Web Letters: Rising to the Occasion

If you want to define a socialist agenda, you might begin by defining yourself against the anti-socialist agenda of our present right-wing ideologies. The "socialism" is the expansion of federal authority in the twentieth century that made the United States into a modern state capable of managing an industrial economy, performing on the world stage as a great power, and securing liberty and justice for all. In "Rolling Back the Twentieth Century," The Nation, May 12, 2003, William Greider used "socialist" only twice. Once was to quote Grover Norquist, "You're looking at the history of the country for the first 120 years, up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over." It is the socialism that what I call the "Libertarian Right" will roll back.

"Liberal" and "conservative" are meaningless here. The polarization between libertarian and socialist. Where libertarian means anarchy and socialist means government.

What, then, is the dreaded socialism? In his speech to the Republican Convention in 1964 which launched his political career, Ronald Reagan said, "Last February 19 [1964] at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-time candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, 'If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States.' I think that's exactly what he will do."

The four major policy goals advanced by Thomas's Socialist Party were:
1) Collective bargaining for labor.
2) The basic provisions of the original Social Security Act (which included unemployment insurance and workman's compensation).
3) The forty hour work week (enacted in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and upheld by the Supreme Court in US v. Darby (1941)).
4) National health insurance.
The first three of these were achieved in the New Deal. There is still a majority public clamor for the fourth.

Reagan had the next twenty-five years, the last eight as president, to stop and reverse Thomas's socialism. We heard no more about it. We are all socialists now.

Norquist has said elsewhere that "labor unions were created by government." The driving force of the Libertarian Right is the political cynicism that we can have no collective political action, no public trust. Law does not protect. It only oppresses. There are no real problems. There are only closet Stalinist bureaucrats who invent problems so they can expand their power to regulate, control and oppress free sovereign individuals. Norquist is the very personification of the political cynicism.

G. Gordon Liddy is a more articulate voice. In his interview with Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarick, January 25, 2005, Liddy explained: "The way they [the Founders] attempted to guard against the tendency [of a central government] to grow and become tyrannical was twofold. One was to say, the only powers this new central government will have are the ones specifically enumerated herein, everything else is reserved to the states and to the people. Then there was the Second Amendment which was designed so that the people would remain armed so that if once again the central government became tyrannical the people would have the means to overthrow it and free themselves."

The federal government has been exercising unenumerated powers since day one. The present tyranny is the socialism--but, we can still have national conscription, a civic obligation, mind you, which is nowhere enumerated in the Constitution. Contradictions abound.

I came to understand the Libertarian Right studying the gun lobby, whose vision Liddy embraces. The cynical, malignant political, social vision of the gun rights ideologies directly parallels the cynical, malignant vision of competitive, unregulated free market capitalism. The Libertarian Right's golden age of political liberty was robber-baron capitalism. Greider puts it at about 1900 for us. It would be today in Ehrenreich and Fletcher's "authoritarian capitalism" in China--or a few other places even worse.

The gun lobby vision has gained a small but ultimately meaningless foothold on the federal judiciary embraced by the same judges who will stop and reverse the advance of the dreaded socialism; but almost completely without notice and completely without public discourse and consciousness about what is really at work--political pandering to a malignant constituency. It is all part of the same story. Norquist is on the NRA's national board.

Lenin's State and Revolution (August, 1917), the last Marxist-Leninist tract before there was Marxism in power, was mostly a diatribe against social democracy, where the capitalist state protects not just capitalist property but expands to protect workers rights, basic civil liberties, the environment, consumers. Lenin repeatedly refers to the "armed masses," the gun lobby vision, who will give us a new order. That utopian vision gave us Stalinism. Is Davos's vision next? Europeans took social democracy further, but the dreaded "socialism" is our American version. We learned in the twentieth century that regulated capitalism works when based on constructive civic values and properly regulated within a viable, responsive "governing order" (Greider's words).

Your contributors lament the absence of a vision. They advocate "solidarity," "democratic planning," "action from below." The campaign rhetoric was "hope," "change," and "unity." These have to take place within the present political order. The Libertarian Right spent tens of millions sniffing around Bill Clinton's undershorts to discredit politically a popular Democratic Party president who might impose a socialist agenda on America. They have been at work for seventy years. They will not go away. Defining and defeating the Libertarian Right's anarchic, malignant vision does not define a new vision, but it is a start towards recasting civic values.

