Why do Americans suddenly like socialism? Blame capitalism. [Opinion]

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Connected to but distinct from the socialist surge, leading Democrats, not just from the party's left but also from its center — particularly if they have presidential aspirations — are embracing social Democratic policies. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has co-sponsored Sanders' bill to supplant our unaffordable hodgepodge of a health care system with Medicare for all; so have her previously centrist colleagues, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who also have endorsed Sanders' proposal for a governmental full-employment program. Of the 57 Democrats who have won congressional primaries in swing districts and will challenge Republican incumbents this November, according to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, 33 support Medicare for all.

(snip)

Sanders' presidential campaign didn't so much create a new left as reveal it. Before Sanders had won a single vote, polls on the eve of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary showed that 43 percent of likely voters in the former and 31 percent in the latter said they were socialists. The shift to socialism has been particularly pronounced among the young, for whom the job security, debt-free college educations and affordable housing that their parents and grandparents could count on no longer exist. A 2017 YouGov poll asked millennials whether they preferred to live in a capitalist, socialist, fascist or communist nation. While 42 percent said capitalist, 44 percent said socialist - a breathtaking response in a nation long deemed exceptional by the absence of a socialist movement.


The rebirth of American socialism derives in part from a shift in electoral strategy dating to the 1970s. Michael Harrington, the Democratic Socialists of America founder, argued that given the nation's entrenched two-party system, the most advantageous way to present socialism to voters was to have openly socialist candidates run as Democrats. Running on a third-party line, socialists were likely only to siphon support from Democrats and help elect Republicans, as the independent candidate Ralph Nader was to do, calamitously, in the 2000 presidential election.

(snip)

It took more than 40 years in the political desert, however, until Harrington's strategy was so decisively vindicated - 40 years in which the economy grew steadily harsher. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the constraints that unions and New Deal legislation had placed on corporate conduct had yet to fully erode. During that time, the Los Angeles DSA chapter, in which I was active, never had more than roughly 350 members (one of them a spy from the Ed Davis-Daryl Gates-era Los Angeles Police Department). Today, the L.A. chapter has close to 1,500 members, campaigning for rent control, for closing ICE, for single-payer health insurance. Most are millennials, who need no instruction in how our economic system curtails prosperity and breeds plutocracy.

(snip)

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Why-do-Americans-suddenly-like-socialism-Blame-13100517.php

I believe this to be a sound analysis.

[bunny planet]

1. I also like Marcy Wheeler's take on the topic....

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/20/radical-socialism-or-clear-eyed-realism/

[Uncle Joe]

2. I do as well

(snip)

But is Ocasio really radical? Is her Democratic Socialist platform all that far left? Looking at Ted Kennedy’s concession speech from 1980 and the points around which he’d wish to rally Democratic voters 38 years ago, probably not given the changes to our society and economy. Unlike 1980, before Ronald Reagan broke down PATCO — the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Union which went on strike in 1981 — we no longer have a thriving middle class based on employment with adequate job security and living wages. We have instead handfuls of billionaires who have amassed their record-breaking fortunes rapidly on the backs of half the country which can’t scrape together $400 cash for an emergency, whose real wages haven’t budged since the 1980s.

(snip)

Perhaps the real problem is the decades-long right-wing propaganda which denigrates reasonable, achievable political solutions to real problems average Americans face as radical and socialism as something we haven’t already accepted and relied upon within our existing social safety nets like Social Security and Medicare.

Perhaps the real problem is the same absolutist propaganda which has uniformly characterized any and all Democrats, even moderates, as “hippies”, “liberal bigots” and worse rather than see them as fellow Americans who believe in the Constitution and also believe the U.S. can do more for the common man through reasonable and distributive economic justice.

Is it really all that radical to want to form a more perfect union by establishing economic and social justice, insure domestic tranquility by ensuring every American has food and shelter, provide for the country’s common defense by promoting American’s general welfare?

