California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

The Balanced Society: A Capitalist/Socialist Hybrid

by John Lawrence, March 2018

Frank Thomas had an excellent piece yesterday in which he wrote about the European societies as being hybrids of capitalism and socialism in which they are continually trying to adjust the balance to get it just right so that the societies serve the people and not just the rich or not just the poor or not just the corporate lobbyists. I commented that these societies are reflective of human individuals most of whom are not completely selfish nor are they completely altruistic. Most individuals are a combination of both. So a society which reflects individual character but not extreme character types is probably the best fit for the majority of the population.

Communism expected individuals to be extremely altruistic in that everyone was expected to be completely unselfish and work for the betterment of all with no individual property. Free market capitalism caters to those individuals who are extremely selfish and don't want their tax dollars going to help any other individuals. They want to keep everything for themselves rather than to put anything towards the betterment of society in general or helping poor people. The US is an example of free market capitalism, at least that's what the party in power, the Republicans, are trying to create going forward. If they had their way, there would be no social welfare programs and every function of society would be privatized. Everything would have to be paid for by individuals and, if they couldn't pay, they would have to go without. This is Social Darwinism, the survival of the fittest, the opposite of which is Social Democracy, a capitalist/socialist hybrid.

The European societies are generous when it comes to free health care, free education and spending for public infrastructure available to all. At the same time, they encourage everyone to work and contribute to society. Entrepreneurialism is encouraged and even supported. In Sweden, if you can't find a job, the government will help you find one. They keep a database of available jobs for the whole country. They will support you until you can get started in a new job which they've helped you find.

As Frank Thomas reported, Netherlands Is In Top 5 Most Competitive World Economies.  Four out of Five of the top competitive societies are European ahead of the US which is number seven. And by any measure Europeans seem to be happiest compared to other societies.

In the US social security and medicare are the main social programs which are a legacy of the period when the US society cared more about people in general and not just feathering the nests of the rich and giving them huge tax breaks. Ayn Rand, the philosopher, represents the extremely selfish individual and the kind of society in which extremely selfish individuals flourish. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is a follower of Ayn Rand as was Treasury Secretary Milton Friedman. Many Republicans subscribe to her theory of life and society.

As I wrote previously:

In a National Geographic survey, Denmark ranked as the world's happiest country. It's a combination of several factors including the feeling that their country cares for them. They can never sink too low because their country will always help them if they are willing to help themselves. They can truly pursue their passion in life because they are set free from worrying about the need to just survive. They have free health care, free education up to and including the university level and parental leave at full pay for a year after every child is born. This can be shared between the two parents including gay and lesbian parents.

The Republican National Convention: Where Social Darwinism Meets Theocracy

by Joseph A Palermo

from Huffington Post, 8/26/2012

At the 1988 Republican National Convention, Vice President George H.W. Bush talked about a "kinder and gentler" America. Four years later Patrick Buchanan scared the hell out of the country by declaring a "culture war." In 2000 George W. Bush gave us "compassionate conservatism." The Bush stratagems were cunning responses to focus groups and public opinion polls that show beating up on the poor and the weakest among us can make people feel uncomfortable. In 2012 we can expect more culture war rhetoric, but it will be clouded by the soothing sounds of reasonableness and moderation.

The trick thus far for the Romney-Ryan ticket has been to pretend to want to "save" Medicare even while putting forth Ryan's "voucher" plan that would end Medicare, not only "as we know it," but end Medicare period. The lies and distortions about their schemes for privatizing Medicare (which have been swirling around Republican circles for decades) are the 2012 election's equivalent of "kinder and gentler" and "compassionate conservatism": empty slogans designed to beguile voters.

What we'll hear all week at the RNC are expressions of an ideological witch's brew, a fusion of Ayn Rand's Social Darwinism with the Reverend Jerry Falwell's vision of an American Theocracy. Rand glorified sociopaths. Falwell believed the Bible foretold a nuclear Armageddon. They've got no choice but to pander to their Christian evangelical base as well as to their corporate overlords; a bone goes to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council while a juicier chunk of meat will go to the Koch brothers.

The Romney-Ryan Republicans are giving us Rand's Social Darwinist economic prescriptions, which hold that if an individual lacks the wherewithal to thrive in a "free" capitalist society that person deserves to die in a gutter somewhere, merged with Falwell's social diktats banning abortion (even in cases of rape and incest), gay bashing, a militarized foreign policy, and a continuation of the "War on Drugs."

If they advocated only the Randian side of the equation there at least would be no restrictions on abortion, gays could go their merry way, and everybody could smoke weed. Things like school prayer, the 10 Commandments in public buildings, abstinence-only sex "education" would be laughed out of court. Conversely, if they gave us a truly "Christian" set of governing principles, (as opposed to the Falwell strain), omitting the Randian Social Darwinism, we'd at least get a government that cared a little bit about the poor, took care of the weak, and might not be so quick to go to war.

As it stands, we get the Social Darwinism without the libertarianism, and the religious strictures on individual behavior without the compassion for the poor and the valuing of peace. In other words, we get the worst of both ideologies.

This epistemological schizophrenia is secular yet religious, amoral yet moralizing.

