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?

Blinding ourselves with ideology.

Roland Merullo is a Cuban-American, a novelist who supports himself in part by writing stories for a golf magazine. On his return from a recent trip to Cuba he argues for an end to the American embargo of Cuba. He recognizes that the existing Castro regime in Cuba has produced a highly educated population, and a medical establishment that rivals any in the first world. But he also deplores the pervasive, extreme poverty of the Cuban people. If we allowed Cubans to visit the US, and Americans to visit Cuba freely, the Cubans, he thinks, would recognize the blessings of capitalism and jettison their own socialism. (Boston Globe,April 13, 2013.)

Merullo is clearly an open-minded person, but in the end he falls back on the purely ideological contrasts between socialism and capitalism, where socialism is bad even if it has some successes, and capitalism is good even if it sometimes fails.

But that comparison is an extremely destructive way of comparing the experiences of two different countries and their peoples and cultures. Cuba's education system is impressively successful. Ours, by contrast, is, as every talking head keeps repeating, "broken." One personal experience to illustrate that: I recently asked one of my classes at the local state university what capitalism is. At first there was profound silence. No one knew. Then one student volunteered that capitalism had to do with buying and selling. That's all they knew. I am sure they would all have agreed that capitalism is good and socialism bad. The educational system in our capitalist country has not served them well.

Similarly, Cuba's medical establishment is first rate, in spite of the pervasive poverty. The United States medical system is more expensive than any other in the world. Yet in listings of international comparisons of medical systems, ours comes in in 37th place. Cuba ranks 39^th. (http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html) Cuba spends a fractions what we spend on medical care.

Many visitors to Cuba report on extensive poverty. But the ideological view of the two countries – "socialism bad, capitalism good" – suggests that poverty is not a problem in our country. But consider these facts:

In Massachusetts the minimum wage is $ 8.00 an hour. A single person being paid the minimum wage may fall short as much as twelve thousand dollars a year below the federally defined poverty level. The outlook for a female-headed households in Massachusetts is that they do not earn enough to pay their bills for themselves and their children. Four out of ten two-parent households in the state will not bring in enough money to make ends meet. Six out of ten families in Massachusetts live paycheck to paycheck.

These facts are cited by the Senate president of the Massachusetts legislature Therese Murray. (Worcester Telegram and Gazette, April 12,2013:6).

To visitors from the US, the face of Cuban poverty never fails to impress. But the United States also has a terribly serious poverty problem.

It is worse than useless, it is outright destructive to approach these facts blinded by the "socialism versus capitalism" ideology. Instead we need to ask questions in the hope of learning. What do Cubans do right in education that we have not managed to do? How do they manage to have a first rate medical system at a much lower cost than ours? What attempts at mitigating poverty have been made in Cuba and in the US? Why did both fail?

Thinking ideologically that capitalism is, of course, good, we are blinded to the terrible failures that affect the lives of large percentages of US citizens. We cannot even begin to think intelligently about ways to improve our record with respect to poverty, with respect to education, with respect to the cost of medical care as long as we are tethered to uncritical and unthinking cheerleading for capitalism.

Merullo may well be right that Cubans who are more freely exposed to the experience of Americans may learn from that exposure. But surely Americans would profit also if we used comparisons between the countries in order to improve how we run our own country instead of reiterating the mantra that capitalism is good.

Yes, let's open Cuba to American visits by abolishing the Embargo. But let's also take off our blinders and visit other countries in order to learn, not in order to reinforce our prejudices.

Socialism for the poor

Socialism for the poor.
At a recent meeting at Columbia University School of Business, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet--between the two of them worth roughly $100 billion--reaffirmed their faith in our economic system--capitalism. They praised the free market, the equality of opportunity of the system, and the ability of everyone to enjoy the fruits of the private initiative of people like themselves.
At the same time the papers report that one in 7 households struggles for food. Almost 15% of US households or about 49 million people, including 17 million children do not have enough food for an active, healthy life style. 49 million people, 17 million children go hungry some of the time, in the United States, the richest country of the world.
We all know the effects of hunger on children. They have trouble paying attention in school, they have trouble learning, they drop out of school early. They have no chance to participate in the “equal opportunity” Gates and Buffet bragged about. They will not share in the fruits of the initiative of successful capitalist entrepreneurs.
Capitalism is a great system for the rich. It is a disaster for the poor. It is not so great for the people in between, who are prone to job insecurity, have troubles paying their bills, may lose their homes to foreclosures, and be unable to pay for decent medical care.
“So, are you advocating socialism”? An appalled reader asks.
No, I am advocating socialism for the poor. The rich already have socialism. When they lose money, when their firms face bankruptcy, the govern steps in to support them. Ask General Motors, AIG, or Bank of America what they think of the sort of socialism that saved their skin last year and is continuing to do so.
While the big financial firms received astronomical amounts of money to save them, so much so that today their directors again get million dollar bonuses--more in bonus money for one year (when they almost went bankrupt) than many working Americans make in a life time-- 1 in seven families goes hungry.
How about a little bit of socialism for them?

