Why are Americans so confused about the meaning of “Democratic Socialism”?
by Lawrence Wittner
928 words
The meaning of democratic socialism―a mixture of political and economic democracy―should be no mystery to Americans. After all, socialist programs have been adopted in most other democratic nations. And, in fact, Americans appear happy enough with a wide range of democratic socialist institutions in the United States, including public schools, public parks, minimum wage laws, Social Security, public radio, unemployment insurance, public universities, Medicare, public libraries, the U.S. postal service, public roads, and high taxes on the wealthy.
Even so, large numbers of Americans seem remarkably confused about democratic socialism. This April, at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire, an attendee complained to Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading proponent of democratic socialism, that her father’s family left the Soviet Union, “fleeing from some of the very socialist policies that you seem eager to implement in this country.” Sanders responded: “Is it your assumption that I supported or believe in authoritarian communism that existed in the Soviet Union? I don’t. I never have, and I opposed it.” He added: “What democratic socialism means to me is we expand Medicare, we provide educational opportunity to all Americans, we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.”
But, despite Sanders’ personal popularity and the popularity of the programs he advocates, large numbers of Americans―especially from older generations―remain uneasy about “socialism.” Not surprisingly, Donald Trump and other rightwing Republicans have seized on this to brand the Democrats as the party of socialist dictatorship.
Why does socialism―even something as innocuously labeled as democratic socialism―have this stigma?
Originally, “socialism” was a vague term, encompassing a variety of different approaches to securing greater economic equality. These included Christian socialism, utopian socialism, Marxian socialism, syndicalism, evolutionary socialism, and revolutionary socialism. For a time, Socialist parties in many countries, including the Socialist Party of America, housed these differing tendencies.
But the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution led to a lasting division in the world socialist movement. The Bolsheviks, grim survivors of Russia’s centuries-old Czarist tyranny and vigorous proponents of socialist revolution, regarded the democratic, parliamentary path followed by the Socialist parties of other countries with scorn. Consequently, renaming themselves Communists, they established Communist parties in other lands and called upon “true revolutionaries” to join them. Many did so. As a result, the world socialist movement became divided between Socialist parties (championing multi-party elections and civil liberties) and rival Communist parties (championing violent revolution followed by a Communist Party dictatorship).
Despite the clear difference between Socialist parties (promoting democratic socialism, often termed social democracy) and Communist parties (promoting the authoritarian Soviet model and Soviet interests), plus the bitter hostility that often existed between them, many Americans associated one with the other.
This confusion was enhanced, in subsequent decades, by the tendency of Communists to cling to the term “socialist.” As “socialism” had positive connotations for many people around the world, Communist leaders frequently argued that Socialists weren’t “socialist” at all, and that Communists were the only true “socialists.” Communist-led nations alone, they claimed, represented “real socialism.”
Actually, Communist and Socialist parties didn’t have much in common. The Soviet government and later unelected Communist regimes―much like fascist and other rightwing governments―became notorious as brutal tyrannies that instituted mass imprisonment, torture, and murder. In reaction, many Communists grew disillusioned, quit their parties, or sought to reform them, while popular uprisings toppled Communist dictatorships. By contrast, Socialist parties won elections repeatedly and governed numerous nations where, less dramatically, they enacted democratic socialist programs. Nowhere did these programs lead to the destruction of political democracy.
Meanwhile, the Socialist Party of America gradually disintegrated. One reason for its decline was government repression during World War I and the postwar “Red Scare.” Another was that, in the 1930s, the Democratic Party adopted some of its platform (including a massive jobs program, Social Security, a wealth tax, union rights for workers, and minimum wage legislation) and absorbed most of its constituency. Rather than acknowledge the socialist roots of these popular policies, President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats chose to talk of a New Deal for “the common man.” This sleight of hand boosted the Democrats and further undermined the dwindling Socialist Party.
