Dave Weigel should be commended for trying to be fair to Stan’s book. And I’ll leave it to Stan to respond to the point-by-point stuff. But there’s one aspect of Weigel’s review that bothers me. It’s a common tendency and I’m only singling Weigel out because I just read his piece. He writes of Stan:
His first problem is that so much of his case depends on the power of that magic word socialism. Kurtz benefits from the fact that it causes a full-body freak-out among American voters and politicians, with images of gulags, bread lines, and Red Dawn.
And:
This problem comes up again and again. If you look for socialism in Obama’s past, you can find it; and if you look for it in his presidency, everything seems like a hammer and sickle. But does this give us a deeper understanding of what the Democrats are up to? Or is socialism a word that, applied to Democrats, makes their policies less popular?
Kurtz sees socialism as the only way to explain Obama’s “insistence on pressing an ambitious program of health-care reform during an economic downturn.” A simpler explanation could be that he’s a liberal Democrat, and liberal Democrats have been trying to do what he did on health care for half a century. Pointing out that some of their ideas came from socialists, and locating the wellsprings of those ideas, is useful history. It helps explain where some of the concepts adopted by liberals come from. What it doesn’t explain is how those liberals end up running the place once they’re in power.
Here’s my problem. Socialism isn’t the scare word Weigel and others (David Frum comes to mind) say it is. I will be honest and admit that I wish it was more of a scare word than it is, but it’s really not one. I don’t think Americans think of gulags, bread lines and Red Dawn when they hear the word “socialist.” They think of those things when they hear the word “Communist,” which is a different thing than socialism (or at least that’s what every book on the subject and every sincere democratic socialist I’ve ever spoken to says).
Now, I must defend my right flank and admit that yes, yes, a thousand times yes: Communism is a branch of socialism (And so are National Socialism and Fascism). And I would love it if more people recognized that the great murderous regimes of the 20th century all did their killing in the name of one flavor or another of socialism.
But social democracy is also a branch of socialism and it is simply unfair not to draw meaningful distinctions. Tony Blair calls himself a socialist as have pretty much all members of the British Labor Party going back a hundred years. But they are not all Stalinists.
What is so frustrating is that liberals — including no doubt Weigel — understand these distinctions. Indeed, in other eras and in other contexts, it has been the job of liberals to uphold these distinctions.
But now things are a bit mixed up. So even though leading liberals have talked openly about the possibility that Obama is a “liberal socialist” or might usher in a socialist era, when conservatives take these arguments at face value or make similar ones themselves, it is liberals like Weigel who insist that socialism must be seen as synonymous with Communism, the gulag, Red Dawn etc.
For example, I’ve just been dipping in and out of Stan’s book, but nowhere I’ve seen does he call Obama a Communist. I’m sure Dave understands the distinction and he might have simply found the word-play irresistible, but it’s worth noting that the Hammer and Sickle are not symbols of socialism but of Communism.
Who is seeing Hammer and Sickles everywhere now?
I covered a lot of this, with a lot more examples, in my Commentary essay.
But one question I would like to ask here is simply this: Can Weigel (or some other sympathetic volunteer) explain what exactly differentiates the goals, ambitions and/or philosophical drives of, say, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party from European social democrats? Is there anything fundamental to social democracy that Nancy Pelosi (forget Obama for the moment) disagrees with because she is a liberal and not a “socialist”? Is there anything Nancy Pelosi believes about the role of the state that would cause the average Swedish or British social democrat to object?
I am sure that there are some cultural differences to account for. Swedes are culturally different from Belgians who are different from San Francisco liberals. But are they philosophically all that different? And do please keep in mind that most European socialists do believe in a mixed economy and all that.
I swear it’s an honest question — and I have my own answers to it. But the reason I ask is that I think more often than not it is liberals who use the s-word to defend themselves from conservatives. Oh, don’t you rightwing philistines understand? We’re not socialists, we’re liberals! Okay, so what’s the difference?
Update: Weigel responds.
On more than one occasion, one of my fellow teachers has claimed to be a proud socialist, and on just as many occasions defended Obama from charges of socialism. We really need a reality show moment where I show them the two side by side.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI refer you to your own debate with David Frum. He seemed to have a pretty clear grasp.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJonah, I do hope you provide your own answer after others have wrestled with the question. For that matter, I hope -- but I'm not optimistic -- that prominent liberals do wrestle with the question.
So, what's the difference?
