This will be brief. I just saw another of those worthless “memes” comparing capitalism to socialism, this time with regards to military chest-pounding. Why do “socialist” countries feel it necessary to “parade” their missiles down major avenues* if socialism is such a warm, cuddly, wonderful thing, while capitalism is supposed to be such a brutal, anti-human thing?
And of course, once the comments fly, the “socialist” country held up as example of this is…The Soviet Union. Which for one thing doesn’t exist anymore, but for another is an example of how labels seem to hold sway over reason too much of the time.
The problem here is that with an avowed socialist in the presidential race, people who oppose him are reaching for any comparison that will make his proposals look horrific. It’s a failure on the part of those who believe such memes to stop acting like rabbits and use their brains. So we keep getting treated to these absurd talking points that suggest that under socialism we would come to be just like the former Soviet Union.
How stupid are we?
You find yourself, however, in order to refute the comparison, having to go back and reinvent fire, do the job that ought to have been done in grade school and high school in history and civics classes (oh, wait, we don’t teach civics anymore, do we?) to bring the purveyor of such nonsense up to speed with reality.
I’m not going to do that. What I’m going to say here is that labels, for either side, explain nothing, but because they are so easy to apply and seem to explain things by association, a lot of people feel they don’t actually have to know anything about the subjects being poorly covered by them.
The former Soviet Union was first and foremost a dictatorship, or, to be a bit more precise, a totalitarian regime. It used certain socialist ideas as tools internally, but any real analysis shows that it could not be described as a socialist state. It was not, for one thing, a democracy, and a major aspect of socialism is based on democratic institutions, of which they had none. Citizens were ruled, they were accountable to a small cadre of functionaries who were not conversely accountable to them. Law was by decree and the security state held all the power.
This is not socialism. Just as what Hitler wrought was not—functionally—socialism. Fascism and Socialism are very different. But of course, even back then, they understood the power of labels, so they called themselves something they were not and pushed that image and suppressed anyone who said “Wait, that’s not right.”
But even more than that, these things are systems. They are constructs. Capitalism is a construct. It was a made thing, it is an artifice now. Which means that it is a tool and ought to do as we wish. So is socialism. Tools. We can set limits on both, use them, even combine them into forms that serve our purpose.
That we fail repeatedly to understand that is the largest single problem in our political reality. And we are kept from understanding that by a crippled educational system and the repeated and deceptive use of labels that even as they purport to inform us and give us some power merely make us less likely to look past them and figure out what the reality is.
Here is the conundrum of our current age.
The benefactor of the current system, known euphemistically as The 1%, are invested in keeping that system in place. They do this by distorting government. The distortion is that they have made it so the government sees them as their primary constituency.
Government therefore fails to serve the rest of us. We consequently blame it. Some of us correctly identify the problem and accuse government of being a tool of the 1%.
The solution is shown to be to strip government of its powers to facilitate the desires of the 1%.+
The 1% see this and by other avenues feed us the idea that government alone is the problem and in order to set things right we must take away its ability to function.
In reality, the only tool we the people have to correct the distortion is through government. Instead of stripping of power, we should be using it in order to correct the systemic distortion.
Government is caught in the middle. It’s a tool and can only do what it is tasked to do. If we 99% believe it is at fault and tear it down, the 1% will have no barrier to their continued misuse of capitalist systems. But we’ve been fed the canard that the government is entirely on their side and is the sole reason for the dysfunction.
Certain corrections to the distortion are based on socialist concepts. But we’ve been told for decades how awful that would be. Meanwhile, the situation continues to worsen because there is no viable solution offered, and the only avenue that appears to be viable is to weaken the one thing that might do us good. Our voice, clearly expressed through our government.
So enough with the idiotic comparison and the bullshit that we can’t use systems rather than be victim to them.
All it requires is a little common sense, less common crap, and participation. Once again, vote. But for the sake of the country, learn something useful about things as they are and how they work. Right now, we are very much like Thelma and Louise. “We have to get to Mexico, but I ain’t going through Texas!”
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- I can’t recall the last time such a parade took place in Stockholm. Hmm…
- + One of the ways they do this is by funding candidates and buying elections, sending people to congress who tell us they’ll work for us then turn around and work for them.
Great work, Mark. Wish people could read. Seriously, the first SENSIBLE thing I have read in years to counter the ‘government IS the problem’ bs.
A question I have – perhaps it will spark your incisive thought process: You mention ‘a crippled educational system.’ I often use the word ‘broken’ to describe it. However, those, too, are labels. At what point do we recognize the responsibility of the STUDENTS (or lack thereof) might be part of the problem?
I’ve thought about that a lot over t he years. What Icome back to time and again is repeated discussions with educators who say that kids who stop learning do so around 3rd grade, and generally because they come to recognize that what they’re getting is nonsense. They sense it. It’s not education, not the way they expect it.
I suspect it’s a GIGO problem. In my opinion, public education in this country has never been primarily about teaching subjects but in creating citizens. What actual learning occurs is coincidental to making Americans. That’s a broad diagnosis and certainly leaves a lot of room for variation, since obviously a lot of students do learn. But you can’t tell them you’re going to teach them Things and then give them rote programming and expect them to line up and obey. Many do, but at some point the switch gets turned off.
Their parents went through the same shell game, which is why they don’t back teachers up. It’s all bullshit. I know a woman whose jobit is to teach the teachers and she tells me that every year she has to deal with deprogramming them (the teachers) and show them how to actually teach and every year the massive inertia of the System beats them back into conformity with programs that fail the students.
I believe, to answer your question, we can’t expect students to respect that which doesn’t respect them. The problem is, what do we do till we stop fooling ourselves about what school is supposed to do and actually fix it? When you look at the last couple of major “solutions” it’s obvious that no one seems to expect them to learn anything.
And that’s just the way the oligarchs like it.