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Socialism? Not Quite, Say the Socialists
My friend Myrtle Kastner, proud campaigner for peace and economic and social justice, has, she suggests, been "quite amused" by the health care debate that reached the end of the beginning with President Obama's signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23.
What's so amusing?
"As I understand it, we have taken over the country," says Kastner, who is a proud member of the Milwaukee local of the Socialist Party. "The Republicans in Congress, the talk radio, all through the health-care debate, they've been saying its proof that the Socialists are in charge. Can you believe it?"
There really are socialists in America, unapologetic adherents of the social gospel of Norman Thomas and the "an-injury-to-one-is-an-injury-to-all" working-class populism of Eugene Victor Debs - and, of course, of the remarkable Milwaukee tradition that produced Socialist Mayors Emil Seidel, Dan Hoan and Frank Zeidler, as well as the nation's first Socialist congressman, free-speech champion Victor Berger.
Kastner celebrates the history of Socialism in Milwaukee, and keeps it alive with a steady schedule of meetings, lectures and, of course, the annual party picnic in a local park - No. 113, she notes, reminding any and all that the Milwaukee Socialists have been a steady presence on the American political landscape for more than a century. Maybe it was the early start that made the Milwaukee Socialists so successful - a success that earned international headlines one hundred years ago this April, when the party's endorsed candidates swept the city's 1910 municipal elections. Suddenly, the city that made beer famous had a Socialists school board, a Socialist city council and a Socialist mayor, Seidel, who appointed as his aide a young scribbler named Carl Sandburg.
They ran things so well that, for most of the next five decades, the good burghers of Milwaukee kept putting Socialists in charge until, finally, the last of the Socialist mayors, Zeidler, voluntarily stepped down in April, 1960. (A year later, an aging Sandburg, would read his poetry at the side of the nation's new president, John F. Kennedy, who like most presidents of the 20th century did not mind fraternizing with Socialists.)
It has been almost exactly 50 years since a capital "S" Socialist last ran a major American city, let alone anything more major.
But, now, a bemused Myrtle Kastner notes that her party appears to have taken complete charge of the U.S. government - or so House Minority Leader John Boehner, various and sundry sulking Republican politicians, and their amen corner in the media (led by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity) would have us believe.
What surprises Kastner is not merely the fact that the party, which sometimes has a hard time filling all the chairs at its meetings, organized the takeover without informing her - or, to her knowledge, any other Socialists.
What seriously surprises her is that the health-care reform legislation that's been passed by Congress would be characterized by anyone who knows anything about economics or politics or history as "socialist."
"I'm afraid it's not socialized medicine," she says of the plan, which maintains private health-insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and nursing homes - most of which saw their stock values rise after the legislation was enacted.
Indeed, the Socialist Party stands in opposition to President Obama's approach.
"This is not a healthcare reform bill," says Socialist Party USA co-chair Billy Wharton, "It is instead a corporate restructuring of the American healthcare system designed to enhance the profits of private health insurance companies disguised with the language of reform"
As the Socialists note:
The bill passed by the House (March 21) would mandate all Americans to purchase health insurance coverage or face a fine. It would also create health insurance exchanges, an idea crafted by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, where people would purchase insurance from private companies. Those not eligible for Medicaid but who still could not afford to purchase insurance would receive public funds from the federal government to purchase bare bones coverage insurance plans from private insurers.(Socialists) opposes this restructuring on the grounds that the mandates allow private insurers to use the coercive power of the state to enhance their private profits. Insurance credits will serve as a public subsidy to private companies. It is yet another case of public money that could be used for necessary social programs being funneled towards companies that engage in practices that are abusive and detrimental to the overall society.
Wharton argues, as would any self-respecting Socialist, that "public funds would be better spent in creating a national single-payer system. Democratic socialists see such a system of open access to care as one part of a larger transition toward making health-care a guaranteed human right for all."
That's a far cry from anything the Democrat in the White House has proposed. Indeed, as Wharton wrote in his recent Washington Post piece -- titled "Obama's No Socialist. I Should Know" -- "The funny thing is, of course, that socialists know that Barack Obama is not one of us. Not only is he not a socialist, he may in fact not even be a liberal. Socialists understand him more as a hedge-fund Democrat -- one of a generation of neo-liberal politicians firmly committed to free-market policies."
