What is the problem caused by our educational system - the failure of capitalism to prevent misery on a grand scale?  The failure of capitalism to provide the kinds of social supports and standard of living enjoyed by Canadians and Europeans?

Or is it the failure to continue to effectively brainwash people into thinking that capitalism is 1) a form of government and 2) the best fucking economic system ever you ingrate!

You see, it was much easier to effect the first and second forms of brainwash when the competing system was communism, which was both a system of government and economics that was total FAIL on both accounts.  Much more difficult when we are looking at socialist democracies and capitalist democracies and comparing the relative merit of each for the everyperson.  Yes, we really want to be like Thugitalistic Russia and not like Sweden.

I seriously doubt whether 53% of Americans know what either of them really are.

My Swedish friends keep assuring me I’d like Sweden immensely.  (In fact, if the wife didn’t have issues with cold weather, I’d look fairly seriously into emigrating.)  Frankly, I don’t see the bad in having a little of what they’ve got here.  Just for me personally I’d like universal health care and a disability system that isn’t actively hostile to those it is meant to serve, but that may be dismissed as it’s stuff I’d, y’know, use.

Or is it the failure to continue to effectively brainwash people into thinking that capitalism is 1) a form of government

I am always amazed and disappointed at how many people confuse political systems with economic systems.  It drives me nuts when people say that we need to replace communism in other countries with democracy.  I had a friend in college who thought this way, and he was majoring in economics!

Both Don Surber and Dr. Helen declare this a problem created by our educational system.

That’s the problem with <strike>socialist</strike> public education.

Before you take a victory lap, brace yourself for the increased acceptance of fascism for the same reason.

Also, thanks to Beck, I’m expecting vampires to make a come-back, too. And not in the water-downed Twilight way. Serious, fangs in the neck of business, lock-up your daughters and gird your loins, Gary Oldman is coming vampires.

Woo!

I think we’ve done a pretty job of changing the meaning of “capitalism” too.  It seems to me that anyone who wants pure capitalism would have no problem with immigration, seeing as how competition is part of the game.  You have to be good at your job or someone else will take it.  Also, True Capitalists(TM) should not support something like OPEC.  Still, I’m actually surprised that only 53% think capitalism is better than socialism.  I’m actually one of those people.  I don’t think that capitalism is perfect, but I think we should have a modified version of it instead of giving it up completely.  I certainly want to see universal health care the same way that we provide universal education.

I don’t see an either/or between socialism and capitalism. Markets tend to work pretty good to deliver a variety of goods, both social goods and private goods. At the same time, “free” markets (which usually describes unregulated markets) are highly prone to failure. We see that with bubbles, with the rise of monopolies (Walmart), and anywhere where universal service delivery is desirable (food, health care, education).

The Reagan years were about rolling back government as the answer to problems. We seem to be moving past that. Socializing parts of the health care system, increasing government intervention in markets (Wall Street especially), looks like what the public is interested in these days.

Capitalism and socialism, as abstract philosophies, don’t seem to factor into it much. Personally, I’m hoping to see a rise of American social democracy as a result.

My point, I think I failed to make directly, isn’t that “socialism” was ever really the Republican’s boogie-man. It was the idea that anywhere the government is involved will limit your freedom and suppress private success and growth and goodness.

They lose that argument everytime someone gets into a screaming match with their insurance company. This movement in “socialism” versus “capitalism” is just a lagging indicator of that. As histro-geek points out, neither the pollsters nor the polled probably have the slightest inkling what either term actually means, beyond a vague association with more or less government.

I don’t see an either/or between socialism and capitalism.

I agree with you.  I don’t think any philosophical economic system is perfect by itself.  I think we should have a type of modified capitalism, with some socialism sprinkles.

(sure it starts with marginal tax rates but next thing you know BAM! your liquiding class enemies and setting up slave labor camps, the bad kind).

