Professor's NYT pitch for 'making things free' via socialism sends heads CRASHING to desks (with bonus paywall irony)

Corey Robin, professor of political science at Brooklyn College, has an op-ed featured in the New York Times in which he argues in favor of taking a journey to socialist utopia, because “freedom” or something:

The NYT asked me to write a piece on what socialism means. My answer: "The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree." https://t.co/uzIaLj3tSl

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) August 24, 2018

Robin argues that free stuff = freedom. And with that, let’s first get a little bit of irony out of the way:

This better be good I have 1 free article remaining.

— Ryan Laird (@laird_ry) August 25, 2018

Unfree. Like this article. https://t.co/Tz3bhYCM1u

— Emily Zanotti (@emzanotti) August 25, 2018

Are you going to lift the paywall, to promote socialism and fight capitalism? Didn’t think so. #hypocrites

— Irish Fan (@sjenk26) August 25, 2018

Your paywall makes me feel unfree.

— Nuclear Dave (@woodstockdave) August 25, 2018

Oh, that’s rich!

Here’s a sample from the article:

The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival.

LOL

Socialism by definition RESTRICTS FREEDOM.

In socialism, do you have the right to produce your product as you see fit?

Do you have the right to demand payment for the product as you see fit?

Literally everything about socialism is about THE STATE TAKING AWAY YOUR FREEDOM. https://t.co/2YTQfeXze6

— Pradheep J. Shanker, M.D., M.S. (@Neoavatara) August 25, 2018

Socialism is a catastrophic ideology that robs people of their individual liberties for the sake of the “state.” It ignores basic human behavior in pursuit of some pseudo-society with no actual grounding in reality. https://t.co/EHSG0CqpgF

— Erielle Davidson (@politicalelle) August 25, 2018

Under Socialism you're free from things like work, money, food, and even luxuries. It's the proverbial utopia. https://t.co/Y1k0O4cQds

— Eric Spencer (@JustEric) August 25, 2018

And when we said earlier that the author argues that free stuff = freedom, that’s literally what he wrote. The op-ed also contains this doozy:

For liberals, these are policies to alleviate economic misery. For socialists, these are measures of emancipation, liberating men and women from the tyranny of the market and autocracy at work. Back in the 1930s, it was said that liberalism was freedom plus groceries. The socialist, by contrast, believes that making things free makes people free.

We’re not sure how many totally free people are going to have to be forced to make and provide all that “free” stuff but the number would be high.