Ernest McGill

College Park, MD

There is nothing wrong with socialism, there is nothing wrong with capitalism, there is nothing wrong with any ism and yet none of these systems will resolve our problems in the long run.

When we are done with black-and-white thinking, with left and right, with definitions, with the endless vomiting of minds that are only outward focused, we will be able to heal the planet.

There are no political or social or economic solutions ultimately, without human beings growing up; otherwise, we just exchange one set of problems for another.

There are human solutions to human problems, not socialist or capitalist solutions.

Chris Johnson

Los Angeles, CA

In the national conversation, such as it is, that's been going on since the emergence of our new president, the word "socialism" has been used extensively, courtesy of "Joe the Plumber." And in some sense I think it has been helpful--to clarify who and what people stand for.

In other ways, it's an epithet for some, a badge of honor for others. To me it's nonsense. I don't know what a socialist is. In this article, Barbara Ehrenreich & Bill Fletcher Jr. proudly declare themselves socialists, but exactly what does that mean?

Lenin and Stalin were socialists (Soviet). Hitler was a socialist (a National Socialist). Mussolini was a socialist (Fascism is a form of socialism). And Bernie Sanders is a socialist (Democratic Socialist). Evidently Ehrenreich and Fletcher are too.

What exactly do all these people have in common? Almost nothing--really, do Sanders and Hitler have anything in common? Of course not--well, almost nothing. The one thing all of these folks believe or believed in: An abiding faith in the State.

Hitler and Stalin and Lenin were pathological; of course, Mao was the worst. The socialism of Mitterrand and Sanders has, again, nothing to do with this murderousness. But faith in the state does have to do with curbing freedom.

Recently, the Federal Government took over General Motors and Obama actually fired the CEO. The treasury secretary is now thinking of taking over other corporations and running them (as it already has done with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--another conversation important to have).

These are moves that reek of socialism, and of course, fascism. It's interesting about the lexicon: What exactly is socialism? A prominent French fascist intellectual, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, wrote a disquisition he titled "Fascist Socialism."

Yet, the originator of Fascism, Benito Mussolini, said the following: “Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail.”

Another Il Duce quote of interest: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”

In the article by Ehrenreich and Fletcher, they term China an "authoritarian capitalism" (or close to it), but it is of course not that at all. It is a capitalistic socialism, as oxymoronic as that might be. Think doubleplusungood.

The think that pair fail to understand is that capitalism isn't about money, it's about freedom. The "State" is necessary--we all need to have roads and bridges and air traffic controllers, and so forth. Otherwise, we might as well be hunter-gatherers. No capital, no capitalism. But it need not be intrusive or as expansive as the aforementioned plain left-liberals (Sanders, Mitterrand), nor the extremist socialists (Lenin, Stalin), seem to want.

Justice Marshall once wrote: "The power to tax is the power to destroy." Yes, capitalists are wary of that. To have an overarching state, it must find resources, and that comes from taxation. We all need to contribute of course, that's not really a question, but for the most absurd of anarchists or libertarians. (I recommend Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own--a great book, which in my foolish youth I stole from a library as an act of ironic stupidity.)

So, as blathering and rambling as the previous paragraphs may be, we come to the gist--as much as socialism may be a faded and uncertain term, it can be brought down to a kernel: an abiding faith in the State to "invest," leading to confiscatory policies. Again we all have to pay taxes (except if one wants to serve in the Obama administration), to make sure we have a society worth living in. Wealth confiscation is another matter entirely, but the socialist needs a source of wealth for his public welfare state largesse.

It certainly is distinct from those who believe in doing really what they want to do, not what the State tells them to--even now we're being told what kind of light bulbs to buy. How much a person can have as a salary a year. What sort of prayer is allowed. For the left--suppress conservative radio. For the right--suppress Larry Flynt and his grotesques.

Some have called for a "radical middle" or an "extreme centrism." I've actually heard both terms, and they are on their face rather silly. Centrism means baseline--no change, no policies, just steam ahead.

Socialism, to the extent it exists as a political force, whether it be Obama or some other, is a one way ticket to poverty. The Road to Serfdom, as some might say.

James Saxon

Washington, DC

Ehrenreich & Fletcher have made many important points about the need to replace capitalism with democratic socialism. If we are to solve problems of war, crisis and a sick planet caused by capitalism, we need to act and create a democratic, healthy, sustainable new society out of the crumbling mess we have today.

