Do socialist politics have a future in the United States?

Great Debates
41

From Olentzero

[/quote]
So you regard the creation of socialism as the task of the middle class and those above? The ruling class is well aware of the fact that it enjoys its position in society precisely because there is a working class - it’s their labor that enriches the bosses.
[/quote]

I’ve always looked at it the other way around…those ‘bosses’, through their abilities, guts, brains, and will, CREATE the jobs for your poor working class guys. If not for them, those rich bosses sitting about smoking cigars lit with $100 bills, where would we be? I can probably guess what your answer might be, but my thought (and a lot of other Americans think this way too) is…Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. Now, those are full communist powers, true, but a lot of Americans see socialism as a step down that road, and it seems that you do too (i.e. you see it as a revolution, all or nothing).

There will always be class tensions. In the Soviet Union there were…in China, North Korea and Cuba there ARE. I’m not even sure thats necessarily a bad thing, these tensions. It gives people something to aspire for, to work for, to dream about. As long as it IS possible to change your class, from the lowest to the highest…and it IS possible in America to do that.

My thoughts, Brainglutton, are that socialism in America, and the liberal left (two different things here) have a moderating effect on the country. This effect has, IMO, been a good thing. Its gotten a lot of the excesses and abuses out of a pure capitalist system. However, I don’t think socialism, per se, will ever be as strong a political force here as the Democrat and Republican parties. There is class tension here (as well as racial tensions), no doubt, but the relief valve for that pressure, so to speak, is the fact that most Americans BELIEVE that they CAN change their class.

On our healthcare: I don’t think many Americans WANT to pay the kind of taxes that our European brothers and sisters pay to get universal type health care. I think most (working class) people, while maybe not happy, are at least content with the system we have where industry picks up part of the tab, and we pick up part of the tab…and pay less in taxes. If I’m wrong about this, show me the cites and I will be glad to look through them. This is IMO, based on conversations I’ve had with friends and such, and my own experiences. As to health care for the truely poor, who have no means to get such care at all…well, I’d have to say that IF there are enough people that truely can’t get any care at all, then that is a valid problem that needs to be addressed. My understanding is that, no matter how poor you are, if you are a citizen, you can get health care in the US. Is this not true?

You gave some background on yourself, so I will too. My family started off in this country very poor…as immigrants from Mexico (my grandmother, fathers side and mothers side), and greece (my grandfather, fathers side). NONE of my grandparents spoke english, and my fathers mother still doesnt speak it very well (she speaks mostly spanglish). My father and mother grew up on the south side of Tucson, in a VERY poor area. For myself, I was raised lower middle class (my father joined the service to get an education), and my family has steadily climbed the social ladder in this country. English is my second language, but my father FORCED me to learn it…and to study. Now, my father is one of your bosses, owning his own company (and employing several hundred) and I’m an engineer also starting my own company (its an incredibly struggle…and at the moment I’m barely able to put food on the table at my own house, but I employ about 30 people).

Now that I’ve put you all to sleep, I’ll bid you adios…hope it wasn’t too dull. I wish I could write as smoothly and debate as well as some of the posters on this board. And as John Mace said earlier, what a great thread…its been VERY thought provoking for me.

-XT

42

Of course, Olentzero’s refusal to reject the revolutionary road to socialism is a perfect example of why the socialist movement in the US is split among hundreds of mutually antagonistic groups. Anyone who claims that violent revolution is not neccesary is suffering from false consciousness at the hands of the oppressors, and is therefore a class enemy. In fact, it is more important to fight these heretics who will undermine socialism from within than the fat-cat bourgeois who are destined to be brushed aside anyway.

Under Marxist thought attempting to ameliorate the plight of the workers is misguided, since the worse they have it under the capitalists the sooner capitalism will fall under its own contradictions. Changing the condition of the workers is impossible, so therefore helping them is waste of time. Instead energy should be used to build groups and educate the masses, so that when the time comes the workers will be ready. Since the time will come only when the workers have lost the last of their freedoms to the bourgeois, the worse things get the better.

43

clairobscur:

More specifically, the most accurate stereotype in the US would be that most Democratic politicians are lawyers. Republican politicians tend to come from business backgrounds.