In response, conservatives―especially big business, its wealthy owners, and their political defenders―acted as if a Red revolution had arrived. Assailing Social Security, Republican Congressman Daniel Reed predicted that “the lash of the dictator will be felt.” In January 1936, at a gala dinner sponsored by the American Liberty League, a group of wealthy business and conservative leaders, Al Smith―the former New York Governor who had turned sharply against the Roosevelt administration―addressed the gathering and a national radio audience. Charging that New Dealers had enacted “the Socialist platform,” he asserted that “there can be only one capital, Washington or Moscow. There can be only one atmosphere of government, the clear, pure, fresh air of free America, or the foul breath of communistic Russia.”
During America’s Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union, conservatives frequently employed this line of attack. “If Medicare passes into law, the consequences will be dire beyond imagining,” Ronald Reagan warned a radio audience in the early 1960s. “You and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” Against this backdrop, most Democrats kept their distance from the word “socialism,” while much of the public simply wrote it off as meaning tanks in Moscow’s Red Square.
More recently, of course, the disappearance of the Soviet Union and most other Communist nations, rising economic inequality, the attractive model of Scandinavian democratic socialism, and Bernie Sanders’ Americanization of “socialism” have enhanced the popularity of “socialism”―in its democratic socialist form―in the United States.
It’s probably premature to predict that most Americans will finally recognize the democratic socialist nature of many programs they admire. But that’s certainly a possibility.
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Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
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Dear Editor:
Please consider this precise problem/solution essay by a gifted and deeply experienced international politics analyst, Dr. Mel Gurtov. For PeaceVoice, thank you,
Tom Hastings
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Overreach, the Achilles Heel of autocrats
by Mel Gurtov
621 words
It Has Happened Here and Everywhere
It seems like just yesterday that we were celebrating the democratic wave sweeping Europe in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. It seems like yesterday that we hailed the Arab Spring and its potential for democratization across the Middle East. It seems like yesterday that we scoffed at the absolute authority of tin pot dictators who presided over impoverished populations in the Third World. We in the US thought all those events were far away; it couldn’t happen in established democracies like ours.
Until it did, with a president who has systematically dismantled regulations that protect and promote human rights, pigeonholed scientists and other experts who defy his beliefs, trampled the Constitution, and practiced in-your-face corruption. Evidently believing he can act with impunity, Donald Trump has invited interference from three countries to assist his election and reelection. His arrogance, lawlessness, and sense of invulnerability seem to have no bounds.
Through all this, we Americans have been overconfident and all too accommodating, as though Trump’s war on democracy would inevitably be halted. In fact, “it” has happened here, and not just here: in Brazil, Britain, Hungary, Egypt, and Turkey. Democracies of one sort or another are in peril, autocrats are in power, and established authoritarian regimes (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia) look to some like the wave of the future. We’re living the Orwellian nightmare: institutions that check executive authority are being systematically undermined, national leaders are claiming popular support for rule by decree, social well-being is an increasingly irrelevant objective, and international norms such as consensus, community, conservation, and human rights are being haughtily dismissed. Unaccountable government is increasingly the norm.
This nightmare, especially coming amidst a climate crisis, is a recipe for global disruption and war, not to mention a disgracefully widening gap between the super-rich and everyone else. In times of great uncertainty, fascism with a human face has new opportunities to take root. People become desperate about the future, suspicious of “the other” and eager for strongman rule. Democracy drops in importance; “stability and order” rise to the top. “Ordinary,” a character in Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale says, is “what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”
Overreach
What is the key to toppling autocrats? Relentless criticism does not seem to move the needle, but their blind ambition and ineptitude may. Look at the damaging mistakes authoritarian leaders have made lately: Donald Trump’s Ukraine and China solicitations, Xi Jinping’s Hong Kong and Xinjiang repression, Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit, Jair Bolsonaro’s Amazonia fires, and Vladimir Putin’s cronyism. Their major errors of judgment and mishandling of events have produced dramatic displays of resistance in Hong Kong, London, even Moscow, as well as stoked worldwide criticism in the other cases. To be sure, crackdowns on political opponents by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban have succeeded so far, Chinese financial power has silenced many foreign critics, and Trump has been able to cow his party’s leaders and fool his supporters. But overreach often is what eventually does dictators in.