But the conclusion they reach,implying that such a movement doesn't exist, is wrong. What is lacking is a political expression, and only access to the mass media and political arena is the answer.

Ehrenreich laments that there is no attainable path to go from critique and vision to the next step: an actual way to change. But we do--it's through a unified, visible, new, clear, democratic socialist political party. She's right, there is no "one big party," no one big movement. But we know that!

What she fails to acknowledge is another invisible reality: the hundreds of fragmented, small groups and hundreds of thousands of people across the country ready to join that movement once it begins. For example, our own website www.PeopleForANewSociety.org shows we can use the political process to elect Congresspeople to end legal barriers to cooperative ownership. It shows a workable bicameral governance model (community- and worksite-based) that would give direct, democratic management throughout society, provide for democratic decision-making on what we need & want, what we produce &o; how, our workday, our schools, healthcare, transportation modes, energy and environment. No profit. It shows not only the model, but--yes, Ms. Ehrenreich--how to get there. Use the political process at the grassroots level to elect representatives to enact legislation and make ours a truly democratic "ownership society."

I loved much of the article's clarity on the need for democratic socialism, but we need more: truly historic & constructive clarion call from Ms. Ehrenreich. Recreating the Correspondence Committees of the First American Revolution, she and the powerful voices around us can help ignite a new movement by taking the next critical step: use the mass-media forum at The Nation and elswhere to organize around the country and help us create that "new party." This is where she let us down.

An authentic, grassroots "Yes We Can"will begin an exciting and necessary new era. Its time for creative boldness:call a meeting. Ms. Ehrenreich, The Nation can help achieve what you write about. Take a cue from Hollywood; in this case "call it and they will come."

Daniel Curtis

N. Falmouth Village, MA

Plan A for "Rising to the Occasion:" Digital Democracy.

As the authors conclude, organization is the key to transforming our society. In fact, this is precisely what has led capitalism to be so successful--through corporate lobbyists, capitalism has essentially organized its effort to influence legislation produced by the House and Senate. As a result, representative democracy is alive and well in the United States, but the entities being represented are corporations and not average citizens.

One way to reduce corporate influence on our democratic institutions is to digitize democracy. In a digital democracy, we could give every citizen a voice in the process of legislation by requiring US Representatives to poll their constituents on bills scheduled for a vote and publish the results. This way we could see how well our representatives are representing us.

For example: Poll results for HR 1424, Troubled Assets Relief Program. The People say: nay (32 percent vs. 68 percent); the House votes: Yea (51 percent vs. 49 percent).

To be clear, the House should have the last word; direct democracy is not a solution to our problems. A voice given to citizens in the process of legislation would be non-binding, and merely an opinion. But even so, digital democracy is a solution that would allow for participation by millions of citizens and at the same time allow the efforts of those fighting injustice to be connected.

In sum, this could be a plan--making the will of the people visible on House bills. As long as the enemy remains invisible, rallying citizens to a cause will be impossible. But if it turns out that the we the people are all able to see quite clearly that our will is continually being ignored by our representatives in Washington, DC, then and only then might we have the makings of a mass movement on our hands.

Pablo del Real

Auroras Voice
Delray Beach, FL

While I enjoyed reading this series of articles and appreciate the analysis, I don't see any plans resulting from this analysis. Social interaction is a complicated process that does not easily adjust to to sudden change, either to the right or left. We are now going through a counter-revolutionary move toward globalization, which seeks to make everyone a wage slave of multinational business interests. This new world order seeks to destroy any social protective legislation that has evolved with nation/states. In the US, they cannot officially destroy the Constitution and the state, but they can destroy its economic base, by using deficit spending for corporate welfare. Further, they can send American industries and jobs to countries with low wages. They break down borders with "free trade" treaties. They encourage excessive use of credit, instead of savings. Low interest rates do not make saving viable, and encourage speculation. Our pensions go to Wall Street through 401(k)s. They seek to destroy national representative government and replace it with the WTO or the IMF. Has globalization made you feel safe and economically secure? Or were you better off with a national economy that could be regulated and controlled?

Globalization is currently in a death spiral toward a worldwide depression. Revolution and counter-revolution does not tell you how to govern. Do you have a plan?

Pervis James Casey

Riverside, CA

I feel we are falling victims to the media frenzy labeling Obama a socialist.

