31 October 2008
Comments on Socialism
Today's Sacramento Times reports that the Secretary of State officially announced a new record in the number of Californians registered to vote next Tuesday: 17.3 million! Still lagging in number with Cairo and Mexico, DF, it is a staggering number of people who will determine how California votes in the Electoral College.
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As so many of you may have, I've just about reached my saturation point for this election's campaigns. Because I want to get some other things done today and this weekend, I want to share with you my comments on various items on the ballot. This is the first of a few postings within which I feel compelled to opine.
I voted two weeks ago, so my decision-making ended then, regardless of the election's outcomes. Just for the context of these posts, for the federal offices, I voted a straight Democratic Party ticket. I moved into my current federal district 49, whose incumbent is Darrell Issa-R. I know I don't want him to represent me, nor do I want any Republicans in the State Assembly and Senate for the time being. Anything that can be done to break up the Republican's minority hold on State government should be done. Clearly, party affilliation is more important than running the state. A much larger Democratic legislature majority would be inclined to work much more productively with Governor Schwarznegger.
This afternoon, speaking at a McCain rally in Columbus OH, our dear governor told the audience that he had lived many years of his life under socialism and he saw how it failed to help his country, so he is very much against the socialist programs that Senator Obama wants to implement. [Huge rour from the crowd.] Well hold on for a surprise, folks, many of the U.S.A.'s federal and state programs fall within the definition of 'socialism'. The McCain/Palin campaign is using the term 'socialist' or 'socialism' to generate fear among the electorate. Our current President used fear tactics elicit popular support after 9/11 that have resulted in his horrendous rape of The Constitution and for the killing of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Southwest Asia, including over 5,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lies in the defense of freedom are good lies to his Administration and its supporters.
Socialism 101: "It is collective because society can control production unlike the economic anarchy of capitalism and because production is for the common good rather than for individual profit." Cf. http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dmcm/Articles/nutshell.htm. There are other, more thorough, complex and complicated essays elsewhere about the concept of 'socialism', but this one captures, to me, the hot buttons that create the emotional and often irrational responses among Americans. For instance, 'collective' came to mean the suppression of individual choice and endeavor by the state, as it had in Germany and the Soviet Union during the 1930's. Today, most countries exist in some form of socialism whether their governments aredemocratic (Europe, Japan, Taiwan and most former British Colonies), totalitarian (autocrats of Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Singapore, Zimbabwe, Libya, and so forth) or somewhere in between, as in China.
Those of us who lived through the eras of totalitarian socialist states in Germany and in the countries of the USSR witnessed the terrible nature of such regimes that claimed that their actions were done on behalf of all Germans or of all workers. If those two countries are the only knowledge of socialism a person has, then socialism is dehumanizing and must be fought at all costs. Also many Americans perceive that when the government decides what is best for the individual, that government wipes out the underpinnings of the American Dream in which anyone can succeed at their goals using individual ingenuity, creativity, acquiring assets with the support of Divine Providence. "Don't Tread On Me" "Give me liberty or death!" "Remember the Alamo!" are patriotic mottos common to the American history as the world's first democratically determined, republican form of government. Those mottos give sustenance to aspirations and hopes of individuals, not to any collectivist proposition.
What the Libertarians and other die hard individualists decry is any government action that addresses the collective good over individual good. Some states' formal names include the word 'Commonwealth'. If that is not a clue that the common good can include individual good or even supersede individual aspirations, then there is no basis for a society to exist for a Commonwealth of anything.
Whenever I hear a farmer or someone in an agricultural, rural part of the country say how they hate socialism, I think about all of the mortgage loan guarantees, crop price support and exclusionary tariffs that are "socialism in action." Tobacco farmers rely on continued receipt of crop subsidies from the federal government so they can afford to grow tobacco rather than another crop. If HHS issued an edict against all production of cigarettes, snuf and cigars in all states, who would be the first ones marching on Washington? It would be that tobacco farmer whose subsidy had been eliminated. Don't tread on me or the crop I want to grow, even if I cannot afford to grow that crop without federal subsidies.
Then there are the most recent socialist programs implemented by the Bush Administration to provide $700 billion to the financial services corporations when their own efforts and resources were insufficient to maintain the capital funding for our economy.
Social Security (1935) is often viewed as the beginning of American socialism. The Roosevelt Administration created Social Security to alleviate the conditions of the elderly who no longer have incomes or other resource. Today, how many Americans have enough savings to support their costs of living once they have decided to stop working? Many of us rely on the equity or value of our homes as our investment to support us in retirement. When the real estate prices collapsed in 2006, many people found that they owed their bank more than the market value of their homes. In the short term, Social Security stipends may be all that older people have to pay the costs of living. If one does not qualify for Social Security because they are too young, the unemployed discover that there are no employer pensions and no Social Security checks to keep from falling into poverty or depending on relatives and children, churches and synagogues, or what they could obtain by begging.
Since the early 1980's, companies have been underfunding or depleting pension funds for the cash they held. Employees began to increase their take home pay by quitting one job for another with a higher pay rate and employers began to appreciate the additional cash because they did not have to fund as many benefits. Today it seems that only public employees remain with their one employer so that they can receive pensions upon retirement. The competitive employment market now assumes that salaries, not benefits, lure qualified applicants. Employers no longer guarantee designated levels of future benefits, including retirement benefits, because employees value their salaries more than future benefits they may not be around to collect.
In 1965, Social Security added Medicare to its socialist programs to which all employees were entitled upon retirement at age 62 or 65. Since then other safety net programs such as Medicaid, state managed and cost shared with the federal government, veterans health care for some, but not all veterans. Federally funded housing and loan guarantees, savings deposit insurance, regulation of pharmaceuticals, food, air quality, public use areas and parks, the interstate highway system (1949+), stock exchanges, currency and accounting systems represent only some of the programs that fall within the envelope of "socialism."
The Confederacy formed by the former British Colonies failed because there were no political mechanisms to obtain consensus about federal taxes, interstate trade and tariffs, and an army and a navy to protect the Confederation of the United States. The 1787 Constitution created the means of checks and balances that would allow the federal government and the state governments to function within an overarching consensus about America's governmental principles and processes. The defeat of the secessionist states in 1865 finalized the boarders of the American consensus of government.
Dear readers, by now you must know that I have some strong opinions about throwing around the socialist label to cause fear of political opponents in order to elicit support for the candidate who abjures socialism as un-American. Ever since the colonies decided to form a union, we have had socialism in America.
So, please, all of you candidates, drop the fear tactics. Americans love socialist programs and woe to the political figure that tries to eliminate them.
p.s. For those who accept the New Testament or at least the Gospels, try substituting 'community' or 'communitarian' and the ethic of the two Greatest Commandments as declared by Jesus Christ. Even at the occasion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus demonstrated the obligation of those who had fish or loaves of bread to share them with the others who were without food. In philosophy, the term 'communitarian' means the group as a whole. Buddhist teachings of the Mahayana way believe that for anyone to advance on the continuum of Enlightment, all must advance together. Thus, there is a common understanding between Christianity and Buddhism about obligations beyond oneself that include obligations to oneself.
Even the most literalist reading of the Gospels reveals God's Will of communitarian ethics and abhorence of individual greed and pride. I think John Calvin missed that part when he developed the concept of the Elect. The Gospel narratives of Jesus' life and teachings reveal the equality of each soul with God in Christ without exception or deeds.
Labels: 2008 election, Buddhism, Gospels, pensions, Social Security, socialism
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