C of C on socialism

[Charles Brown]

Socialism: More Than Ever -- A Compelling Need
Socialism. The pundits keep up the drum beat that it's outmoded, discredited, and defeated. But socialism has been a vision and a movement for hundreds of years. It's still around and will remain a vibrant and increasingly urgent issue for decades to come. Socialism is global, but it is also as American as cherry pie, with deep roots in the nation's history and traditions. It is embodied in the hearts and the exertions of many who believe in a country and world anchored on fairness, on genuine democracy of citizen participation, on equality and justice for all regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation, on freedom to learn and to be enriched by a growing culture, on living in peace, on sharing in the ownership and control of wealth created by the majority, and benefitting from an equitable distribution of income and property.
Socialism will always be around because capitalism, despite its noisy self-congratulations, is making life increasingly harder for the working majority. The Dow Jones may be soaring, but Mary and John Jones are having a rough time. Every upward surge in the stock market in today's global economy reflects another "downsized" worker, another leveraged buyout and shuttered business, another union-protected industrial job shifted to a low-wage, environmentally lax country. New technologies, instead of making life easier for working people, are eliminating jobs by substituting machines for bank tellers, telephone operators, machinists, and many others. Unemployment may be down, but real wages have declined 16% since 1973. Millions today have to work two, even three low wage, non-union, no-benefits jobs to barely compensate for rapidly disappearing work at decent wages. The United States now embraces the most unfair distribution of wealth and income in the industrialized world. The average net worth per household of the top one percent is now $7,875,000; the net worth of the bottom one per cent is $900! Bill Gates's $40 billion is more than the combined worth of 40% of the nation's households! We are now at a watershed: each succeeding generation is worse off than the preceding generation. 
Democracy is our most treasured tradition. But it is sullied by the domination of politics by big money. Corporations get their tens of billions in "welfare" at the public trough while schools, health services, and housing needs go begging--and the poorest and most vulnerable are scolded for allegedly leeching off the taxpayers. No wonder that a majority has simply stopped voting. All the babble about the inseparability of capitalism, "free markets," and democracy is belied by big business domination of both parties, an unresponsive government without moral authority, and the lack of any substantive political choice.
Socialism, to be sure, has seen hard times. Most socialist states started out with technological backwardness, terrible poverty, and the hostility of powerful western industrial states. Despite that, they contributed heavily to the defeat of fascism, eliminated illiteracy, and however inadequately, addressed critical human needs. But the collapse of the Soviet Union has driven home some hard lessons. It is impossible to overcome backwardness by having the state dominating all aspects of life and using repressive measures to restrict human rights. Socialism at its essence is democratic decision-making for the benefit of the vast working majority. Socialism without democracy is no socialism at all. 
Capitalism has brought into existence unprecedented advances in knowledge and technology along with vast material wealth. But all that wealth was created by the social cooperation of human beings while the lion's share has been, and continues to be, appropriated by a diminishing number of individuals who always seek to get richer by reducing wages, increasing the intensity of work, or eliminating jobs in favor of machines. 
Labor and its allies have been able to extract important concessions through battles over centuries to advance labor's rights and redress some of the inequality and unbalanced distribution that is inherent in the system. But the contradiction between social production and private appropriation continues to haunt capitalism -- leading to periodic gluts of unsold goods, failed investments, and financial crises. Despite the enormous sophistication of global capitalism, the near-collapse of the Asian "tiger" economies is a classic example the system's long-term inability to expand its productive capacity and its speculative investments while also "racing to the bottom" in search of the lowest wages and the most exploitative conditions. Such a grievously uneven distribution of wealth, such often remorseless exploitation and pursuit of profit at all costs leads inevitably to insecurity and suffering -- now on a global scale. 
We need socialism. We need a rational and fair system where socially-created wealth can be distributed and enjoyed socially; where the abundance created by the old system does not lead to dead end jobs, or joblessness, or slums in the shadow of palaces. Socialism is needed to allow the vast productive power unleashed by capitalism to serve equality, culture, justice, and decency. How do we get there? Experience has taught us that socialism is not a blueprint or fixed entity. It is the product of social process and experience. Americans have already created a variety of institutions and values which can be a foundation for socialism: cooperatives and worker ownership, consumer and environmental protection, political ideals rooted in the principle of popular sovereignty. Importantly, as working people continue to create new institutions to resist the ills of the old system, the path to transforming change will become clearer. Socialism, addressing past achievements and failures, will most likely be marked by a long period of mixed public and private ownership, by markets to assure that the economy is responsive to what the people want, by an expanding democratic polity. It will also hold fast to characteristics that have always been part of the socialist ideal: unyielding commitment to wipe out all forms of prejudice and discrimination, a job or guaranteed income as a basic human right, decent housing, universal free medical care, free education and child care, and an environment free from fear and violence. Socialism means a government acting on the needs of the people, not on the requirements of a wealthy minority. It means public ethics where service to human beings supersedes the power of money.
All of that is not utopia. It is only the beginning of the human epoch where the ideals, intellect and energy of the people will be exercised to assure that life on earth is not marked by suffering, but by the application of scientific and technical knowledge and political will to elevate all human beings and wipe out the scourges of hunger and poverty that are growing in too many parts of the world. 
We need only recall that new social systems rise, are beaten back, and come again -- stronger and wiser. Capitalism suffered reverses for many decades before its structures solidified. The first phase of what has been called socialism is over. The next phase is on the horizon. Let's join together to hasten the dawn the human epoch as the millennium approaches.

                                - THE COMMITTEES OF CORRESPONDENCE - US
i