Socialism in the US

[RandFan]

I wouldn't. Because it is.

You missed my point. I'm trying to highlight the dishonest use of the word "socialism". The question was rhetorical. I started a thread claiming "We Are All Socialists Now". I believe that. However I caught hell from the conservatives on the forum. It hurt their ears to be called a socialist. Fine. Then give me a word for govt policies and regulations that are for the public good?

In any event, the purpose of words is to convey ideas. Look, I don't give a damn if they narrowly define the word. I really don't. I only ask that they be intellectually honest and consistent.

If virus wants to claim that socialism requires govt ownership then Obamacare is not socialized medicine. If he and the other folks on the right will stick with that then that is just fine with me.

 

[RandFan]

One of the hardest parts of arguing this issue in the US is the knowledge that American political attitudes are set a lot further to the right than in many countries.

Obama would make a fine conservative leader in most western nations, however in the US he is seen by many as being dangerously close to the extreme left

Agreed. And the word "socialist" has simply become an epithet to be used by the right to paint the discussion in the sharpest contrast. It's the very worst of black and white thinking.

 

[MG1962]

Agreed. And the word "socialist" has simply become an epithet to be used by the right to paint the discussion in the sharpest contrast. It's the very worst of black and white thinking.

One has to wonder at the role of the media in removing the shading from such discussions. In my 50 orbits around this planet the one thing I know for sure, nothing is black and white, only shades of grey

 

[jj]

I dont understand the strong aversion to socialism in the US. I dont have any strong thoughts one way or the other.

Does it have to do with the Soviet Union? Like socialism=communism=Soviet Union? I have never been to Europe, but I get the impression that its nothing like the USSR was.

Whats the deal?

It has to do with playing off the Red Scare of the 1950's, and the accompanying prejudices against people "not like us", atheists, and the like. The irony, of course, is that the USA has shifted so far to the fascist right that the dishonest lying about "Obama's socialism" (repeated on a repugnican push poll I got in the maily day before yesterday as claim not in evidence in a question body) shows that, while Obama's policies (even his most far left ones) are to the RIGHT of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the purveyors of American Misery, the radical right Republican fascists continue to spread this lie as far and loud as they can.

This is the same fascist, Radical Republican Right who is against policies that they, themselves, wanted to put in place, until Obama suggested they were a good idea.

How about it, Mr. Romney-care?

 

[RandFan]

One has to wonder at the role of the media in removing the shading from such discussions. In my 50 orbits around this planet the one thing I know for sure, nothing is black and white, only shades of grey

I've done 50 also.

 

[RandFan]

This is the same fascist, Radical Republican Right who is against policies that they, themselves, wanted to put in place, until Obama suggested they were a good idea.

Which is the most maddening of things.

GOP: Let's try X.
Obama: Let's try X.
GOP: You goddamn socialist pinko commie.

 

[Francesca R]

I started a thread claiming "We Are All Socialists Now". I believe that. However I caught hell from the conservatives on the forum. It hurt their ears to be called a socialist. Fine.

"Fine" as in "Can't have that!"? Why not? Are you concerned for conservatives' ears?

Then give me a word for govt policies and regulations that are for the public good?

Not all of those involve socialising something. Some of them involve the opposite. "Socialised" is a fine word for mandatory public funding of goods/services or mandatory public ownership of capital. If someone says that's always and everywhere evil, it would be better to point out the nonsense of such a blanket assertion than to try to bend definitions. Maybe not at political hustings in the US, but on here at least.

In any event, the purpose of words is to convey ideas.

The idea seems to get adequately conveyed outside the US without the mass recoiling in horror at the evil of it. Political parties can call themselves "socialist" and still win mainstream elections (France, Spain, (er . . . ) Greece). "Social Democrat" is more common. In the UK in the 1980s the Social Democratic Party formed as a breakaway from the (opposition) Labour Party because the latter was too left wing for them

Look, I don't give a damn if they narrowly define the word. I really don't. I only ask that they be intellectually honest and consistent.

Fair enough. But it is silly to define something as "completely socialised" versus "not in the slightest wee bit socialised". Universal health systems have socialised funding (mandatory and public) as pretty much their defining feature. That doesn't mean they don't have plenty of privatised aspects to them (and the better ones--not including Obamacare--have more of that IMO, which is another argument)

 

[RandFan]

"Fine" as in "Can't have that!"? Why not? Are you concerned for conservatives' ears?

