Welcome to the United (Socialist) States of America

by Nathan Rothwell

The word “socialist” gets tossed around a lot in American political discourse.

Conservatives, in particular, chiefly assign the word as a pejorative term for liberals with which they disagree. Some (who really shouldn’t be named anymore) in particular are using it as the adjective du jour in describing an imaginary, impending dystopia  that has fallen upon us all now that President Obama has secured re-election, along with the Democratic Party retaining control of the U.S. Senate.

There are two major problems with the American Right’s leaning so heavily on terms like “socialist” and “socialism” when branding their liberal adversaries. The first is that America’s true socialist party, which has existed for over a century, directly opposes both the Republican and Democratic parties as agents of capitalism.

The second, much more glaring problem for conservatives is that the United States already tends towards socialism; and, moreover, it’s what the American people appear to want.

A sort of cynical cognitive dissonance is at play here when socialism is held up as both the cause of and solution to this country’s problems. This was well-documented this past election cycle, as Republicans would often blame entitlement culture for our country’s woes while at the same time try to scare elderly voters into believing that Obama was taking their Medicare benefits away. Essentially, they attempted to paint themselves as the true champions of popular, socialist-style government programs while at the same time decrying socialism as a whole.

Obviously this kind of rhetoric did them no favors in the electoral results – so why do they stick to it? Part of the problem lies with a worldview that hasn’t progressed much since the 1980s. Republican voters, elected officials, and talking heads alike cannot seem to distinguish socialism from the totalitarian version practiced in the Soviet Union for much of the 20^th century.  And in being unable to separate the economic tenets of socialism from the totalitarian communist regime of the Soviet Union, any step towards the former begins the path toward the latter.

Yet surely, they would not object to market socialism practiced every day in the United States. A perfect example can be found in workers who receive employee benefits in the form of stock options in the companies for which they work. Far be it for opponents of socialism to tell the so-called “job creators” of this country how to pay their workers, even though workers controlling the means of production (in this case, the company) is socialism in its exact definition.

At the risk of sounding preachy about this nation’s Founding Fathers, those modern-day Tea Partiers who enjoy putting on wigs and wearing tea bags from their ears may want to pay close attention here. There is a reason that aristocracy was not allowed to take hold in the United States as it had throughout Europe. They worried that allowing vast amounts of money and land to be concentrated in the hands of a small number of families would allow those families to gain undue influence over the country’s true governors.

Yet instead of an aristocracy based on nobility, America has seen a corporate aristocracy rise to take its place. We live in a brave new political world where money is considered free speech, corporations are considered people, and those mighty kings atop the corporate thrones make 380 times more what they pay their workers.

What can one do with that kind of lavish cash? For one, it can buy the attention of a political party, who will be all too happy to accept your money in exchange for rebranding you as “job creators.”  It can also buy the affection of millions of Americans who are too occupied with proletarian concerns to know they are being duped into voting against themselves. It can even buy airtime on national airwaves to repackage the phrase “voting with your wallet” as a diatribe against women and minority voters for “wanting free stuff” (as if many wealthy voters didn’t vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket based on the immense tax breaks they stood to gain).

And this is before we even consider how corporations can buy direct government influence in the form of corporate subsidies and massive tax breaks. That lost revenue is made up for by increased taxes on the middle class – i.e. redistribution of wealth back to the wealthy. For all the hemming and hawing about “redistribution” in this country, its biggest detractors seem to have no problem with it, as long as the wealth redistributes into the hands of the plutocracy.

This is all brought to us by the economics we know and love as American capitalism. Within it exists a system of wealth redistribution in which the workers get nearly nothing, and CEOs are credited with doing all the work. This isn’t to say we should tear off the yoke of capitalism as a true American Socialist might suggest. I simply put forth that those who use the word “socialist” as a nasty word might want to make sure that they themselves aren’t a form of socialists themselves.

The "G" in GOP stands for greed

FUN FACT: Today is your birthday!

Well, probably not. But just for fun, pretend you and your twin sister just turned a year older. It’s kind of a pain to share the special day with somebody else, but at least Aunt Tracy’s looking out for you.

Every year, Aunt Tracy sends you and your sister $100 to share. But here’s the best part: Aunt Tracy always loved you best, and every year she insists that you get 84 of those dollars. You’ve tried to justify this split in your head for years, but in truth there’s no logical reason. Plain and simple, she likes you better, and your sister only gets $16.

This strange form of gift-giving has been going on as long as you can remember, but things started to change right around 2008. Aunt Tracy is getting a little older, and her medical bills are starting to increase. As a result, she’s only sent you and your sister $90 for the past few years – yet still insisted you keep the same 84% share of the money.

But you were always Aunt Tracy’s favorite, and that’s why she’s come to you with an interesting ultimatum. You can either keep taking 84% of the gift, or agree to share some with your sister.

Your Aunt Tracy is fine with you keeping the same chunk of the birthday gift that you always have, but she’s issued a warning: as long as you refuse to share any more with your sister, the yearly gift will be smaller and smaller until Aunt Tracy finally runs out of money.

