Idle, Idle Thoughts, 2.0
I’ve never understood why the far right talk show demagogues, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and any number of others, along with their followers, the ditto-heads, call President Obama a socialist. Have you? For don’t we know, haven’t we known for a long time, that modern, developed nations including the United States are all in good part socialist, and that we are all socialists ourselves to the extent that we continue to pay taxes to our redistributive or socialist governments. How could we be, how could our President be anything else?
At best partly socialist governments (partly because there are no fully socialist governments among the developed nations of the world) are providing help for those who cannot provide for themselves. At worst, as is too often the case in our own country, these governments are also subsidizing small but powerful pressure groups such as the sugar growers of the South, and the farmers of the Mid-West, groups who are no longer in need of special government favors and who ought to be left alone to do for themselves.
If there were no such spreading around of the wealth by the government, if there were no redistribution, no “socialism,” wouldn’t we then be a third world country still with our thousands of super rich, but also with our hundreds of thousands, millions of super poor, of those not able to provide for themselves, many of whom would be out there sleeping and defecating in the streets? For some on the Left this is already the case in our largest cities.
And yet in spite of being socialist ourselves we go on talking about socialist countries, especially those in Europe, and about how we don’t want to be like them. We are like them. Why don’t we accept this?
The only substance to calling one of our political candidates socialist (as opposed to his capitalist opponent) is that he may be in favor of greater government activity in support of social justice than his opponent, who may advocate for smaller government and support for private entrepreneurial activity.
Probably only in this sense, a heightened concern for social justice, can we still use the word socialist and mean something substantive by it. It’s certainly not in the sense conveyed by the oft repeated mantra, “ownership of the means of production.” In fact, this may have happened only once ever, and to boot in that least socialist of nations, the former Soviet Union.
While having these idle thoughts and others, and while reading Michael Harrington earlier today I encountered a 1969 quote from the French political writer and author, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, founder of the French news magazine, L’Express, and author of the 1967 book, Le Défi Américain.
This is what Servan-Schreiber said: “… the fundamental truth of our epoch is that social justice is not only a moral objective but the condition of industrial growth. If that is what it means to be socialist, we should be socialist. But if, according to the dogmas and catechisms, proceeding toward the abolition of competition, authoritarian planification, and the collectivist society are socialist, then we are not.”
To be a socialist, according to Servan-Schreiber, means that one believes that social justice is not just a moral objective but should accompany industrial growth. In other words, go ahead and innovate, and invent, and grow your business, create new wealth, but don’t act as if this were enough. It’s not.
As an accompaniment of the economic growth, essential for all governments, socialist or not, there must be an active concern for social justice, in particular for what that growth will do to improve the lives of all people, not just fill the pockets of the innovators and entrepreneurs themselves.
Our President may very well be a socialist in this sense. And so am I. And so would most of us be if we understood this to be the meaning of the word, that is, a high priority concern for social justice. This reasoning gets us to the point where we ought to be.
No more name calling. Rather united in determining how best to grow the amount of social justice in the life of our country. Having fewer prison inmates, for example, creating better and richer and fuller lives for our children in the inner cities, providing more hope to the immigrants who come to our country to realize their dreams just as we all did before them. A better system of health care.
These considerations also make clear what may be the real differences among us, between Left and Right, Liberal and Conservative. the differences are really about the best way to grow the amount of social justice in the country. Nobody, I trust, wants to hinder its growth.
So the important question is, how do we do it. Is it through less government and more private enterprise (not one or the other since we will always be well supplied with both)? Perhaps President Obama has greater confidence in the power of government than in an unfettered free enterprise system to bring about increased social justice. Perhaps not. I don’t know.
But the differences among all of us must be differences of degree, not of kind as the talking heads would have it. The only question today, as in the past, is not whether, but how much help the government should provide.
Take health care which is such a big part of the present Washington conversation about this one form of social justice. What we have now is clearly not working. The costs of medical care are growing exponentially and if nothing is done to reign in these costs existing government programs, in particular Medicare and Medicaid, will take a larger and larger and ultimately unsupportable portion of the Federal budget. Also, some 40 million Americans are without health insurance entirely.
At present the major players in the health care drama are just two, the government and the private insurance companies. They ought to be working together. But instead the insurance companies seem to have it going all their way. The other way, the public way, or a public option, a kind of Medicare for all, is being put down as a government take over of health care. It’s not of course.