There may be differences in terms of the tactics of politics -- in which case, overt socialists are actually to be commended because, compared to liberals, they're honest about what they believe -- but I don't see a philosophical difference. I don't think there IS a difference.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"" Can Weigel (or some other sympathetic volunteer) explain what exactly differentiates the goals, ambitions and/or philosophical drives of, say, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party from European social democrats? Is there anything fundamental to social democracy that Nancy Pelosi (forget Obama for the moment) disagrees with because she is a liberal and not a “socialist”? Is there anything Nancy Pelosi believes about the role of the state that would cause the average Swedish or British social democrat to object?""
Certainly. The role of the state, and individual liberty within the state, and libertarian (that is, classical liberal) arguments in favor of limiting state power.
To pick one of many possible examples:
A socialist might be interested in taking over General Motors and running it as a nationalized automobile manufacturer, or more likely, starting a company like General Motors as a nationalized concern in the first place, based on the belief that large, important corporations are more beneficial to the society when they are controlled by the state (and thus, so the thinking goes, controlled by 'the people').
A liberal would propose something more along the lines of the action Obama took; that businesses, even major ones, are best operated by the private sector, except in extreme (and temporary) circumstances, and that the standing presumption that the federal government should not generally be directly competing with private corporations has served us well. A liberal would generally prefer that such drastic action ultimately be voluntary -- a condition of being offered emergency loans, for example -- rather than
As with all political philosophies, liberalism and socialism (like various strains of conservatism and libertarianism) seek to balance between various principles in order to hopefully produce the 'best' (in a very broad sense) outcome. Protection of individual liberty, the national defense, social harmony, protection of the weak and disadvantaged, and protection of private property are all options on the table, an ideological label tells us something about how a person value those goods in relation to one another.
In short: Liberals see themselves as respecting the value of individual liberty, private property, and the importance of incentives in economic decision-making to a far greater extent than socialists do.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse""There may be differences in terms of the tactics of politics -- in which case, overt socialists are actually to be commended because, compared to liberals, they're honest about what they believe -- but I don't see a philosophical difference. I don't think there IS a difference.""
If you're referring to average liberal Americans, most I know are incredibly honest about what they believe.
If you're referring to liberal politicos, I don't think liberals have any monopoly on saying things they don't actually believe. I know very few conservatives who work on the Hill, for example, who think gay marriage is a bad thing -- and I know quite a few conservatives on the Hill. But they know better than to bite the hand that feeds them. If there were no pressure from the base on that issue, Washington, DC conservatives would support marriage equality in far greater numbers than an average sampling of the population -- regardless of party affiliation -- in many other parts of the country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'll take a stab.
Are Obama and Pelosi very different from modern social democrats in Europe? No. They're not.
But social democrats are barely socialists. I think we could agree that they are the most economically conservative (in the American sense) of all branches of socialism. The movement accepts capitalism and has abandoned even the gradualism towards state-owned production of older generations.
Calling youself a social democrat has real meaning in a country that has more traditional socialists who have or could realistically have actual power. It just doesn't have that meaning here. I don't think people necessarily equate socialist with Communist here, but they certainly equate it with a rejection of capitalism.
So when Weigel says "A simpler explanation could be that he’s a liberal Democrat...." or an American liberal asserts "I'm a liberal, not a socialist," what I think either one means is "we don't reject capitalism."
American conservatives are not opposed to a party that rejects capitalism; you may think Democrats hurt capitalism, don't respect it, stupidly restrict it, etc., but they don't reject it.
Basically, what's the difference? Grudging acceptance of capitalism v. rejection. And it is an actual difference.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor some reason, when I hear "socalist" I always immediately think of the British Labor Party battling Margaret Thatcher in the '80s. As much as I love "Red Dawn" that never comes to mind at all.
"locating the wellsprings of those ideas" - Time has a great article about a Socialist Party event in 1932 where I think the President and most members of the Democratic Party would feel perfectly at ease. External Link
Except perhaps Barney Frank. The article states "Karl Marx's inflexible dogmas have been left behind." When I saw Frank this morning arguing for Inheritance Taxes, all I could think of "Abolition of all rights of inheritance" as Marx advocated.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePresident Obama and Speaker Pelosi favor state ownership of the means of production. Pelosi is overt about it. She said at the time of the GM bailout that she wanted GM henceforth to produce only such products as she and her fellow Statist-Greenists could approve. President Obama shares that same preference. But unlike Pelosi, Obama lacks a rubber stamp constituency which would back him and fund him and work for him and re-elect him in perpetuity, no matter what offenses he might commit against private enterprise and individual liberty. Obama must always plot a more moderate course than Pelosi if he wants *any* of his Statist-Greenist programs to be enacted. That is the only check on Obama's Statist-Greenist preferences. But the preferences themselves are identical to Pelosi and all the other Statist-Greenists. Listen closely when Obama steps out from behind the Teleprompter. That is when the true Obama emerges.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAren't the San Fransisco liberal and the Swedish socialist really both liberal fascists? Meaning that instead of doctrinaire socialism where the workers control the means of production, they are willing to let wealthy corporations be the means by which the government advances their goals?
