The Meaning and Effect of Socialism

Depending on the source, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of citizens held a rally in Washington, D.C. last weekend to protest high taxes and out-of-control government spending. Many of those attending the rally held signs protesting the country’s slide toward socialism. Many of the protesters accused the President of the United States of being a socialist.

The terms “socialism” and “socialist” are being widely used these days by those who are concerned about the growth of the federal government and the government’s increased involvement in virtually all aspects of the economy. Even before the election, many conservatives, including me, feared President Obama, if elected, would accelerate the country’s slide toward socialism. For many, their worst fears are now being realized.

It is clear the terms “socialist” and “socialism” have negative connotations and invoke fear of a society totally controlled by the government with few, if any, individual liberties. But what do these terms really mean? I think it is time to pause and consider the meaning of these terms because they are being used so frequently in today’s political debates.

For many years, the 1985 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia has been collecting dust on a bookshelf in my house. I thought this would be a good place to start in attempting to understand the meaning of the term “socialism” because I wanted to see how the writers and editors of the Encyclopedia defined the term some 25 years ago. We all know definitions of words can change over time to correspond with changes in the culture or to comply with evolving standards of political correctness.

The Encyclopedia explains the goals and methods of socialism as follows:

“Socialists claim that free enterprise systems are inefficient and wasteful. They believe capitalism leads to such problems as unemployment, poverty, business cycles, and conflicts between workers and the owners of the means of production. To solve these problems, socialists believe that a nation’s wealth must be distributed more equally and justly. They strongly oppose social inequality and discrimination. Socialists aim for a society based on cooperation and brotherhood rather than on competition and self-interest.

“Socialism proposes to fulfill its aims by placing the major means of production in the hands of the people, either directly or through the government. … Many socialists favor a mixed economy—government ownership of basic industries and private ownership of many other businesses. The private businesses, however, would be regulated by the government.

“Socialists disagree over how much wealth should be left in private hands and how to deprive the rich of their excess property. Many socialists call for redistribution of wealth through taxation. They favor laws to help the aged, the unemployed, the disabled and handicapped, widows, dependent children, and other people in need. Many socialists believe that the government should also provide free education and medical service to everyone and should help all citizens obtain safe and sanitary housing at rents they can afford.

In the United States, for various reasons, socialism has never been as strong as in Europe. In Europe, socialism was largely a working-class movement. But the labor movement began later in the United States and grew slowly. Many scholars believe that labor developed slowly in the United States because the frontier and the untapped wealth of the country provided greater opportunities—even for the poor—than Europe did. Other scholars believe that American ideas of freedom and individualism weakened the appeal of socialism.”

Based on the Encyclopedia’s description of socialism, it is clear socialism already exists in this country to a fairly large extent. We already have “laws to help the aged, the unemployed, the disabled and handicapped, widows, dependent children, and other people in need.” The government already provides a free education to everyone through high school. We already redistribute wealth through a tax system that imposes higher tax rates on people with higher levels of income, relieves people with income below certain levels from the responsibility to pay income taxes, and provides for the issuance of “tax refunds” to individuals who don’t pay any income taxes. In addition, we redistribute wealth through a variety of other government benefits, such as food stamps, rent subsidies, and Medicaid, that are made available to people who don’t pay income taxes. In addition, the government, at least for the time being, owns and controls two automobile manufacturers and one of the nation’s largest insurance companies and also effectively controls the country’s largest banks either through regulation or direct equity ownership. An article in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal quoted the president of a mortgage firm as saying, “Over 29 years in business, we’ve always thought of ourselves as being in the free-enterprise system. Today I think of myself as a government contractor.”

Our society today is really a blend between a socialist and a capitalist system. Over the last several decades, we have been moving in the direction of a socialist system by providing more and more government services to citizens at the expense of the wealthiest Americans who bear the largest share of the income tax burden. The question is where do you stop. Where do you draw the line? At what point do you conclude we have too many citizens who are dependent on government for their livelihood? When do you start requiring more individual responsibility from citizens? How much can you take away from the wealthiest Americans before they are no longer wealthy or no longer have the incentive to create wealth?

Most conservatives believe we have already gone too far down the road to socialism and are convinced President Obama and the Democratic Party want to continue down the same road at an accelerated pace. Conservatives think it is time to apply the brakes and perhaps even reverse the direction in which we are proceeding. Few liberals think of themselves as socialists, but many—if not most—of them clearly subscribe to many of the goals and objectives of socialism as described above.

Is President Obama a socialist? If you examine his history, his comments, his actions since becoming President, and his agenda for the future, I think it is clear he is much closer to being a socialist than he is to being a capitalist. You can draw your own conclusions.

What does the future look like for the United States if we continue down the road to socialism? Victor David Hanson is a scholar, college professor, and syndicated columnist who has travelled extensively in Europe and has observed and studied the European form of socialism. He was written that the European form of socialism “closely resembles the model that Obama seeks for America.” According to Hanson, in Europe the “vast majority of citizens lives in apartments, even in smaller towns and villages. Cars are tiny. Prices are higher than in the states; income is lower.” Despite the goals of socialism, Hanson says in Europe “class is firmly entrenched and aristocratic snobbery more pronounced. (We already see that strange symbiosis between socialism for everyone else, capitalism for a few, whether in Michelle’s clothes, the Obama’s mansion, the Kerry fortune, the Edwards compound, the Gore appurtenances, the Clinton speaking cash cow, and too many others to list).”

With regard to Europe, Hanson says, “This is a continent of Tom Daschles, who win by being exempt from the burden of government that they subject on others, and win again by having contacts to sort out government contracts to crony-businesses. My point? The more Europe professes to be egalitarian, the more cynical and conniving the people have become—almost as if the human craving for one’s own property and to make one’s own destiny cannot be denied by the state…”

Hanson also observes, “Socialism surely does not make one happier, or content knowing that the resulting society is somehow more humane or caring. Instead each faction is constantly on the verge of striking against the public good. There are always the bad ‘them’, easy-target public enemies among the rich and aristocratic who need to give away more to the ‘deserving.’” Hanson further says, “I’ve never met a beatific equality-of-result person. They are usually grim and angry warriors determined to right cosmic wrongs, eager to demonize those who ‘have too much’, convinced that the divine ends justify the demonic means.”

Hanson concludes, “The road to socialism is not natural. It must be paved with the hard work of class envy, demonization of the successful, and obfuscation that each new massive spending program that will raise both taxes and deficits…must be passed immediately, without delay, now-or-never to starve off Biblical hunger, plague, and flood. Or else!”