I ran into a friend the other day, and the first words out of his mouth were “Since when did the Democratic party become Socialist?” My short answer was — they haven’t. They’re they same old corporatist, center-right party they’ve been for years. It’s just that Republicans, seizing on the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and a few others, have decided that socialism is the Democrats’ Achilles heel and so they’re making a big issue of it. Oddly enough, however, this could turn out to be a good thing. By drawing attention to it, they’ve opened a debate that’s been dormant for decades.
The return of socialism to the political sphere started with Bernie Sanders in the last presidential election when he ran as a “democratic socialist” with such popular policies as Medicare for All and free public college. It continued to simmer as progressives such as Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made radical proposals of their own, including steeper taxes on the wealthy and the Green New Deal. And it got a big reboot from Donald Trump, when he declared that “America will never be socialist”* in this year’s State of the Union address. If nothing else, socialism has become a topic to talk about and take positions on.
Since World War II, Americans have been generally opposed to socialism. We’ve been carefully taught to distrust it as a slippery slope into Communism, which everyone knows is bad — Cold War propaganda made sure of that. Socialism has been tarred with the same brush by capitalists (conservative and liberal alike) who see it as a threat. Hence, calling someone a socialist is a slur. It’s designed to discredit them.
This is why the Democrats, who would seem more likely to support socialist policies, generally oppose them. Obama, for instance, could have supported a Medicare for All, single payer health insurance system. Instead, he fought for a system requiring all citizens to buy private health insurance. No socialism there, unless it be corporate socialism. Center-right democratic leaders such as Pelosi and Schumer remain faithful to the capitalist system.** Meanwhile, upstarts like Ocasio-Cortez and Warren are seen as disruptive forces in the Democratic party, as indeed they are.
Be that as it may, polls indicate that support for socialist policies is slowly increasing, especially among the young, while support for capitalism is dropping. But why are people beginning to look into an alternative economic system, especially one as politically unpopular as socialism? The answer is simple: because the old capitalist system isn’t working anymore for the majority of people.
To find another era comparable to our own, we have to go back to the last gilded age. During this time of unbridled capitalism, wealth inequality soared. The living conditions of poor and working class people declined precipitously, to the point where it became unbearable. In this climate, alternative economic systems arose, notably communism and socialism, and because people were desperate, they began to subscribe to them.
Needless to say, both of these new economic theories were vigorously opposed by the capitalist class, who rightly saw in them a mortal threat to their way of life. Nevertheless, by the end of the Great Depression and World War II, socialist programs were in place across the world, from Social Security here in the United States to socialized medicine and education in Europe. When circumstances become dire, capitalism is no help. It isn’t goal of capitalism to improve the lives of regular people, and the much touted trickle down effect, if it materializes at all, is too slow. Socialist policies, on the other hand, are direct. If people can’t afford health care, health care is provided. If old people are dying in squalor and poverty, government pensions alleviate that. And so forth.
In America, even today, the virtue of self-reliance is our beacon, but it only works if people are getting a fair shake economically. It’s hard to be self-reliant when your job doesn’t pay a living wage. Economic hardship tends to be radicalizing, and solutions that in a more prosperous times could be dismissed now seem more attractive.
The rich know all this, and they’re equally aware that their own actions have led to our current state of affairs. Nevertheless, they’re digging in. The mere mention of socialist ideas is dangerous to them, because if people start to talk about socialism, they might actually want it, and that could lead us down a ruinous path — at least, for the super rich. They will employ all the scare tactics they can think up to convince people, not that capitalism is good but that socialism is evil. Meanwhile, Trump and the conservatives will run on an anti-socialist platform, keeping Democrats on the defensive as they struggle to counter the accusation without actually admitting that they’re nothing of the sort.
As for the rest of us, we can fall for the negative propaganda likely to emanate from both parties on this matter, or we can think for ourselves. But unless something is done to address the real and urgent needs of the poor and working class, the social problems engendered by poverty and despair will continue. Capitalism confronts social unrest with weapons and force. Socialism does so with social programs. Which way do we want to go? Should we have one or the other, or a combination of both? At long last, America seems ready to at least discuss that question.
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* From Donald Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address:
“We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom — and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair.
Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”
** From Nancy Pelosi, on a CNN Town Hall:
“We’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is.”
