In the desperate final days of the McCain-Palin campaign, one of the leading themes was that Barack Obama is that all-purpose bogeyman, a … SOCIALIST! Well, he’s not. I can speak with authority because I am. And I don’t know a single socialist who thinks he is. This is as good a time as any to explain why not.
To begin, what do people think they know about us? That we want the government owning, or at least controlling, everything? Not really. Most contemporary democratic socialists have given up on state-ownership as a major strategy. Although we don’t yet have a detailed blueprint, most of us are thinking about employee-ownership, or some other form of “stakeholder” control, with government only taking on a few more functions than today. The important point is that we want the economy to be under “social” control, run democratically, by society — in practice, by the working people who make up the great majority of society — for the good of the whole community, rather than the profits of a few. That’s why it’s called “social-ism” — as opposed to “capital-ism,” where the owners of the capital call the shots.
For the last thirty years, the American people have been subjected to an unbroken drumbeat of propaganda — lavishly funded, of course, by those making the big bucks — designed to convince them that the free market solves all problems. The truth is, it creates them. Businesses range the globe hunting for the cheapest wages, lowest taxes, and loosest regulations. The result is an unrelenting “race to the bottom,” in which the living standards of working people, the health and safety of the community, and the very environment that sustains us are sacrificed to the pursuit of private profit. That’s not a distortion of the market — that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Inevitably, the people who are getting hurt organize to fight back. Sometimes this resistance takes negative forms, such as scapegoating minorities and seeking to impose religious beliefs on the community. The more positive, “progressive” forces, seeking to confront the harm caused by unregulated capitalism directly, fall along a continuum from reforming “liberals” to more radical “socialists.”
Our programs are not identical. We, for example, generally prefer single-payer healthcare to fiddling with the private-insurance system. But there is enough overlap that liberals and socialists can work together on an immediate program. So what’s the difference? Liberals, who think the system is basically good, see their program as managing capitalism to keep it running. We, on the other hand, see it as part of a complex process of extending social control. So when the incoming Obama Administration calls for increased government regulation and “spreading the wealth around,” they are not being socialists, just intelligent capitalists.
What’s the alternative? The free-market fanatics, who see taxation as theft and every interference with private moneymaking as a human-rights violation, will just run the country further into the ground. That might be good for us, but it’s unlikely to lead to anything positive.
We don’t have to resolve the difference between liberals and socialists to get a common program through. If the liberal program succeeds, capitalism will be saved by reform, and Americans will end up with high wages, improved social services, and health, safety, and environmental protections. That’s not everything we socialists want, but neither is it to be sneezed at. We really do want those reforms — and not just as a prelude to further change. But if we’re right — if reform doesn’t solve the problems or if short-sighted capitalist resistance blocks it — many liberals, moderates, and even stray conservatives will be ready to look at more radical solutions.
That doesn’t necessarily mean government ownership. There are any number of ways to establish democratic control of the economy, and whatever we do will involve compromise, trial, and error. We could build a new economy around worker-, consumer-, and community-owned enterprises, operating in the market, with the government only setting broad goals, regulating abusive behavior, and providing selected social services. The key will be to balance government and market, equality and incentives. The market enables the community to find the most efficient use of resources; left entirely to itself, it produces inequality, health and safety dangers, and environmental damage. Democratic government is good at defining common goals; if it tries to do too much, it creates stagnation. We need individual incentives to get people to innovate and put themselves out for the community; too much individual reward creates extreme inequality, which is destructive to democracy.
Where will we strike the balance? I have no idea. As long as political democracy prevails, we won’t have to. There will be a political party in favor of more redistribution, regulation, and political control and another in favor of more incentives and market determination. (Let’s call them “Democrats” and “Republicans,” respectively.) They will rotate in power, and whenever things get pushed too far in one direction, the other party will come back in. The result will be a dynamic balance that should do the trick.
So in the end, liberals aren’t socialists and we’re not them. But both sides can work together without dishonesty, naiveté, or loss of integrity — on either side. And we are going to need each other in the months and years ahead, as powerful right-wing forces try to push the Obama administration back from its campaign promises. We must be ready to keep the campaign going and maybe even go into the streets to campaign for national health care, peace, strong unions, environmental protection, and the rest.
These should be some exciting times.