The president's stimulus package to the corporate elite has no provisions for the working class. Instead of wasting our energy and keeping our focus on how much bonuses are given to the chosen few, we should question our government on how many jobs were they able to save by intervening and saving these large institutions. Wouldn't make more sense to worry about the majority? A central element in every true socialist government is to guarantee employment to the majority of people.

Not only we have failed to prevent massive layoffs, companies that receive government aid or gain large contracts from various government agencies choose to relocate thousands of jobs to India and elsewhere in the midst of this unprecedented financial and most importantly social crisis.

As the fear of becoming unemployed grows, companies exploit the remaining workers even more. Long hours, even weekends, no overtime pay and cut vacation time is becoming the norm.

Are we entering a new era of "slavery"? Instead of targeting an ethic group to exploit, corporations are after the middle class--or whatever is left of it.

Nicholas Ntovas

New York, NY

In regards to the question about what will the future model look like...Well, the central theme as we know it of socialism is participatory! Maybe we should revisit the efforts of Tom Hayden and company from the '60s Students for a Democratic Society and the SDS Manifesto explaining participatory democracy. It would sure fit in as a successful model of governance in a world like today in such transition, turmoil and opportunity.

I applaud the SDS for its unintentional foresight into the twenty-first century--after all, the global environment we live in today is very similar to that of the 1960s. War, poverty, hard economic times and progressive minds challenging the models of old and questioning the ethics we operate under as a nation... we are in the perfect climate to change the old ways of corporate ownership and greed; advance towards social change, equality and a recognition of what humanity is capable of!

Dennis Begany

Boston, MA

Ten short essays on socialism in The Nation and on thenation.com, yet not one of them mentions human population growth, which is the single most important factor underlying our present predicament. The thoughtful and deservedly respected contributors make no mention of the fact that, for example, when Marx published the first volume of Capital in 1867 the world population was about 1.3 billion and in 1932 it was about 2 billion, whereas today it is 6.7 billion. This is a big deal and it is central to understanding what we should do next.

The reason it is a big deal is that rapid human population growth favors capitalism and breeds inequality by making it possible for a few individuals to become disgustingly and pointlessly wealthy from the desperation of others. The economic law of supply and demand works for people as well as goods. If there are more people than can be comfortably supported by the environment, a condition that has existed in many parts of the world for millennia and is now becoming universal, the value of people decreases because there is an excess of supply. This situation enables one person (the capitalist) to obtain the labor of other people at rates that are at or even below the wages needed for survival. Workers have little or no bargaining power and the capitalist can become rich while others suffer and die. Workers fight among themselves and kill each other in their desperation.

Capitalism benefits from population growth in three ways: (1) ever-increasing misery of the work force, which lowers wages and thereby reduces costs (i.e., increases profits); (2) more consumers every year, which permits unlimited expansion of business despite environmental limits, which assures the impoverishment of future generations; and (3) devaluation of people, which cannot be owned, relative to things (e.g., land, petroleum, machines), which can be. This last circumstance allows the capitalist to become richer even if he carries on no business at all but merely holds property.

What today's "socialists," at least as represented by The Nation's essayists, apparently fail to grasp is that further population growth on a base of an already oversized (from an environmental sustainability point of view) human population means that socialism is much less likely to happen simply because the current situation inherently favors capitalism. In contrast, with a stable or declining human population, the value of things drops while the value of people (at least the healthy working people) increases. This impedes capitalism and fosters socialism or a similar political economy based on cooperation and unforced exchange of labor for money. Corollaries are that (1) democracy is increased because people can exercise their rights rather than having to trade them for economic security; (2) gaps in income and wealth are based on differences in individual skills and natural endowments rather than power achieved through accumulation and manipulation of wealth, making these gaps much smaller (e.g., a factor of maybe five times rather than several hundred times as is the case today); and (3) the cost of property and goods drops relative to human wages, increasing human welfare whether you have socialism or any other system.