I disagree strongly. First of all, it’s not a matter of people getting free heart surgery, it’s more subtle things. Too-frequent visits to the doctor are not a “minor” problem if they prevent people with legitimate health problems from getting in. Instead of getting the cheap, generic drugs, you get the identical brand name drug that costs twice as much. Instead of waiting to see if that inflamed knee gets better on its own, which it’s 90% likely to do, you stock up on drugs, “just in case”. There are plenty of ways to abuse the system that don’t involve frivalous surgery, and none of them can be classified as “minor” problems.

And so how do you deal with all of these abuses? You get more money - from the taxpayers. You hire more doctors - at taxpayer expense. Your nice “free” healthcare now costs considerably more than it used to, and while the poorest of the poor are doing better (they at least have some health care, provided they can get through the obscenely long waiting lists), the middle class are choking under a bevy of new taxes. Whee, the miracle of socialized medicine!
Jeff

44

Posted by Lemur866:

Umm . . . I’m confused, Lemur866. Are you for this line of thinking – “refusal to reject the revolutionary road to socialism” – or against it? If you’re for it, why do you cite it as the basis for the splitting and factionalism in American socialism? And if this is a problem, what, if any, is the solution?

Everybody, please keep your minds on the OP. I’m asking about the prospects for socialist politics in America, not about the prospects for socialist revolution, nor about the prospects for actually achieving socialism by non-revolutionary means. I’ve already explained why: A socialist movement could make a real difference in our society even if it brings us no closer to a socialist system. Then again, once it gets going, such a movement might indeed lead us down the road to socialism via either revolution or reform . . . but that’s for another thread.

45

Oh, and I slightly flubbed that quote from John Maynard Keynes. The actual quote, written in 1931, is, “How can I accept the [Communist] doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook [Das Kapital] which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry all the seeds of human achievement?” Charles Hession, John Maynard Keynes (New York: MacMillan, 1984), p. 224.

46

That’s a little strong, isn’t it? The revolution hasn’t been all that effective either. And, almost all of the progress that’s been made toward socialism has been made by the parliamentary model.

47

Actually, I think things like free health care, labor laws, public education, etc., are more appropriately called “progressivism” rather than “socialism”. Socialism is only appropriate in my opinion when you are dealing with nationilization of industry.

48

I dont think that Socialism has a future in the US.

My pet theory:
In Europe the plight of the lower classes has more repercussions to the higher classes so they are much more inclined to support higher taxes and are by proxy paying the lower classes not to do them harm. Europe does not enjoy the same amount of police presence, rent a cop presence and secured (barbed wire) neighbourhoods are non existant.

In the US the higher classes can buy their security and put real distance between themselves and the lower classes so they are less inclined to want to pay more taxes when they can more easily install another alarm system/move to a better neighbourhood/pay a rent-a-cop to check up on their house.
Just a theory. May not explain everything. Just another variable if valid.

49

Eh, I don’t really think that’s it. I think it has a lot more to do with Americans’ optimism. Most of us think we will be successful, and want to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

50

Don’t put words in my mouth, Lemur. I defy you to show where on this board I’ve ever said anything remotely close to this.

51

Again, this returns to the question of whether all the countries that get mentioned in threads like this - China, Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea, &c. &c. are in any way socialist or communist. I’ve touched on this subject numerous times. Instead of hashing it out once again, I refer the readers of this thread to this post of mine from February.

52

In many ways, Canada and Australia are the most similar counties to the United States, but neither of them revolted against England. They do not have the US socialpsychology of celebrating and revolution and independence. I don’t think this just affects our national spirit, I think it affects our ideas of personal individualism.

Adam Smith supposedly promoted “enlightened selfinterest,” but I thnk I read somewhere he didn’t use that term. But shouldn’t knowing accounting serve enlightened selfinterest? I’ve never heard capitalists, socialists or communists saying accounting be made mandatory in high school. I think that should be done. People hide information to keep others unenlightened.

“All warfare is based on deception.” - Sun Tzu

Let’s try Sun Tzu Antisocialism

Total War Forever, but with intelligence.

Dal Timgar

53

Well, no, I’m willing to concede they’re not. (In fact, I’d probably go farther than you and say that there’s no way they could have been. You and I have argued before, IIRC, whether or not the industrial state and the working class in pre-Revolutionary Russia was even developed enough to support socialism, let alone places like China or Cuba).