But if you agree to let your sister have $40, she’ll up the yearly gift to $120. You won’t get quite as much as you used to, but this will ensure that Aunt Tracy (with a little help from your parents, who were growing tired of the inexplicable inequity) can continue sending you money long into the future. The choice is easy, right?

One would think the second choice is common sense. But to most Republicans, this smacks of “class warfare.”

Aunt Tracy might not be real, but the analogy certainly is. The top 20% of wage-earners in the United States control 84% of the nation’s collective wealth, with the remaining 16% controlled by the rest of us. The bottom 50% of Americans, in fact, control a scant 0.3% of the pie. This kind of income inequality puts the U.S. in company with other such nations as Mexico, Rwanda, Mozambique and Serbia.

It’s no secret that our government is going broke. We’ve arrived at this point through a series of wars that were never paid for, and cheered on by warhawk blowhards who insisted that Iraqis and Afghanis would greet us as liberators, and gladly repay our efforts from their oil fields. For the first time in American history we fought a war funded by the nation’s Mastercard, and the bills are piling up.

Many of the warhawk blowhards who pushed for war all over the media in 2002-2003 belong to the top 20% - the ones who control most of our country’s money. They never wanted to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they still don’t. Instead, they’ve introduced a series of outright lies designed to placate an ignorant public while ensuring their chokehold on 84% of America’s money remains firm.

LIE #1: “Entitlement” spending is out of control

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has recently been touting his memoirs on the punditry circuit, famously argued that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” His tenure with the Bush administration proved that Republicans took this practically as marching orders, as our country blindly plunged into two wars in the Middle East while simultaneously enacting massive tax cuts – something never before attempted in our nation’s history. The GOP stared reality in the face and refused to back down, never acknowledging the hidden tolls that unending wars and tax cuts would take on our economy.

When the Democrats won back the presidency with Obama’s election, suddenly deficit spending DID matter. But rather than acknowledge the mistakes made during the Bush era, Republicans have instead elected to attack social programs aimed at protecting our nation’s poor, such as Medicaid and Social Security.

Presidential hopeful Rick Perry lambasted Social Security as “a Ponzi scheme,” and the rest of the candidate field consistently refers to federal health care programs as “entitlements,” as if those who utilize them feel “entitled” to their benefits without contributing their own funds to the program. Rather than own their mistakes, Republicans would rather blame old, sick, and destitute Americans for dragging our country down, and enact cuts to social programs as punishment.

LIE #2: Tax increases are a “punishment” on success

U.S. Representative John Fleming (R-Louisiana) recently made headlines by complaining in an MSNBC interview about his yearly income. Evidently, after the money earned by his chain of Subway restaurants (about $6.3 million last year) was taxed and used to pay business expenses, he “only” had $600,000 left over to personally invest in his business as well as “feed his family” – this on top of the annual $174,000 he earns from being a Congressman. Any increase in his taxes, Fleming argued, would be too much of a burden given his current income.

When pressed by MSNBC host Chris Fleming that his position was not sympathetic to the average American making less than six figures a year, he was quick to blurt the second big Republican lie: “being successful in business is a virtue, not a vice.”

Notice the framing here. While Fleming’s statement isn’t false on its own, he’s made clear how most wealthy conservatives feel about taxing corporate profits – like it’s a vice that the government is attempting to curb, much like the taxing of liquor or cigarettes.

Wealthy businessmen of Fleming’s ilk truly believe that they are the golden cogs that keep our economy moving, and closing tax loopholes will leave them unable to create the new jobs we desperately need. You know, the same ones they exploit in order to establish factories and call centers overseas, and hire international workers to fill formerly American jobs at a fraction of the cost.

LIE #3: The way to increased revenue is to “broaden” the tax base

This cynical talking point has been a favorite among Republican presidential frontrunners. Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, and numerous others have cried foul at the fact that so many Americans living off minimum wage salaries are exempt from paying income taxes. By “broadening” the tax base, they argue, and ensuring that everyone pays something (“even if it’s just a dollar!” Bachmann herself as argued), our revenue shortfalls will be magically solved.

No matter how you try to spin it, 20% of our country controls 84% of the wealth in our country. When nothing is done to relinquish that stranglehold, phrases like “broaden the tax base” are birthed – phrases that are simply code for “how can we squeeze every last penny out of the other 16%?”

Return to our Aunt Tracy analogy for one more moment. This is where the real class warfare lies. The real cynicism in all of this lies in the fact that the one with $84 dollars in his pocket refuses to admit that a dollar does not share the same value to him as it does to the one with $16. The “twin sister” who comes up short every year represents the vast majority of America, the ones who can’t afford to attend $30,000-per-plate fundraisers to make sure their interests are represented in Congress. They work hard every day to earn a salary that on average is 1/85^th the size of what’s paid to CEOs in this country.

But you can’t argue with success. It seems to be working for Mexico and Rwanda.