My conclusion is that for socialism to prevail, encouragement of small families and free access to all forms of contraceptive technology should be integral parts of any socialist program. This policy should be pursued in every country in the world, not just poor countries, because the rich countries consume and pollute far more per capita than the poor. Education about the dangers of unrestrained growth of Earth's human population and how it diminishes the welfare of individual people now and in the future should be a key component of socialist doctrine and practice. Failure to include a population plank in the socialist platform will make the job of bringing about socialism harder every year, until it finally becomes impossible. Even places that achieve some form of socialism are likely to slip backward if socialism does not produce rising welfare. Then will come the inevitable calls for "tougher" measures against slackers, troublemakers and "useless" people, leading inexorably to fascism, militarism, and ultimately anarchy. Somalia, Myanmar, and Russia are examples of what much of the world will be like if population is not stabilized, and indeed decreased, very soon.

Haydon Rochester Jr.

Onancock, VA

The article asks many questions. It begins with the distinction between the left and right. That lefties for the most part think that people given the opportunity are basically good. The right is cynical and also corrupt. The foundation of the plan, any plan is the ballot box. We can use common sense and creativity for the rest. If we stick to our basic principles and morals the rest will flow naturally.

Greed brought us here; now it will save us? Big business and the affluent have corrupted the system and society to their benefit. The Republicans are corrupt, the Democrats are just less so. The last president that actually put poverty on the agenda was LBJ. Why is that?

One of the major reasons we're in the current crisis is that wages have remained stagnant while productivity has risen, as well as debt. The foundation of prosperity is people's purchasing power. We currently have the greatest concentration of wealth since the Great Depression. Back then 1 percent of the people owned 36 percent of the wealth. Currently that 1 percent own 38 percent of the wealth. It stands to reason that the markets could lose 90 percent, the same as in the Depression. In the '50s and '60s our GDP was in the 4 percent range; the top tax rate was near 90 percent. During the booming Clinton years it was an anemic 2 to 3 percent growth. The top tax rate was 39.6 percent. The rise of debt has fueled consumer demand since the '70s. You can't build a fair system on debt. The shift of tax burden to those that can to those who cannot afford is corruption.

We need to help homeowners, not Wall Street. We need to buy 60 percent of GM and Ford and give the stock to workers and help them with legacy costs. Single-payer would help. Do the same with other big companies in distress. Raise the minimum wage to $7.50, then raise it $1 a year until it reaches $10 per hour. Raise the salaries of government employees by 10 percent. Also reduce the trade deficit sharply by fixing the dollar exchange rate to the currencies of China, Japan, and the euro zone. Without this measure, all other measures will have limited success.

S. Stojanov

Syracuse, NY

Sure, the capitalists killed capitalism, and maybe socialism is better or maybe not. Here are some ideas to save capitalism from itself, while we ponder the socialist-capitalist dichotomy.

Harvard's MBA program, capitalism's incubator, should offer a course on "Hey, wait, don't kill capitalism!" Heck, make it a whole new graduate program.

Past graduates have done their best to destroy the system: George Bush and the best and brightest on Wall Street. Time for a change, here at Harvard!

Topics: Karl Marx on how capitalists will sell the rope with which to hang themselves--required three-credit course.

Signs that the system is going down:

20-somethings from Yale making $30 million a year on Wall Street (only a year after graduating!)--three credits.

Larry Summers saying unions are bad for employment. (Taught by Larry Summers!)--three credits

Revolving door from the government to Wall Street and back again. ($10K upfront fee, three credits)

George Bush brought down three firms and several countries, including his own. Find out how he did it, and then develop plans for a healthier alternative. Three credits.

Howard Kaplan

Belmont, MA

Ehrenreich's mockery of the free market as an "inscrutable diety" that "hasn't worked" takes a myopic view of economics, politics and history. In fact, rarely does one read a prescription for perfect society so devoid of historical and philosophical context except on the pages of this radical publication. No, Mrs. Ehrenreich, the market has worked! It has done so for centuries. The laissez-faire system introduced by the Anglo-Saxon civilization has given rise to living standards unimaginable in most parts of the world and in any other era in history. And I'm not even WASP myself.

The periodic crises of capitalism, even at its worst, are nothing in comparison to the hardship and penury which the collectivist systems you so ardently advocate produce on a constant basis. In fact, the very indignation which drives you to attack capitalism emanates from the degree of prosperity afforded to you by capitalism with its computers, free speech and enough wealth to sit around and pontificate on the sad state of the unwashed masses. You don't see too many Cuban laborers or North Korean farmers talking much about "controlling their own destiny." Thanks to the kind of system you advocate, they're too busy looking for a daily piece of bread, when not worried about the crushing hand of the collectivist state. Your blithe disregard for the fallibility of human nature and, frankly, childish view of the ways in which societies actually function could be dismissed as nonsensical, except that a growing number of youths in colleges are indoctrinated on this stuff.