So Myrtle Kastner is amused, and perhaps a little thankful to Limbaugh, Beck and the others who keep talking about "socialism." She's hoping that young people, in particular, will want to learn more.
And what will she tell them?
"I know they call Obama's plan ‘socialist,'" says Kastner. "But if the point is to make sure everyone has health care and that costs are kept down, Socialists really could have come up with something better."
- Posted in
96 Comments so far
Show AllOne thing puzzles me. OK, many things puzzle me but this one is on the top of the list.
Why aren't the democrats refuting the label Socialist, why aren't they telling the people, nay, 'reassuring' the masses, that they are not socialists and that their policies are not socialist in any way, why don't they correct Beck and the rest of the right wing demagogues.
The Dems and Obama know they aren't socialist in any way.
Beck et al know they aren't.
The silence from the Dems is just odd.
If I called you a war mongering republican would you debate with me or refuse to acknowledge my accusations?
Keep in mind that if Obama refuted the socialist label being ascribed to Obamacare, the fascist characteristics of Obamacare would have revealed themselves, making many Obamabots very uncomfortable.
Don't I wish the democrats were Socialists. I would vote for them if they were.
In 40 years of voting I have never voted for a Republican and with each new election I have voted for fewer Democrats.
After seeing Democrats at both the national and local levels veal penned into supporting Obamacare, I will feel immoral voting for any Democrats in the future.
The greens, socialists and other third party candidates will heretofore get all of my votes.
Every time you or I vote for a Democrat or Republican we are contributing to the problem, not the solution.
Every time we vote for the lesser of two evils, both evils become more evil.
Welcome!
Hey, RichM!
on another thread, I raised the notion of violence, corruption and blackmail being tools of 'bad' people, while 'good' people struggle to achieve via earned money or the justice system...
in your profiling of republicans and democrats, it seems you're dancing around this same idea...
Republicans use whatever means necessary, while Democrats have to be nice...
could this be not only to assist with the ongoing legislative joke that is our national congress, but also to further the illusion of the Democrats representing 'good' people, among which, of course, so many constituents would like to consider themselves?
if the Dems used dirty tactics, would they endanger their appeal (whatever that may be) to the left? Even if not, would this be their argument?
the illusion of choice facilitates the controlling of choice...
Sioux Rose
RICH M: Just yesterday while biking with my conservative boyfriend I mentioned Adam's first wife, Lillith. He'd never heard of this. I was trying to place a wedge between him and his too-faith-based belief in the Bible. In any case, during dinner last night as fate would have it, The History Channel happened to air a program about the Bible and its analogy to an earlier creation myth taken from Mesopotania. The program then went on to explain about Adam's first wife, Lillith... nice little nod from the universe in the form of that "coincidence," or "omen of agreement" as I prefer to term it.
The idea of sharing power requires balance. If we are going to speak of two halves, then this dualistic designation arises first and foremost from the cleaving of life forms into the two genders. Astrological theory broadens these two halves into 6 Yin (feminine) and 6 Yang (masculine) potential expressions, or archetypal forms.
The premise of naked self-interest, me-first, might makes right, and a universe extending from the infantile ego resonates with Mars, the principle of Aries, the first-born son, basis for worship (as the only deity) in patriarchal religions.
Its co-partner and intended EQUAL, a form of Lillith (as opposed to Eve), is Venus. Ruling Libra, the sign that not only opposes Aries to serve as its counterbalance, but also the one that signifies law and diplomacy (as opposed to war and aggression), represents collective interest, the wellbeing of society as a whole.
While many in this forum hold a prejudice against my area of expertise (because they have never studied the subject, and likely have internalized a prejudice taken for academics that cloaks its logic as mere superstition), the basic bottom line explanations for Venus and Mars happen to fit like a glove over your descriptions for Republicans and Democrats, at least as their former brands suggest. Not only have they morphed into one pro-corporate party, they both tend to support and fund war... meaning, they exemplify the bankrupt ethos depicted by Mars rules!
