Some background on the meaning of Socialism
There is a lot of vitriol about “socialism” in the Unites States in 2022, mostly by people choosing a meaning for the term that is either most disagreeable or most agreeable to them. Historically the term was abused most especially by Soviet political leaders who claimed it as a name for their country, although they were explicitly communist in their writings and policies. Most generally, socialism means direct government intervention in the delivery of goods and services, in ways that are (at minimum) politically beneficial to the current regime and (ideally) generally beneficial to the population as a whole. In practice, one of the most effective socialist political parties is the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SSDP). Under the leadership of Hjalmar Branting, the SSDP gained prominence and them political domination in Sweden in the early 20th century. They converted a nation of destitute peasants and indifferent aristocrats into the hyper-modern country with an exceptional quality of life by the late 20th century.
By the 1930s the most prominent thinker on socialism was Karl Kautsky. As a reaction to the brutal authoritarian policies of the USSR, he drew a sharp distinction between the democratic socialism espoused by Americans such as Eugene Debs and Swedes such as Branting, versus the authoritarian communism of Lenin and Stalin in the USSR. Kaustky points out that both Marx and Engels explicitly rejected authoritarian coercion by a political elite:
Freedom consists in the transformation of the state from an organ dominant over society into an organ subordinate to society. (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875)
If anything is certain it is that our party and the working class can triumph only under the form of the democratic republic. (Engels, monograph in de Neue Zeit, 1891)
Kautsky points out that even Rosa Luxemburg dissented from the Soviet approach:
To be sure, every democratic institution has its ‘faults and limitations, which it has in common with all human institutions. But the remedy discovered by Lenin and Trotsky, the abolition of democracy, is worse than the evil it is supposed to cure, for it shuts off the lifespring from which can come the cure for all the inadequacies of social institutions. (Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution, 1918)
Kaustky traces the emergence of socialist ideas in Europe from the French Jacobins through to the German Socialist Party (SPD) of the early 20th century. He concludes that both in theory and in practice the most valid form of socialism is democratic socialism. I accept Kautsky’s considerable authority on this point: the only socialists worth considering are those committed to democratic, transparent, accountable government.
Democratic socialism has a more narrow meaning as well: direct public intervention in the provision of goods and services intended for public benefit, especially when the market mechanism cannot effectively deliver these goods and services.
Democratic socialism is the form embraced by current American politicians, as it was by Eugene Debs in the 1890s, 1900s, and 191os. But it has an even deeper history in the United States, producing some of the core features of our political economy.
Capitalism is inseparable from Socialism in the United States
In early 21st-century American political discourse, there is a weird presumption that one is either capitalist or socialist. This either/or presumption rests on the flawed idea that these are separate systems, and that one can even function without the other. Here is a glaring example of how capitalism requires socialism:
Delivery trucks travel on city streets. Capitalism is inseparable from socialism, and is literally supported by socialism in the form of public pavement supporting private struck tires.
City streets owned by cities (direct public ownership) and built and maintained by taxes. In other words the creation and maintenance of public streets and sidewalks in American cities is a socialist practice. Since residents can complain about their maintenance in public meetings, they are provided by a specifically democratic socialist system. Furthermore, they are provided with the express intent of supporting the economic activities of the city; they are a socialist-provided resource deliberately provided to support capitalism.
Capitalism can exist without direct government intervention in the provision of goods and services, but it is extremely anemic. Somalia is the best example of unfettered, unregulated, “free” capitalism in the world today, where no national government had been recognized since the early 1990s. All the red tape has been burned away; all the ‘meddling bureaucracy’ that “free-market” advocates despise has been removed. Gross Domestic Product per capita in Somalia in 2020 (most recent data) was USD$277 per year. Without government support and regulation, a truly free market yields extremely weak growth and extreme poverty for the vast majority of the population.
It might be possible for democratic socialism to function without private property. Monastic communities, emulating Luke the Evangelist’s description in the Acts of the Apostles, have lived as propertyless communities. But such communities tend to be small. At the scale of cities and countries, democratic socialism has only functioned as a way to govern capitalist societies, in which some resources cannot be efficiently delivered through the market mechanism. Local roads, sidewalks, and streetlights are obvious examples to anyone involved in urban government: you cannot charge a usage-fee to end-users for every linear foot of pavement they use, nor for every lumen of streetlight they use. These are ‘non-excludable goods’ that are socially beneficial enough that even grumpy taxpayers will pay for them in a transparent, democratic society.
