Democratic Socialism
For the most part, I stay out of political discussions and for good reason. I am not a politician. I donât understand a lot of the political battle lines that rage on a daily basis. I do, however, Â find myself quite intrigued by the different political games that are being played on the social battle field. I was raised in a republican household. Admittedly, my family did not have time for a lot of politics. As I grew older I began to feel like my friends and family were simply repeating what was seen on the major news outlets, the Rush Limbaugh show, or the Michael Medved show. Even into my late 20âs I thought that my only major disagreement with Michael Medved was his views of Sasquatch. For numerous reasons, my views of Right Wing politics began to change. I started doing in-depth reading into some of the political figures that I had held in such high regard. President Reagan was on the top of the list, and I quickly realized that I had never searched out these issues on my own but had simply repeated what everyone had told me. In the past few years, I have moved away from the Republican party. I am no longer a Republican, but at the same time I have not given up on what many hold as âRepublican views.â For the record, my views on gay marriage, abortion, gun laws and gender identity still align completely with the republican party. While I was growing up, I believed these views made me a staunch Republican. It has only been in more recent times that I have realized that my views on pretty much everything else are not Republican, and this makes me an independent voter. Â So now that you have a little background lets talk about Bernie Sanders. First of all, I do not think Bernie Sanders would be a great president, and I will not be voting for him in the upcoming election. I disagree with Sanders on some very key issues. But after last night's debate my twitter feed blew up with my republican friends baffled at the idea that an âopenly socialist candidateâ would get any traction at all. The problem I see is that the left wing continues to say that socialism and democratic socialism are two different things. To be honest, I am not sure if those in the political arena that oppose Sanders are fully aware of the differences but are trying to discount him to a conservative audience that will have a strong reaction to the word âsocialistâ, and therefore continue to refer to Sanders as a socialist instead of a Democratic Socialist, or if I have totally missed the issues. I have tried to understand what Sanders, and others who hold to democratic socialism, are saying. In my understanding there is a difference between the two. I will fully admit that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, especially when it comes to politics, so I could be way off. I have watched a lot of speeches by Robert Reich, Bernie Sanders and others who seem to preach a democratic socialist model. And while I could be mistaken this is what I have gotten out of it. Socialism states that the means of production are owned by the whole. In this model a person works as much as they are able, then everyone basically gets the same benefits. This, in my mind, is like a light form of Communism. However, under socialism we still seem to have forms of class, and there are still leaders. Hitler was a socialist, and I think everyone would agree that did not turn out well. What I have gotten from Sanders and Reich is a bit different. The way I understand democratic socialism is that the means of production still belong to private individuals and capitalism within business is still the working model. Sanders has specifically spoken against the kind of capitalism that our nation has had since the Reagan administration. He sights tax breaks for the rich, tax breaks for huge corporations, corporate bailouts, offshore bank loopholes for corporations, miss management of the Federal bank and other elements, as just a few of the things that have hurt the middle class and have benefited the top 1% in this nation. These are things that Sanders wants to fix, but I donât believe these things necessarily fall under the category of democratic socialist as much as it does democrat. But this can be debated and Iâll come back to this in a moment. When it comes to democratic socialist (and again I could be off on this) what I hear Sanders and others saying is that they are looking at other democratic socialist countries and using this as a base model. Within such a model, democratic socialism gives âunnaturalâ rights to its citizens. What I mean by âunnaturalâ are rights that are not defined within the constitution. Rights like health care, free education, government assistance to elderly people or disabled people who are unable to work, and government assistance to those who for one reason or another are not currently working, etc. etc. Sanders wants to give a lot of these âRightsâ to those citizens by placing higher taxes on the rich, taxing cooperation's and taxing Wall Street for stock market exchanges. Many people might say that we already live in a socialist society. This is true to an extent. Our government provides a form of socialized health care (Obama Care, by the way, is a model that is extremely flawed), social security, and perhaps my favorite, public schools. While some of these programs are arguably not good programs, and should be rethought or even done away with altogether, almost everyone will agree that public schools are something the U.S. should have. Public Schools, however (and in my opinion), are part of a democratic socialist model. It is something that is free, it is something that is seen as a right to the youth of this nation, and it is paid for by the whole of this nation even if you donât have kids. This can be justified due to the fact that my neighborâs kidâs education benefits me. In theory, instead of a child being on the streets, doing drugs because he or she is not in school and doesnât have the education to work, and breaking into my house for drug money, is bad for me. Thus paying taxes so that child can go to school and get an education is good for me. Beyond this, if that child is educated and grows up to be a scientist or a person who does a job I am unable to do or donât want to do, this can be attributed to education. While I personally will not send my kids to public school, I agree that they are something that I want in the society. Sanders wants this free education to go further into college. While Reagan gave us trickle down economics, I donât believe it is necessarily a democratic socialist idea to say that if you make more money you should be taxed more. But, many will say that this is simply a redistribution of wealth to the lower class, and hence is a socialist model. Yet, those who hold to a democratic socialist belief seem to be preaching the idea that what they are truly trying to preach is that we should be taking care of our citizens by giving them Rights (what I call unnatural rights) and this can be done through various forms of taxes. However, in my understanding, the means of production continue to stay within a capitalist framework, and the ability to make more money by producing more is still a viable ability even though you might have greater tax requirements. Even if my evaluation of Democratic Socialism is off, the point still stands that those who hold to democratic socialism believe it is different than socialism. What those who are continuing to label Bernie Sanders as a socialist are doing, are making those on the opposing side think you are either ignorant, donât care, or are intentionally trying to mislead people. Even if all of these are not the case, and even if democratic socialism is the exact same as socialism, I believe we shut the conversation down from the beginning by not acknowledging that others believe there is a difference. Instead of shutting down the conversation over a title at the beginning of a conversation, why wouldnât we want to debate the issues themselves?