However, the record of revolution is still pretty empty. The IWW failed in this country, and attempts to do things like calling for general strikes tend to fail. What does tend to work, in liberal democracies, at least, is when the working class forms political parties and works to get elected. This way, the socialist becomes the worm in capitalism’s apple, devouring it from within. Admittedly, this sometimes leads to impurities, like voting for war credits, but it’s the only way, in a liberal democratic state, to make effective change.

54

We are semi-socialist. The US gov. spends over 1 trillion a year on socialistic policies like education subsidies, corporate subsidies, medicaid/medicare, social security, welfare, etc. The fact that there is no socialist party in the US doesn’t change this, the US still redistributes the countries wealth to look out for the poor and downtrodden, it just isn’t called socialism or done by a socialist party. The democrats are more or less socialist if you ask me. Then again so are the republicans, they just do it different.

Also, the fact that the US was seen as the backbone of the war against communism, combined with the fact that the soviet union was 10,000 miles away (instead of next door like it was in europe) may have contributed to the US’s distaste for socialism.

55

That’s hardly farther at all. I’ve been saying the exact same thing since I started coming to these boards. The post I linked to makes that abundantly clear.

If we have, I certainly didn’t argue from the position that it was. Socialism can’t be built in one country.

That depends on the circumstances under which a socialist group calls for it. Take another drastic measure - the execution of a head of state. If Lenin had called for the execution of the tsar in 1914 when patriotic fervor over the war was at its peak, no doubt the Bolsheviks would have lost what little support they did have at the time and become completely irrelevant. When they did call for the tsar’s execution in 1918, it caused barely a ripple of protest in Russia - because the population knew the tsar had been ultimately responsible for the butchery of World War I and served as a rallying point for the Whites during the Civil War. Nobody wanted him around. Similarly, calling for a general strike when the working class is just learning that it can fight back - to say nothing of figuring out how - is a crass mistake and is certainly doomed to failure. When the working class is organized, militant, and chafing at the bit for a fight, calling for a general strike is far more advisable and much more likely to meet with success.

Social crises are an intrinsic part of capitalism. The Great Depression wasn’t a consequence of widespread socialist and communist political activity, it was a catalyst for it. Organized socialist political parties don’t need to work to undermine capitalism to hasten its demise. They just need to prepare practically and theoretically for the crisi before it hits.

“Impurities”? Millions of working men conscripted into armies and sent to die on battlefronts that essentially didn’t move more than a few inches at a time. The economies of entire countries were ruined, plunging those lucky enough to survive into desperate poverty and want. Voting for war credits wasn’t an impurity, it was out and out treachery. The cause of the working class is in no way forwarded by sending them off to kill each other in what is nothing more than a meat grinder.

56

How would they? There would have been to be a serious lack of doctors for such a thing to happen. I really don’t think it’s an usual issue. There aren’t many people who enjoy going to the doctor’s.

As for how muwh it could cost, I don’t have any idea, but I asume you don’t , either. The only thing I can tell is that when the isssue of the cost of the public health system, and how to reduce it, is raised here, the problem of people goin’t unecessarilly to the doctor’s too often is essentially never mentioned, so it probably doesn’t appear as a major or costly problem. And as I pointed out in my post, too many visits might be a better thing than not enough visits, since it’s way cheaper to prevent a health issue than to cure it.

Also, and that too I already rote, what is the difference when you’re paying for your own insurance, or when it is provided by your employer? Why wouldn’t it result in you making too frequent visits to the doctor’s hence preventing people with legitimate health problems from getting in???

I don’t perceive in what way it would be different without a public healthcare system? For what reasons exactly doctors would prescribe less cheap generic drugs in a public healthcare system, exactly??? Actually, it would mostly be the contrary, since the government has a lot of influence on the health system. I began to write some examples, but I felt it wouldn’t be very intersting or even clear for people not accustomed to the french medical system.

What would prevent me from going to the emergency room every other night in the US, if I had no health coverage? Wouldn’t you need to hire more MDs? And who would pay? Err…the taxpayer, perhaps? Do you let people who don’t have health coverage die in the streets, in the US? If not, then, who exactly pays for this? Do you have some magic recipe making possible to give medical care to someone without anybody having to pay, on your side of the pond?