Oh, I'm not prejudiced at all. I know religion and know apologetics quite well. I also know a logical fallacy and an ad hominem attack when I see one.
Not all life forms are sexed.
Was John Brown a bad man? Or the most moral man in the country as Thoreau suggested?
RichM - I like your theory. We really do need a third party. Maybe a Socialist Party?
I think it exists but only shows up on the ballot in a few states. What gives?
Hello Lord_buckley & Stanley,
Why don't we have a mass Socialist Party, or any mass third Party? Good question.
To answer it we need to go back to basic Marxism. Politics, and political parties, are SUPERSTRUCTURES. The BASE of these superstructures are economic and social relationships.
The two dominant parties are superstructures of the base of capitalism, and specifically of the leaders of the corporate structure; not only the companies themselves, but their associations: the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Bohemian Club, the Bilderburg Group, etc.
It follows then, that before we can have a mass socialist party, we first have to have a mass based social MOVEMENT. First of all a new union movement which is democratic and which believes in moving beyond capitalism, not just negotiating with it. In nineteenth century America, the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor believed in a "Co-operative Commonwealth" and encouraged strikers to set up their own workers' co-ops. (cf. John Curl's, "For All The People")
Allied with radical unions we will also need radical neighborhood associations, tenants unions, student movements, and even federations of radical churches, all of whom will be setting up different kinds of co-ops.
Some history? Before Marx, in the 1830's, there was a "Church of Communism" in London. And today in Brazil, the Landless Workers' Movement or MST. which has seized enough land for 1,000,000 people to farm on, has it's own "Christian Base Communities," and artists' associations. In the 1930's in California, Upton Sinclair's "End Poverty in California," EPIC, combined unions with pre-New Deal co-ops. In 1934 Sinclair won the Democratic primary for governor and ran on an openly socialist platform. (Party bosses and FDR deserted the state ticket, so they lost.)
Once we have built our own mass, democratic unions and communities, THEN we can begin to build a mass party which can compete with the big money. First, however, we have to study history and the world, so that we can teach each other how to organize. Social organizing is no guarantee of political power. But without it, our parties will remain vestigial.
Socialism and (other isms) that Ronny Raygun didn't like were heavily villified during the 8 years Raygun slept in the white house.
For example, Raygun eloquently criticized the "evil empire" at every opportunity.
Since so many Americans loved and love Raygun(he is more popular today than when he slept in the white house), the anti-socialist mentality that became epidemic in the US nearly 30 years ago continues to infect the US.
Laurence, that is an excellent food for thought. Just yesterday or the day before, I was hearing someone recommending the Green party and someone else replying recommending the Labor Party. Regardless of which progressive third party we get, there has to be a lot of self-confidence and teaming up. I might be getting confused but I think that there are too many small progressive independent parties scattered all over the country and this isn't helping anyone. I hear people say vote Green, vote Socialist, vote Labor, draft Nader in 2012 and vote for him, or even suggestions that we just pick any third party out there regardless of what their platform is. This is where I believe that failure starts and we need to unite every liberal and progressive third party out there and get people to build confidence in supporting them along with team confidence that they're out to fight win or lose.
Good analysis and true, I believe. Possibly implicit in what you say, the Democrats also understand on some level that they are not liberal (not to mention radical) and are destined to be tools of capitalism, enablers of the plutocracy.
If you know the book "Lord Jim", the Democrats are much like Jim. All they can achieve is stasis in situations that require radical action because what they actually are, as opposed to what they pretend to be, cannot be reconciled. The Republican corporatists (as contrasted with the Democratic corporatists) are like the brigand Brown in the final chapters; all energy, vengeance, etc. The end result is, of course, the good cop bad cop system.
Of course, I'm speaking of some idealized Democrat, not a simply venal creep out for what he or she can get. If the "Jims" would only get out of the way...but "in the way" is what they do.
Sioux Rose
RICH M: Thank you for your always well-reasoned, incisive posts. You add much to this forum of ideas.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
What RichM decribed is not the whole story. To understand why the Democratic Party moved so far so fast to the right over the last 30 years one must examine the soaring cost of Senatorial, House Representative and presidential campaigns over that period. Corporate media controls the cost of political campaigns because it sets the prices on political ads in newspapers, and on radio & TV.
