Socialism

A recent note from my friend and former colleague, Dan Abbatelli, raised the question as to whether he is some kind of Socialist because he supports universal health care for all Americans. His comment brought to mind the thinking of the philosopher, Ludwig Wittginstein, who believed that many debating points and differences could be resolved by defining and refining the terms used. I am sure that is an over-simplification of his philosophy, but it does highlight the importance of agreeing the meaning of the words we use. And the “S” word is a great example of a term that cries out for clear definition.

I was an active member of the Labour Party for many years in Ireland. It was an openly Socialist party, which gets about 10% of the vote in Irish elections. The British Labour Party has been in power for more than a decade and they too identify themselves as part of the West European social democratic tradition. They are all part of one of the biggest groupings in the European Parliament, the Socialists. All of these parties are committed democrats, fully accepting the results of popular elections.

The American tradition is very different, although Eugene Debs in the first decade of the 20th century and later Norman Thomas in the 30’s, both distinguished Socialists, had a real impact on politics in their time. And, today Bernie Sanders from Vermont, an iconoclastic political figure, was elected to the Senate as a Socialist candidate. Still, American electoral politics continues to be dominated by the two big parties, Democrat and Republican.

Communism can be viewed as an extreme version of Socialism. One of my professors in University College Dublin, a distinguished Dominican priest, Fr. Fergal O’Connor, always argued that Communism should be seen as a system of State capitalism, where the government controlled all commercial activity as well as owning all the means of production and distribution. Everybody had to be controlled and programmed to act in ways that the government deemed to be for the general welfare. Fr. O’Connor, who was an expert on Plato, pointed out that with a philosopher-king, really a semi-divine being, the Communist system might well work. The reality of the 20th century experiment with totalitarian communism is that it was a nightmare for the people living in these dictatorships. The names of Stalin and Mao and their minions in Asia and Eastern Europe are despised by most people because of their awful abuses of power, resulting in the deaths of millions.

North Korea is the only remaining country that seems to adhere to some version of orthodox communism. A recent visitor reported that there is widespread hunger there and the people rarely smile. China is a very different case. The Chinese rulers now promote individual enterprise and encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, and the Chinese growth rate is the envy of the rest of the world. They have not yet accepted democratic elections, and freedom of speech is very restricted. Their spokesmen identify their country, tongue-in-cheek, I think, as a modern communist state.

While communism has failed dismally, the Socialists in the West, social democrats, can point to major achievements since the end of the Second World War. Universal health care is now taken for granted in all the Western democracies, except, of course, the United States. High school and college education are no longer seen as the preserve of the rich; children from poor and middle class backgrounds now routinely avail of fine higher educational facilities. The availability of decent housing for almost everyone in the West is a significant indication of social progress, and workers’ rights are well established. Unfortunately, poverty is still a reality for some, but not the extreme deprivation that was the lot of many a mere fifty years ago. The Socialist movement has also been to the fore in promoting civil and human rights for all groups in society, especially women.

America has seen similar changes in the last sixty years. The GI Bill, which provided free third-level education to servicemen after World War Two, opened the door to a middle-class lifestyle for millions and provided a big stimulus to economic growth since the fifties. The Democratic Party has largely led the fight for progressive policies. The Republican philosophy is avowedly conservative; they are very suspicious of government social programs and, they have mostly opposed legislation to promote civil or human rights. The Democratic issues resonate with liberals everywhere – universal health care, improving education, especially among the poor in the big cities, better employment opportunities and a taxation system that favors the middle-class over the rich. The new administration in Washington is also committed to removing legal obstacles to unionization in the workplace.

Is Dan Abbatelli a Socialist, or is he just a committed progressive within the Democratic Party – or does it matter what words we use to define him?