by Frank Thomas
I fully agree there's a dire need for an intelligent Democratic counter strategy, Jerry, to the non-sensical lashing out of the label "socialism" by the right and its standard barrage of ad hominem one-liners. This labeling often reaches a desperate, severely insulting, even vitriolic level, e.g., calling Obama a fascist, and a socialist, and a communist - calling his health care plans a massive leap into central government planning and control. The right has become politically powerfully adept resorting consistently to attack ad hominems like, "socialism and socialistic," or "any form of socialism leads to Big Brother government control and loss of freedoms." Another example is Wayne LaPierre's (chairman of the NRA lobby syndicate) response to a public call for prompt, concrete, strict gun restrictions: "Socialists, in typical European style, want to take away our God given freedoms, the next one the right to own a firearm." Then he warns us, "You must be afraid."
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"Socialism" is the slur du jour ad hominem of the conservative right to denigrate, demean, distort, deflect, demonize liberals and ideas the right disagrees with. We have a long history of lumping "socialism" with almost all things "liberal." Today for many, the label continues to serve as an effective, if cynical sledgehammer against civil, rational, constructive give-and-take policy decision-making. Now Trump is becoming the new master socialist-accuser by tweet. The conservative right's long standing traditional fear is that America will turn into a decadent, socialistic age-old Europe. Thus, given our nation's long history of anti-socialist sentiments, it's good conservative strategy, e.g., to associate universal health care with "socialism." This applies to most government interventions. So Medicare and Medicaid are carrying us into the abyss of run-away socialism as is happening in Canada and Europe - so goes the ideological rant! American conservatives hold this philosophy sacrosanct for most government interventions while the 2009 great financial meltdown crisis of all crises showed once again how laissez faire capitalism is prone to extremely dangerous, costly market failures - given pure capitalism's natural inclination of blatant abuses and concentration of money in fewer and fewer hands. And this leads to a concentration of power.
Since the New Deal, ideological battle lines over socialist or governmental intrusions into American lives have increased. For conservatives the political cry is liberty through capitalism and free markets. For liberals the political cry is equality through equal opportunity, government oversight, and social responsibility. Both liberty and equality have made great contributions to our nation since its founding. As I've said in previous writings, it's all about getting the right balance between capitalistic and social elements that fit a particular culture. In Europe, the political norm is that, "Whatever promotes the general welfare will also promote personal happiness and motivation as well as economic progress." This contrasts with the U.S. indoctrinated conservative norm starting in 1980 that , "Whatever promotes the corporate and individual welfare promotes the general welfare."
The reality is that democracy needs a healthy balance and tension between these two elements to survive. Looking way back, it seems a miracle that at the high point in our cold war with Russia, a limited form of socialized medicine - Medicare - passed Congress and resistance by the insurance industry and the American Medical Association. Those forces now have teams of lobbyists influencing every key (and bought) Congressman in the policy-making process. The ordinary American ends up in effect having: no right to life if an insurance firm can deny one's coverage because of a prior illness history or inability to pay; no right to elect his or her leaders if a fair election or governing process is unjustly compromised or corrupted; no right to an equitable income if tax cut programs are designed to overwhelmingly favor the upper social class with the greater material influence.
The European Way sorts out conflicting and competing interests behind capitalism's tremendous wealth creating capacity so that income and social benefits are broadly and fairly shared. Europe's social democracies and market economies embrace the principles of both pursuing a free market and serving humanity. As one researcher explained, social democracy is all about a healthy, well-managed, thriving public system in education, health care, transportation, clean environment, child care, libraries, parks. It's all about government programs and blends of policy in concert with a competitive capitalistic dynamic that improve (or do not improve) the conditions of people's lives. In Europe, It's in general a very self-critical, exceptionally transparent process supported in most countries by multi-party systems and coalition governance where constructive compromise is a sine qua non. But the American conservative right disingenuously derides Europe's social-economic democratic model with the idiotic ad hominem one-liner it's essentially a welfare state. A better one-liner is workforce state.
