gracchusdixit

Now that Bernie Sanders has won the New Hampshire primary,  has pulled ahead of Joe Biden in national polling, and shows every sign of winning many of the biggest states that will vote on “Super Tuesday,” the internecine hysteria of the Democratic Party, which has been gathering steam for weeks, is likely to reach a boil.  It is no secret that the party’s establishment—the political power brokers and big-money donors who helped Hillary Clinton get the nomination in 2016—are scared to death by the Senator from Vermont.  Clinton herself has contributed to the fear-mongering by publicly criticizing Sanders for no plausible reason other than petty, personal pique.  More consequentially, the Democratic National Committee abruptly changed its rules to allow Michael Bloomberg to participate in the next round of primary debates, presumably because they think Bloomberg has enough money to counter Sanders’ unrivaled ability to raise vast sums from small donors.

The Democratic establishment is vexed by Sanders, because his agenda, like that of his progressive competitor, Elizabeth Warren, threatens to upset the status quo, leveling the economic and social playing field after decades in which the top one percent have grown rich at the expense of everyone else.  Nothing so exercises the political and economic elite as the prospect of surrendering even a drop of their power, prestige, or wealth, a dread that applies to rich and influential Democrats just as it does to Republicans.  God forbid that the pesky proles should be given an inch, because, before you know it, they’ll want to take a mile.

In seeking to stifle Sanders’s candidacy, establishment politicians and pundits make four arguments:  (1) Sanders refuses to say what his social programs will cost or how he intends to pay for them; (2) his plans are impractical and will fail to muster a majority in Congress; (3) if his plans were enacted, they would wreck the economy; (4) this is a capitalist country to its core, so Americans will never vote for a “socialist,” from Vermont or anywhere else. 

The first three prongs of this attack are tendentious nonsense.  Sanders has made no secret of how he would pay for his agenda:  he would raise taxes across the board but most particularly on the very rich.  Those who criticize his proposals for being “impractical” must first explain (to cite merely one example) in what way it is “practical” to support the continued existence of a private health care system that is simultaneously the most expensive in the world and one of the least effective.  Finally, the notion that Sanders’ policies would wreck the economy is worse than nonsense; it is a complete fabrication.  Between 1945 and 1960, this country experienced the most robust and broadly shared economic expansion in its history, all the while the top marginal tax rate exceeded 90 percent.  

Since the substantive attacks on Sanders are little more than diversions, we are left with the claim that a supposedly capitalist country like ours will never accept a “socialist” as its president.  This assertion would no doubt have been true during the Cold War, when I was growing up.   Whether it is true any longer is far less certain.  Younger Americans, particularly so-called “millennials,” display remarkably little fondness for our current economic system and a surprising willingness to consider radical alternatives.  Since neither the Democratic establishment nor Donald Trump pay much attention to such realities, it is certain that they will do their utmost to smear Bernie Sanders as a godless socialist, who can’t be trusted to preside over the “free market” economy we are all called upon to revere.  

This attack will come, not because it’s true, but, rather, because it’s so easy to make.  And that’s because “socialism” is a slippery concept, which can be construed to mean just about anything and is routinely misunderstood even by those who condemn it most fervently.  Unlike the ideologies of capitalism and communism—or, for that matter, the religious ideologies of Christianity and Islam—socialism lacks a defining doctrine, a definitive text, or an authoritative prophet.  There is no socialist equivalent of Adam Smith or Karl Marx, let alone Jesus or Mohammed.  In days gone by, when capitalists and communists quarreled over rival interpretations of their respective ideologies, they did so within the doctrinal confines established by their prophetic founders.  It would never have occurred to a fervent capitalist to consult Das Kapital any more than a communist would have opened the pages of The Wealth of Nations.  Capitalism and communism, just like Christianity and Islam, are “closed systems,” in which true-believers talk largely to themselves.

This is not at all the case with socialism.  Nearly a hundred years ago, the Dictionary of Socialism identified no fewer than forty, significantly different variations of socialist thought.  Those who charge that this expansive philosophy would lead to the boogeymen of “central planning, the “nationalization” of industry,” or the “abolition of private property” simply don’t know what they’re talking about.  Socialism can mean any of those things—or none of them.

The reality is that socialism is not a fixed economic, political, or philosophical system, with a definite set of prescriptions designed to cure what ails us.  Rather, it is a wide-ranging set of ideas underpinned by a single moral principle—the principle that economic, political, and social justice are one and the same.  Capitalists believe that human societies and governments must bend to the will of the market, as if the market were an all-powerful natural or divine phenomenon, as inexorable as a volcanic eruption or the “invisible hand” of God.  Socialists believe that markets, and the economy more broadly, are entirely human creations that should serve human needs and the societies to which all human beings belong.  In that sense, Bernie Sanders truly is a socialist.  And so, even if they don’t know it, are most Americans.