"Socialism" doesn't reductionistically equate to "freedom"

Corey Robin, in a new op-ed for the NYTimes Sunday opinion section, says that today's socialism ultimately reduces to the word "freedom."

As I said in a set of semi sub-Tweets in a thread there, then a retweet of somebody who dug it, and was retweeted herself by Robin, I'm not sold. In fact, I think the piece has problems.

I'm going to post each Tweet in my thread individually for commentary. Let's start.

Not quite buying defining socialism as "freedom." 1st, "freedom" is wingnut word; of course, Robin may have used it deliberately. That said, anarchism is at least as arguably abt "freedom" as a 1-word definition. Libertarians wld of course claim word too https://t.co/Fjft6e1NK7

— @realDonaldTrump  🌻 (@SocraticGadfly) August 24, 2018

I don't know if Robin was deliberate or not. Whether he was, and was trying to scene-steal, or something else, I simply disagree. And I didn't have room in that Tweet to quote Janis Joplin. But, there are various ways to achieve "losing the last thing," to riff on "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

But let's let somebody else sing it:

So, no, socialism isn't uniquely reducible to freedom.

Next I said:

Bigger issue, IMO, is Corey's talk about socialists crossing two-party system boundaries. None of three he features, nor Virginia's Lee Carter, do that. They're all Doinks. Oh, sure, they criticize national neolib Dems. But, they're still Dems themselves.

— @realDonaldTrump  🌻 (@SocraticGadfly) August 24, 2018

Again, I am by no means alone in still being skeptical — not cynical, but skeptical — about Democratic Socialist of America Democrats. That's why I don't put the rose icon in my Twitter handle. Only the sunflower. (If the Socialist Party USA had an icon it uses, I'd put that one in, too.) That's coupled with an eyebrow on duopoly issues I still have toward Robin himself. On this issue, he's only talking the talk, from most of what I've seen on his social media. He does occasionally give a nod to Greens or others, but that's it.

Now, @Ocasio2018 .@carterforva and others may stand their ground against state & national Dem hierarchies in the future on controversial issues when actual vote nutcutting time comes. Or they may not. We know Bernie has gotten the Vermont Dem Party to clear the field 4 him 4 yrs

— @realDonaldTrump  🌻 (@SocraticGadfly) August 24, 2018

Yep, goes back to Bernie.

And, while we're at this point, it also covers foreign policy. See, while I'm more of an actual socialist than any of the above (none of them has touted an American version of a British National Health System, like I have; hell, Corey may not have), I'm more than "just" a socialist of some sort.

I'm also a left-liberal to leftist on foreign policy. (Socialists can be various types of hard-nosed, just like conservative atheists exist.) I know Bernie opposes BDS, and I know Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has dodged it like a speeding bullet. Carter, being at state government level, gets to dodge it more easily. Dunno about Salazar and others. They're generally not trumpeting it.

So, other than just coloring me skeptical, color me as saying this is glass half full, or two-thirds if we weight domestic policy that much more.

OK, the last tweet in the thread.

Corey is right that the new movement has just started. It may do all it says and more. Or it may not. Never forget that Jerry Rubin eventually became a stockbroker, then an MLM marketer. We shall see.  (And, I'd still prefer my socialist politicians with a policy agenda, Corey.)

— @realDonaldTrump  🌻 (@SocraticGadfly) August 24, 2018

Here's the why on that tweet, especially the stuff in parentheses.

Robin said:

Socialism is not journalists, intellectuals or politicians armed with a policy agenda.

If he had had the word "just" after "not," I'd agree. But he didn't.

Look at the original Occupy in Zucotti Park. It was a semi-disorganized semi-rabble — on the surface; below that surface it had a leadership indeed, with an agenda we don't know to this day. (We do know that some claiming to represent that original movement turned out to be capitalist grifters, and per the previous link, that may well have been the intent of Occupy leader Malcolm Harris.) Again, it's not just me alone thinking that. It's the likes of Doug Henwood. That said, those "socialists" weren't even workers, certainly not of the proletariat. Per their own self-identification, most were the kids of 10 percenters and many the kids of 1 percenters; a strong minority had graduate degrees as well.

Anyway, journalists are "workers," too, Corey. Don't sit in your academic ivory tower and think that journalists are all part of the 10 percent. Not even close.

And, maybe not in the US, but in Britain, Jeremy Corbin is a worker — and a socialist.