I don't mind if they object to the definition IF they will be honest and consistent with their usage of the word.

Not all of those involve socialising something. Some of them involve the opposite.

"Socializing" in the US has come to mean some degree of govt control.

"Socialised" is a fine word for mandatory public funding of goods/services or mandatory public ownership of capital. If someone says that's always and everywhere evil, it would be better to point out the nonsense of such a blanket assertion than to try to bend definitions. Maybe not at political hustings in the US, but on here at least.

The idea seems to get adequately conveyed outside the US without the mass recoiling in horror at the evil of it. Political parties can call themselves "socialist" and still win mainstream elections (France, Spain, (er . . . ) Greece). "Social Democrat" is more common. In the UK in the 1980s the Social Democratic Party formed as a breakaway from the (opposition) Labour Party because the latter was too left wing for them

Fair enough. But it is silly to define something as "completely socialised" versus "not in the slightest wee bit socialised". Universal health systems have socialised funding (mandatory and public) as pretty much their defining feature. That doesn't mean they don't have plenty of privatised aspects to them (and the better ones--not including Obamacare--have more of that IMO, which is another argument)

I'm fine with all of that. I'm trying to get those on the right to be consistent in their usage of words to describe govt involvement. I suspect that's not going to happen as they like their epithet. The cold war made it very useful. Please note that the folks on the right who were quick to whip out their dictionaries have fled the thread as they have done in the past when the facts were pointed out to them. That's my purpose here. To expose the mendacity. I honestly don't think, by and large, there is any confusion when folks on the left discuss govt regulation, taxation, funding, ownership as it relates to the word "socialism". It's possible to discern the intended meaning from the context.

So, I'm not personally interested in actually determining the usage of the word as it relates to those who are reasonable in their usage of it. I think that is pointless. But I'm happy to have a discussion nonetheless.

 

[AdMan]

"Commies, pinkos, liberals, leftists, radicals, hippies... That's who supports socialism."

You left out the godless.

 

[Halfcentaur]

The problem is that the Constitution is a pre-Industrial document, written by people who lived in a world where powerful natural forces served to regulate human behavior and where the ownership of "stuff" (in particular land) was the lynchpin of individual success and prosperity.

Along comes the Industrial Revolution, and the ability of a few to leverage technology to their benefit, and those natural balancing mechanisms were irrevocably destroyed

A simple example: Pre IR, every town had to have it's own mill, to grind the wheat/corn/etc produced by the local farmers. This was because it was impractical to bring in grains from out of town.

In practical terms that meant that the miller could only charge so much for his services or else the farmers simply did without them and did for themselves. The miller had natural curbs on his ability to exploit the farmers.

Post IR, all that changed. Not only could the miller easily bring in grains from all the surrounding towns, but his efficiency in grinding them down was so great, that one miller (usually the first to industrialize) had such an absolute competitive advantage he put all the surrounding towns' mills out of business in short order.

This had the effect of making the miller "the only game in town" (in other words a monopoly), or at the very least secured him a huge comparative advantage. The farmers were forced into doing business with this new, more explotative miller, because if they had ANY expectation of bringing a crop to market (moving beyond personal subsistance farming), they had to play the miller's game.

I agree. I wasn't clear perhaps, but what I intended to say was that this idea of the issue of socialism being black and white that the vocal right wing portrays is not realistic. They act as if the slope is so slippery that socialism is un-American. But there's no consistency. Based on their logic, it almost would seem having taxes at all is a sinister communist plot, maybe even having a government at all is dangerously socialist!

Socialized programs should be an issue of where and how much. Instead it's portrayed as a dirty word.

 

[Dymanic]

I think thats a pretty good description, and suggests a basic difference in thinking between Americans and those in other parts of the world. We can either choose to blame others for our problems, or choose to try and do something about our problems ourselves.

False dichotomy, in my opinion. I don't see most us as having much problem with making both of those choices at the same time. We have an overdeveloped sense of our own capacity for overcoming, through individual effort, problems over which we actually have very little control -- one which somehow manages to co-exist with an almost reflexive tendency to blame others when things go wrong. It's a mindset that comes very close to a simple but important insight: some challenges are best left to individual effort, while others are best tackled collectively. All that seems to be lacking is that last little bit of self-awareness.

