Hurray for the ‘S’ Word!
A YDS leaflet reads:
If so many people misunderstand socialism, why continue to use the word?
First, we call ourselves socialists because we are proud of what we
are. Second, no matter what we call ourselves, conservatives will use
it against us … Liberals and progressives are routinely denounced as
socialists in order to discredit reform. Until we face, and beat, the
stigma attached to the “S word,” politics in America will continue to
be stifled and our options limited.
Lately, the American right have been using the term “socialist” (as a slur, of course) in reference to Barack Obama. Never mind that Sarah Palin’s Alaska may run a state-owned railroad company, allow its citizens to build vacation homes on its vast expanses of public land, and “spread the wealth around” through the Alaska Permanent Fund.
The label does have its drawbacks. There are probably many progressive activists on our campuses and in our neighborhoods that would happily join an organization that fights for a variety of broadly popular social democratic causes but would think twice before joining a group with the word ’socialism’ in its name. Their skepticism is justified, given the number of kooky outfits out there that fly the flag. But ironically, the fact that red-baiting is once again en vogue may vindicate the continued use of that burdensome old ’s’ word.
The McCain campaign and National Joe the Plumber Week have proven that even something as mundane as progressive taxation (which has near-universal support among bourgeois economists) can be red-baited political purposes. Proving that, “no matter what we call ourselves, conservatives will use it against us.”
Is Barack Obama a socialist? No, he isn’t even particularly liberal. Will this prevent him from being constantly red-baited by his Republican opponents and the wide-eyed anti-Dreyfusards of AM radio? Of course not.
If even timid, corporate-friendly reforms like the ‘93 Clinton health care initiative have been labeled as socialist in the past, how can anyone hope that genuinely progressive proposals will somehow escape the same charge in the future?
It’s important that there exist explicitly socialist voices in order to put Barack Obama and other centrist politicians in proper perspective. What Obama certainly doesn’t need is our endorsement – we self-identified pinkos are insignificant in numbers* and influence and our support would not be welcome anyway. What Obama does need, especially if he wins the election, is vocal opposition from the left. For example, if the national debate on health care is to be between President Obama and hard right (the insurance industry and its puppets in Congress and the media), the resulting compromise will be totally unacceptable. But if the debate on health care is between Obama and an angry, vocal, recession-radicalized progressive movement, the resulting compromise might be halfway decent.
In the event of an Obama victory, the Republican noise machine will go into high gear, spinning deranged conspiracy theories about Obama, Tony Rezko and their terrorist picnics with al-Qaeda. Super sleuth Kenneth Starr can investigate! The left will be tempted to defend Obama from this bullshit, but it really won’t be worth our time. He doesn’t need us in his corner. Obama has tons of liberal groupies, particularly in the blogosphere, who will back him up. As radical social democrats, our mission should be to find constructive ways to be Obama’s enemy.
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* I believe there are millions of progressive Americans who could be unconscious social democrats, and real majorities that would support no-brainers like universal health care.
This makes the most sense out of anything I have read in a very long time. Because of how conservative my family and the area I live in are, I had never imagined that what I was was socialist. That would be akin to “rapist” or “murderer” the way you hear it used most often. However, this semester I took a course on intellectual history and have mapped out the various strands of thought, and even from its humble Saint-Simon beginnings, I have always thought that socialism had the best take. What Obama needs is for Bernie Sanders and some of his compatriots on Left to take center-stage and rally against him and his reforms, loud enough at least, so that the media hears it. So that true reform can be heard and agreed with by at least a significant minority of the populace. What we also need is a way to identify ourselves more with the German Social Democrats and forever put the soviets out of people conception of socialism. There are signifiant differences between Soviet Communism and the Fabian Socialism we are derived from. Specifically, Marx never fully defined the socialist movement, even if he did his message as he left it is more akin to Das Kapital and not the Communist Manifesto, and even then, Lenin reinterpreted and misinterpreted Marx. We need to be his left wing opposition for the right to hate so that they can allow Obama to give us at least not entirely crappy reform.
Which German Social Democrats do you mean, Douglas? The early, pre-World War I SPD? Or the current SPD, which presided over the biggest attack on the welfare state since WWII (the Schroeder government’s “Agenda 2010,” announced in March 2003)?We aren’t defined by Fabian Socialism either, BTW. There are plenty of Marxists (albeit not Leninists) and other types of socialists in DSA and YDS. Fabianism is very discredited, in my eyes. As the late British socialist GDH Cole put it:
“At bottom what matters in Marx is not his theory of value but his emphasis on the class struggle as the sole effective instrument of progress. Marx believes that socialism will come not only because it is a better system than capitalism but because there is behind it a rising class led by economic conditions to achieve it. Fabian literature, on the other hand, seems often to be unconscious of the relevance of class distinctions and shows no belief at all in a class struggle as the instrument of change. The Fabians are essentially rationalists, seeking to convince men by logical argument that socialism is desirable and offering their arguments to all men without regard to the classes to which they belong. They seem to believe that if only they can demonstrate that socialism will make for greater efficiency and a greater sum of human happiness the demonstration is bound to prevail.”
Marx was right, the Fabians were wrong. As Bill Fletcher likes to say, “Never forget the class struggle.”
