On February 5 our great flag-hugging president Donald Trump
stood before Congress and delivered his State of the Union Address. Among other
things he said:
"Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to
adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence
— not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we
will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a
socialist country."
Standing behind him, Ms. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House
of Representatives and a Democrat, nodded vigorously in approval as he said
this. President Trump was expressing a bipartisan consensus shared by most
Democrats as well as Republicans.
How would a socialist respond to this, if given the chance?
Was America founded on liberty and independence?
Very well, America was founded on liberty and independence.
But whose liberty to do what? And whose independence from who?
The United States was founded by free English colonists who
sought independence from the British crown and certain liberties or rights
(such as the right not to be taxed without representation and the right to
trial by jury). In other respects, however, full liberty and independence were
enjoyed only by the wealthiest of the colonists. Then as now, many Americans
were dependent for their livelihood on employers. Debtors were dependent on
their creditors.
What liberty or independence did the black slaves have? Or
the white indentured servants, who paid for their passage across the Atlantic
with seven years’ labor under conditions so harsh that they might or might not
survive? Or the native people in the areas occupied or coveted by the
colonists? After all, George Washington’s Revolutionary Army fought not only to
free the colonists from British rule but also to conquer the tribal lands of
the Iroquois League and Ohio Union. [See Barbara Alice Mann, George
Washington’s War on Native America (University of Nebraska Press, 2009).]
So it is true that America was founded on liberty and independence
– for some. It is equally true that America was founded on slavery, dependence,
and genocide – for others.
Are we free today?
How free are Americans today? Perhaps, as President Trump
claims, we are all ‘born free.’ But as Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed: ‘Man is
born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’
Slavery has been officially abolished, but many people still
live in conditions not far removed from slavery: 2,300,000 in jails and
prisons, others forcibly confined and drugged in mental hospitals, victims of
human trafficking, illegal immigrants held at the mercy of their employers and
working for very little or even nothing.
The majority of the population – those of us who have to
sell our ability to work in order to earn a living – can count ourselves at
best partially free. How free are you if for at least 40 hours a week, or
double that if you work two jobs, you are controlled by a manager or supervisor
and ultimately by a boss? How free do you feel?
Only those whose wealth and property income enable them to
live in comfort without working for a boss can be considered truly free.
President Trump, whose net worth is estimated at $3.1 billion, certainly falls
into this category, as do Ms. Pelosi and the other 50 or so members of the
congress addressed by President Trump who own assets of $10 million or more.
President Trump’s meaning becomes much clearer when we realize that by ‘we’ he
has in mind, mainly if not exclusively, he and his fellow capitalists.
When is ‘government coercion, domination, and control’ bad?
President Trump’s denunciation of ‘government coercion,
domination, and control’ seems to be at odds with the real policy of his
government. Are we really expected to believe that the current US government
never coerces, dominates, or controls, either at home or abroad? For example,
when it imposes sanctions on Venezuela and freezes its assets in order to
create a crisis that can serve as a pretext to bomb and invade that country and
seize its oil and other resources, surely that has something to do with
‘government coercion, domination, and control’?
No. Because it is mainly capitalists who need to be
protected from government coercion, domination, and control. The Maduro
government in Venezuela stands accused of trying to coerce, dominate, and
control domestic and foreign capitalists. Economic and even military action to
oust that government is not therefore itself ‘government coercion, domination,
and control’ but action against ‘government coercion, domination, and control.’
By contrast, should a government agency try to stop a
corporation dumping poisonous or flammable waste into the public water supply,
thereby encroaching upon its ‘liberty and independence,’ that is a flagrant
exercise of ‘government coercion, domination, and control’ – of capitalists. We
may rest assured, of course, that no abuse of this sort will occur while the
agency is headed by a Trump appointee.
Calls to adopt socialism?
What ‘calls to adopt socialism’ is President Trump talking
about? Is it the World Socialist Movement that ‘alarms’ him? I suspect not. Our
movement is not yet large enough to give him cause for alarm. He and his
colleagues are probably discomforted by the fact that they now have
‘socialists’ sitting among them in Congress. Exactly how many ‘socialists’ is
unclear. Only a handful of congresspeople openly call themselves ‘socialists.’
However, according to McCarthyite sources many more are closet socialists. One
especially vigilant commentator claims that all 81 members of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus are ‘socialists,’ ‘progressive’ supposedly being a codeword
for ‘socialist.’ The uncertainty must be nerve-wracking for right-thinking
congresspeople, who must worry about inadvertently smiling at a ‘socialist’ or
even, God forbid, shaking hands with one.
True, there is nothing new about having even an avowed
‘socialist’ in Congress: Bernie Sanders has been there since 2007. But they may
have found it easier to tolerate a lone socialist. And an avuncular and urbane
figure like Bernie presumably disturbs them less than the new crop of
impertinent and combative young women, some of them with almost unpronounceable
foreign names like Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez.
I am inclined to reassure President Trump that his alarm is
premature. The ‘socialism’ of these ‘progressive Democrats’ is not of the
full-bloodied kind, entailing the dispossession of the capitalists and the
transfer of their productive assets to common ownership and democratic control.
Their ‘socialism’ is of the milk-and-water variety – the ‘socialism’ advocated
by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, with which quite a few of
the ‘progressive Democrats’ appear to be affiliated.
It would be more accurate to call such ‘socialists’ social
reformers. They accept world capitalism, with its world market and great power
competition, as givens. They never even talk (at least in public) about
replacing it with a new system. Their ideal is capitalism on the West European
and especially Scandinavian model. They seek merely to regulate the worst
abuses – destabilizing financial speculation, for example — and implement
programs like ‘Medicare for All’ and a ‘Green New Deal.’ The most far-sighted
capitalists recognize that such reforms would make the capitalist system more
stable and sustainable.
The trouble is that American capitalists, unlike their West
European counterparts, have never had to accustom themselves to the presence of
moderate ‘socialists’ in government (arguably with the exception of a few years
in the 1930s under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt). They have not learned
how to tame, manipulate, and work with such people. Especially in recent
decades, with neo-liberalism in the ascendant, they have grown used to having
everything their own way. The prospect that soon they may have to make a few
compromises comes as a shock to them.
Nevertheless, the capitalist system has repeatedly shown
itself quite capable of coopting and absorbing ‘progressive’ social reformers.
Will today’s social reformers prove an exception? We shall see.
Stephen Shenfield
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