Lions and Tigers and Socialists, Oh My!
I saw a piece (”Socialism, Boo, Hiss, Repeat“) in the March 1st New York Times that I want to both highlight and say a few words about.
Mark Leibovitch, writing from Washington, seeks to highlight the Right’s increasing focus on one word — socialism — as their brickbat of choice. The first of several comments I found useful put things in historical context:
“The right would use ‘socialist’ against Franklin Roosevelt all the time in the 1930s,” said Charles Geisst, a financial historian at Manhattan College in the Bronx. “To hear him referred to as Comrade Roosevelt during that period was not unusual.” But while socialism is being invoked repeatedly now, Mr. Geisst said, it is a less potent slam than it once was.
Hmmm. Didn’t do a whole lot of good to repeat the phrase then, either. Did it Repubs? That must be why the Republican Party didn’t recover until the 1950’s — and only then by fielding a relatively CENTRIST, public-works-oriented candidate for president.
Leibovitch also makes clear that the Right simply doesn’t understand what it’s talking about:
“I think this country could use a good debate on what goes on in places like Sweden, Norway and Finland,” said Mr. Sanders, saying that notions like universal health care, more funding for education and a greater tax burden on the wealthy have accessible models in those countries.
and if it does, it isn’t willing to discuss definitions enough to realize why the word doesn’t hold much weight anymore.
Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, denounced “European-style socialism,” in his speech at the conference on Thursday, the jeers from the crowd did not exactly signal an openness to debate it on the merits.
Or for that matter, any eagerness to differentiate the Swedish, Soviet and San Francisco flavors.
“The word is most resonant in places where no one is going to discriminate between the various meanings of the term,” Mr. Geisst said.
But that lack of willingness to actually discuss — and instead simply use socialism as a brickbat — can be turned to our advantage.
Frankly, I’m not real upset at being called a socialist — especially as I’m willing to define the word, which is as an economic system that takes the hard edges, and even some of the selfishness, off of capitalism, and adds back in their place a measure of economic security. And better health, lower stress, more vacation, and a SIGNIFICANTLY longer lifespan.
• Sweden, Denmark and Finland rank 2, 3, 4 in Child Well-being. (Economist) USA ranks 20th.
• USA spends 15.4% of income on health care. Denmark, 9.7% and Finland, 9.1%. Sweden didn’t make the list, which cut off at 8.2%
• And yet lifespans: Sweden, 80.9 years; Finland, 79.8; Denmark 78.3, and USA, 76.2.
• Economist gave Denmark the HIGHEST “business environment” score, while Finland tied for third. United States finished sixth, just ahead of Sweden (all of these on two different scales: looking forward to 2011, and looking back to 2002.)
• Meanwhile, Norway finished with the highest (non-oil country) percentage of budget surplus as percent of GDP (16th overall), with 16.7%. Finland finished 35th with a SURPLUS of 4.9% of GDP, Denmark 39th with 3.4%. Last I checked, the capitalist bastion of the USA was running number rather more in the negative …
I could go on (and I’ll mention one more, Human Development Index, which Norway takes #1 with 96.5. Sweden 95.1, USA 94.8, tied with Finland) but I think you get the point. You take care of your people, they produce better. (If that’s the only reason you can think of, well …) We’re not exactly outperforming these “horrible socialist” countries. Perhaps that’s why the Republicans done’t want to discuss them. They’d rather count on the ignorance that stems from their underfunded education systems.
I think for me, it comes down to an almost sound-bite worthy pair of comments. When someone tries to back us into the corner with the word socialism, simply remind them as follows:
1. Socialism is an ECONOMIC SYSTEM. Lying republican hacks will have you believe it’s a political system. It’s not. They’ll tell you this because then, and ONLY THEN, can they make you think that “going socialist” will make this country LESS democratic, less of a democracy.
2. Personally, and this is really pretty tightly connected with point 1, I frankly believe that socialism is much MORE compatible with democracy than is capitalism.
No need to explain it any further than this, unless they’re open-minded enough to want to know more. (And then you’d better have studied up, which is beyond the ken of this post.)
If you REALLY want to get in a conservative’s face about this — and this is most likely to work if (s)he’s tight with the Christiban — ask them which economic system their “Christ” would have been more comfortable with. Yeah — the guy who told the rich that the ONLY WAY into the Kingdom of Heaven was to re-distribute the wealth. No, not other people’s wealth, their own wealth.
Let’s be sure to pound this out. Let’s not slink away when we’re called socialists — any more than we did in the last election when the Right tried to sully the wonderful word “liberal.” Let’s not just be proud to be called socialists (even if that doesn’t necessarily encapsulate our beliefs 100%), let’s be willing to argue the virtues a bit.
Hunh? No, not in the academic sense.
I don’t mean that we need to be whipping out our dog-eared copies of Das Kapital. No. Rather, we need to study up, as Rep. Sanders indicates, on the virtues of countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden. Let’s remind willing (and unwilling) listeners what happens when you put more money into education and health care. Let’s remind them how disposable income actually RISES when members of the oligarchy return some of their obscene wealth — wealth skimmed, a few tenths of a percent at a time, from the annual raises of the workers without whom they’d still be working out of a garage. That “a rising tide lifts all boats” — and that we’d rather swim with a slowly rising tide than dodge ice-cold drops of trickle-down. (You could always remind them that one of Saddam Hussein’s favorite torture methods (like Cheney’s, evidently) involved putting the subject in a room with pipes in the ceiling — pipes made leaky with tiny holes drilled inches apart. Subjects were slowly worn down by the constant drip of icy water from these pipes. There was never a dry space. That’s what I think of when I hear trickle down.)
If we do, we’ll definitely have the edge, since it’s pretty clear that the Right can only spit back what’s been pre-chewed and dribbled into their mouths.
Let’s use the word as a chance to show in bolder relief some of the harsher aspects of the sort of freedom-theiving raw capitalism we’ve had shoved down our throats as a nation for twenty of the last twenty eight years. Let’s see where that’s led us.
Let’s remember that they’ve tried this before. The only time it worked before — except perhaps in their highly revisionist histories — is when we bent over and let them spank us with it under Clinton. I don’t think we want to see that again. We’ve all worked too hard and lost too much.
So go ahead. Call me a socialist if you like. Cold-hearted oligarchic capitalist.
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