Every day it gets harder and harder to watch the Dems absolutely waste their assets and fail to message. Happily, for us, someone has finally pointed this out in a WaPo article here. The Dem primary is wasting time and money. It is a gift to the Repubs. Which leads to one of our biggest gifts to them.
Socialism
Socialism, while maybe eliciting only a shrug in some parts of the USA, is an anathema to most of America, and is particularly vile in places where we will need to win. We always have to keep in mind that the electoral college is stacked against us, the Repubs have gerrymandered the country heavily in their favor, they are going to cheat and lie in every possible way, and many of the key places where we have to win to have an overall victory in the Senate and Presidency, cannot abide the word Socialism. Any politician who uses the word except as an expletive will lose. If Socialism had a smell and you smelled like it, you would lose. If it had colors and you wore those colors, you would lose. Is it completely rational? No. But it is no more or less rational than hatred of people who are not white. And look at how were having to still fight this one out.
Senator Sanders has done the Democratic party a great service by forcing it to talk about and, gosh, maybe even fight for important economic and social reforms. We must respect and thank him for that.
But, he has also done a great disservice by introducing the word Socialism into our public lexicon. Besides, adding the word Democratic to the word Socialism is meaningless. I imagine its purpose is to try to make Socialism palatable by taking on a word that should be palatable. But, it doesn’t really work. Americans don’t hear the word Democratic, they only hear Socialism.
The Repubs have already weaponized this and we must get out of this trap or we will likely lose, not in safe areas where nobody cares (although probably more care than we think), but in critical places where we have to win to acquire full institutional power.
The answer lies in our history of about 100 years ago.
Our Economic Expansion
Most everyone reading knows what follows, but we should remind ourselves anyway (heavily summarized by me, please more knowledgeable people correct if needed).
The Civil War and the Railroads lit off an economic expansion that has persisted to this day. Yes, there have been low spots, but as we know the US has continuously built immense wealth for over 150 years.
After the war the Federal Government was far more powerful than it had been before, now a steward over a real continental nation. But its hand in the economy was light as a feather. Thus, we had about the rawest form of laissez-faire (Free Market) capitalism that there was. The excesses are well known. Robber barons, financial empires, petroleum monopolies, huge financial scandals (see Credit Mobilier), political corruption. As the nation urbanized, we had the growth of services for urban areas like mass production of food, clothing, transportation, etc. Each of these was fraught with corruption, unsafe working conditions, etc..
And so, in a sweep of change that we can hardly imagine today, the nation and its leadership acted to stop the worst of the ravages of Free Market Capitalism.
Briefly, and certainly not a complete list, we did these things:
- Put anti-trust laws in place to prevent monopolization of markets and industries.
- Stopped child labor.
- Established rules for workplace safety.
- Addressed failures in the food manufacturing industry.
- Put in place high progressive tax rates to prevent the kind of disparity that we see now between CEOs and regular people.
- Put in place vigorous estate taxes to prevent the establishment of a moneyed aristocracy.
- Security regulations to prevent at least the worst of security fraud.
- Separated banks from investment brokers (Glass-Steagall).
- The social security safety net for those who needed help from their country when they had a need (except, of course, for domestic workers who were mostly black, because most white Americans seem to be despicable when It comes to race).
- Established the Interstate Commerce commission to almost completely control the railroads (which, over time, may have done more damage than good, but was necessary at the time).
- Unionization and the legal right to collective bargaining.
- Establishment of open, ordered, and reviewable financial transactions for even average people, making possible things like home mortgages for GIs moving to the suburbs after WWII.
- Investment in private/government partnerships, especially university/government research that, whether we realize it or not, built the technology that we swim in today.
Thus, the good old USA wove a web around laissez-faire, Free Market Capitalism to prevent or at least, minimize, the ravages of the open market and the predators who hunted within it.
Was any of this perfect. No. Did it build the American middle class? Yes. Did it make the US the economically egalitarian country that it was for a while? Yes? Did it lead to the death of Capitalism? No. Did it lead to continue growth, expansion, and creation of wealth. Yes. Of course, this last also resulted from our unique position as the sole survivor of WWII whose country was intact and who could remake the world order, not only to prevent another catastrophic war, but who could open global markets to US companies and vice versa (few may remember Made in Japan, but look at where Japan sits in the global economy now).
It must be noted that this goodness was not equally spread around. Whites used all of their usual tricks to continue to stifle black economics. It is like its programmed in. We will find out how deeply it’s programmed in at the next election.
