Socialist Networking / 10-29-09

I conducted a little experiment earlier today. Used my friends. The willing ones. Although they might not have known what they were getting into.

I asked any facebook friends of mine to word associate with the term "socialism." Give me your first thought when you see or hear the word, I asked. And no repeating what the person before you said.

It seemed like a worthwhile little game. After hearing foaming-at-the-mouth politicians / commentators / Fox "News" pundits call out the Obama administration and the president himself for "socialism," always in a tone reserved for war criminals, I decided I should decode what they mean by "socialist." Or should I say, what they want other people to hear when they use the term.

I know what socialism actually signifies in theory - I've done a smattering of research on the topic, and there is the fact that I lived for under a president who belonged to the Socialist Party, under a government headed by a socialist prime minister, and for 10 years at that. (Granted, that was in France. But it counts.) The real definition of the word does not elude me. No, I wanted to know what it means in perception. Which is the only reality that counts, given the way the word has been tossed around in the past year.

Anyway, on with the facebook buddy results.

"control"
"Bread lines"
"De-individualization"
"communism (in drag)"
"Denmark"
"facebook"
"despair"
"healthcare"
"Communally mediocre, shared averageness, mutually middling."
"England... probably due to their socialized healthcare""
"homogeneity, incentiveless, boring, lowest common denominator, unwieldy, inertia, 'for your own good,' involuntary, lazy, shackles, one size fits all"
"dreamslayer, freeloaders, demotivator, entitlement, behemoth, fear, control, bureaucracy, big government, security over potential, lack of competition"
"Capitalism's Yin"

Lots of good stuff there. Let me give out some awards, before I pretend to attach some substance to this post.

Most Ironic
Ryan G. with "facebook"

Most Scenic (tie)
Rob R. for "bread lines"; Amy J. for "communism in drag"

Most In Need of Hug and/or Attention in General
Mason V. for "despair" and assorted other entries

Most Erudite
Kim F. for "mutually middling" and "de-individualization"

Most Continental (tie)
Angie B. and "Denmark"; Christine S. and "England"

Most Timely
Elena S., "healthcare"

Quickest Draw
Noah S. with "control"

Best In Show
Matt L. with "Capitalism's Yin"

The short of it: Socialism appears to get generally a bad rap in the highly representative and oh-so diverse subset of humans known as "John F.'s bored thirtysomething facebook friends of mostly Caucasian descent, many of whom live in one of the reddest states in the union."

So if the cries of "Obama's a socialist!" are aimed exactly at people afraid of socialism creeping into public policy, that sounds like an effective tool. The accuracy of the charge is irrelevant. The tactic appears sound. As long as you're trying to rile up the troops.

(*Tangent Warning* By the way, folks using "socialist" as an insult are of course following in a long tradition of misuse of the word. Who can forget the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? The bad guys from the Cold War get double points for using two misnomers in the name of their country. Republics? Not so much. Socialist? Puh-leeze. They could have done us all a favor and called the whole thing the Flimsy Union of Communist Kremlin Egomaniacal Russian Sociopaths, although that would have looked really bad on their sports uniforms. My real-life favorite: The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.)

Amy J. touches tangentially on this semantic issue with the "in drag" comment. As evidenced by 30 seconds of research, communism and socialism differ substantially, but socialism sounds less threatening, so purportedly Marxist governments embrace it for their public face. It's more benign. Less incendiary. (Unless Sean Hannity is using it.) And while it's true that Chucky Marx himself envisioned socialism as a bridge to communism, which makes it fair to call socialism a kind of communism in disguise, or a communism-lite, that's not the way it's played out historically in Western Europe, where socialist governments have coexisted with capitalistic market forces for decades.

Which brings us to Matt L.'s delectable image of socialism as the Yin to capitalism's Yang. And so it has been in our nation's history. While we let the free market do its thing in many areas, we also have redistributed wealth as long as taxes have existed. Not with the aim of bringing about perfect equality between the rich and the poor, or of ushering in a worker's paradise, but with the notion that government intervention is sometimes necessary to rein in the excesses of unbridled capitalism. I present to you the IRS, Medicare, the coming shape of health care reform and FDR's body of work. Oh, and the FCC, the FEC, the FDA, food stamps, Medicaid, the estate tax, and a gwillion other things.

Just as the Yang would cease to exist without the Yin, and vice versa, our democratic society would come apart at the seams without the key socialistic principle of "public control of productive capital and natural resources." It's imperative that certain amounts of capital and resources be controlled by the government. So they can be managed not for profit, but instead redistributed out of compassion for our poorest and most helpless segments of our population.

On the other hand, clearly the state may not control all capital, unless that government's goal is to enrich its leaders while paving the way for an economic meltdown.

We've come to the time for a brief definition of socialism, so I visited that Wiktionary place, whose definition neatly mirrors the Webster's one, and happens to be the clearest one I could drudge up: "Any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making, and public control of productive capital and natural resources." Terrifying stuff. Economic security for all citizens. Power not concentrated among the few, but spread among the many. Safeguards in place to prevent the rape of the environment. Gotta steer clear from that anti-American madness.

I'm all out of sarcasm. So I'll leave you with this bonus fun fact: Bernie Sanders, the independent junior senator from Vermont, describes himself as a democratic socialist.