Socialism’s message distorted

President Obama and his administration has been accused, among many things, of being “socialist,” something vague, negative and “un-American”; a way of life we as a people supposedly reject. I—as someone who closely associates himself with the socialist ideal of freely-producing workers—find that the current use of the term distorts socialism’s general message of solidarity to the detriment of the average working person.

If Obama—who spent obscene amounts of money bailing out criminal financial institutions, who staffed key government positions with former Wall Street executives, and who expanded covert military operations beyond the original framework laid out by the reactionary George W. Bush—can still be classified as a socialist, I would reject its program for change. However, true socialism implies a higher level of organization and thinking that, unfortunately, has been unable to align itself with any mainstream political movement in the United States for various reasons—mainly a failure on the left to organize and protest effectively.

Almost immediately, socialism must bear the burden of its oft-misunderstood past. The Soviet Union, to use a dominant example, proclaimed itself both democratic and socialist while it remained neither. Socialism was seen at that time as quite an admirable aspiration, something a nation should strive to achieve. The U.S. media dismissed and ridiculed Soviet claims to democracy, but saw an opportunity to discredit socialism domestically, from whom came leaders willing to talk explicitly about the concerns of the working-class and resist exploitation.

The media, along with educators and complacent intellectuals, tied the public’s perception of socialism to the brutal Soviet regime, not mentioning the fact the average worker was just as abused in Russia as in the United States. According to Zygmunt Bauman, “The two centuries of modern socialism’s history extend from its majestic advent in the attire of utopia to the incapacitation arising from its alleged realization.”

Whenever nationalist fervor in the Third World (countries not aligned with the USSR or the United States) turned revolutionary and threatened the global capitalist integration led by the United States, the dangerous “communist” menace was found to be able to appear in various forms in various regions, from Cuba to Vietnam.

So what is socialism and how is it still relevant? Socialism balances the unrealized ideal of equality with the existing ideal of freedom, through changes not only in economics but also in the spheres of the political and social. Socialism is the counter-culture of capitalism and everywhere seeks to undo capitalism’s many wrongs, which are becoming more severe and threatening.

Socialism implies that the means of production are under the control of the workers, and the workers themselves democratically shape the community in which they live, now free from the coercive influence of competition and its cultural defects. Such a drastic departure from the norm can naturally be expected to take some time, although incorporating socialism into contemporary life can just mean aiding the poor and exploited.

A candidate could do much for the average person and thus, by extension, the idea of socialism: a huge reduction of the military budget, increased spending on social programs, a highly progressive tax code, campaign reform, protection of workers’ rights including the right to unionize, educational workshops, public works. In these hard times especially does socialism show itself to be not only agreeable but necessary.

Posted by Michael Russell on Oct 22 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.