This new form of Capitalism can be called American Capitalism. I believe, but cannot find the references at this moment, that it has been denoted this way in other literature.
Folks, you don’t want Socialism. It doesn’t work. What you want is American Capitalism. So, what happened?
The Turning Point
After the Civil rights legislation was passed, and as LBJ predicted, the South moved lock, stock and barrel from Dems to Repubs. This single change is why we are where we are today.
Remember that the Repubs were the party of Abolitionists and Lincoln (though now they are the party of Jefferson Davis). After the war they were largely a Northern party of the moneyed interests, the Capitalists.
The Dems were more of a rural party and included all of the South. When FDR built the Democratic coalition (big summary here), the new urban immigrants and the older Southern Democrats found themselves in a useful relationship that lasted for quite a long time, despite the viciousness of the Jim Crow era (and because the “white” European immigrants were all to happy to adopt their new country’s hatred of “non-white” people). The Dems also didn’t have the kind of money that was behind the Repubs.
When the South moved to the Repubs, in that movement the money of the Repubs was married to the agenda of the South. The Southern politicians were all to willing to give the business interests everything they wanted in order to get the money and political power they needed to destroy the system that had forced integration on them.
This relationship was new and devastating. This relationship steadily dismantled American Capitalism to return it Free Market Capitalism, while at the same time using race staggeringly effectively to get whites to vote against their own economic interests. It still works. And it has succeeded, accelerating this dismantling during the Trump administration. And let’s not forget that the Dems, under Bill Clinton, helped this along in their so-called tack to the center and the removal of some of the financial barriers to the financial corruption we have today.
What We Need to do Now
It was not Socialism that built the fairly decent, broad-based American economy in the 20th Century. It was American Capitalism.
Those of you where were born after about 1980 have never really known American Capitalism. You’ve only known laissez-faire, Free Market Capitalism and it is f’ing up your lives. But you don’t want Socialism and you especially don’t want it anywhere near the platform of your party going into the next election.
So, very simply……………..
Stop using the word Socialism.
Stop thinking that Socialism is going to make things better. It won’t.
Start using the words American Capitalism and say what you mean. Most of the whites who are blindly behind the Repubs and Trump don’t have a clue that it was American Capitalism (many of whose policies came from Dems, like unions and SS) that gave their families a decent middle-class life. Tell everyone what American Capitalism was and what it did for them. Are you listening leadership of the party???????? Your party has a fantastic record of leveling America’s playing field, even for those who hate your guts right now. Use it.
Then, look to the future because what we need is:
21st Century American Capitalism. The only candidate who is coming even close to defining what this is is Senator Warren (the rest are down in the muck of issues that are likely not going to be winning ones). Senator Warren, if you or your staff are reading, please use this term because I believe this is what you mean and it will play a helluva lot better everywhere than Socialism ever will.
21st Century American Capitalism will be different simply because of the growth and penetration of technology and our global interconnectedness.
Many of the readers, much younger than I, are already in the world of 21st Century American Capitalism. They are in the gig economy, every person for himself/herself, start up companies, tech revolutions, unfathomable student debt, not enough economics to buy a home (if you want one), etc. We’ve been through this before, 100 years ago, some of the issues were the same (financial corruption) and some are new, Surveillance Capitalism.
We can fix this again, if we focus on what really needs to be done and not the sidetrack of Socialism.
I strongly believe that the Democratic party (that is currently managing the zoo of the primary) must do this if it wants to win and acquire enough power to actually implement policy.
Furthermore, we must define clearly what is happening now and has been happening for decades. Call this something like:
Republican Robber Barron Capitalism – Steal from the Middle Class and Give to the Rich
For God’s sake Democrats, can’t you even understand what you stand for and what you need to say? Who came up with the meme, “A Better Deal?”. That is absolute amateur hour.
If you want to win, STOP thinking or saying Socialism. START saying 21st Century American Capitalism. And then define for the American public, clearly, in short sentences that say what it is.
All of you younger people reading this (if you’ve gotten this far and still aren’t angry), define what you want 21st Century American Capitalism to be and make your party listen. I’ll bet you anything that you won’t come up with Socialism, but you might come up with an America that is livable and has a future that you can reach towards instead of dread.
If you and the party do this, hard, every day, through all communication channels you will de-fang the Socialism stigma and speak to Americans in a language that they understand and love. And probably win.