You may have noticed that political arguments often have a frustrating, circular nature. Charges and countercharges, points and counterpoints—all get made without ever seeming to converge on a shared reality. It may seem that you and your political opponents are talking past one another. Much of this, in electoral politics, is due to the fact that the discussions are in fact bad faith attacks that seek only to undermine, rather than to reach an agreement. But even good faith attempts to find common ground with political opponents frequently sink in these murky waters.
Nowhere in American politics does this stupid dilemma manifest itself more than the purported debate over “socialism.” Oh, you have opinions on “socialism?” And whether it is evil? Or great? And you would like to yell about them? Let me stop you right there. What exactly does that mean?
The majority of mainstream political discourse about socialism—and almost all of the discourse emanating from Republicans—is just bad faith, lowest-common-denominator red baiting, paltry attempts to wring some political advantage from the still-glowing embers of decades of Cold War anticommunism rhetoric that has soaked deep into the minds of anyone born before the turn of the century. None of this is a genuine attempt to discuss what socialism really is and what it might mean here, so I will ignore it. (A benefit of being a How Things Work reader is that I respect you enough to skip the many paragraphs of undeserved credulousness that other, less honest outlets would feel obligated to pay to this bullshit.)
What about those who do want to discuss the issue? Those who believe that they are trying to communicate something useful about whether or not socialism is desirable? In aggregate, I’m afraid, this has become one of the least productive mishmashes of disparate meanings in living memory.
Liberal billionaire Nick Hanauer writes that “Neither socialism nor MAGA is the answer” to America’s inequality crisis. Instead, he advocates for higher minimum wages, higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor unions, and less concentrated corporate power. He puts forward his proposal for “market humanism” as a counterpoint to what is on offer from politicians like Zohran Mamdani, who supports higher minimum wages, higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor unions, and less concentrated corporate power.
Bernie Sanders is America’s most famous socialist politician. He became popular by calling for higher minimum wages, higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor unions, and less concentrated corporate power. When Elizabeth Warren was running for president against Bernie, she distinguished herself from him by declaring that she was, in fact, a capitalist, and wanted not socialism, but Accountable Capitalism. Her platform included higher minimum wages, higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor unions, and less concentrated corporate power.
On the other side is Donald Trump, an avowed anti-socialist, who is now aggressively pursuing state ownership of corporations.
What is the public supposed to take from this contradictory, uninformative war of labels? Polls now show that socialism is significantly more popular than capitalism among Democrats. What that means is that we have succeeded in getting people to imagine that “socialism” means things they like, more than “capitalism” does. This is good, I guess, but it is mostly an indicator of the fact that everyone’s personal definition of these terms is so flexible to the point of meaninglessness.
The dictionary definition of socialism is “any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” The Republican definition of socialism is “A laundry list of the worst abuses of totalitarian communist states; or, anything advocated by a Democrat that would cost the rich money.” The centrist definition of socialism is “anyone to our left.” The progressive capitalist definition of socialism is “other progressives who may share my values but who are sadly not economically savvy enough to understand that what we really need are higher minimum wages, higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor unions, and less concentrated corporate power.” That is, coincidentally, also more or less the definition of socialism that democratic socialists have. Each faction imagines that the others are unsophisticated, unrealistic dupes.
My purpose in writing this is not so much to try to litigate the One Correct Definition of Socialism, but rather to highlight the (critical!) fact that the big debate about the Soul of the Democratic Party or the Battle For the Faith of America or whatever is, for the most part, one big cloud of people talking past one another. The dirty secret is that most political commentators prefer it this way. It is easier to make grand proclamations about how either Free Enterprise Is Fundamental to Free People or how Capitalist Scum Must Die than to go about the tedious work of agreeing upon our terms and then having an actual policy debate.
I am a self-proclaimed socialist who writes for a socialist magazine and who just got back from attending the Socialist Conference. I promise you that socialists themselves do not have a shared definition of socialism. Much less do the people on the other side whose only reference point for socialism is “Cuba and uhhh Russia” have a shared definition of socialism. My own definition of what socialism means in the context of American politics would be something like “More public control and less private control in society, particularly in the economy, with the goal of producing greater equality.” That, I think, gets at what most of us actually mean when we talk about this stuff. (I have met few American socialists who are truly committed to the communist caricature of full state control of the economy, and even those who do will have to admit that that the path to getting there is described above.)
You will notice that even this definition is directional—it describes where we are trying to go in relation to where we are now, rather than articulating some strict Marxist benchmark that must be met. Politics itself is a directional endeavor, so this sort of definition is useful for politics. If you are an academic looking for analytical rigor above all, however, it might not satisfy you.
Who cares! If you take anything away from all of this, let it be: Almost all of America’s mainstream political debate over “socialism” is stupid. The portion of it that is not a scam on purpose is mostly a big waste of time. Do you support higher minimum wages, higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor unions, and less concentrated corporate power? Then we are on the same side. Let’s walk down that road together. If we make progress, we will reach some point where some people say, “This is far enough.” The rest of us will say, “No, we need to keep pushing this further.” At that point, we can have a debate about the actual policies in question, and their merits, and what the ideal we are trying to reach looks like.
by Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work | Read more:
Image: Getty
[ed. See also: Capital Is Organizing the World to Its Advantage and Everything Else Is a Sideshow (HTW):]***
"We are all mad at the billionaires and whatnot but let’s be very clear about the mechanism driving all of this: American companies are making more money than ever and they don’t have to share it because workers don’t have the power to claim their fair share, and because some of the money has been used to purchase political influence to prevent the government from stepping in, and so therefore the money accrues to the owners, which is to say, to the rich. The richest ten percent of Americans own close to 90% of America’s stock market wealth.This isn’t too hard to understand. I obviously didn’t invent this analysis—this is just grade school Marxism. But to reach these conclusions you don’t need to read any theory or know any buzzwords. You just need COMMON SENSE. All the money that businesses make will go either to the workers or to the owners. The goal of capital, of businesses, the logic of capitalism itself, is for businesses to try to take as close to 100% of the profits as possible for themselves. (Indeed, an amusing new economics paper shows that going to business schools causes managers to pursue exactly this mandate). This is the nature of a corporation. It will always do it, just like a fire will always want to burn. Our problem is that we have not kept corporations properly contained. So, like fire, they will consume everything.
It is far more accurate, more useful, and more true to understand politics as a battleground between capital and labor than as some sort of Democratic vs. Republican thing. Politics is just another arena for capital to organize in order to maximize its own growth."
It is far more accurate, more useful, and more true to understand politics as a battleground between capital and labor than as some sort of Democratic vs. Republican thing. Politics is just another arena for capital to organize in order to maximize its own growth."