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/20/radical-socialism-or-clear-eyed-realism/

Thanks for the excellent addition bunny planet.

[bunny planet]

8. I think it's also important to distinguish what kind of capitalist system a country has...

In successful social democracies in Europe, there is highly regulated capitalism. What we seem to have here more and more, especially with the swamp creatures in charge, is a form of capitalism that is predatory, less and less regulated, and more and more resembling the kind of capitalism Naomi Klein wrote about in her book 'The Shock Doctrine' - Disaster Capitalism.

The Republican party is more and more a Libertarian party, rights and freedoms only for the wealthy, the state and the commons used as a privatized piggy bank for them, and nothing for anyone else. Capitalism on steroids if you will. They privatize the profits, but socialize the losses. Capitalism isn't the problem per se, the toxic brew of crony, disaster, and predatory capitalism that has been taking shape here is a very big problem.

People say they don't like labels, and of course policies matter most in defining the agenda of a representative government.....however, you can be sure the GOP will be labeling us 'socialists' and figuring out ways to malign and distort all that Democratic Socialists and Democrats in general want to stand for and put forth as policy. So, we'd better figure out a clear way to express what it means, and define it in our own terms instead of letting the Repukes define it for us. Also Democratic Socialism is not socialism, it is capitalism with aspects of government that are socialized....like FDR New Deal....

The really interesting thing is, now that a Democratic Socialist and progressive Democratic platform is out in the open and being discussed in public, the right wing noise machine is scrambling and perplexed as to how to make it sound scary and bad, to demonize it in the dishonest way they get away with so often. ex. Sean Hannity had a board up behind him with the wish list of Democratic Socialists behind him.....universal healthcare, expanded care for seniors, free public college tuition,....you know, all those scary things that people want in earnest.....He ended up looking like a fool and making a commercial for all that is good about the platform. You can be sure the GOP and their propaganda media are going to come up with some more successful disinformation campaign shortly, so imho, we'd be better off counterbalancing whatever they try and throw at us with a unified and strongly supportive message that these positive changes are popular and can work.

We must also have a clear message about how to pay for them. If the GOP can pass a tax bill that does nothing except help the already wealthy and adds 11 trillion dollars to the debt and countless more billions to the military alone, we can figure out how to articulate paying for the programs that actually help people. Trick is, we have to be unified in our message, this is what the Democrats stand for...labor rights, healthcare for all etc....

[Uncle Joe]

9. This is a good video by Colbert posted by Rhiannon

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017503099

[bunny planet]

10. yes, thanks for posting...

That Daily Caller's reporting on the Ocasio-Cortez attending Cori Bush's rally was another example I'd wanted to include. When the right wing media publicly try and talk about what Democratic Socialists (who are actually Democrats, not Socialists) actually stand for, they end up making fools of themselves.....because those policies sound really, really good to the American people, who are starved for such policies. Comey too, looks like a jerk when he pleads that the Dems shouldn't move to the left, talking about the great middle. What great middle Mr. Comey? The great middle has been decimated by years of Republican rule (the party you just left) and center right policies that have screwed them right out of the middle and into a downward spiral.

[Sophia4]

3. I would never label myself "Democratic Socialist," but everyone needs health care, everyone

needs housing (I worked for a homeless project for years and understand that complicated problem well), and we need more education than every in this complex, international economy. Too many Americans are left out when it comes to sharing the bounty of healthcare, housing and education.

People in rural areas have no idea what it is to live in a city with homeless people including some families living under tarps and in tents here and there, under freeways, in parks and just plain on the street.

We in California, although we are one of the wealthiest states, know what poverty means, how so many children, seniors and people of working age live in dire poverty here.

I saw a headline last week that 5,000 seniors are homeless in Los Angeles.

Now 70, Colucci lives in a white van with no license plates, a sagging tire and a broken window. Growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, “playing the role of a man” was tough, she said, but added that the stigma of homelessness is worse.