Alan Henessy

Souderton, PA

I listened to Geithner on C-SPAN, do the Kabuki two-step when Bernie Sanders asked "if they are to big to fail are they to big to exist?" I have a question for Sec. Geithner about AIG. If AIG had been allowed to file for Chapter Eleven, how much bonuses, retention pay, would they have been allowed to pay? Can they legally use that to claim back some of the money?

James L. Pinette

Caribou, ME

What a timely article. It really is time we got serious about a process, whether you call it a plan or not doesn’t matter. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left has been foundering; we have become very practiced in critique, but amazingly vapid in annunciating the alternatives. We surely know what we do not want, but we seem to lack the courage to imagine and articulate our practical vision for a future.

Change is sorely needed, vivid suffering is indeed all around us. But in the absence of a direction and a destination, there is nothing for people to gravitate towards, nothing for people to support and no obviously constructive action they can take for themselves. I agree, the absence of a plan is no longer an option.

We need a banner, a rallying point. We need a program for change that is sufficiently rooted in common sense that it is self-evident on receipt, and so simple in application that it is realistically achievable. One that is comprehensive in scope that imagines an entirely new and environmentally sustainable way of life, and includes precise models of participatory democracy.

What might this look like? It might look like a multi-layer democracy, with universal basic services, that leverages micro-economics to create a sustainable way of life for everyone. It just might be that there is a plan out there, or at least the start of one, that we can rally around to lead the changes we know are needed. The Standards of Life is an attempt to create and articulate just such a plan.

Remaining fractured observers of the wrongs will not create the rights. It is really is time to get serious; this is about going in a different direction and we need to start turning now. We need thousands of people to stand as independents at every election from this day forward, and we need them to use a common plan that allows voter support to accumulate around specific changes.

I think that without a common plan we are failing to serve our purpose.

Andrew Percy

Scotts Valley, CA

After thirty years as a corporate technical drone, I retired, having learned one important thing. I am firmly convinced that anyone who wants to be in charge of anything should be immediately disqualified. The problem with both capitalism and socialism is the leadership. Those who rise to the top of any organization, with the rarest exception, are most concerned with retaining their power (no matter how puny or inconsequential) at the expense of their supposed tasks. This applies to both left and right. The most arrogant, intolerant, selfish, spiteful manager I ever worked for contributed $500 to the John Edwards presidential campaign and readily spouted leftist views completely at odds with his behavior. Need I remind anyone that Soviet apparatchiks smoothly became vulture capitalists after 1989? Until this problem is solved (I have no idea how), talk of new systems and orders is completely beside the point.

Richard Sulsky

West Trenton, NJ

Thanks so much to Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr. for their cogent article on the fundamentals of building a democratic socialist movement. For me, one of the most absurd manifestations during the past several months of the US presidential election was listening to the characterization and definitions of socialist ideas filtered through the book of Rush Limbaugh, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and Fox News. At the height of it all, even presidential (candidate) Obama had to respond by saying: "I'm being accused of being some kind of secret communist because I shared my toys when I was a child."

One idea I'd like to throw into this mix, if I may, is one that we already have some comfort level with, that is, the not-for-profit sector of our economy. The mantra of Wall Street is "the banks have to make a profit, the banks have to make a profit!" Why?

Why cannot the banks, the financial services industries and the insurance companies be run on the not-for-profit side of the ledger like public schools, libraries, museums and various other arts institutions that society deems to be "working for the public good and in the common interest of all"?

Yours in the ongoing debate for a better future,

Robin Breon
VP, United Steelworkers Local 1998, University of Toront

Weston, Ontario

We are only semi-developed as human beings, with the temptation to exploit others and greed being latent potentials. The development of capitalism in the last three or four centuries proves this.

The Scandinavian countries all prove well that a good mix of socialism and capitalism works well and there is proof that they live well there but with the checks and balances that go with a socialistic society. Canada has always had and continues to have an internal social conflict about whether we should be more like the Scandinavians or the USA where laissez-faire capitalism still reigns.

I don't think it is a stretch for any informed person to conclude that a good mix of socialism and capitalism is the only path for North America to take, especially after events of the last two years or so.

