jeffkooblog

Not that kind of socialist! I don’t believe in the abolition of private property or in state ownership of the means of production. Like most American socialists (or social democrats, or democratic socialists) that I know, I believe in democracy, and believe that the people should have some say in how wealth is distributed in our society. Economic democracy means fair compensation for work: a living wage for all. The growing income gap between the rich and the poor can be brought under democratic control simply by establishing a fairer system of progressive taxation. (The more money you make, the higher your tax bracket.) In the fifties – a time of thriving prosperity for our economy – the top tax bracket for the very wealthy was over 90%. Now it’s 37%, but many of our richest citizens complain that even that is an unfair tax burden.

Like most European nations, the U.S. is already semi-socialist, and that’s the way most Americans seem to like it. If it weren’t for American socialists and labor unions, we wouldn’t have many things we take for granted these days: the 40-hour work week, child labor laws, paid vacations and sick leave, overtime pay and the minimum wage, as well as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t have universal health care. Every attempt to establish a system of affordable health care, from Franklin D. Roosevelt on, has been attacked by those who profit from the current system as “socialized medicine.” The great majority of family bankruptcies in the U.S. are due to medical emergencies. It doesn’t have to be this way. Nobody should have to go broke in order to keep a family member alive.

I grew up knowing what it’s like to live in a socialist society, because I was an Army brat, and later a soldier. Being in the American military means guaranteed employment and salary. It means that you and your dependents get free medical care. (I was treated for kidney disease, my brother had an appendectomy, and my mother was treated for breast cancer, at no cost to our family.) Your military branch either provides housing or a housing allowance. It either provides you with food or gives you a food allowance. Occupational training (and graduate school, if you’re a qualified officer) is free, and if you serve for twenty years or more you get a pension, whether or not you ever serve in a combat zone. When you serve in the military, all of your basic needs are met by the State.

I’ve seen socialism demonized by rich conservatives all of my life. I doubt that the average American could tell you the difference between socialism and communism; but we’ve all been told, over and over, that they’re both BAD, and that they inevitably lead to tyranny. Tell that to the members of the European Union. Right-wing pundits and propagandists have pushed the notion that “liberal” is actually code for “progressive,” progressive is code for “socialist,” and socialist is code for “closet Commie.”

I’ve lived in other semi-socialist democracies for a total of nine years. Austria (where I lived for four years) has multiple political parties, one of the most popular being the Social Democratic Party. One of the most popular parties in Germany (where I lived for three years) is also a Social Democratic Party. Jamaica (where I lived for two years)  doesn’t have a Social Democratic Party; but one of the two parties, the Jamaican Labour Party, is socialistic. The citizens of all these countries have the same basic freedoms that we enjoy.

Austria and Germany both have progressive taxation. The highest tax bracket in Austria is 50%, in Germany 45%. Some citizens of these countries might pay higher taxes than American counterparts, but most find this acceptable because of the benefits, which include affordable health care and housing, fair wages, and free college and university education for students who get passing grades.

Despite decades of smear campaigns by capitalist propagandists, more Americans are coming to realize that socialism is nothing to fear, compared to unregulated laissez faire capitalism. Given the popularity of the Affordable Care Act, it appears that more and more people are realizing that “socialized medicine” isn’t so bad, after all. Recent polls indicate that a growing number of millennials favor democratic socialism over the current dominant model of capitalistic rule. Those who try to conflate socialism with tyranny and economic ruin are blowing smoke. Most socialistic nations are democracies, and tyrants are as likely to come from the Right as from the Left.

It seems to me that democratic socialism is a marriage of the best parts of laissez faire capitalism, with its incentives for innovation and productivity, and socialism, which gives the people a say in what each person’s labor is worth. Most rich capitalists hate progressive taxation and government regulation. Under-regulated corporations often care more about short-term profitability than about people. Under democratic socialism the people have more control over the excesses of greedy plutocrats.

Most (all?) democracies hold that certain things belong, not to any individual or corporate entity, but to all citizens. In the U.S. “the Commons” include public schools, libraries, roads and other infrastructure, public lands and national parks, as well as the air we breathe and the water we need to sustain life. Unlike the other democracies, the Commons in this country does not include medical care or higher education. It’s time to de-stigmatize “the S-word” and educate the electorate about the benefits of democratic socialism.