When the average American thinks of Socialism, they most likely think of Communism, and the old Soviet Union.
The cold war had seen it's highs and lows, but nobody could forget the drama of the last couple of years.
Then finally the Berlin Wall falls, and Europe is no longer split in two. The Soviet Union breaks apart, and Americans celebrate the "death" of communism.
All seem well and good for many years, and then around the time Barack Obama got the presidentail nomination is when we saw accusations that the Democratic party was a "socialist" or "communist" group from many conservatives.
Even his opponent John McCain threw the words out, perhaps before anyone did. Is there any truth to McCain's words?
Well first you have to look at what Socialism really means. It all started mostly by Karl Marx who believed the world would shift to socialism and then when we were ready to full-on communism. There are many different types of socialism, and even in communist states many leaders including Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong didn't exactly agree with Marx on everything and created their own spin-offs ideals.
One of the offshoots of Socialism was Social Democracy which started out as what we would now call Democratic Socialism. For example, Democratic Socialism was the main ideology for Britain's Labour Party for many years. Their first Prime Minister was Clement Attlee who took over after defeating Winston Churchill's party in the post-war elections.
Social Democracy eventually evolved into a transition idea having a state between Capitalism and Socialism for the time being. The social democrats started to notice that their temporary idea was more of a blessed mixture of the two economic systems taking in a lot of the good ideas from both and getting rid of the bad ideas. This train of thought then turned the Social Demoracy idealogy to the more modern version of what we have now in Europe. If you ask any European, they will tell you that Social Democracy is the Capitalistic Welfare State. More hardcore Socialists hate the idea considering it a betrayal of beliefs.
A real life example of Social Democrats are the Social Democratic Party of Germany which is the main opposition party right now. When the SPD was in power, even during the cold war as part of West Germany they were still considered by most Americans as Capitalist. There was no fear that they would join up with Eastern Germany and the Soviet Union, but rather that the Soviet Union would come in and annex West Germany by force.
The real socialists of Germany (granted they are democratic and non-violent) are members of a party called Die Linke (The Left) which is Germany's farthest-left party with seats in government.
But what does all this have to do with Obama? Well first we have to remember that Obama is a progressive democrat. Progressivism has a lot in common with Social Democracy in terms of beliefs and values. We've had progressives as Presidents before but none of them are referred to as Socialists in our history books. Our first progressive President was Teddy Roosevelt, and he was a Republican. He fought the power of corporations, stood up for worker's rights, and passed an act that made sure that your food was labeled correctly and was safe for you to eat.
Our next Progressive President was Woodrow Wilson. He oversaw the creation of the Federal Reserve, income tax, and passed laws limiting the power of corporations.
Then we also have FDR, the man who led this great nation in World War II. He is the reason why we have Social Security, a program that would have every single Republican voted out of office if they openly try to abolish it like they wanted to for decades.
Then at last we have LBJ who took over after JFK was assassinated. Under him we saw the creation of Food Stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, and his "war on poverty." Was he a Socialist or Communist like they try paint Obama to be? No way, the man's whole political career went downhill after his increased support against the Communists in the Vietnam War.
Is Capitalism at risk? Not the Capitalism that we know it as. We still have billionaires, we still have private businesses, we still have private property, and many other things that "Socialism" is not suppose to have. It's been like that under all of our Progressive Presidents, and it's not going to change under Obama.
The type of Capitalism that most Republicans seem to want these days is a return to anarcho-capitalism or as they like to call it "laissez-faire." Where the government has no control over business, and where social programs are few or non-existent. We used to live in this kind of world over a hundred years ago. A place where workers had no rights, being paid a living wage was rare, and a soceity where poverty and homelessness surged. That isn't capitalism, that is merely an extension of Feudalism.
We liberals, and progressives aren't Marxists, most of us consider ourselves Keynesians. We belief in the economic thought of the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was a well spoken critic of the Soviet Union, and of the radicals in the old days of the English Labour Party. His theories were picked up by the Western world especially after World War II, and were eventually supported by liberal and conservative parties until the rise of extremists like former President Ronald Reagan and former English Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher.
The false accusations aren't going to stop. The smart conservatives and Republicans know how to twist history, and they get the dumb ones to preach it with fiery anger. Congressman Todd Akin even lied when he said the pilgrims escaped Europe because of Socialism instead of religious freedom like every history book states. He says they learned Socialism wouldn't work as early as the 1620s about 200 years before Karl Marx was even born.
The whole Tea Party crowd, and all of the other conservative groups preaching this junk have a childish and re-written view of history. This isn't about socialism vs capitalism. This is about the non-caring capitalism vs capitalism with morals.
By: Adam Rankin
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