Donald Trump suddenly discovers a distaste for socialism
It has been said that Trump is a poor man’s idea of a rich man. Well then: a socialist is an old, ideologically bereft man’s idea of a boogeyman.
In his third state of the union address, while suddenly facing the real possibility of having Bernie Sanders as an opponent, Donald Trump suddenly discovered a distaste for socialism. He said Democrats were plotting a “socialist takeover of our healthcare system,” and he alluded to the fact that Sanders’ Medicare for All plan would outright ban private health insurance, currently held by 180 million Americans.
“Socialism destroys nations,” Trump said. “But always remember, freedom unifies the soul.”
That’s a good line, especially if you needed reminding about the effect of freedom on the soul. But socialism doesn’t destroy nations any more than true believers pervert the teachings of Christ. Which is to say, it depends on which parts you pay attention to, how they’re applied, and the nature of your soul to begin with.
Still, the next day while campaigning in New Hampshire, Joe Biden took the bait. Seeking to scare voters out of voting for Sanders, Biden said this:
Donald Trump is desperate to pin the socialist label of - socialist, socialist, socialist - on our our party. We can’t let him do that. But if Senator Sanders is the nominee for the party, every democrat will have to carry the label Senator Sanders has chosen for himself.
If this sounds like a broken record to you - Republicans accusing Democrats of socialism, Democrats scaring themselves into thinking the label will stick - then congratulations, you’re over the age of 30. And if the word socialism actually does scare you, then congratulations, you’re at least over the age of 50.
As Andrew Yang has said repeatedly, including again in Friday night’s Democratic debate, “The capitalist-socialist dichotomy is simply out of date.”
American hostility to socialism is a historical quirk
The label “socialist” once meant something in American politics. Particularly the years in which a totalitarian regime which dubbed itself the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics'' violently overthrew a Republican government in Russia and proceeded to usher in a 70-year nightmare of state-controlled terror and self-inflicted economic wounds (which, despite themselves, would allow the USSR to overcome and help the allies defeat Hitler).
Socialist used to mean Communist. Though different substantively, and today more open to interpretation than ever, socialism and communism were inextricably linked in the American consciousness since at least the end of World War II, when the United States made it its business to stop the spread of Communist governments and, you know, make the world safe for Democracy.
That was a worthy effort. In the great ideological-political struggle of the Cold War, there is no doubt that the U.S. was on the side of right, the side of freedom, the side of justice. That is true despite America’s historic support for a string of brutal right-wing dictatorships and despite the brutal and decidedly unjust war in Vietnam (in which America’s fear of Communism led it to mistake anti-colonial revolutionaries for harbingers of global totalitarianism).
The struggle against Soviet Russia eventually ended with a fizzle, thank God, and not a nuclear bang, but that struggle continues to leave its mark on American politics, namely in the form of a lingering, unspecified fear and confusion over the difference between socialism and USSR-inspired Communism.
There is much that could be said by political scientists and high school social studies teachers about the differences between political systems and economic systems, or about China’s odd blend of of one-party control and statist-inspired, goal-driven capitalism, or about why it is that Venezuela has descended into post-apocalyptic economic collapse while the Nordic countries have successfully combined a strong “socialist” safety net with the kind of business-friendly entrepreneurialism that has birthed companies like Ikea, Nokia, Spotify, and others.
But I’ll leave all that to the academics. This newsletter is concerned with perception, and how that perception influences voters and politics.
Bernie’s heavy lift
Bernie Sanders has for his entire career been trying to do the work of changing Americans’ perceptions about socialism. That’s a heavy lift, considering the decades of historical forces arrayed against him. And yet, by all accounts he’s done an extraordinary job of shifting public sentiment, beginning with his 2016 campaign and continuing through to today.
Last year in May, Gallup found that 43 percent of Americans thought some kind of socialism would be good for the country (one percent more than Trump’s approval rating at the time). Unfortunately, Gallup hadn’t polled Americans on their perception of socialism since the 1940s, so it’s tough to draw clean trend lines anywhere. However, in 2018, the author Steve Pearlstein pointed to surveys which showed that only 60 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that a free market economy is the best system, down from 80 percent just ten years earlier.
That is a pretty dramatic shift.
Americans’ opinions of socialism are changing, that’s for sure. It could turn out that Sanders is on the right side of history, and that America is in the beginning of a historic shift toward the kind of broad social safety net policies embraced by Sweden, Germany, and other developed nations.
But another way to put it would be this: Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, America is beginning to revert back to the mean. Because the truth is that America actually has a substantial, pre-USSR tradition of socialist politics.
Socialism “as American as apple pie.”
Last December, Nathan Robinson, writing for the Guardian, published a good primer on the extensive, largely successful history of socialism in America:
A century ago, when socialism was at its peak in this country, the Socialist party had 1,200 offices in 340 cities. There were two Socialist members of Congress, dozens of Socialist state legislators, and more than 130 Socialist mayors in over half of the US states.
Not Democratic Socialists, mind you. Socialists.
The University of Washington has a great page on the history of socialism in America, complete with illuminating maps, including this one:
Not only were socialist politics widespread in America prior to the Soviet Communist revolution, but Socialist politicians earned themselves a reputation for governing quite competently. According to Peter Dreier, an author and political science professor at Occidental College, nowhere was that more true than in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which elected a Socialist mayor from 1916 - 1940, and another one from 1948 - 1960.
According to Dreier:
Before the Socialists took office, Milwaukee was one of America’s most corrupt cities. Businesses routinely bribed local officials to give favorite corporations private monopolies over utilities and streetcars, which were typically run inefficiently. Businesses paid little taxes while local government was starved for cash.
But under the Socialists, Milwaukee gained a reputation as a well-managed municipality… They built community parks, including beautiful green spaces and recreation areas along the lakefront that are still widely-used. They increased the citywide minimum wage (28 years before the federal government adopted the idea) and established an eight-hour day standard for municipal workers. They championed public education for the city’s children, built excellent libraries and sponsored vibrant recreation programs. The city municipalized street lighting, the stone quarry, garbage disposal and water purification.
In other words, the socialist mayors of Milwaukee did what any good mayor might do. So why don’t we hear more about this?
Fear and shame
We don’t hear more because we don’t study history, and even when we do we don’t remember it. We’re too caught up in labels.
Jon Stewart has a new movie coming out about two political operatives duking it out in a - wait for it - mayoral election in rural Wisconsin. In the trailer, the Democratic operative says to the Republican one, “All you have is fear,” and the Republican operative replies, “Twenty bucks says I do better with fear than you do with shame.”
Sadly, that is an all-too-accurate summary of the state of American politics at the moment. One side uses fear to win elections (fear of change, fear of immigrants stealing our jobs, fear of a good economy turning bad); the other side hopes shame will counterbalance. Neither strategy feels good. And neither speaks to our better angels.
I prefer to search for what makes us American in the first place, and for that I look to our shared history and identity. And that history includes a tradition of Socialism. It’s not something to be scared of, or used in a campaign of fear-mongering, nor is it something to shame others into accepting.
It’s a political tradition with a history in America just like any other. Less dominant than some of our other traditions, but present nonetheless. Rather than point to Venezuela, or the USSR, or even Denmark or Sweden, let us look to our own history for examples of what a socialist might do once in office, including a democratic one like Sanders.