Meaning all social networks operate as part of a comprehensive system of institutions and policy decision-making that's geared towards keeping individuals and families healthy, productive, free working individuals to insure a vibrant, sustainable economy. This approach was originally conceived as a security revolution, NOT a socialist revolution by the conservative politicians - Churchill, Monnet, Adennauer, Schuman. In the words of Monnet, "Europe will be attained by concrete achievements generating an active community of interest." The result since 1950? There are as many if not more European Fortune 500 companies than U.S. China or Japan. The Netherlands, for example, is a small land one-half my state of Maine with nearly 18 million people with some very reputable, innovative world firms including Unilever, Phillips, Royal Dutch Shell, Heineken, KLM, DSM, ASML.
Europeans in general don't see their unique form of hybrid capitalism with its high degree of economic freedom AND socialist elements as a conflicting societal norm ... but rather as a mutually reinforcing norm for improving the lot of ALL citizens. The developed economies of mature European countries are in essence "hybrids" that are constantly being refined. The private management is capitalistic while being the home also of public oversight and social institutions, providing strong job protections, well-trained labor markets and centralized unions, affordable quality health care and good coverage, relatively low-cost trade schools and colleges. Success has NOT been achieved by being more Right or more Left, by being more Capitalistic or more Socialistic. Labeling people, policies, programs socialistic and capitalistic as a discussion norm is seldom if ever done to evoke emotional reactions or to make prejudgements or charges that distort reality. The degree to which American conservatives automatically invoke the frightful specter of "socialism" serves no constructive purpose in advancing inclusive, creative, balanced, policy discussions and actions in Europe within multi-party and coalition governing systems.
Here are a few words on "socialism" in 2009 by Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore, American History Professors, Cornell University
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"When socialism can be used interchangeably with fascism - as it often is in the heat of contemporary political debate - Americans
are playing with historical fires they do not understand. America has not had a politically meaningful socialist movement since that
of Eugene Debs early in the last century. The Soviet Union has perished, the Berlin Wall has fallen, and capitalistic China is our
No. 1 industrial competitor. Against such a political landscape, what meaning could socialism have even as an epithet?
Those who hurl the "s-word" misunderstand the role of the state in American history. While they accurately point to the enormous
growth in government since the Civil War and claim that it has stripped Americans of their individualism and self-reliance, the focus
of the state's activities has been subsidizing and promoting "private" enterprise. Government growth promoted by Gilded Age
Republicans, New Deal Age Democrats, and Reagan revolutionaries has been one of the most enduring constants in American
history. Despite regular election cycle pleas to shrink the size of government, a unifying theme of political experience has been the
government's growing intervention in the market on behalf of the business community.
For an exceptional few decades, however, things were different. Sparked by the Great Depression and the rise of the New Deal, the
government expanded its responsibilities to include working people as well as business. It was not accidental that between 1945 and
1972, while business grew drastically, income inequality declined significantly for Americans while posing no threat to the nation's
wealthiest. Nor was it accidental that in the decades of growth since the early 1970s, a reversion to uniformly pro-business policies
promoted a significant rise in income inequality with the top 1% of all incomes enjoying the largest percentiles of growth. This too is
partly a direct result of government's beneficience to the private sector (business).
The issue, therefore, is not government intervention, yes or no; rather it is on behalf of whose interests government intervenes. When
the government assists business by bailing out the financial markets - as it often should - it is called supporting the market. When
government helps regular folks, as with health care reform, it stirs fears of something called "socialism."
Republican Theodore Roosevelt understood the central role of property for American individualism and citizenship - much like those
who wield the fear-laden charge of "socialism" today. But, he argued in 1910, when human rights are in conflict with property rights,
"human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property." Some today would call this "socialism."
My summary one-liner advice to Democrats: they should stop hiding and running from the words "socialism" and "socialistic." They should make the policy blend of social welfare and capitalism their way to best achieve a humanly, democratically and financially sound, just, equitable, social-economic-political environment. They should talk up the good parts of it, take the heat when necessary and be transparently on the offensive for ALL Americans every day - especially for the bottom 90% to counter our movement into autocracy.