Prior to the midterm elections I heard Sen Ted Cruz (R), from the great state of Texas (where all of Houston was on a boil water alert that day), say that if the Democrats took over government, socialism would be the horrifying result.
I found this laughable. It’s pretty clear we have the 1%ers happily running the economic and political show of both parties for the rest of us 99%ers. But it did make me want to know how this word, socialism, could still strike terror in the hearts of Americans. I turned to what seemed like a good basic education on the subject:
Wolff opens the book with this: “Socialism is a kind of yearning for a better life than what capitalism permits for most people.” He goes on to say that he will only cover the economics of socialism and how inequality is a part of history: masters and slaves, lords and serfs, employers and employees. “These class struggles shaped the quality and history of each type of economic system” as well as the societies where they existed. “Class struggles are always key contributors to eventual transitions to different economic systems.”
To Summarize
There isn’t enough space here to present all that Wolff details of the history and the varieties of socialism. Enough to say, it’s a worthy read especially if history and economics aren’t your thing. They weren’t mine and now I’m having to play catchup. But several sections struck me as why socialism remains the S word.
- Socialism and communism are linked in history and often in the minds of Americans who’ve been around long enough to witness or read about the collapse of the USSR. “For many, communism, socialism, Marxism, anarchism, and more recently terrorism, are all noxious anti-American ideologies,” to quote Wolff.
- Many people lived through the Reagan administration where “welfare queens” and anyone who didn’t/couldn’t find a job was accused of taking advantage of those who did work. These moochers, according to Reagan et al, were supported with our tax dollars with “entitlements.” This is still a Republican talking point as well as many less vocal Dems. Our current president being one of them (look it up).
- President Clinton sent jobs overseas via NAFTA and also “ended welfare as we know it,” making poor women pay the price. These two men (and their parties) helped create the class war we’re living through today.
- Socialism in Nordic countries and most of western Europe has been held up as a way to meet some important yearnings (healthcare, education, living wages), but that old S word always serves as a “warning” to Americans. We are the most powerful country in the world, so what could we learn from them?
- And always a failsafe for those who subscribe to any or all of the above – the national debt is such that “austerity” is required. Cutting back on social programs is always first on the chopping block. Never mind the military and medical industrial complexes, multiple proxy wars, congressional stock deals, and earmarks to help them stay in office.
More About That Yearning
I had just finished Wolff’s book when I read Jeffery St. Clair’s Friday (11/25/2022) post on CounterPunch. He’d recently spent time driving the backroads of southern Indiana where he’d once lived. He wrote this about his trip: “Dollar stores have become a major employer in many areas with more outlets than Walmart and McDonalds combined (over 50,000). Corporate America thinks rural America has no choice but to take these jobs at shit pay. The unions have been beaten down. The politicians blame extended unemployment benefits.”
Photo credit: Jeffery St. Clair
St. Clair continues: “People don’t trust their bosses, their banks, or their government. They don’t trust that the insurance they pay out the ass for will really cover them if they have a stroke or get cancer or contract COVID on the job. Yet, the people most in need of national health care are among the least likely to support it. Why you don’t trust the government – it’s never done much of anything for you, except demean your existence, humiliate you for asking for help, and make life harder than it already is. The fear isn’t irrational. It’s been learned over generations.”
Maybe the S word’s power is not really about the fear of socialism but about one more betrayal the poor would rather do without.
Worker Cooperatives
At the end of Wolff’s book, he offers an interesting way to create a form of economic socialism. He proposes “worker cooperatives” as a way to address the yearning for a better life and a democratic economic order. It would also help to transition the U.S. away from our current 1% vs 99% capitalist system.
“In their modern forms, worker co-ops provide all who labor inside a workplace – whether factory, office or store – with an equal voice on the key business decisions. Majorities determine what, how, and where the workplace produces; how it uses or distributes its outputs; and how it relates to the state. The state’s direct partner in its relationship to the workplace is no longer a minority, the employer, but instead the entire collective of employee-owners. By democratizing workplaces, worker co-ops can give a shape to a real, daily democracy on a society-wide basis.”