Hopefully Latin America will develop its own blend of such a mixture. Rather than continue with the never-ending tension between those of the right and left, why don't we work together and develop this futuristic model in which there is more egalitarianism and equality in all senses from the political to economic to environmental!

Sam George

Vancouver, BC, Canada

No, Barbara & Bill, the principles of capitalism did not bring the country down. Abusers of the principles of capitalism brought the country down.

President Obama himself demonstrated his understanding of this when he spoke of the irresponsibility of those in control of the economies both in the private and public sectors.

Should you two writers ever be unlucky enough to get the system you foolishly wish for, then I hope for your sake you're part of its elite, for they are the only ones who will live well, and quite hypocritically, I might add.

charles h. thornton

Reisterstown , MD

This article is truly sad. When so many human needs are not met, the authors gut the core of the socialism they profess to speak for--production for use. It still takes people to engineer and make things; provide healthcare, educate children and teach adults, and deliver other services; and rebuild our living and working environments. In short, socially useful production. Most people are ready to do these things, to be workers for the common good, if society will guarantee them economic equality. A "blueprint" is a straw man. These writers give up on program.

Charles Andrews

Oakland, CA

The writers appear to be looking for a socialistic political economic blueprint. Although Marx would roll in his grave (the historic dialectic Marx used suggested that capitalism would dig its own grave, but did necessarily come up with a blueprint) if someone were to step forward with a model Marxist blueprint, David Schweichart (After Capitalism, 2002) has come as close as anyone (especially the one called "parecon."). On the one hand, Schwichart elegantly describes an economic democracy that would be as innovative and efficient as the best that capitalism offers. On the other hand, economic democracy would provide an egalitarian and just model that could revolutionalize a system of scarcity and greed (the neoliberal model of capitalism) into one of plenty for all.

Gordon Alderink

Coopersville, MI

Praise to the writers for taking the first and most important step--a frank declaration that there is another side, and that they need not mince words or favor euphemisms for the change that we, the people, need for survival.

Praise for the unapologetic declarations that there is another way, a better way and a brighter future for regular Americans.

Praise for the common sense that shreds the shrill noise and fear-mongering of the dead-ender finance capitalists.

And finally, praise this magazine for some bold editing.

Mark Deneen

Eureka, CA

Since at least as far back as Plato's Republic, philosophers have reasoned for a world governed by the just. But whether it is called capitalism, mercantilism, feudalism or pillagism, wealth will always flow to the most ambitious. The secret to acquiring wealth is not innovation and it is certainly not truth, justice and the American way: it is single-minded determination.

There are those who inherit great wealth and there are those who steal it; there are some who work hard and accumulate some measure of wealth. But those at the very top of the heap are the rentiers who amass great wealth from the labor of others.

Not since the Gilded Age has the possession of wealth in this country been as lopsided as it is today. According to Forbes, the top 400 wealthiest people in America have now amassed $1.5 trillion in net worth--that's one and a half million, million dollars for 400 people!

Though we live under a capitalist system, it doesn't mean that we are all of us capitalists. Only 1 percent of all Americans are truly considered such--multimillionaires who earn well in excess of $500,000 annually. Generally they are top-level corporate executives, high-rung politicians, mega-celebrities and heirs and heiresses.

For the most part, the beneficiaries under capitalism are large corporations and the people who run them. Additionally, we have a government that favors this class to such a degree that it removes all constraints to their voracity, subsidizes their endeavors and cuts their taxes--putting the greatest tax burden on the middle class.

Farm subsidies are of little help to small family farms because they are primarily awarded to large corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra. Along with other big businesses in the communication/information, defense, banking and energy industries, they feed greedily at the government trough while people are losing decent-paying jobs that are being sent overseas, losing their homes and their savings and losing their American Dreams.

Executives from Shell Oil, Exxon-Mobile, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips and BP America have stated that their record profits are merely the result of market conditions--supply and demand--and that they are justified because they pay for exploration and offset leaner years. Meanwhile, people who earn $8 an hour cannot afford gasoline to drive to work.

How can a system that benefits so few so greatly continue to exist? It is accomplished through the exploitation of the commoners' fear. Whether it be Hun, Bolshevik, terrorist or gay couples getting married, plutocrats in America are able to maintain control of the government by declaring the threat and then presenting their candidates and programs as the safeguards.