Sorry, but i vastly prefer people not having to worry about the cost, and getting medical care when they need it than them waiting too long and not only having more serious health problem, but also, since you’re very worried by this, a problem much more costly to fix (if it can be fixed)…and at whom’s expense will it eventually be fixed, according to you???

[quote]
Your nice “free” healthcare now costs considerably more than it used to, /quote]

First, I never stated it was a “free” healthcare, and only the staunch opponents of the healthcare system are pretending that people believe it’s free (If you want to know the exact amount is mentionned on everybody’s paycheck each month, here, since it’s based on a percentage of the salary, so I could tell you exactly how much it costed me say, last year, up to the last cent).

Second, yes, the public healthcare system does cost more than it used to. So does your own healthcare system. Both for the part which is paid for by private insurances, and for the part which is paid for…err…would it be by the american’s taxpayers? Could such a thing be remotely possible? And anyway, as you surely already knows since it has been debatted so many times here, it costs much more in the US than in other western countries (with public healthcare system) for extremely dubious results, in term of health, as you surely know. So your argument doesn’t hold water.

What “waiting lists” are you refering too? I never heard about a “waiting list”. As i already mentionned, the “waiting list” thing is a canadian and british phenomenon (And i suppose that since american people are quite familiar with these two countries, they assume that “waiting list” are an unavoidable consequence of a public healthcare system). There’s no waiting list here, and I don’t think there are any in Germany, Italy, Spain, etc…

And in the US, the middle class is chocking under a bevy of incredibly costly private insurances, and beside that, pay taxes to fund the haelthcare for elderly people, poor people, etc…

Should I make the same assumption about you that you did about me, and suspect you to believe that healthcare comes for free when it’s not fully paid by a public healthcare system?
And besides, the middle class, strangely enough, isn’t complaining about the existence of a public healthcare system. Actually, more like the contrary, since the support for it is overwhelming. I suppose people just can’t imagine that you can get a good and money-efficient healthcare system when it’s run by greedy private companies trying to make a buck at your expense :wink: , or perhaps they somehow suspect that in any instance, whether there’s a public system or not, they’ll eventually pay for other people’s healthcare with their tax money? :wink:

57

I’m going to call you on this.

This is one of the lies that causes people to dismiss hard-left socialists as fools. The Rosenbergs were executed for spying, not for opposing the US. Had they voiced themselves in the democratic fashion - published their beliefs, and stood up and been counted - then people could have supported them or not according to their political judgement.

But instead they spied for Russia, were caught, were tried, and were punished according to the laws democratically approved by the people of the US.

The idea behind socialism, the establishment of a safety net, is a good one. It is ultimately self-insurance: ‘One day, that might be me.’ But pitch that safety net too high and you get too many Free Riders. And I’ve yet to see freedom in a socialist state. Indeed the very basic tenet of socialism, ‘From each according to his ability’ is another definition of slavery.

58

Forgot a cite.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_SENT.HTM

59

It is true, Olentzero, that the socialist parties of Germany and France betrayed their basic political messages, and lost a lot of credibility, when they voted for war credits on the eve of World War I instead of standing firm for international proletarian brotherhood. But the American Socialist Party opposed entry into the war, and look what it cost them. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

In this connection, the modern Social Democrats USA are an interesting case. They not only supported the Iraq war, but if you review the most recent literature on their website (www.socialdemocrats.org), they seem to have developed the same attitude towards democracy (in the competitive, parliamentary sense) that Trotsky had towards socialism (in the Russian Bolshevik sense): military aggression is justified to spread it throughout the world. Of course, in the same literature the Social Democrats make clear that they are not out to do away with capitalism, not even gradually. Yet this organization is, indisputably, one of the three institutional heirs of the old Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas – the others being the Socialist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America, both of which opposed the Iraq war. Which of these, I wonder, now has the most publicly appealing message?

Of course, if you’re an orthodox Marxist, the politics of building a socialist movement are, strictly speaking, irrelevant to the end-goal. How many Marxists does it take to change a light bulb? None! The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution!

60

Oh, and how many Maoists does it take to change a light bulb? 100! One to screw in the new bulb, and 99 to chant, “Fight darkness!”