OK, finally, the quote-tweeted retweet.

I guess Corey accepts the idea that one prob w/ capitalism is being "gendered." That ignores, oh, Betsy DeVos of Trump's cabinet. Carly Fiorina. Iron Lady PM Margaret Thatcher. Maggie's a good starting point. Plenty of Scotch men and women alike were economically crippled by her. https://t.co/cNJdYcLLM4

— @realDonaldTrump  🌻 (@SocraticGadfly) August 24, 2018

I mean what I said. Capitalism is not so "gendered" as he claims, or is presented as claiming, since Robin liked the Tweet.

Yes, women have been in a power imbalance in capitalism. But, that's not necessarily an issue of the structure of capitalism. I don't think it is at all. As I've argued with Doug Henwood, and through him to Adolph Reed, and also with Jacobin, that not all race issues reduce to class issues, neither do all gender issues so reduce.

Let's remember that France and Italy, while both allegedly being to the left of the US on a democratic socialism scale, and both having paid family leave time, have both otherwise long been regarded as having more sexism than the U.S.

#FeelTheBern on #socialism, #BlackLivesMatter, even foreign policy

Bernie Sanders knocked it out of the park, at least in terms of Democrats, in his "socialism" speech at Georgetown today.



Several brief points, mainly taking from stuff I tweeted during the speech.

First, he hearkened back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, not just 1933 or 1937, but the FDR in the middle of war, who still looked to greater economic equality (if but haltingly for minorities) in his 1944 State of the Union address.

He then transitioned to Lyndon Baines Johnson and Medicare. This was good, which then led to a pivot to calling for a "Medicare for all" single-payer national health care system.

However, if Bernie wants to really go for the long bomb, he could have thrown deeper.

First, I still contend that the only good way to control costs in American health care, a single payer system isn't enough. Medicare being tight on reimbursement rates might help, but it might not be enough. I still say we need to look at nationalizing chunks of the hospital/clinic/doctor health care provider system.

(Update, Nov. 24: I have now written a broader blog post specifically defending corporate socialism, which Sanders did himself back in his salad days.)

Second, he didn't touch all of LBJ's Great Society. That's despite quoting Martin Luther King Jr.:

"This country has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor."

Let's remember that LBJ riffed on this in relation to African-Americans.

More, far more, than the New Deal, the Great Society was focused on racial as well as socioeconomic issues. Hence LBJ at Howard University’s 1965 commencement:

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe you have been completely fair... This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.

Exactly.

Heck, LBJ might even had said #BlackLivesMatter today, per this from 1968 and riots:

When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what's he going to do? He's going to knock your block off.

More of his Great Society and other quotes are at Wikiquote.

But, this must be balanced with socioeconomic concerns, too, both in the ivied towers of the Ivy League and the crumbling curbs of Main Street.

Speaking of, while he did make more than one allusion to unionism, I wish he had spoken more directly about the issue. Unfortunately, many unions, like the oily SEIU, have already lined up to endorse Clinton. And, per Sanders and social democracy, the American non-parliamentary two-party system is part of why Democrats co-opt unions without having a Labor or Social Democratic party.

On the other hand, organized labor could withhold endorsements before we get further into the primary system. And, just one — a truly liberal one like the Longshoremen — maybe could do a Greens endorsement in the general.

But, Sanders did touch on other issues today, even if family and maternity leave doesn't help the underclass if it's not paid leave.

He did note that climate change is a moral issue.

And, he did touch on foreign policy. Including calling a racist spade a spade, from Donald Trump or whomever.

No, he did more than that.

He covered foreign policy in far more depth than at the second Democratic debate, and did well.

Arbenz. Mossadegh. And many others the CIA overthrew all got mentioned. Vis-a-vis the GOP's Benghazi fixation, let's remember what Benghazi was — a spook shack.

He then called out Gulf oil states for not accepting refugees from their own corner of the world. Saudi Arabia has a tent city that can hold up to 1 million people and is only used for pilgrims at the hajj. It sits empty as I type. He also said the Gulf states need to join in the fight against Daesh. Related to that, he forswore an endless "War on Terror."

And, wingnuts will call him "earnest" or whatever while doing their own pontificating, but he focused on the moral angle of many of these issues.