“The homeless, they’ve been beaten up, they’ve got nothing, no hope,” she said one hot afternoon, sitting in the cluttered van’s open doorway.

Colucci’s medical history may be unusual. But she is part of a large cohort of L.A.’s homeless population whose surge this year took some L.A. officials by surprise. While L.A.’s overall homeless population dipped slightly, Colucci’s age group, 62 and up, shot up 22%, to nearly 5,000 people.

The city and county have been slow to respond to the graying of the homeless population, advocates said. While some homeless people are aging in place, L.A.’s spiraling housing costs increasingly are driving people into homelessness for the first time at advanced ages, advocates said.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-older-adults-20180719-story.html

[Uncle Joe]

4. As for me labels are meaningless, actions, ideals and policies are all that matter.

It's far too easy in warping or distorting a label from it's original or most idealistic premise via mass propaganda and in abandoning a prejudiced label based on ignorance or knee jerk fear we narrow our choices and close potentially critical paths for survival.

Thanks for sharing Sophia.

[Sophia4]

5. I agree that labels are meaningless.

And our economy is likely to change over the next 10-15 years -- drastically as automation does more and more of the work we used to do.

I remember how my grandmother washed clothes with a wringer washing machine.

And her mother before her probably had a washboard.

Progress means we have to be ready to deal with change.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Precisely and just look at all the gadgets that smart phones alone have or will replace

50 Things Your Smartphone Replaced [ Or Will Replace In The Future ]




The birth of smartphone revolutionize the way we communicate, play, think, surf the internet and more. Never before a single device has the capability to replace so many other items. As technology becomes smaller, more efficient, and better with every release. We shall explore what the smartphone replaced and what it will replace in the near future.

(snip)

https://www.geckoandfly.com/13143/50-things-smartphone-replaced-will-replace-future/

[JayhawkSD]

7. This is a losing narrative.

This nation enjoyed enormous prosperity in the 1950s, 60s and well into the 70s; a prosperity which embraced the middle and working classes as much if not more than any other. The economic system which was in place and which drove that prosperity was a mixture, but was almost entirely capitalism. Socialism as the primary engine of an economy has never provided significant prosperity for any part of any nation which embraced it. Not once in the entire history of structured economic systems.

What has destroyed the prosperity of today's working class is the perversion of the economic system by the destruction of the balance of power between business and labor which was provided by a system of collective bargaining. That destruction has been driven by the corruption of legislative bodies, members of which we keep reelecting at an 85% rate, and which we continue to look to for solution of the problem which they created to begin with. We blame business for asking them to create that destruction, but is the legislators who actually did it, and they did it for the most base reason. They did it for money.

We keep asking the governing bodies to pass laws strengthening labor unions. Why would the legislatures do that? They are the ones who passed the laws gutting them in the first place. You seriously think they are going to recreate the labor unions that they so carefully destroyed in the first place?

And that doesn't even touch on the legislative neglect that allows the perversion of capitalism which stifles competition and allows price fixing and monopoly control, especially in the health care industry. We don't even ask our legislative bodies to do anything about that.

Don't let anyone fool you with the mantra that Medicare is socialism and that it presents some kind of solution. It is not and it does not. In socialism the government controls the means of production of goods and services, and Medicare does not fit that description. Medicare is delivered by private parties, capitalists, and only payment is controlled by government. And even that control of payment is an illusion, because the parties delivering the goods and services fix the prices through anti-competitive measures and through the same bribery of legislatures which drives all legislation. Anyone who touts Medicare as an example of the benefits of socialism does not know what socialism is, and does not know of the hundreds of millions of dollars annually that are lost to fraud and overpayment through that system. Those losses are not decreasing, they are increasing.

[ck4829]

11. People are beginning to realize capitalism is great... when you have capital

[lagomorph777]

12. People are beginning to see that Capitalism is just another euphemism for a giant ripoff.

And Socialism has been falsely portrayed by the ripoff artists.