We Need To Talk About Socialism

I had an academic-type tell me years ago (in one of those idealistic conversations that at the time seems like it was aided by the drink, but was probably really hindered) that the communists ruined socialism for everyone else because of what they did in Russia. Which, of course, culminated in the spectactular failure of a planned economy. It's ideals got corrupted by human nature, he'd said, and wasn't really socialism.

Indeed, during the Cold War in the States, it was a common insult hurled at the Left with great effectiveness by the Republicans. And just last week McCain, with considerably less success, accused Obama of being a socialist. They have so effectively owned the word that the Left has been powerless to have any reasoned debate about it.

I've often thought about what my better-educated friend said that night. And thought it a shame to pillor a well-meaning, if loose, theory because it'd been basterdised by one group.

But it was the victory of victories; free market capitalism had won the ultimate ideological battle and history was over.

So the American way was the right way. It was undisputable, and capitalism took off unchecked. It was shortly after the fall of Russia that Wall Street met Main Street, and, aided by internet stock trading, everyone was investing in the stock market. If you didn't have a portfolio, you were nobody. Status symbols changed. What car you drove or what job you had meant less than what stocks you invested in and how wealthy you'd become. And it went on, only slightly bumpy, for 20 years.

And then we get to now. The fierce urgency of now, That One says. While much of the country got richer, it was mostly a few who got very, very richer. They had done it by devising more and more complex ways of tapping into the earning power of those who didn't work in investment banking and had to make their money the old fashioned way, by earning it. A transfer of the cash earning potential of regular people into financial products to sell to other banks. It created the biggest wealth disparity in American history. In the country that still believes, to this day, despite it's actions, in the proud principle that all men were created equal.

It crashed. And the American way is no longer invincible. Now both Cold War ideologies have failed. And they failed the people the were both meant to empower.

So let's have a conversation about socialism. A national one. Let's talk about nationalising the services that are nesessary to conduct one's life. Like banking. And utilities. Health insurance. Food. Maybe even car ownership.

Because so few people in America have sought to understand what socialism really represents, it's the word that's bad, not the ideology. It would seem the Republicans think socialism is ok when the wealthy are in trouble. Now that socialism has been applied to the wealthy, maybe the time has come to talk about socialism when the not-so-wealthy are in trouble.

Can we have it back please. The word. God knows nothing else seems to be working these days.