Less obvious, but also deeply intertwined, is the way that government regulation supports capitalism. “Free-market” ideologues tend to characterize all regulation as red tape that is inherently obstructionist, anti-capitalist, and inefficient. However, FDA approval of pharmaceuticals is actually one of the most powerful boosts of their brand value; and the right of pharma companies to charge extremely high prices is actively defended by the United States Patents and Trademarks Office (USTPO). I don’t mind critiquing this process, and seeking ways to improve it. But we need to understand the nature of market value—and the role of government regulation in supporting that value—before we go reforming this mix of socialist capitalism. If “socialist capitalism” sounds like an oxymoron, if it sounds contradictory, please consider the private truck driving on the public street. I won’t even bother citing scholars or deep research to make this argument. The evidence of pervasive socialist capitalism in America is directly outside your window right now.
Public Education as American Socialism
Public k-12 primary and secondary-school education is another critical economic resource provided through socialist means. It has its problems, including segregation and very unequal funding depending upon the school district. But it is also an astoundingly effective method of economic growth and the development of informed citizens. We are very concerned about the current rejection of the scientific method and critical thinking among the American public. But the problem was infinitely worse in the era when most of the population could not read.
One of the great advocates for universal public education in the United States was the Christian socialist Frances Willard. The linkage between socialist ideals and Christian values dates to the Acts of the Apostles; was affirmed by St. Thomas More in 1516; and was affirmed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2004. Most Western socialists miss this tremendous political opportunity of alliance with organized religion because they are phobic about religious faith. That is a self-sabotage that needs to be overcome in order to improve the health of U.S. politics in the 21st century. Willard, like Adam Smith and so many moral philosophers, believed in the common welfare. She lobbied for Women’s right to vote, Temperance, and universal public education in the United States. She headed the Women’s Christian Temperance Union from 1879 until her death in 1898. Though she did not live to see these objectives fulfilled, by 1920 all three had been achieved.
The movement to provide universal public education—as a right and as an obligation—gained traction in the 1850s and 1860s. Public schools emulated the scale-efficiencies of mass production with large classrooms in buildings that were ‘factories’ for education on a bulk scale. The alternative at the time were private governesses for privileged individual children. That system could not be scaled up, and the cost of private tutelage was prohibitive for a society-wide project. Educators continue to struggle with the balance between universal coverage and the lack of customization to individual interests. We are beginning to use the internet to change this model, but my hunch is that we have not yet imagined the ways in which we can profoundly reform education even with the info-tech that we currently have.
Again, we need to understand the underlying logic of an institution in order to reform it competently. American education has never been objectively neutral. The overt agenda, from the beginning, has been to both educate and indoctrinate students, in order to develop a patriotic and cohesive society. Teaching literacy means people are far more capable of forming their own opinions, which is why literacy-education of enslaved people was prohibited before the Civil War. So there has always been a tension between developing an independently-minded public and a public that understands and supports the government and the perpetuation of the country as a whole.
I am especially mindful of this after 18 years of teaching at California universities. The terms of my employment mean that I am literally an agent of the state, a public servant. Many of my students have been veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars. So as “Lefty” as California universities may be, we continue the work of preparing students for both work and society. As a teacher of urban planning and public policy, my job is to prepare students to also be public servants, especially in arenas of public policy reform. Therefore I teach them—and learn from them—how to keep our own counsel and be ready to revise our judgments based on research and new information. One of the best citizenship-preparations I can impart is the importance of becoming our own editors of the massive flow of information we experience now through computers and smartphones. In addition to the challenge of perpetual distraction, there is the much deeper challenge of looking at our institutions critically, and thinking about how to reform them and improve them for a better future.
In order to prepare for reform, we all need to understand as clearly as possible the backstory and current nature of the institutions we are dealing with. This essay is an example: attempting to figure out how to ‘overthrow capitalism’ or conversely ‘freeing the market’ are both wastes of time because they both begin with a presumption that capitalism and socialism are either/or, mutually exclusive. Since capitalism and socialism are actually mutually constitutive in modern political economies, a whole different set of questions arises.
- Which goods and services should be provided privately through markets, and which should be provided publicly via taxation?
- What are the political, growth, social-justice, and environmental trade-offs in this balance?
- What indicators should be use to reveal when we should change that balance?
These are useful policy reform questions based on a rejection of a false dichotomy and a deeper understanding of modern political economy. Perhaps next I will give a specific example of this “balance-adjusting” in the space industry.