Why are People afraid of Socialism?

Twenty years ago the Berlin wall came down and Soviet communism collapsed. Chinese communism has morphed into an authoritatian capitalism that destroys the environment and mercilessly exploits working people. Except for the tiny island of Cuba, communism or socialism appear to be dead. Why then the continuing fear of socialism? In the recent debates about health care, the president's program was regularly attacked as “socialist.” Why is the specter of socialism still haunting the apparently triumphant capitalist system?
Capitalism won the battle but it has returned from the wars bloodied and limping. While the papers tell us every day that the economy is recovering after almost collapsing, the small print tells us that unemployment is going to rise in the near future and employment will recover very slowly. With the national unemployment rate at close to 10% – one out of every 10 persons looking for work will not be able to find any – that is a serious failure of the system. Yes, Goldman Sachs and the Bank of America may be making a profit again, but ordinary Americans are still suffering from tremendous job insecurity. Many hard-working Americans still are losing their homes. More and more schoolchildren have no homes to go back to when the school day is over. Poverty is on the rise; more and more families have to go to food banks in order to feed their children.
All this is well known. Less well known is the fact that this betrayal of ordinary working Americans by the capitalist economic system has been going on for many years. For a long time now capitalism has not been good for most Americans. Between the end of World War II and the 1970s, real wages for most working people went up. People earned more, they could buy more. Life was good. Since then, real wages – what the money you earn can actually buy—have been going down steadily. Working families responded by converting themselves into two wage-earner families. More and more women are also working paid jobs. One result was that more and more children come home from school to empty houses or apartments, and more of them get into trouble. It is good that women have greater job equality. It is not good that parents have to work so hard they cannot take care of their children.
But even having both husband and wife working still did not bring in enough money. A large number of working families carry consumer debt they will never be able to repay. It is not uncommon for families earning $60,000 a year to owe more than $100,000 on their credit cards. Real wages were so low that even with all adults in the family working they could not bring in enough money. Families took on serious debt for consumer purchasers and for housing.
At the same time, it became possible to move manufacturing jobs offshore and still make a profit. Steel, autos, tires and electronic gadgets are now manufactured elsewhere. Look at the labels in your clothing; chances are they are made in China. Big business earned more; ordinary Americans were left with worse jobs and lower pay.
In the same period, health care costs exploded. The American healthcare system is the most expensive one in the world; our outcomes are definitely second rate. Life expectancy in Japan is higher than in the US; the cost of the Japanese health care system is half of ours. The US health care system is the most expensive in the world but the Infant mortality rate in the US is just a tad better than in Poland, Croatia, Estonia and Hungary.
The outlook for the future is very grim. The rate of obesity in America is shooting up. Soon there will be millions and millions more suffering from diabetes and other illnesses connected with being overweight. More and more people will have bad knees and bad backs because they are too heavy. This is caused, as Michael Pollin has recently argued, by our economic system that produces food that is cheap but also very bad for us: fast food, soda, greasy snacks. Healthy food such as vegetables and fruits are more and more expensive and out of the reach of many people. Many Americans do not earn enough to feed themselves and their families healthfully. Our economic system yields fewer jobs for ordinary working people, falling wages, second rate health care and unhealthful food.
A well-known Yale University economist, Robert E. Lane, has asked whether people are happier today than at the end of World War II. His answer is :”no” People work harder than ever before; they have less time to visit with friends and family. A certain amount of their earnings go to buy gadgets that further isolate them: MP3 players, smart phones that allow you to play games or text others instead of talking to your friends. But happiness requires that we share, that we maintain our important relationships. Texting is not a substitute for friendship.
As the current crisis shows, the system produces terrible insecurity for many working people. Economists today admit that this insecurity is built into the credit system. Crises are bound to recur at regular intervals. When there is a crisis, as today, lenders are cautious. But then the economy recovers, most banks and financial institutions make money and investors think that the good times will never end. (Barely a year after the economic meltdown there are already signs of banks making risky loans.) They take excessive risks and the economy will collapse once again. Ordinary workers pay billions of dollars-- as we did in the last year-- to bail out the big financial institutions and then loose their jobs and their homes on top of that.
Those financial institutions bring in enormous profits for the investors. Capitalism is good for them. But often it is not good for ordinary people.
Socialism is the opposite of capitalism. While not a real threat, many Americans fear it. It is their way of putting into words their anxiety that capitalism is ailing. Its many failures force us to move away from a system of private enterprise and free markets. Firmly committed to capitalism, many Americans nevertheless see the many signs of its inadequacies. In calling attempts to remedy some of those socialism, they acknowledge in a backhanded way that their favorite system, capitalism, is an idol with feet of clay.