I’m very glad that the likes of Palin, Beck and others at Faux News have raised the spectre of "Socialism" after a long hiatus on the American political scene. Of course socialism is a "dirty" word here in the good ole "tea-bagger" USA. That was not the case in the first third of the 20th century when there was a vigorous Socialist/Communist movement in our country. And it’s obviously not the case in Europe, South America, Asia and the rest of the world, where socialist parties and movements rule or challenge the status quo. Even though "socialism" in Europe has preserved the capitalist system more than challenged it the concept has great prestige and resonance among the people at large. Unfortunately the left movement in our country was decapitated in the 1950s and has never fully recovered, in that fundamental critiques of our capitalist system are still verboten. So even though the right wings characterization of Obama as a "socialist" or "communist" is comical, in that most of his policies are to preserve the capitalist system under stress (much as FDR did, but with recycled moderate Republican rather than social democratic policies), it still puts socialism back on the map to be properly elucidated and understood by critics of the "system" whose critiques have been, to date, totally inchoate.
For instance, over at HuffPost there’s an interview with Graham Nash, in which Nash mentions Eisenhower and his famous formulation of the "military-industrial" complex," adding "commercial" to it, the better to characterize the enemy of progressive values. Of course, Eisenhower at first referred to the "military-industrial-congressional" complex. So to better characterize the system, we can think of the "military-industrial-commercial-congressional complex." Well, we definitely should add "financial" to all of that and why not "energy" and "real estate" and then basically what you get is an apt description of the "capitalist system" itself, and when you add "penal" (our ridiculous incarceration rate of young, male, unemployed minorities) and "judicial" (especially the Supreme Court's recent decisions) to it, you get an apt description of the rule of the capitalist class itself (lobbyists, corporate control of the electoral process, etc.) or in other words "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie." So lets amend the classic phrase to now include "the military-industrial-commercial-financial, real estate-energy-penal-judicial complex." Well, upon further reflection we can add the health care and insurance industries as we just witnessed with the Health Care Reform debate. And how could I forget the media? So, now we have the "military-industrial-commercial-financial, real estate-energy-penal-judicial-insurance-medical-media," complex. We have now identified the problem and the enemy and it is basically US. But what is the solution? As mentioned the solution has been taken off the table because we cannot in polite society (including here at Dkos) mention it. How about "socialism?"
The right wing recognizes socialism as their mortal enemy, so why doesn’t the left take up the cudgel once again and see it as our savior? For instance, another article over at HuffPost is written by the well-known neo-con Tony Blankley. In it he says "the new (health care) law provides for taxes on investment income to pay for socialized health care: Sucking out the lifeblood of our economy to fund the deathbeds of the destitute." Yes indeed, the middle class, families making less than $80,000 dollar per year, are now, in Blankley’s world the new destitute and he would prefer to see them languish on their deathbeds rather than tax the elite's investment income. Yup, under Blankley's rule the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Social and economic justice in his and Beck's vocabulary equals socialism. Well, in the right-wings world it seems to be "give them socialism or give them death," and they prefer that you die. Give me socialism any day.