Finally, in a lighter vein, and throwing Hillary Clinton under the bus, he said he wasn't running because it was his "turn." More seriously, besides the bright lines he continues to draw with her over things like Wall Street regulation, he threw her under the bus on the War on Drugs, calling for a lot less incarceration, especially on things like minor drug crimes. Given that Clinton gets significant campaign funds from private prison companies, this is important.

For a few more text pullouts, see Mother Jones. And, the NYT gave him a respectable read — on its First Draft blog. Let's see how the main page plays it. And, a Paul Krugman. Or others.

"Others" including a "real socialist" like Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is not yet highly impressed by Sanders.

And, per PDiddle in comments below, I'm at least some sort of semi-pacifist myself. And, I have blogged extensively about Bernie sucking too much at the military teat. PD's got more on his take at his blog. And, Sanders' website has full speech text.

Too bad he already co-opted himself by (on paper, at least) forswearing a third-party run.

Are liberals really that disorganized?

Jon Chait makes just that claim, in a long essay that says real liberals shouldn't be that hard on Obama.

Ahh, there's the problem. With both America and Jon Chait's thought processes.

Fact is, of course, that America's the most conservative of the advanced democracies, especially if we exclude Japan and South Korea. As a result, American liberals include less liberal types, who argue about what's practical, what's achievable, and what's really that liberal.

Look elsewhere.

Canada? Past huge history of *conservative* disorganization.

Britain? Old vs. new Labour is still an issue, especially with Lib Dems selling out to the Conservatives. Still more organized than the U.S.

France? True, recently, its Socialists are struggling, but they have had a strong past.

Germany? The only issue is that of Social Democrats refusing to coalition with the former Communists of the "new left." The new left will eventually weaken enough to eliminate that worry.

Elsewhere in Western Europe, socialist and social democratic parties, either single ones such as Spain's Socialists, or coalitions such as in Scandanavia, have had no disorganization issues.

So, the real fault is with America in general and Chait's analysis in particular far more than with American liberalism.

Don't write off labor as part of liberalism's future

Earlier this week in Salon, Michael Lind noted that labor unionism was only one strand of progressive politics in the U.S. and that social democracy had actually contributed more.

Matthew Dimick counters that, in today's all-on assault by the right on all angles of progressive politics, union strength is going to be necessary to further social democratic politics.

I'm OK with a VAT if

The "I'm not a neoliberal, but a pale American imitation of a social democrat" Michael Lind is pushing his "radical centrism" idea again.

And, one of the ideas he touts is a value-added tax.

My thoughts?

A VAT is OK if:

You eliminate food, for one thing, and other basic necessities. On the flip side, like some states that have a goods and services tax instead of a sales tax, it MUST tax things like consultation of lawyers and MUST be assessed on corporations, not just individuals.

Lind gives no indication of just how "radical" his VAT ideas are, but, knowing him, I'm guessing the idea is quite possibly limited to individuals and does not include corporations.

That said, his larger conceit?

"Social democracy," even here in the US, is NOT the same as his radical centrism. Though his version of "radical centrism" is better than the corporatacracy's version. Also, while I agree on wanting to move the country to a "post-racial" stance, it isn't actually there yet. And, Lind is a Texas native and should know better. Plus, he gives no indication on how much more aggressive he would be on addressing class-based issues if race is removed from the picture.

The Left needs to find its voice - and it ain't Obama!

Tony Judt has some excellent insights on this issue. (They include noting that Obama is not really a Keynesian, and will show more and more of his neolib clothes as time goes on, and that we need some social democracy here in America.)

Capitalism and its discontents

I believe we need to drive a stake through Adam Smith and his “invisible hand,” the vampires of fictively ideal “capitalism.”

Let me state that global warming, or peak oil, has nothing to do with the less-than-perfect nature of capitalism, or my assessment of capitalism’s inadequacies.

By “driving a stake,” I mean driving a stake through the idea that “the market is always right in the end,” or similar bullshit. Because it is bullshit.

As I’ve blogged elsewhere, Adam Smith did NOT invent economics as a (social) science, “dismal” or otherwise.

Rather, he became the first person to seriously philosophize about economics. Big difference. And, because of the expansion of the British Empire, and its then-junior American relative, over the next century-plus, people for some reason thought capitalism as espoused by Smith (and similar minded followers) was an insight of genius.

First, it was based on the now-discredited philosophy of Enlightenment Deism. Smith’s “invisible hand” was nothing more than an economic-specific hand of the Watchmaker Supreme Being “winding up the world.”

