Ladies and gentlemen of the Kos, I am a democratic socialist and I'm damn proud of it. I want to make it clear right at the outset that I don't expect or intend to change anyone's mind or call anyone to action with this diary, nor am I going to ask you to sign any petitions or anything like that - I'm just here to set the story straight about a philosophy much maligned even by some in the mainstream left. Everything you never wanted to know about Sean Hannity's favorite word, below the fold!
From watching Fox News and reading the right-wing blogs, you'd get the idea that socialism involved worshipping the devil, eating babies, and - as always - being a Nazi. Of course it should come as no shock to anyone that, as with anything else, the far right understands socialism about as well as the ancient Mayans understood solar eclipses (though, to their credit, Fox News hasn't ripped out nearly as many people's still-beating hearts over it). What it comes down to is that the modern right-wing mindset is stuck in the 1950s, back when the word "communism" provoked a visceral reaction of fear and hate. And why shouldn't it have? After all, people back then would wake up to find it partly cloudy with a 10% chance of nuclear holocaust. At that vulnerable and insecure time, the anti-communist crusade waged by tragically deluded ultraconservative hardliners like Senator Joseph McCarthy helped give rise to to the popular misconception that anything that wasn't unfettered laissez-faire capitalism (even innocuous, populist, non-revolutionary ideals like democratic socialism) was totalitarian communism by default. The modern far right still sees the word "communism" as a big red button that says PUSH TO SCARE; they haven't yet realized that the circuitry shorted out about midway through the Gorbachev administration.
That is what is going on inside Glenn Beck's head when he utters the word that makes my generation think first and foremost of boring Tom Clancy novels. And it's easy to see how the far right, as drunk with fear as they are, can so readily conflate socialism, even democratic socialism, with communism as well as other unpleasant concepts like fascism, no matter how disparate those concepts might be in actual reality (case in point: Jonah Goldberg's entire existence). Nonetheless, it may still come as a surprise, even to some of my friends on the left, that even actual socialists loathe what the Republicans seem to think socialism is. I may be too young to remember the Soviet Union, but I know my history: I know well enough that non-democratic government has absolutely no place in the modern world, and that central economic planning is nothing less than a recipe for disaster. In fact, those are two of the major reasons why I'm a democratic socialist in the first place.
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Socialism ≠ government control of industry
The modern democratic socialist philosophy boils down to one simple assertion: you live in a democracy but you work in a dictatorship, and there's something seriously wrong with that picture. Democratic socialists stand in firm opposition to both capitalism, in which a tiny upper crust controls all of industry, and state socialism, in which the government fulfills that role. Thus, in order to understand democratic socialist thought, it is necessary to understand what we mean by "capitalism" and "state socialism."
Capitalism is not the only economic paradigm that rewards innovation, it is neither the "default" nor the "optimal" economic system, it is not America's fabulous prize for reaching the end of history, it is not the only market alternative to authoritarian economic planning, and it is not synonymous with "freedom" and certainly not with "democracy." Most importantly, capitalism is not the system of goods, services, and money changing hands - it is, simply enough, the mechanism that allows the least scrupulous members of society to profit off of the work of others. These sweaty-palmed fellows are the capitalists: during the industrial age, they were the factory owners and the agrarian nobility; in today's post-industrial economy, they are the corporate executives and the majority shareholders. They make their living by taking credit for the accomplishments of their employees, blue-collar and white-collar alike (think about it: did Hess CEO John Hess personally go out and scout, map, model, drill, transport, refine, distribute, or sell any oil last year? No? Then did he really deserve the 160 million dollars he took home in 2008? This is what the Marxists mean when they talk about exploitation of the workers). Apologists extol the alleged virtues of capitalism with the phrase "economic freedom," but what is "economic freedom?" Certainly the capitalists are free to do whatever they damn well please - but what about your freedom as a worker? What ever happened to your freedom from having corporate policy dictating to you what to do, where to go, what to say, how to dress, when to eat lunch, and how much time you get to spend with your family? If you're self-employed, or if you own a small business in which you actively participate, then congratulations: you've found true economic freedom, despite the capitalists' best efforts.
State socialism (also known, confusingly enough, as state capitalism) is similar to capitalism in many ways, the most notable difference being that instead of a plutocratic elite controlling industry, you have a government. And just because it's a democratic government, that doesn't make it any better: you may have voted for your representative and your senators, but you sure as hell didn't vote to bail out Citigroup; you can support the living heck out of our troops, but nobody waves flags when the government awards lucrative contracts to Halliburton and Blackwater. However, like our slightly more conservative cousins the social democrats, as well as many of you among the non-socialist left, we believe there are certain things that governments can do better than markets (due primarily to the market's susceptibility to the no-brainer tradeoff between "the warm fuzzy feeling of doing good" and "enough money to fill a swimming pool shaped like a giant dollar sign") and therefore should do. Healthcare is one of those things, which is why we support a "medicare-for-all" single-payer healthcare system, though a public option is certainly a small step in the right direction. We do not consider single-payer to be state socialism, but rather a rectification of the respective roles of government and industry: simply put, health is not a commodity, therefore healthcare never should have been a for-profit industry in the first place.
And so we're back to the beginning: you wouldn't want to live in a dictatorship, so why would you want to work in one? Democratic socialists envision a society in which a government is owned by its citizens, a business is owned by its employees, and both are controlled by direct democracy. Imagine if you could vote in referenda to rescind AIG's bailout and strip the Stupak amendment from the House healthcare bill, and imagine if you could vote down the board of directors' bid to outsource your department to Elbonia and award themselves seven-figure bonuses for doing so. Imagine if you could vote not only for your nation's President, but for your company's CEO as well - imagine if both were paid only what their constitutents/employees thought they were worth, and imagine if, instead of being faced with a few pre-chosen nominees and forced to pick the lesser of two evils, candidates were nominated by popular acclaim and you could vote for whoever's ideas you genuinely liked best.