Differences are (1) the Swede's political culture came to that position as a fallback from more doctrinaire socialism, while the American's culture has been there since Wilson or FDR; and (2) the redistribution of wealth is probably still a stronger goal for the Swede while the American leftist places greater priority on other goals such as sexual liberation or the environment.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBTW: what is the difference between an American liberal and a European social democrat: the social democrat has a constituency which is willing (or *more* willing) to pay for the benefits of the socialist program, while the American liberal prefers to foist the bill off on the unborn and those still too young to vote.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSocialists nationalize private property.
They do it over the objections and protestations (but rarely the dead bodies—that’s what communists do) of the hitherto rightful owners.
For example, when private bond holders are dispossessed in contravention to the covenants and normal legal proceedings during the restructuring of GM debt, then our historic first Islamic apostate president and those who made it happen are Socialists.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOr, to put my point another way, American liberals resist being called socialists because of the majority of the comments on this thread.
Clearly, Democrats believe in more state intervention in the economy than Republicans. Granted. What doesn't follow is the crazy you see here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Here’s my problem. Socialism isn’t the scare word Weigel and others (David Frum comes to mind) say it is. I will be honest and admit that I wish it was more of a scare word than it is, but it’s really not one."
First off, this simply isn't true, as even a few moments of Googling would have revealed. Conservatives use "socialism" as a scare word all the time. Sarah Palin did it when referring to Barack Obama's tax plans; see here for an example. "European-style socialism" is even more of a scare word (or scare phrase, I suppose); you can find any number of examples on NRO itself. I'm not quite sure how any regular NRO reader can miss this.
So where does the confusion come from? I think the trouble starts here:
"They think of those things when they hear the word 'Communist,' which is a different thing than socialism (or at least that’s what every book on the subject and every sincere democratic socialist I’ve ever spoken to says)."
Communism is indeed different from socialism, as Jonah says (at least in this paragraph). Here's the catch: Many Americans don't draw much of a distinction between the two, in part because (for perfectly good reasons) they don't spend time speaking to democratic socialists or reading books on the topic. I think Jonah is conflating *his understanding of socialism* with *the popular understanding of socialism*. These aren't the same thing at all, and to most people, the two are close enough that it's not worth drawing a large distinction between the two.
This confusion continues here:
"...when conservatives take these arguments at face value or make similar ones themselves, it is liberals like Weigel who insist that socialism must be seen as synonymous with Communism, the gulag, Red Dawn etc."
The use of the passive voice elides this issue. "[S]ocialism must be seen...." By who? Everybody? I think Weigel is probably saying something like "Many Americans *tend to see* socialism as synonymous with Communism, etc.," which is a very different point.
Kurtz knows this. Weigel knows this. Why Jonah doesn't know it is far from clear.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think the answer to this - though not a very satisfying one - is that there is so much cognitive dissonance on the left as regards their emotive aims being in conflict with their material comfort that they take on an amoeba-like quality where they don't know their own minds from one minute to the next. The only consistency is in their belief that we are the enemy, and - both individually and collectively - they'll adjust their rhetoric at will in recognition of this.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"First off, this simply isn't true, as even a few moments of Googling would have revealed. Conservatives use "socialism" as a scare word all the time. Sarah Palin did it when referring to Barack Obama's tax plans; see here for an example. "European-style socialism" is even more of a scare word (or scare phrase, I suppose); you can find any number of examples on NRO itself. I'm not quite sure how any regular NRO reader can miss this."
I don't use the word socialism as a scare word but as a proper adjective to describe the end result of the policies that progressives and liberals or whatever they call themselves (that alone should be a clue) support. Also, this is the word that liberals themselves use, but get upset when conservatives call them on it. I believe Michael Moore, Al Sharpton, Laurence O'Donnell and Bill Maher used the term in glowing terms, but when conservatives such as Stanley Kurtz use it to explain Barack Obama, he is dismissed by the likes of David Weigel (who posted the most nonresponsive response I have read). If we can't call them socialists, are we to continue the fiction by calling them progressives? And when they're tired of that label, what shall we call them then?