Well, 225 years on, we’ve seen just how deluded Enlightenment Deism actually was. That alone puts the kibosh on capitalism as political philosophy.

Second, the “worship” of capitalism is a clear post hoc, propter hoc fallacy. In other words, just because the British Empire burgeoned after Adam Smith theorized doesn’t mean capitalism had a damn thing to do with it. In fact, given the strongly mercantalist British economy until the 1832 corn bill, and the fairly mercantalist British economy until the 1867 second corn bill, it’s quite arguable that capitalism had little to do with it. Certainly not capitalism as idealized.

(In fact, if one looks at the post World War II American Empire, there’s clearly mercantilist bits to it. Our whole “special arrangement” with the House of Saud comes to mind.)

Third, Smith (and his followers until some Univ. of Chicago profs started winning Nobels for doing just this) left no place for emotions, emotional actions, and emotional illogic in his enlightenment capitalism. To the degree emotions can be studied in capitalism, its hugely in the aggregate at the most macro level; short of people wearing a Borg-like fMRI box on their heads, you’ll never get that study close to the level of individuals.

Is capitalism “all wet”? No. Is the fictive idealization of it often trotted out for hypercapitalist dog and pony shows “all wet”? Well, it could probably stand a stocking-in of umbrellas.

“Replace” it? No, I didn’t say that.

But, since you may be asking ...

First, contrary to many libertarians, the “tragedy of the commons” is both a real and a serious issue. That’s in part based on the emotion-based decision-making noted above, which often precludes long-term thinking, and thinking as part of a social group above a certain size.

Second, I don’t claim governments are perfect. As I once posted here, ideally, I’d be described as a libertarian socialist... at least with one foot. But, I know that’s not realistic.

So, I have no problem saying that my other foot is in the waters of social democracy.

Are we better than Western Europe in many ways? Yes. Is that always because of our political, economic or social systems? Not even close.

Are we sometimes deluding ourselves we’re better? Yes.

Take unemployment. Everybody talks about high unemployment in Europe.

Well, it ain’t so much so, if you compare apples to oranges.

For instance, in the U.S., if you work for a temp agency like Manpower, you’re considered employed. In Germany, you’re considered unemployed.

Given that, as of the turn of the century, per an old Nation article, Manpower is the biggest employer in both countries, and temp agencies make up about 2 percent of the work force in both countries, that’s a HUGE adjustment you need to make to compare apples to apples. Other, smaller ones, are worth at least half a percentage point, meaning U.S.-German unemployment differences are only 2 percentage points, not 4.5 or 5.

Is that worth it for the greater stability of German social democracy-style capitalism, or something similar? I’d say yes.

And, you know, I bet a lot of Americans would, if we could get them deprogrammed from the brainwashing of American society and business elites.

I might just be a libertarian socialist

There are many more varieties of libertarianism under the stars, Horatio, or Mona Holland or others, than your philosophy hath room for.

Did you know there is green libertarianism? Libertarian socialism? Council communism? Anarcho-syndicalism?

I refer to Wikipedia’s overview of libertarianism.

And, I find that “libertarian socialism” might describe my political stance even better than “social democracy.” In a thumbnail, libertarian socialism believes that a socialist economic system can be established without heavy government lifting, through the actions of trade unions, guilds, councils and other voluntary federations and cooperatives.

The state is (rightly, in my opinion) distrusted as an instrument of capitalism. Most left-libertarian political philosophies, with the exceptions of green libertarianism, focus on labor issues as the key to economic improvement, including the labor theory of value.

So, left-libertarians of the world, UNITE! You have nothing to lose but the chains of rightists spinning myths that theirs is the only actual libertarianism.

I quote Wikipedia:

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who is often considered the father of modern anarchism, coined the phrase “Property is theft> to describe his affinity for the labor theory of value, a socialist value.

Seventeen years (1857) after Proudhon first called himself an anarchist (1840), anarchist communist Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as a libertarian.[2] In United States because the word "libertarian" is now commonly used by anti-state capitalists, non-authoritarian socialists ot that country often call themselves libertarian socialists to differentiate themselves. In the rest of the world, "libertarian" is a synonym of “anticapitalist.”

We, not you Johnny-come-lately righties, were the FIRST libertarians.

Unfortunately, most Americans, even those who claim to know something about political philosophy, just don’t know what all is out there. (Wiki lists Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn as people who could be characterized as libertarian socialists.)