And lo and behold! The Republicans' idée fixe just happens to serve perfectly the interests of the ruling corporate elite in American society! It's a menu of ideas that give the 1 percent everything it wants. (The Supreme Court's ruling that money equals speech and corporations deserve stronger Constitutional safeguards than people codify this worldview.)

It's as though with every minute of right-wing talk radio, every 24-hour news cycle at Fox, and every spittle of words strung together by Romney, Huckabee, Priebus, Ryan, and the rest of them at the convention, they have set out to prove to the world that power equals knowledge, and the ideas that are the most widely disseminated in any society are those that best serve the narrow class interests of its ruling elite.

It's kind of funny that a tropical storm is heading toward Tampa right when the GOP is kicking off its lovefest. Since about 1900 the American people have looked to the federal government for help when their locales are hit with natural disasters -- you know, the government we're all supposed to despise.

The Choice in 2012: Social Darwinism or a Decent Society

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The returns aren’t all in yet on today’s Republican primaries but President Obama didn’t wait. He kicked off his 2012 campaign against Mitt Romney with a hard-hitting speech centered on the House Republicans’ budget plan – which Romney has enthusiastically endorsed.

That plan, by the way, is the most radical reverse-Robin Hood proposal propounded by any political party in modern America. It would save millionaires at least $150,000 a year in taxes while gutting Medicaid, Medicare, Food Stamps, transportation, child nutrition, college aid, and almost everything else average and lower-income Americans depend on.

Here’s what the President had to say about it:

Disguised as a deficit reduction… it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism.

We are likely to hear a lot more about social Darwinism in the months ahead. It was the conservative creed during the late 19^th century – legitimizing a politics in which the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of money on legislators’ desks, and justifying an economy in which sweat shops were common, urban slums festered, and a significant portion of America was impoverished.

Social Darwinism encapsulated the idea of survival of the fittest (a phrase Charles Darwin never actually used) as applied to societies as a whole. Its chief apostle in America was Yale Professor William Graham Sumner.

Here’s what Sumner had to say in his social-Darwinian classic “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other” (1883):

Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: Liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.

Could there be a better summary of what today’s regressive Republicans believe?

The Republican’s Social-Darwinist Budget Plan

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

In announcing the Republicans’ new budget and tax plan Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said “We are sharpening the contrast between the path that we’re proposing and the path of debt and decline the president has placed us upon.”

Ryan is right about sharpening the contrast. But the plan doesn’t do much to reduce the debt. Even by its own estimate the deficit would drop to $166 billion in 2018 and then begin growing again.

The real contrast is over what the plan does for the rich and what it does to everyone else. It reduces the top individual and corporate tax rates to 25 percent. This would give the wealthiest Americans an average tax cut of at least $150,000 a year.

The money would come out of programs for the elderly, lower-middle families, and the poor.

Seniors would get subsidies to buy private health insurance or Medicare – but the subsidies would be capped. So as medical costs increased, seniors would fall further and further behind.

Other cuts would come out of food stamps, Pell grants to offset the college tuition of kids from poor families, and scores of other programs that now help middle-income and the poor.

The plan also calls for repealing Obama’s health-care overhaul, thereby eliminating healthcare for 30 million Americans and allowing insurers to discriminate against (and drop from coverage) people with pre-existing conditions.

The plan would carve an additional $19 billion out of next year’s “discretionary” spending over and above what Democrats agreed to last year. Needless to say, discretionary spending includes most of programs for lower-income families.

Not surprisingly, the Pentagon would be spared.

So what’s the guiding principle here? Pure social Darwinism. Reward the rich and cut off the help to anyone who needs it.

Ryan says too many Americans rely on government benefits. “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency.”

Well, I have news for Paul Ryan. Almost 23 million able-bodied people still can’t find work. They’re not being lulled into dependency. They and their families could use some help. Even if the economy continues to generate new jobs at the rate it’s been going the last three months, we wouldn’t see normal rates of unemployment until 2017.

And most Americans who do have jobs continue to lose ground. New research by professors EmmanualSaez and Thomas Pikkety show that the average adjusted gross income of the bottom 90 percent was $29,840 in 2010 — down $127 from 2009 and down $4,842 from 2000 — and just slightly higher than it was forty-six years ago in 1966 (all figures adjusted for inflation).

They could use better schools, access to higher education, lower-cost health care, improved public transportation, and lots of other things Ryan and his colleagues are intent on removing.

Meanwhile, America’s rich continue to grow richer — and many of them (and their heirs) are being lulled into lives whose hardest task is summoning the help.

Anyone who thought the Great Recession might reduce America’s wild lurch toward wild inequality should think again. The most recent data show that just 15,600 super-rich households – the top 1 tenth of 1 percent – pocketed 37 percent of all the economic gains in 2010. The rest of the gains went to others in the top 10 percent.

Republican Social Darwinists are determined that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 be made permanent. Those cuts saved the richest 1 percent of taxpayers (roughly 1.4 million people) more money on their taxes last year than the rest of America’s 141 million taxpayers received in total income.

Thank you, House Republicans, for “sharpening the contrast” between your radical Social Darwinism and those of us who still cling to the belief that the most fortunate have a responsibility to the rest.