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Why is socialism such a scary word?
Casually Hardcore
Once an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered User regular
Once an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered User regular
https://youtu.be/vW32S19vp0kSo that's the typical response whenever you bring to the word 'socialism'. It's always Venezuela, high taxes, and communism.
But, they always forget about why Venezuela is the way it is. How the USA interfered in that country ploitics, and how there's many examples of socialism that is highly successful.
So how do get this Boogeyman imagery off of socialism? Why should socilists hide behind less scary terms like 'solicist-democrats'? Why should socilists rally behind the Democratic party when the Democratic party has shown time and time again that they have to real interest in pulling the nation left?
mod edit:
Let's keep discussion to talking about the broader ideas of socialism and how it's received in America, and skip the 10 page back and forth about the Democratic Party.
So It Goes on
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It's bad because people who have no interest in debating it have declared it bad, and either won't look closer at anything, or know better and are not arguing from a position of good faith.
*for some definition, depending on who you talk with, of course
This is generally because we have many examples of failed socialist systems and it's easy to point at the core ideology but very difficult to examine each case and its particulars, especially if you don't have a strong grasp of economics (I don't!). If you saw the bread lines and economic disaster that was Soviet communism, that's hard to forget. If you were around when millions were starving to death, or if your parents were around, it's hard to ignore. It doesn't matter that there are enormous differences between centralized Soviet-style communism and other forms of socialism, because those differences are technical and challenging to understand; the vast majority of people won't understand those distinctions. I don't feel comfortable trying to define them, personally.
On top of that, the line between the welfare state (the idea that a government is responsible for taking care of its citizens with social programs) and socialism has been very blurred. Welfare state policies are now considered "socialist," but there was a time when socialists genuinely thought the welfare state was a dangerous opiate offered to undermine socialist efforts with half-measures, because the people in power saw that there was an alternative to capitalism and became afraid.
isn't "the US meddled in politics, that's why the country failed" the standard conspiracy theory line that Chavez / Maduro supporters use to justify the disaster they made of the country?
Hell, we've got social welfare right now in the US. Even past the Medicare/Medicaid, unemployment, Pell Grants, and minimum wage. We've got exactly the kind of socialism that people are calling for, it's just gated behind military service. I get government healthcare, and government provided college. It isn't perfect, obviously, but it's a hell of a lot better than the nothing I would have without it and if you tried to take it away you'd have a few thousand vets on your doorstep to have words with you. Everyone who says it doesn't work is just being ignorant, willfully or otherwise.
The above is a problem because the vast majority of the left do not want Socialism, but they do support some Social Democratic policies. This is because America already has many such policies in place, such as welfare and the military.
However Republicans are currently trying very hard to tie Social Democrats (Capitalist) to Actual Socialism (not so much). So definitions and education become important.
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Define "socialism," please.
Because under the textbook definition (collective ownership of the means of production), countries that have attempted this on a wide scale for all (or most) industries have been colossal failures.
But in the US, we've perverted the definition of socialism to "literally any wealth redistribution or government involvement in markets at all" which obviously means that some socialism is a good thing.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Edit - notably, by this definition the European social democracies are not socialist systems, but capitalist systems with some socialist elements (which I think is an accurate descriptor)
Socialism Lite. You get the perks of keeping the robber barons away without the drawbacks of food shortages and expropriation because a free market setup with an overly generous welfare system like the Europeans have is still free market.
US history in South America is not pretty though Chavez/Maduro had a habit of using Post-Colonial politics to explain why they were fucking up and not developing the country turning it into a massive resource curse tragedy. Which is what is wrong with Venezuela not socialism.
Quick example of shit we did in the Venezuela and it isn't good. But it is a standard story in the US across pretty much the developing world.
Venezuela shouldn't be brought up in a conversation about socialism or mix market economies with oil money because it was really neither of those outside political rhetoric. A better example in the Western world is Norway.
Now breaking down the historical reasons why socialism is a bad word, just look above. I saw them mentioned, mostly the Cold War but also the fact socialism tends to be an antithesis to laissez faire economics that the use rhetorically supports.
In reality all modern democracies and much of the developed world are socialist mixed market economies. It is more just to what degree they lean. The use rhetorically just likes to not admit it because the difference between socialism, communism, and other planned economies are not really taught in the US very well and instead lumped together.
Raw capitalism, communism, social democracy, socialism and anarchy all share some traits with eachother, along different axes.
And most of them feature some venue for influence to coalesce unchecked into few hands.
I would like to know more about this. When and where?
Isn't this is pretty much just how social progress occurs in a capitalist society.
The modern welfare state is credited to Otto von Bismark. He used the police to administer payments, and it was used as a tool of social control to isolate and literally starve radical socialists out of their communities.
Since I'm not an ideological socialist, I am comfortable with what works, but I do understand the argument that government-administered income is the 100 percent opposite of worker control of the means of production. One is a handout from politicians tied to regulations and requirements said politicians desire, while the other is recognized legal ownership of a part of the economy with all the power, rights, and responsibilities that entails. As Bismark showed, it is quite possible to create a welfare scheme in a right-wing framework.
I see this sentiment today in some socialist communities.
