The word socialism has great impact in the U.S. It provokes fear and condemnation and is often used as a political weapon, a means to put your opponent or member of the “other” party on the defensive. The socialist is usually seen as a threat to the security of the U.S. as well as our way of life.
This fear has some merit to it. Socialism does not present a threat to the security of this country, but it does threaten our way of life.
What exactly is our way of life? We live in a country where the top 20% controls over 88% of this country’s wealth; access to health care, which often entails life and death issues, is unavailable to millions of people because they cannot afford the premiums; there is an overwhelming shortage of affordable housing resulting in tens of thousands of people having to survive on the streets; “we” are constantly at war because our ruling class needs to control the world’s human and natural resources in order to increase their profits and earnings . . . it is the children of the working class who fight these wars, either getting killed or returning home with their lives ruined; “we” imprison more people than all other Western countries combined; “we” punish the poor for being poor; “we” refuse to provide an adequate safety net for people who might need help, etc., etc., etc.
Ours is a society that values and promotes competition, honors greed, and perceives exploitation of the working class as merely doing business. The capitalist justifies these behaviors and values by insisting that this is the true nature of man. Yet, there is no evidence to verify this conclusion. Man, has historically demonstrated that his/her survival was possible only through cooperative community action where resources and responsibilities were shared.
This, in large part, is our way of life. This is what “we” have been asked to protect and perpetuate. This is the way of life “we” wish to bring to other parts of our world. The abbreviated means of defining the above is CAPITALISM.
Socialism is a social and economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production, distribution of goods and services and cooperative management of the economy.
A socialist economy is based on the principle of production for use, to directly satisfy economic demand and human needs, and objects are valued by their use-value, as opposed to the principle of production for profit and accumulation of capital.
So, how does socialism threaten our way of life? It removes the notion of profit from the equation and replaces it with goods and services as a response to human need.
A perfect example of capitalism at work is the government paying farmers to warehouse excess foods rather than make them available, while people around the world go hungry, in order to prevent prices from dropping; or offering patents on newly discovered drugs that can last decades in order to prevent competition that may allow for lower market prices. The focus is not to respond to human need, but to protect the profit margin.
When Barack Obama began his quest for the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), many labeled him a “socialist.” People did not want the government interfering with their health care, not understanding that this act was a boon for the private health insurance industry . . . millions of new customers were mandated to get health insurance. The only available insurance was through the private insurers. Attempts to add a public option to keep premiums under control by offering the public another means of getting health care, was immediately sabotaged by Obama despite the fact that a great majority of Americans favored such an option.
While many worried about the government interfering with their health care, they had no problems accepting profit driven corporate CEOs from doing exactly that.
If one were to threaten these same people with removing their Medicare coverage, they would be outraged, not realizing that Medicare is, in fact, a government run health insurance program for those over the age of 65. It comes as close to socialized medicine as one could have in this country . . . and people love it.
During Obama’s two terms, many have come to realize that there has never been as good a friend to corporate America in the White House as Mr. Obama. Thinking of him as a “socialist” is an abomination.
Not only has Bernie Sanders been called a “socialist” but he is a self proclaimed “socialist” and, may I add, an “independent” who has always allied himself with the Democratic Party and is running, not as an independent, but as a Democrat.
Although some of his domestic policy platform moves along a progressive track, Sanders is today’s Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the 1930s, during the Depression, Roosevelt instituted many government programs which kept the country from exploding and capitalism from taking its final breaths. Because Communists were organizing workers and, like today, the ruling class was insistent on austerity measures that would further burden the working class, he recognized the danger to capitalism as a system and took action to make it more palatable to the people.
Bernie is not a “socialist,” he is an apologist for capitalism and like Roosevelt, will make it more acceptable to the struggling population of Americans.
His domestic platform is a good one but, let’s be realistic, Congress, and the corporate executives whom they represent may allow us some short term relief but his rhetoric will remain just that, rhetoric. The ruling class is smart enough to recognize when they must concede some things to the “masses” but there will not be any substantive change in the corrupt system in which we continuously struggle.
The goal of the corporate ruling class is, and always has been, to accrue more and more wealth. They will never willingly surrender their lives of privilege and domination. It will have to be taken from them.
As has happened for decades in this country, people will continue to apply Band-Aids to a hemorrhaging political and economic system in order to maintain that system. The problem lies not with Bernie, the individual, but with a corrupt, destructive system that is destroying lives and the environment.
But where does Bernie stand on foreign policies?
Where it comes to the issue of Israel, Bernie is not different than any other Democrat. Last summer, in the middle of Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza, he joined with the rest of the Senate in voting for continued support of its onslaught.
In Vermont, a small group of AIPAC-linked Jewish activists do have Sanders’ ear on Israel-related matters. Yoram Samets, a Burlington businessman and a member of AIPAC’s national council, said that he has been in touch with Sanders for the past decade.
Not only has Bernie supported U.S. financing and arming of Israel, but he has voted in favor of bombing Libya and Syria and continuing the drone program made famous by the Obama administration. He has supported the U.S. arming and financing of Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen, and last, but not least, we have this nice, Jewish boy from Brooklyn supporting the fascist coup, dominated by neo-Nazis. of a democratically elected president in the Ukraine. He has supported U.S. imperialism and encroachment into other sovereign nations. Is this really socialism?
Bernie has not made any public statements regarding the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements. Nor has he addressed the bloated Pentagon budget or suggested we reduce its budget to finance his domestic programs. So far, his platform is all rhetoric . . . where will the money to pay for his programs come from?
Bernie was silent on the racial problems in the country for which he is seeking the presidency. He was finally coerced into publicly taking a stand and including racism and policing in his platform. Clearly, he is most comfortable staying on script.
The people in this country are so hungry for recognition that they are being seduced as they were in 2008 when Obama was running for president and, in 1992, when Bill Clinton was to be our savior.
Remember, watch what they do, not what they say!
GOD BLESS AMERIKA!!!
Dave Alpert has masters degrees in social work, educational administration, and psychology. He spent his career working with troubled inner city adolescents.
What a beautiful and well written article. Back in the 1960s when Medicare was still not enacted and the government was trying to pass it (Kennedy an Johnson) I had family members who fought against it along with a whole town back in Edwards, Mississippi.
Years later when my aunt who had fought against was dying from cancer back in the early 1990s, she said to me, “I don’t know what I would do without my Medicare.”
Although Sanders is has a platform that the Democratic Party should have proposed long ago (Except in foreign policy, as Mr. Alpert notes), that party will never allow him to be their candidate. Given that he has pledged to support any candidate chosen by the party, his campaign seems to be another version of Obama’s hope and change deception in 2008, energizing the “left” and then delivering them to Clinton or Biden, with the help of a Republican bogey man. Nothing good can come from the utterly corrupted Democratic Party.
Nice article, in my opinion and I agree wholeheartedly with the author in his belief that Bernie Saunders is all rhetoric and nothing else on whatever concerns ordinary folks.