I don't want to go into some politico-economic diatribe here, but I've honestly been getting a little disheartened at the slinging around of the words "socialist" and "socialism" in the context of the stimulus package, bail-out of Wall Street, and the Obama presidency in general. Here's the cover story from last week's Newsweek. Here's another one from yesterday on Fox News. From the usual suspects like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, to the McCain/Palin campaign trail rhetoric, to every scared ideologue of the Right, "socialism" has become the new terrorizing watchword of the young 2009. The problem I have isn't really in the political nature of the mud-slinging or the partisanship but in the basic lack of understanding in the vocabulary used to describe the situation. Ask the average American what socialism means, and you'll probably get a response something akin to "government controls the economy" or "the opposite of capitalism" or "that thing the Soviets did" and all of them would be, by and large, wrong.
Dictionary and encyclopedic definitions can often shed light on meaning, but even here, there is a major disconnect with what the term is supposed to mean and what it is perceived to mean: most emphasize the Marxist and Soviet varieties, which are but two out of many. Socialism, arguably, has a much broader meaning than capitalism. Capitalism at its most basic level is a system whereby all means of production (companies, land, etc.) are privately owned and operated and the investment of money into these means of production is a source of wealth itself. Socialism, however, has a larger economic meaning in the sense that the means of production are distributed to a greater variety of individuals, and could be controlled, depending on the society, by groups of individuals (co-ops or syndicates), the public at large through democratic means, or controlled by a state hierarchically from the top down. The problem with the misleading rhetoric coming out of most mainstream media is that the focus is on the latter at the expense of all other meanings. In fact, the original envisioning of socialism did not even include the statist variety - this was essentially created by Lenin and Stalin. It does not reflect well on the economic intelligence of our society as a whole that a seventeen year old blogger seems to understand this far better than the supposed experts in the field. The perception of socialism as a particularly heinous form of government control comes, I assume, from the fact that the galvanizing enemy against which the United States defined itself for 60 years was the U.S.S.R. - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. However, this is only one form of socialism, the statist variety, and a brief history of the movement shows that most socialists in the world today reject this variety. One could argue, in fact, that anything that is statist is, by definition, not socialism, since true socialism requires some form of cooperative ownership and control. State control of all means of production is really like having one corporation run everything.
Here's where the current situation comes in to play. What is going on now - pumping money into corporations, banks, state and local governments, and the economy at large to create jobs - is not really socialism, since the control of the capital and the means of production hasn't actually changed. A better term for this would be something like oligarchic hypercapitalism or plutocratic hypercapitalism or interventionist hypercapitalism. True socialism would involve something along the lines of firing all of the heads of the companies getting bail-outs and giving ownership equally to the workers of the companies regardless of how much money they have invested, or even whether they have money invested. Or, it would be giving all taxpayers an equal stake in the companies, with decision-making power at the ballot, with the money to be returned in kind as these companies rebuild. At least the Newsweek article gets one thing right: it points out that Republican administrations spend a great deal of money as well, and Reagan and both Bushes actually showed a net increase in spending during their terms. If the stimulus package is socialism, people on the Right should take solace in the fact that Obama has at least this one thing in common with his Republican predecessors.
Dictionary and encyclopedic definitions can often shed light on meaning, but even here, there is a major disconnect with what the term is supposed to mean and what it is perceived to mean: most emphasize the Marxist and Soviet varieties, which are but two out of many. Socialism, arguably, has a much broader meaning than capitalism. Capitalism at its most basic level is a system whereby all means of production (companies, land, etc.) are privately owned and operated and the investment of money into these means of production is a source of wealth itself. Socialism, however, has a larger economic meaning in the sense that the means of production are distributed to a greater variety of individuals, and could be controlled, depending on the society, by groups of individuals (co-ops or syndicates), the public at large through democratic means, or controlled by a state hierarchically from the top down. The problem with the misleading rhetoric coming out of most mainstream media is that the focus is on the latter at the expense of all other meanings. In fact, the original envisioning of socialism did not even include the statist variety - this was essentially created by Lenin and Stalin. It does not reflect well on the economic intelligence of our society as a whole that a seventeen year old blogger seems to understand this far better than the supposed experts in the field. The perception of socialism as a particularly heinous form of government control comes, I assume, from the fact that the galvanizing enemy against which the United States defined itself for 60 years was the U.S.S.R. - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. However, this is only one form of socialism, the statist variety, and a brief history of the movement shows that most socialists in the world today reject this variety. One could argue, in fact, that anything that is statist is, by definition, not socialism, since true socialism requires some form of cooperative ownership and control. State control of all means of production is really like having one corporation run everything.
Here's where the current situation comes in to play. What is going on now - pumping money into corporations, banks, state and local governments, and the economy at large to create jobs - is not really socialism, since the control of the capital and the means of production hasn't actually changed. A better term for this would be something like oligarchic hypercapitalism or plutocratic hypercapitalism or interventionist hypercapitalism. True socialism would involve something along the lines of firing all of the heads of the companies getting bail-outs and giving ownership equally to the workers of the companies regardless of how much money they have invested, or even whether they have money invested. Or, it would be giving all taxpayers an equal stake in the companies, with decision-making power at the ballot, with the money to be returned in kind as these companies rebuild. At least the Newsweek article gets one thing right: it points out that Republican administrations spend a great deal of money as well, and Reagan and both Bushes actually showed a net increase in spending during their terms. If the stimulus package is socialism, people on the Right should take solace in the fact that Obama has at least this one thing in common with his Republican predecessors.
If you look at presidential economic records, you have to go all the way back to Eisenhower to find a Republican who was better at controlling the deficit and increasing GDP than ANY of the Democratic presidents since then. The "fiscally responsible" tag that they cart around is not deserved in the least.
ReplyDeleteAll the socialism stuff bothers me, too, and I correct people whenever I can. Really, though, I think it just comes down to "socialism" being much catchier than "interventionist hypercapitalism". Also, if you want to demonize Democrats, calling them socialists is a pretty good way to go about it.