Is There A Push For Socialism Within America?
To answer the initial premise, one must first slog through a series of questions in gauging the depth of such impending discourse to be had. Fundamentally of which, the question — Were the Founding Fathers Socialist where they not only championed, but constructed the first ever universal healthcare in American history by charging sailors one to two pennies per to the government that ran the then, modern day, healthcare system? Was Reagan a ‘Red’ as he implemented the policies left over from the ‘New Deal’ where the government intervened in the growth of fruits such as oranges allowing them to rot within the California sun as an endless sea of red upon the horizon to keep prices high, disallowing consumers to buy such product cheap thus inextricably hurting farmers? “In socialist economies, consumer prices are usually controlled by the government. Capitalists say this can lead to shortages and surpluses of essential products, yet commits to the very same vices begging the question — Is it only Socialism when others do it, but not America?”
Another such initial question to be asked in framing the conversation would be how one instinctively, if not historically, views Socialism — whether as a baseless signifier of a European hellscape rather than the more accurate descriptor of what one ultimately believes. This is pertinent where as Warren Buffet asserted “Government needs to reallocate some resources … be it extreme cases such as World War II, that’s the closest that we have come (as a nation) to Socialism.” Millennials and Generation Z are far more embracing of incorporating Socialistic elements into a broken system than preceding generations inundated by dutiful brainwashing dating back to, and largely defined as a historical linchpin, the McCarthy hearings and the blacklists that derived from which where a young Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actor’s Guild, would sell out Hollywood rivals as Communists cementing television roles for himself while his acting career waned.
It is important to note both the complicity that Reagan had as a budding Republican in which, and how such was prescient upon the role he would ultimately play later as America’s 40th president (1981–89) to a fallen Russia where both were equally calculated, thus setting up the return of the “Red Scare” under a Trump administration where the right wing would all but trip over one another running for a camera crew instilling such vivid demonizations of both China and Russia as preambles for war while galvanizing the sustainability of Capitalism the world over. Yet if we were to heed the advice of Sun Tzu who suggested “If one must go to war, they have already lost,” sustainability is all but tenable.
But such preludes were dubious at best given one’s ultimate determination in regard to what is and isn’t Socialism, especially inherent Socialism within America. For reference, Capitalism dates back to 1400 AD in Europe where Socialism sought it’s origins to the age of Plato, but found it’s definitive resurgence in France, in 1800 AD where the prevailing winds lend more so toward Capitalism in feasibility, Socialistic trends crop up roughly every fifty years or thereabout.
As author George Monbiot asserted during a lecture upon Consumerism, Capitalism and Neo-liberalism on July 16, 2020 — “Not everyone can afford a swimming pool, a tennis court, an art gallery and playground, yet there isn’t enough land for each to do so. But in creating those things far from taking away resources and spaces from other people, you open them up to other people. And the more that we can start to share public assets and natural wealth, then the more chance we have of everybody achieving a decent quality of life without actually bursting through the planetary boundaries.” He goes on to define Capitalism for the flawed ideology that it is in asserting that the perception exists that “your money grants you the right to natural wealth” whereas “everyone has a right to the equal enjoyment of such natural wealth” which runs counter to this modern day version of Manifest Destiny. “Its not the possession of natural wealth, but the enjoyment of it, and the enjoyment should come before possession.”
“The net product of Capitalism, or the aggregate product of everyone’s profit generating activity is economic growth. The system is deemed to fail even if economic growth falters. And governments, and everybody embedded within the capitalist system does what they can to get growth back on track.” To punctuate such a poignant thought, the FED has set about over the past year wrought with record high bankruptcies, homelessness, national debt in dollars, and small businesses going under due, in large part to the pandemic, printing money continuously offering bailout after bailout to corporations without it’s desired effect. Such a fruitless act plays into the gross misunderstanding that Trickle Down Economics works where historically there is no evidence to prove the veracity of such a philosophy.
Monbiot went on to suggest “And continued perpetual growth would be absolutely fine if the planet were growing at the same rate. But perpetual growth on a finite planet is, as we know, a recipe for catastrophe. The argument that many people will use is — ‘well, growth can be decoupled from material resource consumption.’ As we switch from a goods economy to a service based economy, we can keep growing and everyone can have more and more money, but we will consume fewer and fewer goods. Its a lovely idea in theory, but bizarrely, we are heading in the opposite direction.”
“So while in the last two decades of the 20th century, there was a relative decoupling — not an absolute decoupling, and we weren’t using fewer goods — we were just using fewer goods or fewer materials per unit of economic growth. In the 21rst century so far, there has been a recoupling where we are now using more materials per unit of economic growth. Even in countries like this where we move further into a service based economy. Why? It turns out that services use an awful lot of goods. If you fly on a plane or make a film, or do any of the activities that we regard as service based activities, you have to use an awful lot of goods. And while you can demonstrate relative decoupling in some countries in some periods of history, no one has ever shown absolute decoupling of material resource consumption in any country at any time. In other words, while economic growth continues, nowhere have we seen an absolute decline in the amount of materials that we are using.”
