Out of the Woods

What is Socialism?

 The headline in the Seattle newspaper was something like “Socialism Contested in Seattle City Council elections.” In national contests over the soul of the Democratic party, socialism is an important issue. A word that was taboo ten years ago, or less, is now important in the current political vocabulary. But what does it mean? Do you know what President Trump means by socialism, or Bernie Sanders? Most likely they attach different meanings to that word and when one condemns socialism and the other advocates it they are likely talking about very different things.

I want to talk about several quite different kinds of socialisms. The first identifies it with the system prevalent in the Soviet Union—USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics where the word “soviet” is Russian for “council.” Russian socialism, especially as represented by media in the West was an unrelentingly brutal dictatorship which killed millions or exiled them to harsh lives in Siberian prison camps. The essence of that kind of socialism is a violent and coercive government that did neither recognize nor respect any human rights. President Trump thinks that Bernie Sanders wants that kind of violent dictatorship for our country.

In actual fact, Sanders’ socialism is without doubt democratic; it will have no truck with authoritarianism, even the relatively moderate authoritarianism of Donald Trump or of other recent Presidents who went to war without Congressional approval and gradually extended the power of executive orders instead of asking Congress for legislation. The target of Sanders’ sort of socialism is inequality. Contrary to the practice of the current president, or of the Republican and Democratic presidents before him, the socialism of Bernie Sanders, often called “social democracy” will ask the rich to pay for assuring the poor a half-way decent life. 

Social democracy does not attempt to equalize the incomes of different citizens; it is content to accept the existence of persons who earn very little and persons who earn an enormous amount of money. But social democracy wants to make sure that everyone has enough to eat and does not have to worry about food. Everyone is entitled to decent housing, to the best available medical care and to an affordable—affordable for everyone—education. Social democracy relieves parents by providing adequate daycare for all children and assures all children a first rate education that begins in preschool. All of this calls for a great deal of money. The millionaires and billionaires will pay for that.

A different kind of socialism has capitalism as its target. In a capitalist economy, like ours, a small number of persons owns the factories, banks, modes of transportation—trucks, railroads and airlines—and modes of communication—radio and tv networks, internet providers, phone companies. Others own sources of energy, hospitals and medical clinics and privatized prisons. These owners hire the rest of us. Unless we belong to a strong union and can therefore bargain with them effectively, they pretty well pay us what they want. They hire and fire and thus determine whether we have work or not. They have far reaching power over the lives of the rest of us and our families.

The owners get rich from their ownership. They can use that money to buy many houses, in the US and abroad. They can use the money to invest in new businesses and get even richer. They can use the money to buy their children admission to the fanciest universities . They also use their wealth to influence the political processes , through lobbying, through graft, and through buying and controlling the media. A real democracy, by contrast, gives equal political power to everybody. In our democracy, the rich have effectively many more votes than ordinary people. They pretty well run the country.

The socialism that targets capitalism is also democratic but in a more radical way. Abolishing capitalism also abolishes the existence of a class of people who have a lot more political power than the rest of us. Abolishing capitalism restores political equality and thereby restores our democracy to some extent.

There are different versions of the socialism that will replace capitalism. Often socialism is described in predominantly economic terms as a system where the productive apparatus is not run by private owners—that would be capitalism—but by the workers in the enterprise. Often socialists add requirements for a socialist politics: the government is elected by all equally and its task is to serve all equally. No more governments for the rich and by the rich and of elected officials for sale to the rich.

To those two requirements for socialism—workers control of the economy and political equality for all – some people want to add a third requirement, that a socialist society will have different values. In a capitalist society profits are a more powerful incentive than human well-being. Companies will regularly pay starvation wages for the sake of their profits. In a capitalist society that is morally acceptable. People who get filthy rich by pay starvation wages are held up as models to our children. They have fancy buildings names after them. But from a socialist perspective exploiting your workers is pure wickedness. Human flourishing is a more important goal in a socialist society than profits.

In the upcoming elections socialism will be an issue—not the authoritarian dictatorship President Trump condemns rightly, but the socialisms that propose different means for restoring a society in which human lives are more important than money, and for restoring the political equality without which democracy remains a sham.

The choice is yours. What will it be: people before profits or profits above everything, even human lives?