Over the last few years, I have been hearing the term “socialism” thrown around constantly. Very often the term has a negative connotation, as is the case with barrages of crazy Tea Party supporters who hold up signs claiming “Obama is a Socialist!”
Never mind that Obama is, if anything, a painfully bland centrist whose economic views are actually to the right of past Republicans such as Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Want proof? Under both Eisenhower and Nixon, the top income tax rate was between 70 and 90 percent.
Today that top tax rate is around 35 percent, and Obama has shown limited willingness to raise it to the 39 percent it was at with Clinton, much lower than the rates under Eisenhower and Nixon.
Of course, nobody would call those presidents socialists. But in the present political climate, if any politician or commentator suggests raising the taxes of the super-rich even slightly, they are immediately branded a socialist.
It appears as if, in America, the worst thing a person can be called, aside from a baby killer or child molester, is a socialist. In fact, socialism has been branded as toxic both as a word and as a legitimate viewpoint going back to the red scares of the 20th century.
The first red scare occurred right after World War I and the second during the Cold War years of the early 50s.
The first was a response to the Russian Revolution, which saw the communist Bolsheviks take power. During the hysteria, a number of well-known socialist and left-leaning groups and individuals in the United States found themselves subject to harassment and even imprisonment. Famous socialists such as Jane Addams and Eugene V.
Debbs found themselves the targets of attacks on their patriotism and loyalty to America.
The second Red Scare of the 1950s saw the infamous senator Joe McCarthy able to ruin lives and careers just by branding those he found disagreeable as communists or subversives.
In both cases, the anti-communist hysteria led to a general distrust of ideas considered “radical” and weakening of left-wing movements for greater rights for workers, women and minorities.
The civil rights movement and its leaders, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would find themselves labeled as communists and subversives by those opposed to their efforts. Author and journalist Chris Hedges goes so far as to blame the first Red Scare for bringing an abrupt end to the Progressive Era.
As this brief history shows, socialism has gotten quite a bad rap in this country today. Yet in spite of this, socialism has still played a vibrant and often positive role in our nation’s history, and to deny that is to deny an aspect of history that many right-wing demagogues and economic elites would rather have us forget.
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The truth is that socialists and socialist ideas have often been at the forefront of making our country a more fair, equal and democratic society. Many of the early abolitionists and crusaders for women’s suffrage were proud socialists. The populist movement of the 1890s, which opposed “robber barons” and their unfair monopolies, was inspired by socialist ideas.
The Progressive Era at the turn of the century saw many open socialists rise to prominence, and socialism, for a time, became an acceptable philosophy of governing which sought to prevent the abuses and injustices of unregulated capitalism. Many towns elected socialist mayors while socialist books and activism, such that of Upton Sinclair, drove politicians to enact progressive reforms.
Later, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the voices of communists, socialists and other radical groups helped push FDR’s New Deal leftward and led to the enactment of Social Security and the right of workers to form unions.
Socialists were also prominent among the civil rights movement, and many were inside Dr. King’s inner circle in the fight for racial justice. In the 60s, the socialist Michael Harrington’s book, The Other America, played a pivotal role in focusing the national dialogue on the nation’s poor and led the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to launch a war on poverty.
Author John Nichols documents the rich role in US history that socialism has played in his brilliant new book, The “S” Word.
Even today, as commentators and ordinary Americans who watch too much Glenn Beck deride and warn of the supposed evils of socialism, but many of the benefits of their everyday lives are the product of socialism or socialist-leaning ideas.
These benefits include driving on public roads, a taxpayer-funded fire department for fire safety and prevention, public libraries, schools, post offices and universities of which they or someone they know is surely a beneficiary. I am sure most Americans, except for the most diehard libertarians and Ayn Rand worshippers, would not consider these things negative.
But, many of them may not realize the socialist philosophy which underlies them: that some things ought to be set aside for the common good and be publicly owned. Therefore, we should think and consider our history before we continue to make socialism a dirty word.