If you want a historic example, try Karl Marx's 1850 Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League. (Emphasis mine.)
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The Cold War in the U.S. is actually kind of tame compared to the history of brutality, murder, imprisonment, and public execution on bogus charges that made up the American political response to socialism in the late 19th century to the Great Depression. If anything, the Cold War saw a more balanced approach where attacks on communists were matched with socialist policies like the expansion of the New Deal and the War on Poverty, themselves formulated as a response to communist propaganda pointing out the racism and poverty endemic in the West.
I don't think Venezuela is any sort of proof that socialism can't work, but it does say something about socialist communities that a lot of socialists pointed to Venezuela as a model even when the many problems that would come to a head were becoming more and more obvious. It isn't just heavy reliance on oil. A lot of the government actions that various socialist groups admired were failures that made things worse.
The populace is still practical, though. An American is happy to embrace socialist tendencies in the wake of any sort of free-market driven economic recession or cataclysm. When did FDR gain power, for instance? Why was there a blue wave in 2008? Etc. Americans themselves aren't resistant to socialism when the benefits to them are immediately tangible. They DO resist it, however, when they feel things are fine. If you take the mentality of my first paragraph into consideration, these two positions aren't as contradictory as they appear.
When the excesses of capitalism get out of control, even the everyday American celebrates government expansion.
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If Venezuela is proof socialism doesn't work, then Russia is proof that capitalism is a failure...
Or, individual nations have individual circumstances that aren't covered when you debate at the level of a six-year-old.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Except, I don't think anyone, at any point, has held Russia up as an example of "Capitalism Done Right"?
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However, this was not always the case. Early socialism was often libertarian (the old meaning of the word, not the Ron Paul meaning) or anarchist, with the state being regarded more as an inherently oppressive part of the political-economic system that should be abolished rather than as a semi-neutral tool that should be taken over for the purpose of changing that system. The split between the "red" and "black" strains of socialism - or between Marxists and anarchists - is very important to how socialism developed and how it is perceived today. The climax of the split between the more libertarian/anarchist and more authoritarian/statist branches of the socialist movement was at the Hague Congress in 1872. By the Second International, Marxists were becoming dominant, anarchists were being excluded from meetings, and the older, libertarian idea of socialism started losing influence. Your post reminded me of this because Bismarck is said to have quipped:
In other words, Bismarck regarded the socialist movement as more dangerous to the ruling classes when it combined opposition to capitalism with opposition to the state; the red/black split was, by that logic, a boon to the capitalists. I pretty much share Bismarck's perspective here - "Marx ruined socialism" isn't something you hear very often but it's kind of how I see it.
We should probably separate out the sub-sections of it. It is always against the ruling class almost by default mind.
Oh, there was a LONG period when you could find a lot of pundits, economists, and politicians saying just that. The oligarchs and Yeltsin/Putin were our allies who were embracing capitalism while getting stupid rich for a lot longer than they have been the Big Bads of a new Cold War, and right wingers the world over would really love for things to go back to the days when they could just praise Russia while collecting the checks.
He had a lot of fans from what I could tell and you could find pieces talking about how much he had improved Venezuela in pretty mainstream magazines like the "Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle" article in Slate.
Can we agree that socialism is collective ownership and regulation of the means of production? That a fully socialist state would regulate or own all the means of production while a fully capitalist system would equate to a fully private ownership of a the means of production. And depending on our individual leanings means how far we are on the spectrum of Capitalist vs Socialist.
Mostly, it is right wingers claiming that Democrats or some such love socialism, so they must love Venezuela. It's one of those things that looms large in the right wing imagination, while most left-oriented Americans just don't spend any time thinking about the place.
Anyway, its terrifying to a lot of people, particularly people like Megan McCain, because they're talentless bores who's station is life is premised on their inheritance. We have a lot of those kinds of people in power.
Or praise from Bernie Sanders.
Problem is the modern usage of socialism, outside some circles in the US, does not mean this and instead means mixed economies.
There are no real fully capitalistic societies and really no purely socialistic economies and no countries moving towards either.
Slate's editorial mandate is "Be controversial." It's both why you shouldn't take any article in it as a sign that even the writer supports the thesis, and why Slate went from a pretty mainstream web publication to a peripheral clickbait factory. Nobody trusts a professional contrarian.
Canada is a very successful socialist nation
Canada is a very successful capitalist nation
Both are true statements based on context. We should agree on a definition before going forward.
Capitalism, even when its working as intended, grinds along on top of a million human ball bearings of misery and it crashes to routinely that its cyclical failure is just regarded as a natural force. And even after all that capitalist countries can and have collapsed and descended into near barbarism. So even assuming all the worst of what is said about socialism and Venezuela, so what?
Economies, like gender, exist in a spectrum, at one end we have completely communal society where nobody owns anything and everything is held in common, and at the other end we have robber barons and laissez-faire capitalism.
When capitalist talks about socialism, they probably does directly to soviet Russia, when socialist talks of capitalism, they probably think of laissez-faire.
Socialism is a scary word (for some) because most people (who fear it) don't understand what is meant when those who are socialist say it, partly because of generations of propaganda, partly because language is fussy and people expect the worst.
And some people do understant, but find it profitable to pretend that word means something it is not.