I love socialism. Not
that I am a socialist, or that I want others to be socialist. Rather, I love it as an object of study. There is something unique about its origins
and its history that allows one to observe the internal dynamics of
modernity. It forces one to think about
collective human potential, human nature, and the limitations of reason. The critical conversation about democracy,
justice, and equality that the early socialists began continues to this day. For some, socialism was an extension of
religion. For others, it was its
surrogate. In either case, the
alleviation of misery was its raison
d’être.
Having said this, one might be surprised to find out that I
believe socialism to be essentially a nineteenth-century phenomenon. By this I mean that what had developed
during this formative century as the defining feature of socialism—that is,
widespread public ownership of the means of production—would eventually prove
either undesirable or unworkable in the twentieth century for many countries. The result is that most contemporary
manifestations of nineteenth-century socialism no longer hold this traditional
feature as definitive, leaving the original form behind. The phenomenon that some today see as
European socialism, often referred to as Social Democracy, has fundamentally
made peace with this type of private ownership.
Social Democracy is not your grandfather’s socialism. [1]
If I am going to be this strict with my definitions and
analysis, it seems that I have to view capitalism in the same way—that is, as a
nineteenth-century phenomenon. Did not
capitalism have a similar historical trajectory as socialism? In other words, after the Progressive era,
the New Deal, anti-trust laws, environmental regulation, the institution of the
Federal Reserve, and labor regulation, do we really see the capitalism of the
nineteenth century as desirable or workable?
This is not a perfect analogy, but there is a practical reason for
considering it.
In my Socialism: The
History of An Idea course, the students and I found it difficult to talk in
a complex way about the twentieth-century part of the course if we hung on to
nineteenth-century definitions of capitalism and socialism. The reason was that the features that had distinguished
the two historically had compromised.
The human need that came out of depression and war had forced both
ideologies into more pragmatic manifestations: both lassiez-faire capitalism and historic socialism had been defeated
by the real world. We found that instead
of talking about capitalism vs. social democracy, we were really talking about
different approaches to a market economy—different enough to be significant,
but similar enough to leave the nineteenth century behind and search for new
terminology.
This experience made me think about American political
discourse and the problem with politicians and pundits using terms like
“socialism” or some form of “capitalism” in their economic talk. As was made clear to me, these terms and
concepts belong to a different time and were part of a different debate. As a result, we can’t use them to
meaningfully conceptualize our present problems and their solutions. If you hear these terms being used, reject
them as obfuscation and manipulation.
Worse is an electorate that rejects pragmatism in economic matters
because they have adopted the socialism vs. capitalism narrative, which has
become part and parcel of the right. Not
only is this narrative violently anachronistic, but when shaping the convictions
of politicians it ensures more economic disasters in the future.
Our economic problems
are not world-historical, and the options before us are not capitalism vs.
socialism. Discourse must be
historically informed. Let’s update our
language and terminology to reflect our present reality. We have a market economy. How well it works is up to us.
[1]
This is a very complex history. For
clarification or more detail, I would recommend Sheri Berman’s The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy
and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century. And Donald Sassoon’s One Hundred years of
Socialism.
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