The 2020 election in the US may be a last chance to restore democracy and reestablish the nation as a beacon of hope. If we miss our chance, America will descend deeper into authoritarianism and become unrecognizable to those of us who remember what it meant to live in civil society. Impeachment of Trump will happen, is necessary, and demonstrates to people living under authoritarianism that accountability and transparency are fundamental to a democracy. But only a solid triumph at the ballot box will do the job of removing a serial abuser of power.
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Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.
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Hi Jim,
Please feel free to use the below article as is. For an interview or comments from Ngan Nguyen on this and related topics please reach out and I will be happy to coordinate.
Ashley
How To Make The Mindset Change
That Creates Good Habits — And Success
Achieving success or struggling depends on many factors, but habits go a long way toward determining either outcome, research shows.
Breaking bad habits and cultivating good ones can be difficult, and willpower alone isn’t enough, says Ngan Nguyen (www.nganhnguyen.com), a leadership coach and author of Self-Defined Success: You Already Have Everything It Takes.
“You can’t create the life you want unless you replace bad habits, and that happens by developing a new mindset,” says Nguyen. “These are new thought processes that are linked to your new clarity of vision for your life.
“Usually, some sort of stimuli triggers our habits. Breaking a habit requires changing the action that we take when the stimuli appear. Repeated over and over, these new, more constructive thoughts and resulting positive actions automatically become the new habit.”
Nguyen offers the following tips to transform bad habits into good habits that lead to success.
Clarify your life vision. “Reassessing what we want out of life can provide a more efficient roadmap of goals and how to reach them,” Nguyen says. “Translate your longings and discontents into an actionable, crystallized vision that propels you forward. If you feel stuck, a powerful vision that’s in alignment with your core values is the most critical first step in liberating yourself and creating the results you want. Good habits flow from an energizing new life vision.”
Don’t let doubt or worry hold you back. “Distinguish between believing if you deserve to live your dream life, and whether or not it is possible,” Nguyen says. “You don’t want to talk yourself out of the vision you have crafted for your life based on whether or not you think it is possible. It is absolutely possible, because if you can imagine the outcome, then there is a way. Knowing that, your new habits stay consistent.”
Replace negative beliefs with positive, empowering thoughts. Nguyen says habits that hinder success often stem from negative thoughts. Some common ones are beliefs about ourselves, other people, money, and success. “People think, ‘I’m not good enough, not smart enough,’ or, ‘Other people will deceive me,’ and, ‘Money is scarce and hard to earn,’ ” Nguyen says. “Changing our beliefs to positive is what will allow us to access ideas and allow new positive perception to enter our consciousness. If we recognize that a thought doesn’t serve us, then we can choose to think differently when a stimulus to think negatively occurs. Over time, it becomes easier to think differently because new neural pathways are strengthened with our persistence.”
Analyze your stories. “Stories are how we live our lives,” Nguyen says. “The way we each live is guided by our beliefs, habits, values and emotions. It becomes destructive when patterns repeat in our lives that we do not desire, like always having problems with money or the inability to have a fulfilling relationship. If similar patterns play out that we do not like, we can identify what the underlying belief is by taking an objective look at the story.”
“It is when your beliefs, thoughts, and emotions completely align with the person who is living their new, clarified vision that the life they want becomes possible,” Nguyen says. “New, good habits become second nature, and while success is never automatic, good habits make it far more likely.”
About Ngan Nguyen
Ngan Nguyen (www.nganhnguyen.com), author of Self-Defined Success: You Have Everything It Takes, is the founder/CEO of Cintamani Group, an executive coaching and consulting firm. Nguyen coaches on leadership and empowers entrepreneurs as an intuitive strategist, incorporating actionable concepts to achieve higher goals. With over a decade of business strategy experience as an advisor to Fortune 100 companies, Nguyen is also a certified master-level intelligent leadership executive coach with John Mattone and was an analyst for McKinsey & Company. Nguyen graduated with a double honors degree in biochemistry-biophysics and bioengineering from Oregon State University and completed a research fellowship at MIT in nanotechnology.
