Are You A Socialist?

Or are you a liberal? Or neither? The general elections in America have made clear that a majority of Americans are in favor of policies that are decidedly leftist in nature, and largely overlap with the main points from Bernie Sanders'campaign: healthcare for all, raising the minimum wage to a living wage and canceling student debt are all extremely popular. The question is why these popular proposals never materialize in a country that prides itself on being the world's greatest democracy?

If you're a regular reader you already know the answer to that question: these are leftist proposals, too close to being socialist proposals, and America has no leftist political party. It has a liberal party, the Democratic Party, that is more like "Republican-light" than a true leftist party. There's a difference here, and it doesn't help that in the media the terms "leftist" and "liberal" are used interchangeably. Both liberals and leftists believe in democratic governance and universal human rights, but liberals put their faith in capitalist market-based economics. They generally believe that the obvious problems in our capitalist society stem from corrupt individuals; they basically suffer from the same sanctification of the individual discussed in yesterday's post, and attribute systemic problems to problematic individuals... They believe that if we simply remove these "bad apples" and slowly introduce incremental reforms, this capitalist system can function properly and more or less justly. A true leftist on the other hand believes that most problems are inherent to capitalism. They actually believe the system is functioning exactly as it should and that the problems aren't bugs but features.

What it comes down to is that capitalism can not solve the problems it creates. Poverty, homelessness, declining education standards, the decline in life-expectancy, the huge and growing wealth-gap and limited access to healthcare aren't problems within capitalism, but problems of capitalism. Solving these problems would result in impeding profits and growth, and that's simply not done in capitalism, which makes it impossible to ever solve these problems within this system. Do you believe we need to address the material concerns of average people? Do you believe that everyone is created equal, that we should expand democracy, that healthcare and a decent standard of living are a basic human right, that we should work together to build a better tomorrow for everyone? Well, than you must believe that we need to move beyond capitalism, for capitalism does not allow for all these things to ever become a reality. It's not that it's impossible, but to make it possible we must give individual profits and economic growth a lower priority. In the Century Of The Self we've been made to believe that we only need take care of ourselves, resulting in the cold, heartless reality we now experience every day, a reality where most Americans are but a medical emergency removed from personal bankruptcy, where there are more empty homes than homeless people; please watch the above linked video for an account of this reality by one such homeless person.

In socialism there's this great motto: "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs". Translated to our capitalist reality this means that if you have more money, you contribute more to society, which is no more and no less than the progressive taxation being practiced in many western European countries, like Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden; do you think it's a coincidence that these are the seven countries that make up the top 7 in the 2019 international happiness ranking? I think not. I think that living in a country where the socioeconomic circumstances bring about a feeling that we take care of each other, rather than only taking care of "number one", promotes happiness as a by-product of a feeling of togetherness. These specific topics aren't explored in the below linked video, but it does a decent job at explaining the difference between liberals and leftists, and how leftists (or socialists) are concerned with individuals' material circumstances. The Video's title, "You're Probably Already A Socialist", may put you off but give it a chance; in only 10 minutes you might be surprised to learn that you're actually a leftist, maybe even a socialist...

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