Socialism

"I thought we lived in an anarcho-syndicalist commune."



--from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

Sarah Palin is quoted yesterday morning, calling President Obama a socialist. My first thought on hearing this was to think that Sarah Palin wouldn't know a socialist if she tripped over one, but then I figured perhaps she might benefit from a little lesson in the history of philosophy and economics.

Utopian socialism has been around almost from the time human beings evolved on this planet. In this sense, socialism is just about sharing, without too much reference to the merits or lack of merits of those receiving help. Examples abound in the Bible. One that comes to mind is the injunction to farmers not to harvest their fields too closely, but to leave something for gleaners, the people in need.

The term "utopian" comes from the fictional writings of Thomas More, who envisioned an ideal world where everyone did manual labor, and this allowed time for everyone to do other  things too - pray, paint, dance, read or whatever pleased them. The word supposedly means "nowhere."

By the early part of the nineteenth century, there were a number of attempts at creating model societies, notably in the United States. New Harmony Indiana is often cited as the prime example. People there associated voluntarily, shared food, lived in close proximity (but without shedding traditional family arrangements) and kept little as personal property. I guess the kibbutz way of living in modern Israel is similar to them.

These utopian communites usually didn't last very long. Bickering over the communal property and perceived infringements on personal matters caused people to abandon the concept. The Shakers were among the last relics of it in America.

Karl Marx thought the whole idea of utopian socialism was silly. Marx was interested in economics and in social justice, but assumed the separation of small numbers of people into voluntary  communes would never reform capitalistic society. Marx insisted that his analysis was scientific and would be the future of humankind because it is rational, not because people would change their hearts and voluntarily share with each other. Marx insisted that the illogicality of private enterprise would cause it to fall without much of a push from the downtrodden.

Marx's view of nineteenth century life was pessimistic in the extreme. Every person competed with every other person for the necessities of life, which were available in sufficient quantities, but only if profits - Marx always called profits "surplus value" - could be eliminated. But of course profit could not be eliminated because a steadily diminishing number of plutocrats were enriching themselves by squeezing labor in a more and more desperate effort to avoid falling into the ranks of the exploited. Every product must be offered at a lower price than competitors are demanding in order to be sold, but the owner of the factory, mill, farm or whatever business is being considered, can only charge a lower price for finished goods if  his labor costs are lower. Therefore, the owners must drive down wages.

Marx insisted that when working people became desperate enough they would rise in revolution, take over the property of their oppressors and institute a dictatorship of the proletariat, a truly unfortunate expression. In this communist future there would be ample amounts of everything because no surplus value would be siphoned away by private owners. There would be no further need for government, since governments protect the owners, and governments would wither away. (Why there wouldn't be a reversion to a private enterprise economy is a topic Marx didn't get around to addressing.)

Marx was utterly dogmatic about his theory. He fought ceaselessly through the rest of his unhappy life to prevent any revisions of it. But, of course, there were people who  accepted some but not all of Marx's propositions. Instead of simple common ownership of property, and to prevent a new concentration of wealth, that ownership should be entrusted to the government, which represents all of us in a socialistic world. Instead of a violent revolution, this public ownership can come about through the ballot box, and gradually if it cannot be achieved all at once.

Various parts of the American canon might be called socialistic under this rubric. The minimum wage, for example, is meant to prevent employers from compelling workers to accept less than a living wage for full time jobs. (Theoretically: a person making minimum wage could not possibly live a life of decency at the current time, unless bunking in with others, or receiving other help.) Social Security and Medicare might be called socialistic, as they supposedly benefit people of modest means at the expense of their wealthier neighbors. (Once again, I don't personally see much "income redistribution" going on there. The ceiling for Social Security contributions is still low enough that more affluent people are not unduly burdened by it.)

So, coming back to Sarah Palin and her charge that President Obama is a socialist. Not having heard her, I'm not certain of the specificity of her allegation, but guess it's involved with the Affordable Health Care Act. It strikes me that the act hardly qualifies as socialistic. Perhaps if it provided for single payer health care or there was a public option - either of which would have strengthened the act in my view - one could argue it's socialistic, but as it is, it just doesn't signify. Sorry, Ms. Palin. Thank you for playing and we have a lovely parting gift for you. (If only you'd go away.)