At some point in the very early 1980s the Democratic Party's leaders faced a choice: (1) Carry out a protracted, messy and politically costly legislative, legal & media battle with the Republican Party over serious campaign finance reform including, most importantly, compelling broadcast licensees who use the people's airwaves to allow free air time on the those airwaves for election campaign debates and equal time for both Parties' political ads, or (2) Play it (dubiously) safe by moving to the right to co-opt and enact as many watered down Republican policies as possible while currying favor with corporate America as the more broadly appealing, socially liberal Party of the two now corporate political Parties--and the one most willing to cut dirty deals in order to keep steering the corporate campaign money their way.
After the formation of the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in 1986, the Democratic Party leadership chose the second path--the path of least resistance. To successfully emulate the Republicans they even bought into the previously Republican only, anti-regulatory, "free market" mythology of Milton Friedman and forgot decades of their own partisan & economic success courtesy of the economic policy ideas of the liberal New Deal economist John Maynard Keynes.
This right-ward Democratic Party trajectory is clearly revealed by the extreme contempt Republican's had for DLC poster-boy "Slick Willy" Clinton, which existed long before his affair with Monica Lewinsky was made public. The Republican impeachment attempt was just their revenge on Clinton for co-opting so many of their key policy goals and thus stealing their ideological fire. The GOP has reacted by tacking further and further to the far-right as the DLC-corrupted Democratic Party moves further to the right to keep their running-on-fumes co-opting strategy going. Bill Clinton passed into law things like "welfare reform," NAFTA, the WTO, the Telecomm Act of 1996, banking & derivatives deregulation, National forest clear-cut sell-outs, etc., that Republicans had been dreaming of for decades (some of them since the New Deal) but never had enough public support to pass into law themselves. Obama's far-right policies speak for themselves and he's outdoing the worst most fascist policies of the Bush II maladministration when he's not continuing them verbatim.
Both Parties from the mid-1980s on were in on the same racket: Selling out the common good wholesale in return for corporate campaign money for the next election cycle. The public were just their revenue cow to milk and they gutted the real economy out from under that cow in the process. Due to offshoring of our manufacturing jobs base, banking & derivatives deregulation, Friedmanite interest rates from the Fed, the resulting housing bubble implosion, tax cuts for the super rich during war-time under Bush II and the bank give-aways the public cow is running out of milk. The easiest and poorest people to squeeze have been almost wrung out. But both Parties are so habituated to bipartisan parasitic exploitation of the general public that they do not want to curtail it.
Being the more dishonest traitor to the working-class of the two, the Democratic Party is becoming cornered by a 30 year old policy of co-opting bad Republican policies that is no longer affordable in any sane fiscal sense. Historic economic, social, foreign policy and environmental pressures are building up an economic feedback surge against the present bottom-up system of wealth over-concentration in the hands of the richest one-tenth of 1%. The longer the two Parties, especially the Democratic Party, ignore this, the more traumatic the coming secondary economic and social upheaval will be.
Sioux Rose
METAL: Very interesting post. I never thought about it in the terms you presented. Your analysis makes great sense. I appreciate the nuanced quality of your thought process and your contribution/posts on C.D.
Good Cop/Bad Cop. Both still cops.
Great thread, gang! Plaudits to all!
It is to the advantage of the corporations that socialism be thought of as watered down capitalism so that actual socialism is 'off the table' and need not be thought about. It shifts the perceived 'middle to the right, making even minor socialistic policies seem to be very extreme.
