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."