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Dear Editor:
Please consider this urgent yet timeless appeal by criminologist Dr. Laura Finley to abolish the death penalty--not necessarily because some don't "deserve" it--because far too many flaws in capital case investigations and prosecutions result in wrongful convictions and have led, literally, to murder of people who did not commit the crime. For PeaceVoice, thank you,
Tom Hastings
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The death penalty is barbaric and ineffective
by Laura Finley
398 words
October 10 is World Day Against the Death Penalty. That the U.S. continues to use this broken and antiquated system of (in)justice is reprehensive in so many ways, but among the most important is the issue of sentencing people to death row wrongfully and executing people who did not commit the offenses that resulted in those sentences. As a Floridian, I am highlighting here the case of James Daily. Not because Florida is the only state in which the system is frequently wrong, but in the hopes that his very legitimate claims of innocence may be heard by others who can help save a life.
James Dailey is a Vietnam War veteran who served three tours there and one in Korea. If the state goes forward with his execution, currently scheduled for November 7, he would be Florida’s 100th executed person since executions restarted in the 1970s. Dailey has spent more than 30 years on death row for a murder he did not commit, and despite there being no eyewitnesses or physical evidence tying him to the murder. In fact, the physical evidence, a hair found in the victim’s hand, already excludes Mr. Dailey from having committed the offense. The true killer, co-defendant Jack Pearcy, has signed an affidavit swearing that he actually committed the murder. Pearcy failed a polygraph pre-trial and told inmates and several correctional institutional officers that he did it. He has a history of violence, particularly against women. Further, police reports from the 1985 crime show that Mr. Pearcy left his home with the victim shortly before the murder and James Dailey was not with them, yet this information was withheld from jurors.
As is too often the case, the prosecutors used an unreliable and uncorroborated snitch/informant to build the case against Dailey. After the state initially failed to secure a death sentence against Pearcy, law enforcement went to the jail, pulled every man from Dailey’s pod, showed them coverage of the case and offered them leniency in their cases if they could “help.” Only then did someone say Dailey did it. Paul Skalnik was a known child sexual offender but charges in his pending case were dropped due to his testimony against Dailey. He was released and went on to commit another sexual offense against a child in Texas, where he is currently incarcerated. The prosecutor in the case has since said she would never use Skalnik again because she had no evidence that his testimony was truthful.
This case highlights so much of what goes wrong in capital cases. Use of problematic witnesses, police and prosecutorial misconduct and jailhouse snitches are frequently factors in exonerations. At this point, Florida leads the nation in getting it wrong—for every three executions, one person is exonerated.
It is way past time that Florida, and the remaining death penalty retentionist states, discontinue this barbaric and ineffective practice.
—30—
Laura Finley, Ph.D., syndicated by PeaceVoice, teaches in the Barry University Department of Sociology & Criminology.
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• Gun-violence patients
When providing medical care to victims of traumatic injury, including gun violence, knowledge of a patient’s environment plays a role. For example, people who come to the emergency room for a minor injury and who also have symptoms of depression or anxiety have poorer outcomes 12 months later, said Therese Richmond of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Her research also shows that factors such as adverse childhood experiences and poor childhood environments worsen the severity of post-injury mental health symptoms. “Health is driven not just by individual behaviors or risks but where you spend most of your time, where you live, play, work, worship,” Richmond said. “Those environments can have profound positive or negative effects on both physical and mental health.” (EDITORS: Please feel free to use this News Brief or the longer article.)
• Immigration & the economy
Immigration policy in the United States is important to future economic growth over the next few decades, due to the country’s aging population and relatively low native fertility, according to experts from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “If we want to continue growing, if we want to maintain our relative position in the world population, really the only way we’re going to accomplish that is if we bring in more immigrants,” said Alexander Arnon of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which has built an online immigration policy simulator. The essential findings of the simulator include: Shifting the mix of legal immigrants toward college graduates would have little impact on employment and slightly increase gross
domestic product (GDP); legalization of undocumented workers would slightly reduce employment and have a negligible impact on GDP; increasing deportations would substantially reduce both employment and GDP. (EDITORS: Please feel free to use this News Brief or the longer article.)