I know. You’re thinking fat chance of this ever happening. But isn’t this yearning being activated now by movements to form unions in a variety of service and other industries? And if all of the employees are owners, wouldn’t the need for whistle-blowers and strikes disappear? Those human lives lost on the Boeing planes could have been saved; the railroad workers would have already been receiving paid sick leave? It can be done.
Bob’s Red Mill has created just what Wolff proposes. Here’s Bob when the company became 100% employee owned. “That happy day came in April 30th of 2020: as of our 10th anniversary, Bob’s Red Mill is now 100% employee owned, one of only about 8,000 businesses in the country to achieve this incredible feat.”
I’m going to enjoy, even more, my bowl of Bob’s steel cut oats in the morning.
A note on the books and blogs
- Jeffrey St. Clairis the editor of CounterPunch. His entire essay can be read at https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/11/25/the-retail-carrion-feeders-of-rural-america. You can purchase his most recent book co-authored with Alexander Cockburn.
- Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, U Mass, Amherst, and founder of Democracy at Work. Learn more at: rdwolff.com and www.democracyatwork.info
- And why the red roses on Wolff’s book’s cover? The symbol spread across Europe and to the U.S. around 1910. Today, the red rose in a fist is the symbol for Socialist International (a worldwide organization).
Photo Credit: S scrabble tile – Brett-Jordan
This just in! The U.S. House just voted – Democrats 109 joined Republicans 218 to pass Resolution – 9. The resolution asserts that the U.S. “was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collective system of socialism in all of its forms in fundamentally and necessarily opposed.” 87 Dems voted Nay. Ro Khanna who voted Yea describes himself as a “progressive capitalist.” The sanctity of the individual – would that include a decent wage, healthcare, safety on the job, etc.?
Barbara, I’m very glad you’re pursuing this important topic. I think older people do associate “socialism” with the tyranny of Stalin and Mao, and I certainly agree that the label is used cynically by the wealthy and their servants to frighten the very people socialism would most benefit.
A word of caution, though. As we see in the black policemen who beat to death a fellow black man, the position often creates the behavior. In Israel, the union-owned industries were no less anti-worker than their capitalist peers. Kibbutzim behaved in the market place just like private marketers, and didn’t treat any hired (often Arab) workers well. Alas!
So glad to see this discussion. I recommend the work of French socialist economist Thomas Piketty. He’s French but came to the US to teach at MIT for 14 years before he gave up on American “economic theory.” He has said nothing insulting about MIT, but quietly stated why he left. He’s now Professor at the Paris School of Economics and director of EHESS there (please look that up if interested). I deeply recommend his two classic studies, Capital in the 21st Century (Harvard UP, 2014) and Capital and Ideology (Harvard UP, 2020). The latter clarifies how socialism is blocked in the US by ideological distraction and trickery, assisted by academic “economic” theories. These books each run to about 900 pages (yes) and I studied them in a seminar with friends. I recommend that. Still, Piketty’s collection of recent periodical essays, Time for Socialism (Yale UP, 2021) gives briefer presentations of his work, many of them directly addressing the US, with footnote references to his longer studies. Very eye opening re: how dying ultracapitalism manages to persist in spite of its economic oppression of the majority of Americans.
Gulp! 900 pages! I just finished Anna Karenina at 700 pages and took a bow. Thanks for your recommendations and interesting notes. Someone at my local library must have “loved” Time for Socialism – they took it and never returned it. So now I’m waiting for an interlibrary loan and will start with the essays. Your last comment is the mystery – what would it take to wake us up, one and all, to the economics (and all of the other human factors) of oppression?
Deep down in our American version of anti-socialism is a deep fear of sharing any wealth at all with black or brown folks. Even poor whites can proudly say they’re at least better than and better off than those of darker shades. Our American class war is shot through with racism, more so than in other countries. if worker owned business can break through that wall of white supremacy, that would be fabulous. Not sure it can happen widely before a national reckoning with our racist past.
Hi – Here’s a quote I ran across today when I was reading more about socialism and Wolff’s book on Understanding Marxism. I think it speaks to your comment:
“History does not eliminate grievances; it lays them down like land mines.”
A. N. Wilson