Will this change under the Obama administration and a more liberal Congress? One could hope. But will it change significantly or for the long term? History says otherwise. The meek have yet to inherit the earth--that is why the priests invented heaven.

Michael D. Kerrigan

Kaneohe, HI

With all due respect, "Reimagining Socialism" demonstrates with dismal clarity the full extent of the human capacity for self-delusion. What is failing is not "capitalism." No, we are witness to the simultaneous and synergistic collapse of the entire web of Keynesian Ponzi schemes that has served as the American Welfare State's foundation for nearly a century. Chief among these is the Federal Reserve and its debt-based fiat currency. Other elements include Social Security, Medicare, the income tax and deficit spending.

The American experiment was based on the idea of individual freedom, including individual economic freedom. It is the massive statist effort to control and manipulate the free marketplace within which that freedom is exercised that has failed, and it has done so with a vengeance.

Frank Brady

Kansas City, MO

Hybrids are in. Here's one that embodies both socialism and the free market (with participatory planning providing the guiding policies).

Identify our "lifeline" systems--those networks that are essential to our health, safety and general welfare and that tend to form monopolies because they (a) are expensive, (b) occupy unique territory or (c) are fundamental to economic and social order and, therefore, a juicy target for private takeover. These would include the energy grid, highways, railroads, transit, telecommunications, water lines, water sources and sewer systems, among others.

Nationalize all of these networks so the profit motive does not act as a barrier to essential traffic as it does now. Pay for their operations and maintenance by inviting the private sector to supply services over them (much like the British rail system).

To ensure "highest and best use" of the public networks, participatory planning, both from the top down and bottom up, would become a national citizenship event, like elections, resulting in five-to-ten-year budgeting priorities along a twenty-five-year pathway to a vision of the future. Public priorities as stated in plans and budgets would have the force of policy and law. Use pricing policy over each network to ensure that public (not individual) priorities have preference, not the other way round.

The result: news and public interest information would not be crowded out by entertainment on the airwaves; alternative sources of energy would be able to compete with fossil fuels; freight and passenger traffic could transition to rail; water would be allocated to priority uses, first; new development would not go where it becomes too expensive to provide transportation, water and sewer lines; public services to the poor like health, education and security could be subsidized by market services like entertainment, luxury goods, etc.

We cannot have socialized or nationalized systems without a public consensus on how they will be used in the best interests of all citizens. This is the job of the planning process--a process that has taken a beating in the past thirty years.

Planning is one of the defining characteristics of humans. It takes advantage of our abilities to reason from fact in order to see possible futures. In theory, through planning, we would choose a path that leads us to the version of the future that best comports with our values. The advantage of planning is to allocate scarce resources like land, water and mineral resources well in advance of their use, so that we are assured that they will be available to help attain a sustainable future. The "free market" tends to be wasteful of these resources, using them up just when they are needed for social purposes.

Yet we ridicule and even fear planning--the highest order of human social and intellectual endeavor--because it gives preference to the community rather than to the individual. There is no argument: national, state or local planning is a social tool that proscribes individual action. In some cases it prohibits action by individuals, and even by social groups, by closing off undesirable pathways to the future. In a capitalist system, this is the function performed by regulation, hence the aversion to regulation by devout free marketeers. But regulation on a day-to-day basis does not provide any particular vision of how scarce resources are to be used to create a collective future.

If we are going to reintroduce socialism of a kinder, gentler type, we must embrace an inclusive and powerful planning process in order to govern both socialism and the market. Any talk of socialism, in other words, must include a discussion of planning as the essential foundation for a New New Deal.

Jay Moor

Bozeman, MT

It's nice to see self-described socialists now agreeing increasingly with survivalists (like me) about what "finance capitalism" has produced. (Though even here, the true nature of a genuinely free market is grossly misunderstood by the authors. A "corporation" in and of itself is government intrusion into a truly free market. It amazes me that this obvious fact is missed by those on the political left and right.)

Good luck with that "collectivist vision" thing. So long as we survivalists will still be permitted to opt out of participating, hunker down in our bunkers with our arsenals, deep freezers and generators, and not be forced into the "glorious future" à la every other socialist dictatorship that's ever existed on this planet with any modicum of political power, then who am I to tell someone else how to expend his or her time and energy?

Just grant me and my handful of like-thinking survivalists the option to secede from the resulting "utopia," and surely we can "all get along."

John Bickle

Cincinnati,, OH