Our collective self-image as a nation of rugged individualists boldly carving niches for ourselves out of the wilderness has proven much more persistent than has our wilderness itself, leaving us desperately trying to live up to an idealized image (mostly created by Hollywood) of the proper way for the descendants of brave pioneers to act. But those original pioneers appreciated at a deep level something we seem to have largely forgotten: For rugged individualists, survival often depends on the ability to act cooperatively with other rugged individualists. Crony capitalists understand this quite well, as do the politicians with whom they are allied, and turning the shrill knob on the propaganda machine up to eleven has so far proven an effective means of clouding the minds of their minions enough to prevent them from obtaining this key insight, as evidenced by their continuing to show up in droves at political rallies and voting booths to support policies that go against their own best interests.

But times are changing. They always do.

 

[crimresearch]

False dichotomy, in my opinion. I don't see most us as having much problem with making both of those choices at the same time. We have an overdeveloped sense of our own capacity for overcoming, through individual effort, problems over which we actually have very little control -- one which somehow manages to co-exist with an almost reflexive tendency to blame others when things go wrong. It's a mindset that comes very close to a simple but important insight: some challenges are best left to individual effort, while others are best tackled collectively. All that seems to be lacking is that last little bit of self-awareness.

Our collective self-image as a nation of rugged individualists boldly carving niches for ourselves out of the wilderness has proven much more persistent than has our wilderness itself, leaving us desperately trying to live up to an idealized image (mostly created by Hollywood) of the proper way for the descendants of brave pioneers to act. But those original pioneers appreciated at a deep level something we seem to have largely forgotten: For rugged individualists, survival often depends on the ability to act cooperatively with other rugged individualists. Crony capitalists understand this quite well, as do the politicians with whom they are allied, and turning the shrill knob on the propaganda machine up to eleven has so far proven an effective means of clouding the minds of their minions enough to prevent them from obtaining this key insight, as evidenced by their continuing to show up in droves at political rallies and voting booths to support policies that go against their own best interests.

But times are changing. They always do.

Great post.

Too bad that politicians never change, even when we change politicians.

 

[Pardalis]

Except where it hasn't. Most western governments these days (including the US) are a combination of socialism and capitalism.

Which means it's not socialism. Call it something else, like social-democracy.

"Socializing" in the US has come to mean some degree of govt control.

Again, "some" degree is not socialism.

 

[Tricky]

Which means it's not socialism. Call it something else, like social-democracy.

Why? Because socialism is an all-or-nothing proposition? Insisting on absolutes is a sure way to inhibit communication and encourage the cursification* of a perfectly good descriptive word. If socialist policies are used in a government, then that government is, at least partially socialistic. Only those who want "socialism" to be a scary word insist on this sort of linguistic purity, and if you're going to insist that governments be 100% socialistic before you can call it "socialism", then there are not and never have been any socialist governments.

*Yeah, I made that word up.

 

[RandFan]

Call it something else, like social-democracy.

And while you are at it hold back the tide.

Again, "some" degree is not socialism.

Words are not laws that govern the universe. They are simply a means to convey ideas. Words evolve depending on usage. I have no interest in such strict definitions. I only care that people define the terms they use and that they are consistent. If you have a rigid definition for socialism that's fine by me. I'm not likely to adhere to it because I want people to understand me based on the usage of the word and context. If and when "social-democracy" becomes the lingua franca then I'll use it. I'm not much of a trail blazer.

 

[Robert Prey]

I dont understand the strong aversion to socialism in the US. I dont have any strong thoughts one way or the other.

Does it have to do with the Soviet Union? Like socialism=communism=Soviet Union? I have never been to Europe, but I get the impression that its nothing like the USSR was.

Whats the deal?

More like Greece.

 

[RandFan]

More like Greece.

More like the rest of Europe and other nations high in HDI.

 

[Ziggurat]

Obama would make a fine conservative leader in most western nations

ftfy.

 

[jj]

More like Greece.

Since it's a testable, verifiable, and falsifiable idea that the problem with Greece is not socialism or anything of the sort, this statement is quite offensive to debaters here, as well as being anti-American and insulting to every citizen of the USA.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Agreed. And the word "socialist" has simply become an epithet to be used by the right to paint the discussion in the sharpest contrast. It's the very worst of black and white thinking.

I haven't read the thread yet, but whenever discussions of "socialism" or "socialist" come up, I like to quote from Orwell's "Politics and the English Language". From the section headed "Meaningless words" (my underline and paragraph break added):

Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.† Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way.

Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

I think without an explicit definition of the word socialism for sake of any given discussion, we can assume it is at best being used ambiguously --and at the worst, deceitfully as Orwell says.