Writing in Commonweal, David Bentley Hart debunks the myths about socialism.
I graduated high school in 1956 and was politically aware during high school and college. I remember McCarthy-style Republicans denouncing every government program as “socialism,” which was the surepath to Communism and Stalinism. I grew up in Texas, where that overheated rhetoric was common. These days, I wonder if we have regressed to the toxic 1950s, as Republicans decry every social welfare program, every effort to reverse climate damage, every proposal to tax billionaires, as “socialism.” Thus I read and enjoyed this article.
Hart writes:
Not long ago, in an op-ed column for the New York Times, I observed that it is foolish to equate (as certain American political commentators frequently do) the sort of “democratic socialism” currently becoming fashionable in some quarters of this country with the totalitarian state ideologies of the twentieth century, whose chief accomplishments were ruined societies and mountains of corpses. For one thing, “socialism” is far from a univocal term, and much further from a uniform philosophy. I, for instance, have a deep affection for the tradition of British Christian socialism, which was shaped by such figures as F. D. Maurice (1805–1872), John Ruskin (1819–1900), Charles Kingsley (1819–1875), Thomas Hughes (1822–1896), F. J. Furnivall (1825–1910), William Morris (1834–1896), and R. H. Tawney (1880–1962), though I have also been influenced by such non-British social thinkers as Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944), Dorothy Day (1897–1980), and E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977). None of these espoused any kind of statist, technocratic, secular, authoritarian version of socialist economics, and none of them was what we today think of as “liberal.” And yet their “socialist” leanings were unmistakable.
Moreover, just because a totalitarian regime happens to call itself socialist—or, for that matter, a republic, or a union of republics, or a people’s republic, or a people’s democratic republic—we are under no obligation to take it at its word. What we call “democratic socialism” in the United States is difficult to distinguish from the social-democratic traditions of post-war Western Europe, and there we find little evidence that a democracy becomes a dictatorship simply by providing such staples of basic social welfare as universal health care. At least, it is hard not to notice that the social-democratic governments of Europe have always gained power only by being voted into office, and have always relinquished it peacefully when voted out again. None of them has ever made war on free markets, even in attempting (often all too hesitantly) to impose prudent and ethically salutary regulations on business. Rather than gulags, death camps, secret police, arrests without warrant, summary executions, enormous propaganda machines, killing fields, and the like, their political achievements have been more in the line of the milk-allowances given to British children in the post-war years, various national health services, free eyeglasses and orthodonture for children, school lunches, public pensions for the elderly and the disabled, humane public housing, adequate unemployment insurance, sane labor protections, and so forth, all of which have been accomplished without irreparable harm to economies or treasuries.
Libertarians and their conservative ilk refer to the northern European countries, which are government-regulated capitalist countries (Denmark, Finland, et. al.), as being Socialist States!” as a smear. If they actually called them what they were … “highly government-regulated capitalist countries,” they would soon get this question thrown their way: “Why can’t we have that kind of capitalism?”
Anyone who thinks the American economy isn’t highly regulated hasn’t tried to start a business. You’d be surprised at the sheer volume of red tape involved.
We are definitely back in the 1950s with rampant McCarthyism and red baiting going on 24/7 nonstop. All you hear from these dumbed down indoctrinated Trump zombie voters is socialism, socialism, socialism, socialism, socialism, ad nauseam. And many of these people who decry socialism are recipients of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. The level of willful stupidity in this country is staggering.
I have to laugh at these flag waving super patriots who recite the socialistic Pledge of Allegiance, written by the Christian Socialist, Francis Bellamy.
Joe Biden, of all people, is being portrayed as a socialist??!!! It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic.
In Florida conservatives have been portraying Biden as a socialist. They have been trying to turn Cuban and Venezuelan Americans against the Democrats by calling them socialists.
The word socialist is a very loaded one to many uneducated people in this country. They associate it with communism. Biden has successfully steered clear of using the word socialism to describe his plans. Instead, he has described what services he intends to provide for working families without a label attached. Most Americans support stronger social safety nets, but many of them eschew the term “socialism” to describe a collective social service.
Americans of Cuban descent don’t need Republicans to point out that Dems are socialists. Americans of Cuban descent already know that.
Do Americans of Cuban descent know that Republicans are fascists?
Loved that piece. I recently had an exchange with someone who is educated and when on a tirade about “hating socialism” and didn’t understand the individual’s grievance was actually about inefficiency and corruptions in a “socialist” nation. I would add a couple of things. Don’t forget Frances Perkins, arguably the person most responsible for the substance of the New Deal (and whose named building is being desecrated daily by Department of Labor). And–for you, Bob–Willy Brandt! While I don’t claim to be a biblical scholar, I think the essence of socialism can be found in Luke 6:31.
The New Deal lengthened and deepened the Great Depression.
For one example, the NYC DSA uses “progressive stack” in its meetings. That means if a bunch of people raise their hands to speak, questions will be addressed in reverse order of intersectional oppression. E.G., trans women of color (presumably excluding Asians) get to speak first. Black women of color get to speak next. And so on, with white men going last.
I’m in favor of strong social welfare safety nets for all. I’m not interested in any group that institutionalizes the primacy of group identity. I identify as a moderate.
Gulags, death camps, secret police, arrests without warrant, summary executions, enormous propaganda machines, killing fields, and the like will not come from democratic socialists but from the Alt Right killing machine that some conservatives started building back in the 1960s, and then there is the danger and insanity of Trumpism and his AR-15 totting supporters.
If Trump stays in power, the justification his extreme right forces will use to throw us in camps without arrest warrants and execute us by the millions (just because we didn’t vote for Trump or dare to speak out against him through social media) will be to defeat the evils of socialism defined by them without any evidence.
Trump and his base does not need evidence to find someone guilty and execute them. All they have to do is think/say someone is guilty and we are dead.
Wish I had time to write more here. Just want to say how thoughtful and erudite this essay is. I can hear the response from the opposition now: a series of meaningless grunting sounds.
The author recounts the horrors of Communism. Fair enough.
But let’s admit that the benevolent capitalist is a grim fairy tale. Allow me to illustrate With the case of the continued capitalist exploitation of the Congo which began in earnest with ri advent of the inflatable bicycle tire and the hunt for cheap rubber, continues its deadly course to this day.
Communism in its socio-political expression has at times caused great human and ecological suffering. Any good communist is quick to admit as much, not least because communism is an unfinished project that depends on the recognition of its real and tragic mistakes.
But communists are not the only ones who have to answer for creating human suffering. Far from being a friendly game of world competition, capitalism, Marx argued, emerged through the privatization of what was once public, like shared land, a process enforced first by physical violence and then continued by law.
“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property,” Marx and Engels say to their bourgeois detractors. “But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.”
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/07/23/catholic-case-communism