I’ve been following Jesse Jackson since he ran in 1988 when I was in grade school. Jesse Jackson caught my interest because of his connection with Dr. King and the way he highlighted poverty, racial justice, and worker’s rights in his speeches. I had the opportunity to watch Jackson speak in opposition to the first Gulf War at the MIT Peace Rally in 1991 and it was an excellent speech where Jackson ties the struggle for peace with the struggle for justice in the United States. Jackson’s candidacy was important because he brought issues into the mainstream that the media and other politicians of the time did not want to talk about and he helped to build a multi-racial, multi-generational movement that offered an alternative to market ideology.
Jackson recently wrote a column about democratic socialism and the scare tactics centering on the word ‘socialism’ emanating from the media and candidates:
Some already have started to frighten people about the label “democratic socialist.” Trump paints it as Venezuela or Cuba. Mike Bloomberg has called Sanders (and presumably Warren’s) views on taxing wealth “communist.” Voters are going to hear a lot more of this nonsense, if Sanders continues to build momentum or Warren catches fire.
Here’s the reality. The important word in “democratic socialism” isn’t socialism, it’s democratic. Sanders isn’t talking about making America into Cuba or Venezuela; he’s talking about extending social guarantees like those offered in most other advanced industrial states, invoking Denmark or Sweden. These countries have universal health care at lower cost, paid family leave, guaranteed paid vacations, higher minimum wages, more generous public retirement programs. They also have vibrant and competitive economies, lower inequality, less poverty, and higher life expectancies.
A political regime under most economic systems can be more or less democratic or authoritarian. There have been dictatorships within countries with capitalist economies and dictatorships within countries with socialist economies. Chile is a prominent example of a dictatorship in a capitalist country because when Pinochet took power he killed the most prominent socialists and labor leaders with the help of the CIA in order to implement Milton Friedman’s free market ideology. I’ve studied the case of Chile closely because I’m from Montana where the Anaconda Copper Mining Company that was seized in Chile was based. The Anaconda Company had a stranglehold on Montana as well as it had Chile with both states having a colonial economy as a result. When Salvadore Allende nationalized the mines in Chile it weakened Anaconda enough to where Montana could write one of the nation's most progressive constitutions in 1972. Socialism in Chile brought Montana a new constitution that guaranteed to every Montanan “A clean and healthful environment.” The people and the State of Montana could not implement any environmental regulations when it was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Anaconda. In the context of domination by powerful corporations and individuals socialism and democracy are instrumental and defensive tools with which people can fight back.
In his column, Jackson goes on to list and describe policies and programs that can be considered democratic socialist and contrasts them with socialism for the wealthy:
When you think of democratic socialism, remember the programs that Republicans and conservatives and the corporate lobbies denounced as socialistic when they were first considered: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental and consumer protection, banking regulation to protect consumers.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which manages our nation’s civil aviation and international waters, is a state program. The Food and Drug Administration, which ensures that drugs are safe is a state program. The minimum wage, food stamps, public housing could all be considered democratic socialist programs.
Our problem has been that we have too much socialism for the rich and the powerful — subsidies for corporations, get out of jail free cards for crooked bankers, tax breaks for the rich that leaves them paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries, monopoly power for corporations that allows them to gouge customers and more.
None of these programs or policies involve gulags or firing squads and they are supported by a long history of political thought in the United States. They are not Cuban or Soviet. The media controversy over the label “socialist” is as absurd as the media controversies in 2008 with Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Joe The Plumber. It was claimed that Obama might be radical with terrorist sympathies in 2008 because he served on a board with Ayers and at some point Ayers made a contribution to Obama’s campaign; then it was claimed that Obama might secretly hate America because his attendance at Jeremiah Wright’s church; then it was claimed that Obama was really a communist because he said to Joe the Plumber, “when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” The corporate media, billionaires and conservatives are quick to paint anything that benefits the poor and working class as communism. I know it isn’t communism so their fear tactics don’t scare me and I welcome having a national debate with Republicans on these issues.
At the end of his column Jackson ends by invoking the words of Dr. King:
And on this, Dr. Martin Luther King — often smeared as a “red” or a communist — was very clear. In 1966, he confided to his staff:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”
So, put aside the fearmongering and the red-baiting; take a look instead at the substance. There’s no question we need big structural change, as Elizabeth Warren puts it. We need a better distribution of wealth, and a greater protection of basic human rights like the right to affordable health care, as Sanders argues.
Now is the time to fearlessly fight for our future and the future of life on this planet and take on Trump and the Republicans before they turn this country into a fascist dystopia.