What is Socialism Really?

 

Many right-wing and conservatives - not only in the USA - are blaming centrists and liberals for "socialism", especially during the last election. They might confuse it with communism.  This from folks who have never experienced or lived in a socialism or communism regime - unless they are born in Cuba, the Eastern bloc, or in the former DDR.  Nor did they experience the way of social-democratic lifestyle that can be found in many wealthy European countries...

SOCIALISM for the RICH...

Tax rebate checks corporations received from Trump's tax plan: 

• Amazon: $129 million
• Delta: $187 million
• Chevron: $181 million
• GM: $104 million
• IBM: $342 million

Now they claim $600 is socialism...
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To bring in a bit of humor into the socialism debate, I am referring to a comedy I recently watched on German TV.  The topic was about right-wings that are fearing socialism. He ensured them that Joe Biden was for many years Senator of Deleware, a notorious tax haven, and held his hand over the finance industry - typical for a socialist!?  To expect him to turn the US into a socialist country is just absurd. 

Then it was explained to Trump fans: Socialism is when children are taken care of by the government, politically brain-washed, later placed into the military, when people could only go into state-sponsored vacation places, and when the government builds a wall so that no one can leave the country.  And: if there were no Bananas available in stores  : )

It's called Real-Existing Socialism.  Did only work in the DDR for less than 50 years ...

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Then What is Socialism Really?

so·cial·ism

noun

It is a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

In Marxist theory: a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism.  See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53vmQNVBm0w

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Talking About Socialism

In National Review, Kevin Williamson wrote: “All this talk about socialism isn’t about socialism,” Williamson writes. “It’s about the status quo.” The idea that “capitalism” has failed us and that “socialism” is the answer relies on a cartoonish oversimplification of reality. 

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Paying a living wage, offering affordable health insurance, and fair taxation is NOT socialism! 

It prevents people from the anxiety of uncertainty and it pays back and supports capitalism as it almost automatically generates higher tax-income for the State, and higher earnings for producers and retailers -  as average folks are able to consume a lot more on items they cannot afford with a minimum wage.

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Remember FDR:

Roosevelt’s initiatives, meant to curb the misery brought on by the Great Depression, directly funded millions of government jobs, employing everyone from photographers to brush-clearing conservation workers. To pay for this, he raised the income tax—which hadn’t even existed two decades earlier—to 75 percent on the highest incomes. The rich were subsidizing the poor, and that was A-OK with FDR.

The fiery president defended his actions as pragmatic responses to the real, glaring needs of a changing society. The rich who criticized him, who cloaked their greed in an affinity for capitalism, were dangerously missing his point. He knew the ideological threats of communism and of fascism were real and were overtaking democracy in European countries.  By fulfilling the government’s obligation to assist its people, he was instilling confidence in the American system. He was vindicating the Founding Fathers.  Read more: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/16/democrats-socialism-fdr-roosevelt-227622

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Profit is Privatized, Risk and Bailouts are Socialized….

Not only during this pandemic or through the financial crisis everyone had and has to chip in. However, the percentage of income tax is not the same for a worker as it is for a huge corporation that can afford expensive tax lawyers and accountants to make sure they pay barely any tax.  Remember the amount Trump paid in a year, and how many years he paid no tax at all...  Same for Apple, Google, Facebook, or Amazon.

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Those Who Are Damning "Socialism"...  are using public streets, airports, ports, schools, and teachers, government agencies, hospitals and doctors, public servants' and politicians' work, just to name a few of their own "social" benefits.  And then they often pay only the minimum wage to their own employees instead of a living wage. A living wage would allow employees to earn enough income for a satisfactory standard of living and to prevent them from falling into poverty. Hypocritical?  On top of that, many of the largest and wealthiest companies in the world pay barely any tax...

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Rigged Capitalism

Elizabeth Warren said: "I am a capitalist. I believe in markets. What I don’t believe in is theft, what I don’t believe in is cheating. That’s where the difference is. I love what markets can do, I love what functioning economies can do. They are what make us rich, they are what create opportunity. But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules are about the rich take it all, it’s about the powerful get all of it. And that’s what’s gone wrong in America."

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