"Communism is indeed different from socialism, as Jonah says (at least in this paragraph)."
Difference is only a matter of degree. The end result of both is the same: human misery. Perhaps that is why people associate socialism and communism synonymously, but I think when people refer to Obama as a socialist or a lot of policies as "socialism" they do not immediately jump to having nightmares of gulags or Bolshevik government takeovers. That is a strawman inserted into the debate by people who are sympathetic to socialism to stave off criticism of their position and associate the person making the charge with an extremist position. For instance, when Obama visited the GOP to address concerns about Obamacare, he threw out the claim that Obamacare is "not a Bolshevik plot". The only reason to do such a thing was to make Obamacare look moderate in the face of withering GOP criticism, which was extremist for being against a reasonable approach.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWith due respect to the erudition on display, the arguments over what is "american socialist" v. "european social democrat" v. communist v. fascist is largely an argument over style and degree, not intent. The intent is to institute thorough-going control of as many facets of life and commerce as can be done without provoking armed rebellion.
Anyone attempting to institute one of these models with any degree of practicality will inevitably resort to fascism (private ownership of the means of production, with extensive government control), and the reasons are pretty simple:
[1] No regime of the current day can survive without producers who provide the resources the government can loot, hence there is at least a nodding acceptance of business, if not a full court impressment of compliant businesses into the deadly embrace of Corporatism (Mussolini's terminology)
[2] No such regime can allow unfettered liberty of the sort envisioned by those Dead White Guys of Revolutionary War America, so social and economic controls will be intrusive for both individuals and groups. One cannot rely upon a social consensus to achieve the desired level of control, so the gloved hand will be decorated with metal studs, figuratively, if not literally. Naturally, self-defense in such regimes has to be vigorously discouraged.
[3] No such regime can tolerate uncontrolled innovation, so the default model will include bureaucratic central planning, not because it is efficient, but because it slows down human adaptation and innovation to a pace that is less obviously beyond the ken of any central authority to administer.
Finally, look at the political platforms of the U.S. communist party and that of the current democrat party to see if there is really any substantive difference between the two.
The following comment by Robert Heinlein is completely applicable, although I think that he was a bit optimistic about the true motives of the control freaks.
"Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort." - Robert A. Heinlein
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@ chrisboltssr
Another great example of why liberals don't like the phrase. How many conservatives discuss socialism without reaching conclusions like - "Difference is only a matter of degree. The end result of both is the same: human misery." The hyperbole! There are plenty of reasons why Swedish-style political economy is not a good fit for America. The large amounts of human misery it has caused is not one of them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt doesn't take visions of gulags to know which way the wind blows. Just look at what they do when the doing is easy. Honduras and Colombia as small examples. Somehow, the fact that Obama is capable of bending in the face of political reality is supposed to be an insight into his capacity for moderation? In a Democracy?
The impulses are rather obvious even if they aren't always convenient politically, so I find it rather ludicrous when people like Weigel attempt to conflate survival instincts with conviction.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat you really want is for the word "socialism" to be a term for a vice, a term that is both a possible true discription of a tendency but which has an appropriate negative conotation to it. It's this in which one might wish it to be a real "scare" word. In Europe, it is used as descriptive but without negative connotation. According to Wiegel, conservatives use it for negative effect without it picking out anything specific to describe. But a theoretical case can be made that it is both specific and negative, which refutes both. But the persistance of people ignoring this is morally objectionable. Hence, socialism ought to be a scare word in this sense. Jonah is clearly right.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis whole thread is a little surreal. Here's an idea: let's take an inspiration from the clearly ridiculous "No Labels" folks. Instead of getting bogged down in fine distinctions between communism, socialism, progressivism/liberalism, etc., let's begin with the already made observation that they are all "branches" of the same thing. And that thing is the Eternal Tree of Stupidity, which posits a wide variety of theories so inane that they can only be believed by those who have become so educated that they can outsmart themselves. Here's a newsflash: Fish swim. Birds fly. And human beings compete. Any grand theory that attempts to describe (or prescribe) society without taking account of that fact and making room for it resides in that Eternal Tree of Stupidity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseForget the terminology. Prove them stupid, and thereby unfit to hold power.