Morticia
Obama has emphasized and assured the American people and the press in the past that he is not a socialist. So did Biden when he laughed off that suggestion put forth to him by the media during the 2008 presidential campaign. I think the problem is that the corporate media does not do a very good job of defining what a socialist actually is and as a consequence the gullible and uninformed American people end up believing the fear mongering put forth by the conservatives that the dreaded socialists will take over this country if that [alleged] socialist Barack Obama's programs are allowed to continue unchecked. My small town local newspaper never fails to print at least one or two letters a week warning Americans to be on their guard so that all these horrible socialist programs by the Democrats do not overrun the country. But what these misinformed letter writers never state is that many countries which have universal health care do not have a single payer system and the countries which do have single payer make sure that their citizens' basic health care needs are met [just as the countries which do not have single payer do] for a fraction of the cost that the U.S. spends on its broken down and most inefficent health care system. But unfortunately that point of view is rarely if ever going to be heard in the mainstream media since the last thing thing that the television executives and talking heads [even including people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow]will do is to actually have a genuine well informed socialist on their programs.
Erroll, that is the point. The republikkkans and corporate America don't want the dirty little secret of what socialism entails to leak out. The very last thing they want is for people to know what socialism really is and especially that they would benefit greatly from such a system. The reasoning is obvious. People would like it. No, I take that back...they would *LOVE* it, and all but the nastiest of republikkkans would want for socialism to replace the nasty fasciast system in place now.
Aussiedawg
Very well said. Steven Hill illustrates your point in his most excellent book Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope In An Insecure Age. In his chapter The Myth Of The Overtaxed European, Hill relates a story of a chance encounter that an American friend of his [who lives in Sweden] had in New York City a few years ago when he and his Swedish wife shared a limousine to the theater district with Senate Democrat John Breaux. As Hill writes:
"Breaux, a conservative, anti-tax Democrat, asked my acquaintance about Sweden and swaggeringly commented about 'all those taxes the Swedes pay', to which this American replied, 'The problem with Americans and their taxes is that we get nothing for them.' He then went on to tell Breaux about the comprehensive level of services and benefits that Swedes receive in return for their taxes. 'If Americans knew what Swedes receive for their taxes, we would probably riot,' he told the senator. The rest of the ride to the theater district was unsurprisingly quiet."
That story, and especially the penultimate sentence in that last paragraph, is what our corporate media should be telling the American people. Because if they were to actually do their jobs by letting the American people in on how other democratic countries like Sweden take care of their citizens, then perhaps, just perhaps, the people in this country might decide to hold their elected leaders' feet to the fire by indeed rioting in the steets. The fact that universal health care is not even an option in this country, a counry that is supposed to be the richest in the world, is contemptible as well as shameful.
"the last thing thing that the television executives and talking heads [even including people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow]will do is to actually have a genuine well informed socialist on their programs"
So true! Where are they to be found in the USA though? I can only bring to mind Cornel West and Bernie Sanders. Sen. Sanders has to dilute his ideals to fit in with Democrats though.
It'd be good to see a presentation on TV featuring some European socialists debating with US politicians on the subject of socialism. Not much hope of that, I guess.
So much obfuscation and pure outright noise has come from the likes of Faux News Channel and the rest of the GOP entertainment industry that the Tea Baggers & Christian conservatives would have no idea what socialism actually is even if it came up to them in a leather bustier with fishnet stockings, knocked them on their collectives asses, and urinated on their faces in an upscale West Hollywood strip club.
Thanks Errol. :smile:
Truly, I must have missed it. I watch little to no television, just read the papers and travel a lot.
can we stop with the labels, yet?
we're dealing with criminals committing crimes...
there are no political positions that legitimately endorse crime, or the stealing of public money for private gain, so why pretend to hold one?
stop arguing about whether one is a duck or a goose, or a duck pretending to be a goose...
they're all pigs, working for wolves...
lie, get laid, get dressed, vote, get paid...repeat...
Glenn Beck said it, I believe it, that settles it. (/sarcasm)
The real purpose of these 'Obama the socialist' memes being broadcast by the right is to muzzle the very real criticisms of Obama from the left: like the way he preemptorily scuttled the single-payer option. Experience all over the world has shown thats the only option that can both provide universal healthcare AND dramatically lower our healthcare costs (and improve health outcomes) in this time when American businesses and families could use an economic shot in the arm like that.
Glenn Beck calls Obama a commie, a bunch of Tea Party nutcases take to the streets shooting in the air, and the left quietly assumes this must mean Obama is non-corporatist in his policies. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the Tea Partiers had a lick of sense, they'd be demonstrating against Obama from the left.