• Intelligent machines
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept flourishing solely in sci-fi worlds filled with robots and androids. It’s become an integral part of modern life. But despite AI’s ubiquity, many uncertainties remain. How is it being used today? How will it be used in the future? What trade-offs are acceptable in terms of privacy, ethics, and human decision-making? And how much control over and input into the process should individuals have? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who are working to answers these questions say the bottom line is that AI is here to stay, so the key is to figure out how to live in a world shared by humans and smart machines. (EDITORS: Please feel free to use this News Brief or the longer article.)
• Three rivers
The Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers meet in the center of Pittsburgh. This wealth of water also presents a unique set of challenges for the region, including sewer overflows, flooding, industrial and agricultural pollutants, emerging contaminants, aging infrastructure and poorly coordinated land use. An in-depth study by the Water Center at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, has shown that, while the Pittsburgh region has made progress on some of these issues, many remain unaddressed. The report also underscores how climate change and changing land use patterns will exacerbate these impacts. Now embarking on a second phase of the project, the Water Center, with support from the Heinz Foundation, is working to develop and implement a road map for water resource management. (EDITORS: Please feel free to use this News Brief or the longer article.)
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Contacts: Rich Finlinson For Immediate Release
UETN, Communications Manager October 3, 2019
Email: rfin@UETN.org
Phone number: 801-585-7271
Susan Cohen, M.Ed
UETN, Public Relations Associate
Email: scohen@UETN.org
Phone number: 801-581-7668
Lindsay Conrad
Connected Nation, Director of Public Policy
Email: lconrad@connectednation.org
Phone number: 248-376-4046
Taking Inventory: Utah Education Network
Asks School Districts to Track Technology in Classrooms
Salt Lake City, Utah (October 3, 2019) – The Utah Education and Telehealth Network (UETN), in partnership with Connected Nation (CN), just launched a new portal that will inventory technology within Utah’s public and charter schools. In 2015, UETN began tracking how technology is used in the classroom and the access teachers and students have to digital materials, devices, and platforms.
“Last year, following our second statewide inventory, we learned the number of classrooms connected through digital teaching and learning had risen thanks to increased distribution of computer devices and newer wireless gear,” said Ray Timothy, CEO, UETN. “However, we also found that more work was needed to connect every student to key technologies that will prepare them for an increasingly digital world. This inventory can help us identify gaps and point to areas where we’re seeing improvements—providing opportunities to learn from our successes.”
In 2018, Connected Nation, working with UETN, captured data from more than 1,000 schools that serve more than 665,000 students across the state. The resulting data set contained more than 100,000 new points of data on the use of technology in Utah K-12 schools, including digital curricula materials, platforms used, and the number and nature of devices used in classrooms.
“We understand it’s important to continue to track our progress,” said Timothy. “Connected Nation has shown us it can help facilitate this research and support our teachers and administrators. We have had 100 percent participation in the past two statewide technology inventories—proving that Utah’s school leaders understand how important it is for us to identify where we are doing well and what we must do to better serve our students.”
In 2015, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 222, which established a digital teaching and learning program that paved the way for a comprehensive inventory of classroom technology and related resources across Utah’s public and charter schools. CN and UETN released that first report in January of 2016.
“As a nonprofit, we have worked for nearly two decades to find and implement innovative solutions to expand access to broadband and its related technologies to more families and communities,” said Tom Ferree, Chairman and CEO of Connected Nation. “Connecting our schools and, ultimately, more students is a critical part of our mission. Children must have the opportunity to learn how to leverage technology for careers, education, healthcare, and more. UETN is taking proactive steps to identify ways to help all of Utah’s students, and we’re excited to once again partner with them for this important work.”
Following the first report, the Digital Teaching and Learning Grant Program was established by state leaders. It allocates funds toward improving digital teaching and learning technology throughout Utah’s schools. The data gathered helps track how well the program and other efforts are working.
School administrators and teachers can take part in the current inventory by going to https://techinventory.uen.org/.