Update it for the modern world to liquidating anyone in the financial industry worth more than $10 million and allowing unrestricted private use of copyrighted material, and you’ll suddenly get a lot of people stroking their chins and thinking “hmmm…”.

Gary Oldman is coming
Yay!!!!

Seriously though, the way the GOP whines for every little pointless thing, no wonder no one is afraid when they cry wolf anymore!

Bernie Sanders is the socialist.
Keith Ellison is the Muslim.
Neither of them are Barack Obama.
Please tell this to every conservative you know.

Gary Oldman is coming

Which is really scary to conservatives, because he’s a vampire AND a wizard.

I think the either/or comes when you let your thinking become too absolute, and decide that the means of production have to be controlled universally either by the state or by private interests.

Socialism/communism does not call for the means of production to be controlled by the state exclusively. Socialism calls for the means of production to be controlled directly by the workers who use them. Communism calls for them to be controlled by the whole community (the distinction is mostly one between whether producers or consumers should be at the helm). The idea is a democratization of this control.

The monopoly that Marxism-Leninism and social democracy has had on the communist and socialist movements, respectively, over the past… 50 years? has resulted in these goals being equivocated with state control, because both these strands advocate for top-down rather than bottom-up approaches to the problem of taking our current society and turning it into the society which is their goal. The right-wing, and centrist liberals, don’t have any incentives on refuting this equivocation, because they know that this misconception works in their favor.

At the risk of sounding like a gLibertarian, “A is A”. The state is not the community. The state is not the workers. At best it can *stand as a representative* of these groups (if the workers control the state and the state controls the means of production, transitivity means the workers control the means of production). But the map is not the territory. And as an anarchist leftist, I feel the state does a very poor job at representing these groups in its best incarnations.

You’re not quite wrong, BlackBloc, but at the same time… so? We’re never going to get anything other than incremental change out of our republican government (small-R), corrupt state, and weak democracy (small-d). That doesn’t mean that this incremental process we’re stuck with can’t produce powerful and wonderful outcomes—public works projects and socialist or quasi-socialist regimes like rural electrification and social security that endure even when the center-right (and even extremist-right) get back in power.

I hope we can slowly move the center, too. Look at all the code-words (privatization, then private accounts) the right has to come up with to try to dismantle things like social security. “It will be the death of freedom!” just doesn’t cut it as a political message once we secure it and, to no one’s surprise, freedom survives.

Given the collateral damage of true Revolution, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing, either.

Suddenly I understand why that jerkwad exec at AIG was wearing a Che tee shirt. He was just heightening the contradictions so that the revolution would arrive more expeditiously.

It’s not just what people think when the hear “Socialism” that’s changed

When people my age were in grade school and got the “the American way is superior” lectures, “Free-market Capitalism” meant the system FDR left us:
The CEO of General Motors paid a top marginal tax rate of 90%, workers had defined benefit pensions because about half of us were unionized, government regulation protected workers and consumers, etc

If all you know is the post-Reagan era, “Free-market Capitalism” looks more like the robber baron era, come to think of it, Socialism was popular then too

Keep your sleazy democratic party off of my socialism!  Oh, and thanks Blackbloc for your clarifications for people, but I would argue that the Lenin oligarchy model is not actually dominant within socialist groups (nor has it ever been, at least in the US), it is just how socialist groups are percieved from outside.  Fifty years ago, the Socialist Party of America was helping organize freedom rides and put our presidential candidate on the platform when King gave his I have a dream speech.  Since, then, there was a major anti vietnam movement, and the running of the first openly gay candidate for president.  Btw, the Socialist Party of America was somewhat divided over Lenin (some argued that, while bad, he was better than the czars and could lead to progress, others just thought he was completely wacko) but by the time Stalin popped up, their was a pretty unanimous opposition (unlike the Communist party, which kicked out members who opposed the Lenin/Stalin regime).  The fact is that most people really do have no idea about the history or meanings of these groups.  Here’s the socialist party’s website http://socialistparty-usa.org/ so if you want to know what socialists actually stand for, try asking us.

