Is President Obama a Socialist?

Business Week (we all know what a liberal rag that is) ran a story last year that I recently stumbled upon and thought was both entertaining and informative. It asked the question: Is President Obama a Socialist?

The simple answer is no. And, judging from the article, no is also the complicated answer, the short answer, and the long answer. It’s the reasonable answer.

Let’s define Socialism. Socialism is an economic and political theory that advocates state ownership of major industries as a tool for distributing wealth more evenly in a society.

While Rush Limbaugh and others like him on the Far Right get political mileage out of implying that President Obama is a Socialist, the real Socialists of the world beg to differ, according to the Business Week article.

They say if the Obama Administration were establishing a true socialist state, we'd have at least a $15-an-hour minimum wage (instead of the current $6.55 federal minimum) and 30-hour workweeks. Every American would be guaranteed employment and health-care coverage. Oh, and homeless people would be occupying vacant office buildings in cities and vacant McMansions in the suburbs.

Business Week talked to Frank Llewellyn, national director of the New York-based Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest U.S. Socialist party, and to Frances Fox Piven, a professor of political science at City University of New York (CUNY) and an honorary chair of the DSA. They also talked to a representative of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in Chicago and the Socialist Party USA in New York. In their view, President Obama is not trying to take over private sector industry and turn it into something run by the state to benefit the masses. Instead, he is “scrambling to rescue and preserve capitalism.”

How influential are these Socialist political groups? The Socialist Party USA has 1,500 members. The much larger DSA has a whopping 7,000 members. By comparison, Wikipedia says there are about 55 million registered Republicans and 72 million registered Democrats in the US. The Coffee Party has 172,000 fans on Facebook and the Tea Party Patriots page has 115,000.

On Mar. 6 (2009) a New York Times reporter asked Obama whether his domestic policies indicated the President is a socialist. Obama laughed, replying "the answer would be no." In a later telephone call to the paper, Obama said enormous taxpayer sums had been injected into the financial system before his election. "The fact that we've had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk-taking has precipitated a crisis," Obama told the newspaper.

While the bailouts of 2009 may have given the federal government an ownership stake in a few industries, the Obama Administration never tried to take over the decision making process in at any major company. At worst, the administration may have stepped in and voiced an opinion on some management practices (particular those tied to executive compensation).

Of course, bank regulators come in and take over banks that are insolvent. Is that Socialism? We haven’t thought so in the past. And bankruptcy courts usually tell businesses how they can structure a plan to pay off their debts. Is that Socialism? Again, we haven’t thought so in the past.

It’s tempting to say that Rush Limbaugh doesn’t actually know what a Socialist is. But that’s obviously not true. He may be a Far Right ideology, but Rush is smart. He knows what a Socialist is. He knows Obama is not one. And Rush would like to expand the definition of Socialism to change that – at least in the public mind.

In the words that one prominent politician used recently, the idea that President Obama is a Socialist – well, that’s “barkings from the nether reaches of Glennbeckistan…”

Is it Socialism?

I was sitting in my living room watching President Obama's speech on healthcare this past Wednesday. I had Facebook up and the chat window opened.

Why are people so opposed to a public option? a friend asked.

It's socialism, I replied.

There was a pause. Then the reply...

So is a municipal police department.


Is it?

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There's not some official definition of Socialism I can refer to in order to answer that question. Wikipedia says this:

Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating worker or public ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with an egalitarian method of compensation.

I know, kind of vague and wordy. Wikipedia goes on to say that it is primarily an economic system, and that it stands in contrast or capitalism. And perhaps in a purely theoretical world that might be true. But in the real world societies tend to blend elements of both systems.

Americans today have very little experience with hard socialism. We don't have a history of state owned industries. We don't have a sovereign wealth fund with hundreds of billions of dollars in assets to invest (like the United Arab Emirates, China, Norway, Singapore, and a few other countries).

We do have a few industries where a major portion of that industry is actually managed by the government, in the sense that projects are government funded and workers are either government employees or are contracted by the government. Transportation stands out: government (federal, state, or local) builds and maintains our roads and manages our airports. Public safety is in that same boat (and that answers the question about the municipal police department). Education is another biggie. Most American's don't think of the word "Socialism" when you talk about public schools or state universities. But in the strictest sense of the definition, schools like Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State, and UCLA are socialist institutions. So are most elementary schools.

We don't think of roads and schools as socialism. Maybe they are, maybe they're not. But we don't think of them as such.

A softer, fuzzier form of socialism worries most Americans much more. It's the idea that the government might provide services of some kind - a social safety net for the poor (or for the middle class, on the chance that they might become poor), health coverage, financial services (like mortgages or student loans), etc.

The problem is, we have those things to some extent already. Not only do we have them already, but most Americans like them.

We could do away with those things. We could put an end to social security. We could tell our senior citizens that we're sorry if they didn't plan well when they were thirty, but now that they're 69 and unemployed, they're own their own when it comes to medical bills. Their families should take care of them. We could close the VA medical facilities because they're Socialism. There are people who advocate that idea, based on the principle that Socialism is bad - somehow immoral, definitely anti-Christian, economically unmotivating, yada yada yada.

Why hasn't that happened? The politician who voted to end Social Security or Medicare would never be re-elected. The majority of people in his district would vote for his opponent in the next election. Most American's want those programs to continue to exist. Our voters aren't alone in that. I can't think of a developed democracy without these sorts of economic safety nets.

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Politics and religion is a combustible mix. In injects emotion into most discussions and tends to remove reason from the discussion.

One of the loudest arguments being voiced against the growth of the soft and fuzzy sort of socialism represented by government supported health coverage (the so-called "government option") is that it's somehow "un-Christian." In support they often site II Thessalonians 3:10 - If a man will not work, he shall not eat. (NIV)

The verse is a good argument for the concept of work ethic. But it's hardly theological backing for an entire economic system. Capitalism has more to do with marketing goods than producing them - with supply and demand, profit and loss, and pricing. And people in the Religious Right who want to argue that Socialism is evil neglect the fact that early Christians practiced it in the Book of Acts (chapters 2 & 4).

The theological argument breaks down when real theology is applied. The truth is simpler than politicians want to acknowledge. Mature, devote Christians work because it's, well, righteous - not because it's personally profitable. Non-Christians may find their own reasons to work, but the flawed character they have (described in the early chapters of Romans) means they find a way to avoid work in any system.

The religious argument breaks down. And Christians outside America aren't as preoccupied with it. Americans have their perception of the issue skewed by the ties fiscal Conservative (Republicans) have created here with Evangelical churches.

America is a long, long way from being a Socialist country. Americans don't like the word "Socialism" because they associate it with Communism and with dictators. That association is fed by Fiscal Conservatives who, among other things, play the religious card. American's like the Socialism they have and fear the Socialism they don't have. With political purpose in mind, Conservative politicians feed that fear. But so far, a little Socialism (once it's part of the system) has proven to be easily tolerated and well like by the majority of Americans. And no one I know wants wholesale, hard Socialism.