That's what democratic socialism is all about. What's so evil and un-American about that?
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An eclectic bunch
Democratic socialists share two core beliefs: 1) both government and business should be democratic institutions, and 2) that end must be achieved through democratic reform and organic social change, not radical revolution. Beyond that, we are an eclectic bunch, and there is no unified platform, no ideological dogma. We don't even have a party, and we aren't really looking for one. For us, faced with the choice of taking small steps forward or giant leaps backward, historically we have simply voted for the most progressive candidate available, which is, no surprise, usually the Democrat (I myself am involved, if not active, in the Texas Democratic Party) - but I think Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the first democratic socialist to be elected to Congress, set a great precedent by running as an independent. Democratic socialists are generally too liberal to run comfortably as Democrats, the party platform just feels a bit restrictive - and besides, I doubt you guys would want us among your ranks anyway, considering the Republicans already think you're a bunch of socialists ;)
Democratic socialists are not single-minded; we all have our own pet issues. I, for example, advocate the abolishment of the United States Senate as an important step towards direct democracy (obviously Bernie Sanders feels rather differently). We Americans are nowadays divided much more by political ideology than we are by state borders, so there's no reason why one Wyomingite should be worth 69 Californians. The Senate nowadays serves only to slow down the legislative process and castrate good bills - and just imagine the untold billions we'd save in taxes if we didn't have to pay for the daily operations of the Senate, let alone the salaries and expenses of the staffers and the Senators themselves. The switch to unicameralism would not be an unprecedented change: Denmark, Sweden, Croatia, Peru, Venezuela, and New Zealand have all abolished their upper houses at the national level, and all are better off for it.
There are, however, characteristics that we share - with each other as well as with the broader left. Democratic socialists do not define themselves beyond what democratic socialism purports to be, but it would be a strange coincidence indeed that we all just so happen to be staunch social progressives. There is no official prescription, but as a general rule we support anti-discrimination laws, full racial and gender equality in all social, political, and economic respects, as well as full and equal rights for gays and lesbians, including but by no means limited to marriage - however, we look earnestly forward to that day in the hopefully-not-too-distant future when positive social progress will render such legislation unnecessary.
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Wait, were you honestly surprised that Glenn Beck was wrong about something?
So where do democratic socialists fit in to the broader political picture? Nowadays there are basically two broad philosophies in action, liberalism (which includes liberal progressives, conservatives, and libertarians) and socialism. The lines blur a bit between the left of liberalism and the right of socialism, but in a nutshell, liberals see a just society as contingent upon individual liberty whereas socialists see individual liberty as contingent upon a just society. This is not to say that liberals subordinate the good of society to the good of the individual, or that socialists subordinate the good of the individual to the good of society - rather it is to say that liberals focus on the fact that a just society does not necessarily guarantee individual liberties (eg. we have democracy to ensure our voices are heard, but there's still the problem of tyranny of the majority), while socialists focus on the fact that individual liberties do not necessarily guarantee a just society (eg. we have labor laws to protect workers, but there's still the problem of capitalist exploitation).
Socialism is a broad family of political-economic philosophies which include, among others, democratic socialism, social democracy, Marxism, and libertarian socialism. Marxists and libertarian socialists seek the radical overthrow of both capitalism and the state, but they disagree on how to do it (there's really a lot of hair-splitting involved that I won't get into). Social democrats and democratic socialists reject the notions of radical revolution and anti-statism outright, instead preferring to move towards a socialist society using peaceful, democratic means.
Ideologically, Marxists and libertarian socialists start out at different places and then converge, while social democrats and democratic socialists start out at the same place and then diverge. Modern democratic socialists are the ideological descendents of the "purists" who split from the social democrats during the early- to mid-twentieth century, when the European social democratic parties began move towards either revolutionary Marxism (as in Russia) or mixed economy incorporating elements of both socialism and capitalism (as in Scandinavia). Obviously communism in practice degenerated almost immediately into authoritarianism, and in modern history social democracy has had the greatest political and economic success. But on a smaller scale, there are some real-world examples of democratic socialism in action: my favorite example is the grocery co-ops you can likely find in the more, shall we say, "granola" neighborhoods of your city, which operate under the democratic socialist principle of worker-owned enterprise. These co-ops, as well as things like credit unions, farmers' markets, artists' galleries, and the entire concept of self-employment, are all wonderful examples of efficient and equitable market activity taking place entirely outside of capitalism.
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Whew, that ended up being a lot longer than I intended. If you've made it this far I'm guessing you share at least some measure of sympathy for my beliefs, even if you're not a socialist yourself - but again, I wrote this to educate, not to convert anyone to my way of thinking. Unfortunately, those on the right who most need to read this never will, or if they do, they'll dismiss it outright as propaganda and lies (y'know, because the entire left wing has a secret evil agenda to oppress the poor beleaguered straight white Christian conservative and, like, socialize the Super Bowl or something, who even knows).
Anyway, I hope you've found this diary edifying and I hope you've found it entertaining, or at least not so boring that it's made you envy the illiterate. If, despite my rambling, you're interested in learning more about the philosophy, there is a link to Democratic Socialists of America in my blogroll. But in any case, I'll be happy to answer any other questions or comments you might have.
Edit: wow, rec list for an incoherent ramble. Thanks, guys!