Socialism Q&A
Q. What is socialism?
A. The dictionary definition is "A political and economic theory of that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." In reality, there are many different types of socialism. It is described in Marx's theory of history as the stage between Capitalism and Communism, where the worker's own the means of production, but where there are still some elements of capitalism.
Q. Who were some famous socialists?
A. A few famous American socialists include Albert Einstein, Upton Sinclair (whose book "The Jungle" led to the creation of the FDA), Eugene V. Debs, Kurt Vonnegut, Francis Bellamy (who wrote the original U.S. Pledge of Allegiance), Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Bernie Sanders.
Q. Doesn't socialism just mean that money is taken from the rich and given to lazy people?
A. No. What happens now is that money is taken from workers and given to their employers. Workers create value for their company, but are only paid in accordance with "market wages". This creates a separation between the work that they do and the pay they receive for that work, and that difference is pocketed by their employers as profit. Socialism aims to remove that separation or "alienation". If a worker does X amount of work, he should receive X amount of pay.
Q. Why do socialists support higher taxes for the wealthy? Isn't that punishing them for their success?
A. No person has ever gotten wealthy without workers whose labor they profit from, and without a stable society creating an environment wherein they can get wealthy. If there were no schools to train the workers, who would the wealthy hire? If there were no roads, how would their products be transported? The wealthy rely on our entire society to make their wealth, when they avoid paying their fair share of taxes, they're stealing from all of us.
Q. Didn't socialism kill 100 million people in the 20th century?
A. No. That's an inflated claim made by French author Stéphane Courtois in the sensationalist book "The Black Book of Communism", and repeated without research or fact-checking by conservatives and libertarians worldwide because "100 million" sounds like a nice round number.
First, the author listed communist states, not socialist states. No government has been entirely socialist, and it's typically western social democracies that have elements of socialism in their government. The communists of Maoist China and Stalinist Russia did not agree with socialists, and socialists were the victims of these regimes. These were not socialist countries, and arguably weren't even communist, as the means of production were owned by a bureaucratic elite and not the workers.
Second, the numbers of dead under those totalitarian regimes is questionable, with the researchers for the Black Book of Communism picking the larger end of the estimates whenever possible. But really, people dead under any system is a bad thing, whether it's 1000, 1 million, or 100 million.
Third, if the intent is to compare "body counts" between economic systems, the question must be asked, "How many people has capitalism killed?" 4 million more people die each year in India than in China simply because of poor access to medical care. If the editor of the "Black Book" reasons that communism can be blamed for deaths from famine in the Soviet Union, then deaths from famine in the capitalist world must be blamed on capitalism. In that case, the dead on the capitalist side pile up fairly quickly, exceeding a mere "100 million" in record time.
Fourth and finally, socialism itself, through promoting equitable distribution of resources, through providing medical care for all regardless of their ability to pay, has saved an untold number of lives. If you call universal health care "socialist", then it is to blame for the higher life expectancies in countries with universal health care. The average in the US is 78.37, in Canada its 81.38.
Q. Has socialism ever worked for a country?
A. Has any attempt at an ideologically pure system of politics or economy ever worked for a country? Pure capitalism gave us child labor, polluted rivers and air, and the Great Depression. Socialism is intended to be democratic, and as any democratic ideology, is best used in concert with other ideologies, acting as checks and balances against each other. And really, true dictionary-definition socialism has never been tried, so we can't know if it would work or not.
Now, if you call a country with a strong welfare state and universal health care "socialist", there are dozens of socialist countries, and the overwhelming majority of them are extremely successful. Take a look at Canada, France, the Nordic states, for examples of how a government with a healthy socialist component works extremely well. These are "social democracies", countries which mix socialism and capitalism together democratically. There may be a time in the future when we can have a purely socialist country, but speaking for myself, I'd be happy for making things better in the present day.
Q. Doesn't the Constitution forbid Socialism?
A. Article 1 Section 8 Clause 1 of the Constitution permits Congress to levy taxes for the purpose of defense and the general welfare of the country, which would make a tax-funded healthcare system constitutional, and which does make things like Social Security and Medicare constitutional. The 14th Amendment, not a part of the original constitution, prohibits the State from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property". Which would make the forcible redistribution of existing property unconstitutional. However, that doesn't prohibit things like worker-owned factories and businesses, and it doesn't prohibit taxation either. Additionally, right wing nativists in the US right now, opposed to how the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, are looking to repeal it because it's inconvenient to their political ideology. So who knows, maybe they'll make it a non-issue by repealing the 14th Amendment through their own efforts.
It's also worth remembering that the original Constitution didn't support or forbid any particular ideology other than Democracy... but a "democracy" wherein only white male landowners were allowed to vote. The rest, the freeing of slaves, giving women the vote, the income tax, has all been amended into it over the following two hundred years. The "founding fathers", while they're used as proxies for whatever the current political ideologies are, and while some even raise them to the same level as saints, were just men. The Constitution was written at the dawn of the industrial age, contemporary to the discovery of steam power and the early factories. Many of the "founding fathers" owned slaves, exploiting slave labor for their own profit. Certainly there were some smart guys among the founding fathers, and they set the stage for America to become a great country. Perhaps their most impressive achievement was writing into the Constitution the ability to change and improve it to reflect the realities of a changing world.
Q. Who were some famous socialists?
A. A few famous American socialists include Albert Einstein, Upton Sinclair (whose book "The Jungle" led to the creation of the FDA), Eugene V. Debs, Kurt Vonnegut, Francis Bellamy (who wrote the original U.S. Pledge of Allegiance), Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Bernie Sanders.
Q. Why are you a socialist?
A. For me personally, when I was growing up, my dad had me read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut. In "Hocus Pocus", mention is made of Eugene V. Debs. I looked up some of his speeches, and was hooked. I also read Marx's "The Communist Manifesto", and found it remarkable that he predicted many of the negative aspects of globalization. If I could describe my reason in one sentence, it would be to quote Eugene Debs when he said "I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence." I'm not a socialist because I'm jealous of the wealthy or because I live in poverty. I'm quite comfortable. But just because I'm able to keep my head above water in the capitalist system doesn't mean I should condemn forever my brothers who are drowning.
