OPINION

To fear or not to fear

I hate labels. Especially labels that are used to tar good people or good ideas.

"Socialism" is a label that being adopted by some Democrats in today's U.S. politics. The same term is being used by the GOP to make conservatives afraid of liberals. Let's take a look at this while trying to bypass all the inflammatory rhetoric.

Socialism is an economic system where the ways of making a living (factories, offices, etc.) are owned by a society as a whole, meaning the value of products or services belongs to everyone in that society, instead of private owners. People who agree with this type of system are called socialists.

There are two ways socialists think that society can own the means of making wealth: Either the state (government of the country) is used, or worker-owned cooperatives are used. Another important belief is that management and sharing are supposed to be based on public interests. Socialists believe that everything in society is made by the cooperative efforts of all people.

Communism is a political and economic system in which the major productive resources in a society--such as mines, factories, and farms--are owned by the public or the state, and wealth is divided among citizens equally or according to individual need.

In a way, communism is an extreme form of socialism. Many countries have dominant socialist political parties, but very few are truly communist. In fact, most countries--including staunch capitalist bastions like the U.S. and U.K.--have government programs that borrow from socialist principles.

Socialism is sometimes used interchangeably with communism, but the two philosophies have stark differences. Most notably, while communism is a political system, socialism is primarily an economic system that can exist in various forms under a wide range of political systems.

Socialism allows for ownership of personal property. Communism does not; all property is state owned. Socialism promotes distribution of wealth according to contribution. Communism, in theory, promotes distribution of wealth according to need.

Socialists have no problem with a democratic government. Communists insist on complete state control over property, production, and distribution of income, and are governed by totalitarian regimes. There are many social democratic nations, like Sweden and Norway, and several democratic republics, such as France and Great Britain, that employ many socialistic programs like universal health care and mandated labor benefits. These social democratic nations and the hybrid democracies are all capitalistic economies.

It is certainly worth noting that the U.S. has socialistic programs. Two of them, Social Security and Medicare, are widely supported and extremely popular with the overwhelming portion of our population. We have had Social Security since the 1930s and Medicare since the 1960s. They are self-funded through individual and business taxes. Other popular socialistic programs are labor laws that protect unions, guarantee minimum wages, and require overtime pay.

We do not have universal health care provided by the government, but we do have Medicaid for the disabled, elderly, and impoverished, and Medicare for the retired. Although some of these programs are under attack by the GOP, most Americans would probably agree that these are generally beneficial to our society. All of these programs have been around for so long, they are scarcely associated with socialism or communism.

Pure socialism has been attempted but has always failed. Pure capitalism might ultimately fail as well. In the case of the former, the necessity to squelch the natural ambitions of a people to better themselves through entrepreneurial ventures in order to evenly distribute wealth requires too much government control and breeds resentment and sabotage. In the case of the latter, wealth gradually gets drained off into the hands of a few oligarchs who seek to step on the poor and the middle class in order to retain wealth and power.

Sooner or later this will result in a revolution to set things right. And class warfare ain't pretty.

The happiest people on this planet, according to numerous surveys, reside in countries that are socialist democracies. Certain government policies and programs guarantee benefits that are essential to a quality of life, such as affordable health care, adequate personal vacation time, affordable housing, and a clean environment. However, the people are served by representative democracy and are free to seek as much individual property or wealth as they choose. These nations are basically a hybrid of capitalism and socialism blended in a very effective and pleasing way.

We should not be afraid of socialism. Rather, we should recognize where some of its concepts have succeeded and benefited mankind. And then, we should rush to nourish those ideas in our own country.

Boyd Ward is a novelist and author of the blog A Yellowdog Takes Aim.

Editorial on 02/17/2019

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