Lux Americana

Last week, I received the following message from my older brother, who is also quite politically inclined:

One thing I love about Eastern Europeans is that they already lived through all of the BS were are heading toward. The 2nd page is better, I think it was translated from Russian it’s so a little choppy.

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/

(I felt my response was worth republishing, so I’ve edited it into a more appropriate format for this site, and is as follows):

Ah, Pravda… once the official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, now the Russian equivalent of the National Enquirer, with hard-hitting stories like this one: http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/19-02-2008/104119-nether_world-0 … even after the fall of Communism, they’ve long been a reliable bastion of sensationalism and anti-Americanism (and pictures of Russian supermodel tits).

I won’t bother pointing out the several blatant errors and mischaracterizations the author made… check out his blog if you want a clearer understanding of his weird Russian-Nationalist/Christian-Mercantilist perspectives…

I will say I agree the old Soviet bloc countries have a unique perspective on socialism, but then so do the Swedes… of course the socialism of Sweden bears very little resemblance to that of the USSR, just as British and American socialism don’t have a whole lot in common with either the Swedish or Soviet versions.

I’d argue this isn’t something we’re “heading toward” on a couple levels – first, and probably most importantly, we’re already there. Second, the “socialism” we’re experiencing in America is a schizophrenic sort… as we’ve discussed before, we “socialize the losses, and privatize the profits” – it’s often more like Mussolini’s Fascism than Marx’s Socialism.

Interestingly, on the author’s blog in another post he’s discussing Marx’s opinion of international “Free Trade” and globalization — essentially Marx said he supports it, not because he believed in it, but simply because it exacerbates the pre-existing tension between the proletariat and the bourgeois and so increases the potential for revolution — I’m not sure that makes us socialists, but it provides an intriguing perspective; if Marx supported the fullest extent of international laissez-faire markets purely as a means of making people’s lives miserable and inciting revolution, does that make American hyper-capitalists and proponents of global free trade into Marxists?

Honestly, I wish the GOP had succeeded with their hare-brained attempt to rebrand the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party” – maybe then we would get over the ridiculous obsession we have in this country with the word “socialism”. Plus, it’d give the Democrats an opportunity to rebrand the Republican Party as the “Christian National Fascist Party,” and we could all totally devolve into name-calling…

But seriously, we as a nation have to start having a serious discussion about the merits and flaws of socialism, stripping out the bogeymen of Bolshevism and other authoritarian states that tried to apply Marxist doctrine. Most people in this country enjoy our socialized roads, highways and bridges, socialized police, fire, military and emergency response, socialized schools and libraries, etc. They enjoy having an SEC, FDIC, FDA, USDA and other methods of “state control over the means of production and distribution,” the very definition of socialism.

Now, most of those same people couldn’t accurately tell you in 20 words or less what Socialism is, they’ve never read any of Marx’s work or any scholarly refutation of Marx/Socialism, but they can sure as hell tell you why it won’t work/hasn’t ever worked and that anyone who believes in it is evil. I think we have a serious problem there.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not an apologist for Marx or capital-’S’ Socialism, but I’m intrigued by the state of debate in this country vis-a-vis socialism — it seems for the most part, the more frequently someone says the word, the less they actually understand about it. I think plenty of self-described Libertarians might find their head exploding when presented with the notion of Libertarian Socialism (a term considered redundant outside the US, interestingly enough)…

We’ve been trained to believe that Capitalism = Democracy = Individual Liberty, and conversely that Socialism = Authoritarianism = Statism, but in reality we’re talking about 6 very different things, none of which are particularly exclusive (except of course for Authoritarianism and Liberty).

I found it hilarious how much Palin was going on about socialism during the campaign… she’s governor of Alaska, for shit sakes… the state where the people own the resources (oil and gas) and everyone who lives there gets cut a check every year for their share of the profits… that’s socialism, plain and simple…

Check out some of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on YouTube or something… he’s a self-described “socialist” – I’m willing to bet you find yourself agreeing with him more often than not.

This wound up being a really long response, but I hope I’ve made clear I’m not really an advocate of Socialism, I just think we need to be a lot clearer about what small-’s’ socialism really is and isn’t, so we can appropriately and rationally address the negative aspects of what we are dealing with – corporate welfare, unions with more interest in the power of the organization than the well-being of the worker, and a bought-off government…

America has long been a country with socialist institutions and tendencies.  It’s time for Americans to wake up, stop being afraid of a word, and start attacking the real issues.

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