On February 5 our great flag-hugging president Donald Trump stood \nbefore Congress and delivered his State of the Union Address. Among \nother things he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here, in the United States, we\n are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was\n founded on liberty and independence \u2014 not government coercion, \ndomination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. \nTonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist \ncountry.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Standing behind him, Ms. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of \nRepresentatives and a Democrat, nodded vigorously in approval as he said\n this. President Trump was expressing a bipartisan consensus shared by \nmost Democrats as well as Republicans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
How would a socialist respond to this, if given the chance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Was America founded on liberty and independence?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Very well, America was founded on liberty and independence. But whose liberty to do what? And whose independence from who?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States was founded by free English colonists who sought \nindependence from the British crown and certain liberties or rights \n(such as the right not to be taxed without representation and the right \nto trial by jury). In other respects, however, full liberty and \nindependence were enjoyed only by the wealthiest of the colonists. Then \nas now, many Americans were dependent for their livelihood on employers.\n Debtors were dependent on their creditors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What liberty or independence did the black slaves have? Or the white \nindentured servants, who paid for their passage across the Atlantic with\n seven years\u2019 labor under conditions so harsh that they might or might \nnot survive? Or the native people in the areas occupied or coveted by \nthe colonists? After all, George Washington\u2019s Revolutionary Army fought \nnot only to free the colonists from British rule but also to conquer the\n tribal lands of the Iroquois League and Ohio Union. [See Barbara Alice \nMann, George Washington\u2019s War on Native America<\/a><\/em> (University of Nebraska Press, 2009).]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is true that America was founded on liberty and independence \u2013 \nfor some. It is equally true that America was founded on slavery, \ndependence, and genocide \u2013 for others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Are we free today?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
How free are Americans today? Perhaps, as President Trump claims, we \nare all \u2018born free.\u2019 But as Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed: \u2018Man is born\n free, and everywhere he is in chains.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Slavery has been officially abolished, but many people still live in \nconditions not far removed from slavery: 2,300,000 in jails and prisons,\n others forcibly confined and drugged in mental hospitals, victims of \nhuman trafficking, illegal immigrants held at the mercy of their \nemployers and working for very little or even nothing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The majority of the population \u2013 those of us who have to sell our \nability to work in order to earn a living \u2013 can count ourselves at best \npartially free. How free are you if for at least 40 hours a week, or \ndouble that if you work two jobs, you are controlled by a manager or \nsupervisor and ultimately by a boss? How free do you feel? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only those whose wealth and property income enable them to live in \ncomfort without working for a boss can be considered truly free. \nPresident Trump, whose net worth is estimated at $3.1 billion, certainly\n falls into this category, as do Ms. Pelosi and the other 50 or so \nmembers of the congress addressed by President Trump who own assets of \n$10 million or more. President Trump\u2019s meaning becomes much clearer when\n we realize that by \u2018we\u2019 he has in mind, mainly if not exclusively, he \nand his fellow capitalists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When is \u2018government coercion, domination, and control\u2019 bad?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Trump\u2019s denunciation of \u2018government coercion, domination, \nand control\u2019 seems to be at odds with the real policy of his government.\n Are we really expected to believe that the current US government never \ncoerces, dominates, or controls, either at home or abroad? For example, \nwhen it imposes sanctions on Venezuela and freezes its assets in order \nto create a crisis that can serve as a pretext to bomb and invade that \ncountry and seize its oil and other resources, surely that has something <\/em>to do with \u2018government coercion, domination, and control\u2019? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
No. Because it is mainly capitalists who need to be protected from \ngovernment coercion, domination, and control. The Maduro government in \nVenezuela stands accused of trying to coerce, dominate, and control \ndomestic and foreign capitalists. Economic and even military action to \noust that government is not therefore itself \u2018government coercion, \ndomination, and control\u2019 but action against <\/em>\u2018government coercion, domination, and control.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By contrast, should a government agency try to stop a corporation \ndumping poisonous or flammable waste into the public water supply, \nthereby encroaching upon its \u2018liberty and independence,\u2019 that is a \nflagrant exercise of \u2018government coercion, domination, and control\u2019 \u2013 of\n capitalists. We may rest assured, of course, that no abuse of this sort\n will occur while the agency is headed by a Trump appointee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Calls to adopt socialism?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
What \u2018calls to adopt socialism\u2019 is President Trump talking about? Is \nit the World Socialist Movement that \u2018alarms\u2019 him? I suspect not. Our \nmovement is not yet large enough to give him cause for alarm. He and his\n colleagues are probably discomforted by the fact that they now have \n\u2018socialists\u2019 sitting among them in Congress. Exactly how many \n\u2018socialists\u2019 is unclear. Only a handful of congresspeople openly call \nthemselves \u2018socialists.\u2019 However, according to McCarthyite sources many \nmore are closet socialists. One especially vigilant commentator claims \nthat all 81 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are \n\u2018socialists,\u2019 \u2018progressive\u2019 supposedly being a codeword for \u2018socialist.\u2019\n The uncertainty must be nerve-wracking for right-thinking \ncongresspeople, who must worry about inadvertently smiling at a \n\u2018socialist\u2019 or even, God forbid, shaking hands with one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
True, there is nothing new about having even an avowed \u2018socialist\u2019 in\n Congress: Bernie Sanders has been there since 2007. But they may have \nfound it easier to tolerate a lone socialist. And an avuncular and \nurbane figure like Bernie presumably disturbs them less than the new \ncrop of impertinent and combative young women, some of them with almost \nunpronounceable foreign names like Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am inclined to reassure President Trump that his alarm is \npremature. The \u2018socialism\u2019 of these \u2018progressive Democrats\u2019 is not of \nthe full-bloodied kind, entailing the dispossession of the capitalists \nand the transfer of their productive assets to common ownership and \ndemocratic control. Their \u2018socialism\u2019 is of the milk-and-water variety \u2013\n the \u2018socialism\u2019 advocated by groups like the Democratic Socialists of \nAmerica, with which quite a few of the \u2018progressive Democrats\u2019 appear to\n be affiliated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It would be more accurate to call such \u2018socialists\u2019 social reformers.\n They accept world capitalism, with its world market and great power \ncompetition, as givens. They never even talk (at least in public) about \nreplacing it with a new system. Their ideal is capitalism on the West \nEuropean and especially Scandinavian model. They seek merely to regulate\n the worst abuses \u2013 destabilizing financial speculation, for example \u2014 \nand implement programs like \u2018Medicare for All\u2019 and a \u2018Green New Deal.\u2019 \nThe most far-sighted capitalists recognize that such reforms would make \nthe capitalist system more stable and sustainable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trouble is that American capitalists, unlike their West European \ncounterparts, have never had to accustom themselves to the presence of \nmoderate \u2018socialists\u2019 in government (arguably with the exception of a \nfew years in the 1930s under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt). They \nhave not learned how to tame, manipulate, and work with such people. \nEspecially in recent decades, with neo-liberalism in the ascendant, they\n have grown used to having everything their own way. The prospect that \nsoon they may have to make a few compromises comes as a shock to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, the capitalist system has repeatedly shown itself quite capable of coopting and absorbing \u2018progressive\u2019 social reformers. Will today\u2019s social reformers prove an exception? We shall see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the WSPUS<\/a> website<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stephen Shenfield<\/h4>\n\n\n\n