By Alana Moceri.
In 2009, I wrote in my blog that President Obama wasn’t a socialist. This post was gleefully linked to and commented on in Spain’s right wing press who took it as a rebuke to the PSOE, who had featured images of both Obama and former President Bush in their European Union parliament campaign. Some of my friends in the PSOE were not happy with this post, but perhaps now, after completing 5 years as president, it’s even more clear why it’s problematic to characterize Obama as one of them.
Obamacare, his signature legislative achievement, gives the lie to anyone who calls him a socialist. This market-based solution may help make health insurance accessible to more American citizens but it ignores evidence in the rest of the world’s developed countries that single-payer healthcare, otherwise known in the U.S. as “socialized medicine” works.
This past November, Obama himself gave the best summary of his capitalist credentials as he addressed 100 top business leaders at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit: “People call me a socialist sometimes, but, no, you gotta meet real socialists. You’ll have a sense of what a socialist is. I’m talking about lowering the corporate tax rate, my health care reform is based on the private marketplace, stock market’s looking pretty good last time I checked, and, you know, it is true I’m concerned about growing inequality in our system, but nobody questions the efficacy of market economies in terms of producing wealth and innovation and keeping us competitive.”
From the get-go, Republicans hurled the socialist label at Obama, a word that’s been vilified in the U.S. to the point that it’s a label conservatives indiscriminately slap on any progressive they are wishing to insult. Many Tea Party activists have shown their deep lack of understanding of these terms by calling Obama, not only a socialist, but a fascist and Hitler in the same breath. But let’s stick with the socialist label, which is not only misunderstood by Tea Party activists but in general in the United States.
The American aversion to socialism cuts two ways, it’s part semantic and part cultural. Capitalism is mythicized in American culture: we are raised to believe that capitalism is what makes the American dream possible and fed a constant stream of rags to riches anecdotes. Capitalism is such a dominant value that we don’t even bother to contrast it with socialism despite the fact the U.S. government, like all capitalist countries, includes many socialist elements such as public schools, social welfare, public works and more. These programs are only referred to as socialism when conservatives wish to insult them. Democrats have eliminated the term from their lexicon, preferring to call these programs a social safety-net.
But a funny thing is happening while Republican politicians disparage socialism and Democratic politicians run from it: American attitudes towards socialism seem to be changing. A Gallup poll done in November of 2012 showed 39% of Americans having a positive view of socialism, up from 36% in 2010. Capitalism is still seen far more favorably at 61%, a figure that has remained unchanged in this particular poll since 2010.
Perhaps more telling is a 2011 Pew Research Center poll that shows a generation gap when it comes to positive and negative views towards socialism and capitalism. Amongst 19-29 year-olds, 46% view capitalism positively while 49% view socialism positively. In contrast, positive views of socialism drop drastically with age, 30-49 year olds fall to 34%, 50-64 year olds to 25% and 65+ to 13% while capitalism holds at 50%, 53%, and 52% respectively.
Sky-high university tuition costs combined with enduring unemployment and underemployment that has kept many at home living with their parents offers some explanation for this reversal in attitude. The Occupy movement gave voice to those alarmed by growing income inequality, most of whom were from our youngest generation. The other two groups that favored socialism over capitalism in this poll were blacks (55 to 36 percent) and liberal Democrats (59 to 39 percent).
The real measure of whether attitudes towards socialism are really changing in the U.S. may be the test of electability. And for this, Kshama Sawant’s Seattle city council victory in November provides evidence that made national headlines. The community college economics professor wasn’t afraid to run as a socialist—under theSocialist Alternative party banner—and the people of Seattle weren’t afraid to vote for her. The Seattle Times called her “the council’s first socialist member in modern history.” Sawant campaigned on a promise to fight for a $15 minimum wage like the one that was passed in the nearby town of Sea-Tac the very day she herself was elected.
Municipal socialism isn’t new in the U.S., in fact, during the Socialist Party’s high point in the beginnings of the 20th century “about 1,200 party members held public office in 340 cities, including seventy-nine mayors in cities such as Milwaukee, Buffalo, Minneapolis, Reading, and Schenectady” according to an article in Dissent,a socialist journal founded in 1953.
Nor was Sawant the only progressive victory in November. Bill de Blasio may not have ran as a socialist, but survived a New York Times article about the leftist activism of his youth and the subsequent attacks from his Republican opponent. He went on to win by a landslide 73% of the vote. His campaign centered around economic inequality. At the national level, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is notable as the token and outspoken Socialist in the U.S. Congress.
None of this indicates a sea-change for American politics. Though Obama is no socialist, real change comes about in small steps and most often from the ground up. and words matter in politics. As Americans become more and more disillusioned with economic inequality coupled with politics dominated by corporate interests, they may question capitalism, embrace more socialism and be less afraid to call it that. Pope Francis’ recent comments about capitalism as the “new tyranny” not only helps keep open the public debate that Occupy started but also gives credibility and cultural cover to others willing to criticize capitalism out loud. Words matter in politics and as times goes on, the word “socialism” might just have a less sinister ring.
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This article was published in the Spanish foreign policy magazine, esglobal. Keep in mind that this was written for Spanish readers, therefore there may be more context about American politics than you would find in an article written for American readers.