8:35 “Already we
Through much labor in wading through dated material and subsequently flawed precepts of a comprehensive understanding of what Socialism ultimately is through its many colors and hues, I found this definition to be one of the more inclusive and therefore more insightful — “Socialism describes a variety of economic systems under which the means of production are owned equally by everyone in society. In some socialist economies, the democratically elected government owns and controls major businesses and industries. In other socialist economies, production is controlled by worker cooperatives. In a few others, individual ownership of enterprise and property is allowed, but with high taxes and government control.” By Robert Longley.
It’s my assertion (more fact than theory) that the Left now resoundingly remains entrenched within the middle regardless of the hysteria surrounding Socialism while the right incessantly, regrettably, moves more to the fringe of the party while shouting unfounded hysterics toward a return toward a “Red Scare” due, in large part, to gross ignorance surrounding Socialism — a topic that immediately calls upon the reader to set such parameters of the conversation by asking ‘political’ or ‘economic’ Socialism where the two are vastly different. Within this vain, top-down Socialism asserts that one must first gain power in order to enact their policies where bottom-up Socialism establishes it’s policies at the bottom — co-ops being the chief example of which — which inevitably and intrinsically changes the power structure at the top. Further, Socialism has many branches inasmuch as Conservatism does. So there is no one definitive preamble that one can subscribe to it in enumerating their many misinterpretation of such a nuanced philosophy without being both intellectually dishonest and led by hubris, not fact, in doing so. None of the policies that have been put forward by Democrats — or such policies that are feared that they might put forward — emphatically reside within a Socialistic camp. Or no more that systemically or historically have etched their mark upon the American landscape.
Contextually, there were various periods spread throughout American history where policies like those of a more centrist, modern based Democratic party were based upon “for a greater good” — the GI Bill, a minimum wage, removing children from the workforce, lesser hours within the work day and better working conditions, along with collective bargaining to name but a few. LBJ ushered in Medicaid, Medicare, the Headstart program along with the National Endowment for the Arts and Public Broadcasting Corporation as part of his ‘Great Society’ program. It is the absence of such forward-thinking, and the general fear of a “Red Scare” part two, that has led to such a pragmatic perspective — one encroaching upon the favor and/or policy making of both sides of the aisle that have been readily and ignorantly dismissed from the larger conversation.
So much so that the causality of which has led to stagnant wage increases dating back to the 70's, further historical highs in wealth inequality and national debt, the inherent and systematic need for UBIs, and an under educated citizenry in a great many pertinent area of thought and/or expertise due to exponential rises in cost of post-secondary education. As a footnote to the latter, modern economist have elucidated on the lack of teaching of Socialism within post-secondary educations for multiple generations has fed into the grave misinterpretations and the preponderance of ignorance upon the topic of Socialism that forces any honest discourse virtually impossible without long, drawn out conversations dispelling widespread and generational generalizations toward which.
But as the conversation grows — if it can bud into honest debate — one must rightly contrast the flaws within each system. Through capitalism, a economic recession happens every seven to ten years resulting within government intervention. For context, every President since LBJ have raised the national debt by at least 30% To which, only three times within America’s storied history has the budget ever been balanced — under LBJ, Eisenhower, and lastly, Clinton, who, upon September 30th, 1998, announce a balanced budget ushering in wasteful spending by his successors. Yet a historical asterisk marred LBJ’s name where adding Social Security to the overall budget ledger inevitably masked the deficit he created. According to Robert Reich, “Over the last 40 years:
Wages for the top o.1% grew 345%
Wages for the top 1% grew by 160%
The share of wages for the bottom 90% shrunk…
Unfettered capitalism has pulverized the working class.” Typically, 80% of federal spending goes toward medicaid, medicare, social security, national defense, and paying on the interest on the national debt.
In conclusion, such Socialistic(?) constructs like UBIs and co-ops are being utilized if not being ground tested all over the world, but specifically within the parameters of this discussion, also in America with great success. Specifically, but not solely to one example and not the other, co-ops have saved entire regions from abject poverty allowing them to flourish in the same regard as microlending transformatively saved third world countries by granting them access to, and a furtherance of financial mobility. Once the data is entered covering the rate of success or failure that UBIs’ will have within the immediacy, countries will be better able to customize them as the world enters into a third industrial age within the next 20 to 50 years (probably sooner) that is going to further remove the already depleted and unskilled middle class in market related talents as a bulwark of consumer spending. Where credit cards were the go-to intermediary during the 80’s and upwards. thus supplementing income for a stagnating middle class, UBIs will vastly, and inevitably, take over such a vital role to perpetuate consumer spending as the unskilled middle class and working poor are crushed under the weight of a markedly unfettered and self-serving capitalistic economic system.
.
