitivity training” and “being educated in the dignity of alternative life-styles.” In other words: Brave New World instead of 1984.  The “upward march of democracy” rather than the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

~ Murray Rothbard, "Liberal Hysteria: The Mystery Explained," Rothbard-Rockwell Report, October 1992