Yea, this is standard operating procedure, as in continually moving the debate to the right. If Obama is the left, even represented as the far-out "kooky left," when actually he is a pure corporatist somewhere to the right of Nixon, then the plutocrats are playing the game totally on their turf, with total control of the scoreboard and the officials.
"The real purpose of these 'Obama the socialist' memes being broadcast by the right is to muzzle the very real criticisms of Obama from the left"
Yes, and it works beautifully: "They hate him! They want to destroy him! The enemy of my enemy is my friend!"
and so the circle of protection surrounds Obama. "He may be an SOB but he's our SOB ... and certainly not as bad as ... GASP! ... Sarah Palin."
If it weren't so tragic it would be funny.
When full-blown neo-liberal, neo-classical economic policies are implemented, tens of billions in taxpayer subsidies and giveaways to private corporations, strong-arm "mandates" to force poor people into buying an over-priced defective product is labeled as "socialist" we have truly reached an Orwellian state.
Obama policy is not only capitlaist to the core, it is state-sponsored MONOPOLY CAPITALISM. It is worse than "classical capitalism" by miles. When the taxpayer is legally robbed to further boost the obscene profits and salaries of banksters, insurance vampires, Big Oil, and Big Pharma, it is nothing but KLEPTOCRACY.
This article is pretty weak, but at least it begins to explain the irrational nonsense and lies that passes off as political discourse in our country.
The most we can "hope" for is a so-called free market. What we have now is a criminal form of kleptocratic neo-Fascism. Socialism remains a meaningless negative buzzword, propagated by the corporate media.
What he sez ^
RichM
"In terms of substance, though, everything Nichols mentions about the socialists points to the superiority of their viewpoint"
Leaving out Single Payer Health Care which is a no brainer and certainly not the property of socialist's....we might have to disagree. :)
If their viewpoints are superior, why is there no country that has been successful using them. Would there not be a plethora of examples if its so superior? Is there one?
Veritas
How about a combination of socialism and capitalism or, as Steven Hill terms it, social capitalism? I strongly recommend the book that I mentioned at 2:12 pm. In Europe's Promise Steven Hill mentions how successful most of Europe has been in providing, as Hill notes, "universal health care, generous retirement, paid parental leave, paid sick leave, affordabe child care, monthly kiddie stipends, free or inexpensive university education, generous vacations [four to six weeks as compared to, on average, two weeks for Americans], decent unemployment benefits, job training, elder care, affordable housing, heating subsidies in the winter, etc." These are benefits that most Americans can only dream of possessing. Yet more European corporations dominate the Fortune 500 than do American businesses while also making sure that a safety net is provided for the citizens of Europe. Europe's mass transit, infrastructure, and energy programs are also, for the most part, superior to that of the United States. There are many things that the U.S. could learn from Europe but that would mean acknowledging that American exceptionalism is not the panacea that so many Americans leaders believe it to be.
Neocons will point out that Americas GDP growth rate is higher than Europe's, but once both rates are normalized by population growth rates, they are actually the same. Hence, 'free market' capitalism as espoused by Americans doesn't yield higher economic growth rates per capita than the 'managed capitalism' espoused by the Europeans. Yet, as you mentioned, European's labor under much friendlier circumstances. One statistic I keep mentioning (not sure if its dated now, but) is the relative divorce rates. In Europe, the more religious the country (ie fraction of population who go to church), the lower the divorce rate. So far, so good. But America is actually MUCH more religious than any European country, and yet our divorce rates are higher than all of them. I think the American work week, lack of time with family, etc, eventually shows up as cracks in the family, with higher divorce rates being one consequence. Ironically, I think its because Americans are so over-worked that they are so religious ('opiate of the masses', etc).
Isn'tthat what democratic socialism is? Also; dirigism & in plain american english, the mixed economic (public sector/private sector) system of FDR.
I think so. Simply put (I have a simple mind) it's a question of balance. Socialism proper would never have come into being had there been a just balance of rights in certain countries. When one side became too powerful and the other too downtrodden an opposing system arose. I guess it's an inbuilt part of nature that this should happen.
