The word "socialism" is getting a lot of play lately, mostly from people looking for a way to condemn the agendas of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. The conventional wisdom is that the U.S. is a capitalist economy, and Americans prefer capitalism. But is the conventional wisdom wise, or merely convention? Might it be that Americans are and have always been more "socialist" than "capitalist?"
(Note: I haven't yet been able to copy the Kossaku template from my old computer, and haven't yet made up a new template, so there's no Kossaku this week. My apologies.)
More below the fold....
Are Americans Capitalists or Socialists?
Google "Obama is a Socialist" and you will get 193,000 hits, most of them citing conservative pundits or bloggers who complain that President Obama is leading America into "socialism." The charge is not new; Accuracy in Media ran an 'exposé' in February of 2008, highlighting Obama's "socialist connections," and the issue has been rehashed repeatedly during the campaign and since his inauguration.
Of course, as Andrew Koppelman notes, these charges rest on a confused and sometimes dishonest use of the term "socialist." Sheri Berman in Dissent offers an excellent history of the Left's relationship to socialism, leading to an uneasy compromise she calls "social democracy," where capitalism remains as a market model, but under government regulation to curb its excesses and direct its efforts toward the needs of society. Koppelman writes:
If we use Berman’s taxonomy, Obama is firmly in the Social Democratic camp, and the label "socialist," when applied to him, rests on a confusion (willful or otherwise varies, I suspect, with the speaker) about the distinctions on the left just enumerated. [Emphasis added.]
And of course we must parse these words carefully, because we all know "socialism" is un-American. Or is it?
Do Americans practice socialism?
The answer to that question depends on which of our economies you study and how you define your terms. Many people have defined socialism, and often even a given writer's definitions vary over time. For purposes of this essay, I'll offer a two-part definition:
- Shared community rights to means of production - This isn't quite the definition often cited, which is "state ownership of means of production," because I'm going to suggest that we practice socialism in ways that don't always involve government. As ownership is by definition a bundle of rights regarding property, this captures that idea without limiting it to government.
- "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." This is a quote attributed to Karl Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Program (1876), though it was a common slogan in the socialist movement before that. It is often cited to show how socialism distributes duties and resources.
I do not claim that definition to encompass the whole of socialist theory or practice, now or in history. As I said, even socialists disagree on exactly what "socialism" means. But this is a workable definition, and one that should be revealing. Because it turns out that much of what we practice in America is already "socialist" by that definition, and indeed always has been.
Americans practice many economic models.
The title of this essay is, of course, a trick question. Americans do not practice a single economic model in every aspect of our lives. We practice several, rather like picking from the proverbial Chinese menu - some from column A, some from column B, etc. - to fit the circumstances in a given economy.
For example, most household economies are at least partially socialist. While the adults may have ultimate ownership rights of the refrigerator, sink, stove, microwave, cookware, and other means of food production, in most households the kids are also allowed and even expected to use them. Likewise for the means of laundry production, garbage removal, personal hygiene (at least the shower and toilet), etc. And household duties are often shared, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." At Casa Crissie I do most of the cooking because I'm good at it and enjoy it, but most of the eating is done by the Springoffs because they need more calories than do Herself and I.
American socialism doesn't stop at the household level. Much of local government could be described as "socialist." A government - city, county, state, or federal - owns and maintains our roads, sewers, fire and police services, public health and safety inspectors, courts, public schools and libraries, and a host of other facilities and services that we share as means of production. That did not begin with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal; many of those government owned facilities and services were present in some form from the birth of our nation and even before that. And indeed most of us would be very upset if we called 911 and the operator asked for our credit card, or if we had to pay a toll at each intersection. We pay for those facilities and services with our taxes, many of which are keyed to income or property value ("From each according to his abilities"), and we expect them to be available when we need them ("to each according to his needs").
Even our workplace economies usually include socialist elements. There's usually an employee washroom, or several, and often a break room with a coffee pot, water cooler, microwave, refrigerator, etc. The employees may not hold legal title to those elements of the means of production, but they share community rights to them by company policy. The money the company spends to maintain them could have been distributed in salaries and wages, or shareholder dividends, so you could reasonably apportion each person's portion of that support by salary, wage, or ownership share ("From each according to his abilities"), and the employees use them as needed ("to each according to his needs").
Americans practice socialism more than capitalism.
Those economies encompass most of the transactions we perform in our daily lives. Which is to say, most Americans practice socialism more often than we practice capitalism. One could argue this is why many of us aren't very adept at capitalism, but that misses the point. We are "socialists" in most of our transactions, and most of us not only accept but expect those transactions to be thus. To be capitalists in our household economies would mean our babies would die, as they can't afford to pay for their food, cribs, diapers, clothes, blankets, and caretaking. Most of us would rightly be outraged if the 911 operator demanded a credit card number before asking what was wrong. And most of us would be upset if our workplaces installed coin-operated toilets.
That didn't start with Franklin Roosevelt. It didn't even start with Karl Marx. These "socialist" transactions have been standard practice for Americans - and most other human beings - for millenia. We do them not because we're not fully committed to capitalism, but because we know capitalism is at best an economic model with limited utility. Capitalism is one way to encourage human activity and distribute goods and services, but it's not the only way, and it's not the way we practice most often in our daily lives.
I'm not arguing we should abolish capitalism, though some could and do make that argument. I'm simply arguing we should end the veneration of capitalism as if it were the One True Economic Model, handed down to us by God through his first creation Adam Smith, in II Revelations: The Wealth of Nations.
John Galt didn't buy his mother's teat.
Happy Wednesday!