I think Douglas just meant Fabian in reference to the fact that we’re not expecting the revolution “any day now,” like the Rapture-ready evangelicals are expecting to suddenly meet Christ in the air.
I have a soft spot for Harold Laski. But I think the Fabian Society’s technocratic anti-movement outlook (described above by Jason) led the Webbs and others to fetishize the state and its role in economic planning and ultimately, to shameful apologism for the authoritarian ‘isms’ that were emerging in continental Europe.
But God do I love tracts! I love British persuasive literature. I’ve read a lot of Fabian pamphlets and I can’t believe they did more harm than good. I even like the Left Book Club, which we are supposed to hate because it published some Stalinist cranks. See Victor Gollancz v. George Orwell
Nice piece, Adrian. I have been spending a little of my free time responding to newspapers and blogs that run stories that claim Barack Obama is a socialist, or is a member of the New Party and Democratic Socialists of America, [DSA member he ain't!] and/or that claim redistributing wealth is an inherently bad thing.It’s an opportunity to encourage some folks to think critically, and to familiarize them with democratic socialism and DSA. Whether my tiny interventions have any impact on how people will vote in this election, I cannot say.Precinct walking tomorrow.
Glad that you identify with this piece, Douglas! I hope that you’ll consider joining YDS. Info is at ydsusa.org.I didn’t understand this part of your comment, though:Specifically, Marx never fully defined the socialist movement, even if
he did his message as he left it is more akin to Das Kapital and not
the Communist Manifesto, and even then, Lenin reinterpreted and
misinterpreted Marx. We need to be his left wing opposition for the
right to hate so that they can allow Obama to give us at least not
entirely crappy reform.
Excellent piece as usual, Adrian. While I agree with the basic message of your piece, I think the term “enemy” is rather harsh. While I have no illusions about Obama, I see our role as constructive critics and agitators. We are the left of the possible. But we are not “the enemy.” As for the German SPD, that is a matter close to my heart, as I’ve lived 1.5 years in Germany and have experienced several May Days and other demonstrations there. I’ve also had some contact with young members of the SPD.The SPD is a shadow of what it once was, but their policies are merely part of a larger trend towards neo-liberalism in the industrialized world. The left-wing of the SPD still has good politics, and even many in the right-wing of the party are better than many U.S. Democrats.I don’t like Hartz IV/Agenda 2010, but then again, Germany DOES and did have massive unemployment, and something needed to be done about it. I have literally met people in Eastern Germany who have lived from welfare for years on end without lifting a finger. Obviously I favor a generous welfare state, but when people reject jobs that are offered to them and have no desire to work, I do not see that as admirable. And die Linke(formerly the SED-Socialist Unity Party of Germany) have some truly awful elements. They have great people too, but one should be careful before praising them too much. Many of their members and hangers-on engage in violence that most DSAers would oppose, and there is a bit too much anti-Semitism espoused as well for my comfort. I think we have to come to grips with the fact that the revolution isn’t coming tomorrow, as Adrian astutely pointed out. We need to work within the system for reform, even while we advocate revolutionary change. Being arm-chair revolutionaries in cafes and the academy will not change the realities of the world.
“We aren’t defined by Fabian Socialism either, BTW. There are plenty of
Marxists (albeit not Leninists) and other types of socialists in DSA
and YDS. Fabianism is very discredited, in my eyes.”I still hold that meaningful reform is possible without the dogmatic holding to class struggle as the definition of history. As a historian, I personally think the Marxist outlook is a tool that is convenient for its proponents, but not entirely correct. Marx had the proper critique of capitalism, but his view of history, which seems to be popular at least among some of you, ignores much of the diversity of human nature in my opinion. How possible is it to infuse class consciousness into those elements of society who are ignorant of it? How necessary is class conscious to progress and meaningful expansion of democracy? As far as discrediting, I am reminded of a piece I read recently on the discrediting of libertarianism that made the comment that libertarians are the “Marxists of the right”: they will never be discredited because they will never have a chance to see their ideological world view take hold entirely due to its incompatibility with the worldview of so many individuals. There are many views of what socialism means even among those who realize how silly it is to label Obama a socialist. I hope that people here respect the fact that in saying I am a democratic socialist, I am saying that I believe that the combination of meaningful political reform and (above all) the expansion of democracy into more parts of society (unions, co-operatives, community economics, etc), all of this in my mind being influenced by my Christian worldview.If you want a good outlook on humanistic, non-Marxist socialism, I suggest reading works by Liszek Kolakowski, who moved from being a Stalinist, to being an revisionist Marxist, and eventually to reconciling his socialism with his disenchantment with Marxism, which he believed inevitably led to totalitarianism. I wrote an article on him a while back, but the editor here has yet to publish it.
As for perceived inherent weaknesses in Fabianism, if by Fabianism we mean Old Labour, the weakness was not internal, rather it was a inability to respond to a shifting society which had been led away from class consciousness by consumerist society and neoliberalism. Old Labour responded successfully to the needs of workers, but workers were convinced that they needed to stop worrying about fairness and bettering the working class and labor in favor of fulfilling individualist desires. New Labour took up this assumption and was successful, but at great cost to workers. Could they have returned to power without doing such a thing? Yes, but only by diminishing the new individualism (aka consumerist society), and that’s a cultural project worth pursuing still. All this is covered pretty well in the Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self (chapter 4).