The same can happen in reverse too - too much Socialism is as unjust and unpopular as too much corporatism.
I think of it this way:
There's a boxing ring. Labor and Capital are knocking each other silly. Somehow this results in economic growth. Government is the referee. Both sides appeal to the referee to 'get on my side', and sometimes the referee does take sides.
But, if either boxer gets knocked out, the game is over, and the growth stops.
I get the analogy, but this is Mike Tyson against Pee Wee Herman.
Nice, succinct essay.
Hey, Veritas!
could it be tactics? nice guys finish last?
in a game of chess, one must eliminate the pieces of one's opponent as part of the process that leads to victory...if only one player is willing to do this, with the other feeling such things are 'evil', the willing player wins...
one of my favorite books, Searching for Bobby Fischer, by Fred Waitzkin, examines this psychological battle as it arises in the burgeoning career of his son, Joshua, the child chess prodigy...how unpleasant is one willing to be, or become, to win?
what we mostly see, in my opinion, isn't the success or failure of a given political platform, it is the victory of violence over non-violence...
"could it be tactics? nice guys finish last?"
Yes, nice guys finish last because they have far fewer and less potent tools to work with. They can either lie or tell the truth depending on which serves their purpose. They don't mind stabbing you in the back in order to get "ahead," etc.
And to top it off, cognitive experiments show that people actually prefer authority with some nastiness thrown in.
Why do you think those asshole boys in high school get the girl friends while the nice ones get ridiculed?
Veritas, you haven't done your homework have you?
Great post RichM! I wish I'd made it. I have been waiting a long time for a "progressive" pundit like Nichols to actually bring up real socialism. Pretty tepid John! If this were Wiemar Germany "liberal, progressive" Nichols would have been an SPD member - the party who made it possible for the Nazis* to come to power.
*It is worth noting that the ideas socialism were so popular that the nacsent Nazi Party felt compelled to call themselves the NATIONAL SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY in order to deceptively attract the German people to a party of right wing militarist and capitalist elites that held both socialism and workers in utter contempt.
Let's face it. The entire spectrum of U.S. political terminology is so distorted and pre-branded with "good" and "evil" labels as to render any meaningful discussion and debate virtually impossible.
That's no accident, of course. The mislabelling makes it much easier to persuade the populace that they're actually living under a system of democratic republican governance when you can make the terminology mean whatever you say it means.
This is so true. When I first moved to the States and tried to discuss politics I had a terrible time understanding what people were talking about.
Until the penny dropped and I realised that though we used the same words we had different definitions for them.
Of course this makes meaningful dialogue very difficult and not just across cultures but within the USA itself.
How does one discuss classical liberalism when the locals think it means socialism, etc.
The funny thing, or maybe not so funny thing, is when you bring up the actual ideas of socialism. The concepts are so alien to their thinking that most have trouble grasping the basic of ideas.
I get pretty disheartened by it all sometimes.
There's plenty enough to love about socialism and I'm all for putting a 10 year moratorium on capitalism. I still can't understand why even Ralph Nader isn't pressing for socialism instead of arguing for regulated capitalism. I'd usually be torn between wondering whether we should regulate capitalism or just kill it altogether and go for socialism straight but the worse things get, the more I want the latter.
P.S.: I scored another round of success convincing my moderately conservative neighbors about the benefits of socialized medicine. I am amazed that they can be convinced to support single payer when one figures out the best ways to convince them but I'm more shocked that they'll even love socialized medicine when you give them interesting details and try to help them out with their stressed out lives and help them build a new progressive type of confidence. I'll bet they can do better than Sanders or Kucinich on health care reform now that they're catching on.
Any economic system contains both strengths and weaknesses and it's not necessarily an either/or choice. There are plenty of examples of "mixed economies" that seem to work reasonably well in applying socialism to basic infrastucture and other areas of the commonweal while retaining the advantages of real "value added" capitalism where incentives for private initiative are most critical.
In any case, however, unregulated capitalism can never be relied upon to provide its own moral guidance and constraints. It's essentially amoral except in the very narrow context of purely fiduciary responsibilities.