I wonder what these people think goes on in public schools, and how they come to those conclusions. I’m about to graduate from college, so it was only a few years ago that I was in the public school system. I grew up near Berkeley, so it was one of the most liberal public school systems you’ll find. We had one history teacher who was a Communist, and who advocated socialism/communism, but no one took him very seriously because he was really crazy and threw a can of soda at a student’s head and had to take a leave of absence. Other than that, I can’t say any of my teachers ever questioned capitalism in front of us. Ever.

I would argue that the social democracy espoused by the Socialist Party is still mostly a top down approach. It’s just not oligarchy. Aren’t you still pursuing an electoralist strategy instead of dual power?

Kudos for the grassroots organising though. Us anarchists just think funneling our ressources into electoralism is ressources taken away from the grassroots and community organizing, and we just feel those are the places where we actually accomplish something.

If the fright-wingers are worried about a resurgence of socialism, they should be telling our capitalists to stop being such rapacious evil monsters.

Ha ha!  Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen.  Viva la revolucion!

When I was in public school, 10-20 years ago, all I ever learned about socialism, aka COMMUNISM (cue menacing fanfare) was that it was very, very bad and the great USA! USA! USA! defeated it.

No doubt, this anecdote just goes to show how right Surber really is, somehow.

The Soviet Union was the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics, ergo Socialism=Communism=Evil Empire.  That’s how a huge chunk of Americans see it; it was on all the maps.  The Red Scare has never completely died out.

“The Soviet Union was the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics, ergo Socialism=Communism=Evil Empire.  That’s how a huge chunk of Americans see it; it was on all the maps.”

...and the Nazis were National Socialists, so they’re socialists too.  At least that’s what I read in Jonah Goldberg’s excellent book.  The only people on earth who aren’t socialists are Republicans…

The only people on earth who aren’t socialists are Republicans…

I’m fairly certain that is the working definition these days.  Hey, you’re either with Bush or you’re with the commies.  I know which way I’m goin’.

Both Don Surber and Dr. Helen declare this a problem created by our educational system.

For the millionth time, conservatives give away their desire for a Cultural Revolution, with educators seen as party operatives in whom loyalty is the most important attribute.

The Red Scare has never completely died out.

That’s sort of ironic, considering that Republicans are represented by the same color.  (Cue conspiracy theory in 3, 2, 1…)

Americans aren’t moving toward socialism as much as we are moving away from capitalism.  We’re sick of it - sick of the damn banks and AIG and everything else.  I think this trend will continue for as long as the recession does, if not much longer.

the economic system of the US has, since the 1930’s , been Fascism, not Capitalism.

Yes, the US became so fascist in the thirties that corporate leaders planned a coup against Roosevelt.

Is the USA one of those socialistic fascist countries?  I hear those are the worst.

First, to make a small correction to your piece, there is one actual Socialist in the Senate.  My good Senator, Bernie Sanders.  The press calls him Independent, because a party needs more than 5% to be recognized as a minority party.

Second, while I don’t think our system now is “Fascism, not Capitalism”, I would say we are moving towards fascism, and that its a big part of our problem.

The press calls him Independent, because a party needs more than 5% to be recognized as a minority party.

The press calls him an Independent because he is an Independent. He is sometimes associated with the DSA, but as far as I can tell, he is not member. In any case, the Democratic Socialists of America are not what most people would call a political party; they do not run candidates in elections.

Marx was no dummy, but his world view was as rigidly absolutist as an internet libertarian.

Quotes might help your case more than bald assertions.

My reading of Marx is quite the opposite, a pragmatist whenever necessary, the Communist Manifesto a platform of pragmatism: “These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.”

You’ll find your rigid absolutism among some communists, if that’s what you’re looking for. Among those who are still rehashing Stalin versus Trotsky, perhaps. I’m not sure that makes your case.

Regardless, to bring up “Marx” when the subject was “socialism” more generally, is rather to miss the point.