October 4, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Interesting…
this is exactly what I’ve been expressing myself lately, but in different words.
The one thing weakening America right now, in my opinion, is not socialist policy, healthcare reform, terrorism, moral laxity or any other issue. It’s internal divisiveness… and the rise of passion over reason.
We are having a civil war, minus (for now) the bloodshed. We are a body attacking itself from within, and we don’t seem to notice that the solution to so many of our problems probably lies in constructive dialogue to help heal these polarities. We have the political version of lupus or Crohn’s right now and then we wonder why we are falling apart as a nation. We wouldn’t even have to worry about terrorists or the economy if we had more of a sense of collective purpose right now. The debates going on about all the current issues, from healthcare reform to gay marriage, are all symbolic of this divide. Obama is simply the lightning rod for this debate, attracting a lot of irrational idolatry and hatred.
I’ve had many an argument with radical libertarians about the concepts you discuss here. Yes, the government always gets involved in civil issues. In every developed nation. Even a monarchy is no assurance of a government that doesn’t redistribute wealth to the have-nots. I am happy, personally, to pay taxes… whether or not they are technically illegal or the Federal Reserve has overstepped its boundaries. I have had to live on food stamps during a difficult divorce, and was grateful for being able to feed my child. I now pay my taxes with gratitude, knowing that I’ve made it through that tough place thanks to our “socialist” society that allowed us to get through to the other side. I shudder to think where my daughter and I would be now without the options we had, as a single mother and child without child support, trying to live on our own. I am grateful that Medicaid was able to assist me through my pregnancy and early motherhood as well, and I now have a commitment to repay my debt to society (if it can even be called that) by using my own success to help other have-nots make it.
Wealth to me is a fleeting gift. At some times of most of our lives, we will have and have not. To me, having the power (wealth) to share with others is a gift, not a curse. Unless someone has experienced true, crushing, nothing-in-the-fridge poverty, especially as a single parent without a support system, they can’t understand how close to impossible it is to get out of that rut without a hand up. Every civilized society I have every visited, has its version of a system of charity. Those that don’t, usually have systems of prostitution, begging and crime.
I believe government has a responsibility to redistribute (not keep!) a small portion of collective wealth. The question is not whether, but how much. If we want a pure free market society without a trace of socialist policy, then we have to get rid of many social institutions that even the far right, libertarians and many anarchists generally support. Public schooling. Fire departments. Free roads. National and urban parks. You want to be a “real” libertarian? Bomb an unoccupied playground in protest, and build a swing in your own backyard.
If we were to look at the current healthcare reform debate with more logic and less passion, one thing seems clear to me: we should stay consistent. Why is it bad to fill our children’s cavities and save their lives for free, but a given that their education and playspaces are free? Why support a baby’s right to life, if its needs for food, shelter and medical care will not be provided for? And why condemn a single mother for going on public assistance if she has no affordable or subsidized childcare options? (Often there is a years-long waiting list for such free services, even if they are technically “available.”)
I believe in consistency, logic, liberty and unity. Once America gives up our ongoing preoccupation (however faltering and riddled with missteps) with these qualities, we’re going to fall apart as a nation. This is happening already, sad to say.
Thanks for your thoughts. Hope you are well.
Sarah Noack
October 16, 2009 at 9:03 am
Sarah, Only this morning, belatedly because I’m not used to having people make comments on my Blog musings, and don’t even check anymore to see it there are any, — only this morning did I read your response. And I thank you for that. It’s not in your “consistency, logic, liberty and unity” listing, but it should be, “communication.” You know that communication is what I was always preaching in the school, usually in vain, as so many things I’ve got behind in my life, so many things that led nowhere. I still write, but only for myself. There are few or no readers at the moment. But writing still helps me to know, as I said then, what I’m thinking, and thinking is still what life’s, at least for me, mostly all about.
I’m not sure if you will see this belated response. I’m not at all sure at how it will reach you if it does. I’ll try to find an email address for you.
You write a bit about the healthcare debate. I’ve written about that a number of times. I’d be interested to know what you think about William Easterly’s take on the “right to healthcare.” I wrote about that in my Blog of 10/13, Truths about Healthcare and Education.
And, yes, I hope you’re well too. And I’d love to have news of your mother.
Philip