Let's Put These Political Terms in Plain English

For 18 years, as a classroom teacher of secondary social studies, mostly upper level American History and government, Economics and World Civilization, I included objectives in my lesson plans which led to students being able to identify political ideologies by name.  Terms like "Communism," "Socialism," "Democracy," and "Fascism," are part of an eighth grade class in Constitution.  Since that's a required class, and most Americans have at least an eighth grade education, at least I hope they do, these are terms we should know, and be able to use by now.  

Don't trust politicians, especially conservative politicians who think their constituents are the most stupid and ignorant people on the planet, to define these terms correctly.  In some cases, I'm not sure they know what they mean, and if they do, they don't care about the real meaning.  Let's take, for example, the term "Democratic socialist."  This is often referred to, by those who either forgot everything they learned in social studies, or who are deliberately engaged in duping their constituents, as a "left wing" political ideology that supports both political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy.  

That's a very broad definition but it works for the sake of discussion.  Let's observe a couple of specific points about it.  

First, the presence of political democracy is essential to democratic socialism.  A government of, by and for the people is the core essential element necessary for this ideology to work.  So it is, in this aspect of governing philosophy, impossible for a Democratic Socialist to be a Communist.  Communism imposes the will of one class over the other.  And that's not democratic.  So let's make this clear.  Democratic Socialism is not Communism, it is the opposite of Communism.  

Whether or not it is a left wing political philosophy is another issue.  Frankly, I don't really care if it is.  

The Socialist part of Democratic Socialism is a bit more complicated, and it has a long history.  Basically, the American economy, while it has overwhelmingly capitalist characteristics, is socialist by definition.  There are businesses which the society at large, through the government of the republic, has placed under public ownership and control or regulation.  For example, one of the biggest socialist projects in American history is the Tennessee Valley Authority, a series of dams constructed for the purpose of preserving water resources and providing electricity to an impoverished part of the country.  

The railroads are another example.  No need for every rail company to build rails, the infrastructure was a socialist development.  

In Canada, for example, the national health care system is an example of the most beneficial kind of Democratic Socialism.  Canadians have a national health care system that pretty much covers everything, right down to prescription drugs.  Conservatives in America love to bash the system, claiming that if it was so great, why do so many Canadians cross the border to get health care in the United States?  

I know the answer to that question.  They don't.  Oh, to be sure, there are some Canadians who live in places close to the US border where certain kinds of specialty services are much closer in the United States than they are in Canada.  But the truth is that relatively few Canadians seek medical care in the United States.  I have a step-brother whose family lives in Port Erie, Ontario, right across the river from Buffalo.  If they need a specialist to which they don't have access in their local clinic, they go to Toronto, which is a little further than Buffalo.  

And let's talk about the waits to see specialists and get specific treatments.  My own spouse has waited for more than two months to see a pain management specialist in Illinois, in one of the most well-equipped hospital systems in the state, attached to medical, nursing and medical tech schools.  The wait to see her PCP is three months.  The wait in Canada, in Toronto, for a cardiologist specializing in electrophysiology is two whole weeks.  Two weeks.  

Well, let's cut to the chase.  It frustrates conservatives that Canadians generally like their socialized medicine because it works for them.  Statistically, the overall quality of their care is better than that received by the vast majority of Americans.  And the fact that they pay slightly less than half of what Americans pay for private insurance is a bonus.  It is, in fact, the way most citizens of countries in the world that have some form of socialized medicine feel about the care they get.  

In a society and in a government that conservatives love to claim is based on Christian principles, how is it possible to consider human pain and suffering in terms of the profit that it can generate?  

And that is the essence of Democratic Socialism.  There is not anything Communist about it.  It is about the power, invested in the governed, determining exactly how the government can contribute to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of its people.  We have proof all around us that a national system of health care, and the ability to finance it by either cutting insurance premiums in a private, competitive market, or by removing private paid premiums altogether, in favor of a single-payer health care system.  

Getting Rid of Citizens United

Oligarchy is a less frequently defined objective in social studies courses at the eighth grade level, but it actually does exist in current constitutional studies objectives.  Oligarchy, which is the concentration of political power in the hands of a small group of people who are united by common political interests, is now the primary means of government in Russia.  That's not completely surprising, given its modern history of government, from a Czarist monarchy primarily based on feudalism, to a short-lived provisional government intending to restore legislative power to the Duma, to Marxist Communism, to a short-lived sort of democracy that could never break out of internal corruption, to the current oligarchy that has come out of the economic instability several banking and industrial tycoons have imposed on the country in the form of Vladimir Putin. 

The one element missing from Russian socialism, in those periods of time where it actually happened, was democracy.  I wouldn't venture to say that Russia ever got very close to real Democracy, even in the years when Boris Yeltsin was President.  There are too many divisive elements vying for power in the Russian regime to allow the voice of the people to be heard.  

But the United States was never a feudal monarchy, nor have we ever, at least until now, experienced a government that was anywhere close to as authoritarian as what we have now.  One of the reasons for it is that we have been moving in the direction of allowing the 1% of the population who control 99% of the money to buy the government.  All it took was a Supreme Court that had already been corrupted by the presence of billionaire dollars in their pockets.  Bribery of judges is going to be called "pulling a Clarence" given the kind of money it has taken to buy his decisions.  And so we have corporations considered equal with citizens of the United States.  

Democratic Socialism would be the kind of government philosophy that would lead to the overturning of the Citizens United court decision that made this possible in the first place.  The first people to raise this possibility, back in 2020, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, were individuals labelled as Democratic Socialists, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  They suggested breaking the filibuster in order to create five more Supreme Court seats by amending the Judiciary Act, allowing President Biden to appoint liberal, Democratic Socialist justices who would have overturned Citizens United on day 1, along with  restoring Roe, nullifying Presidential immunity and expiditing the intermiable foot dragging and delaying and obfuscating of Merrick Garland, making sure Trump got tried and convicted for the insurrection on January 6th, and for stealing classified documents.

Just for Clarification

Democratic Socialism would not, in any way, ruin the current free market economy we have in the United States, because we don't have a completely free market economy, and we already have a measure of socialism in our economy.  There aren't a lot of places in the economy, beyond health care, public utility regularion, and maybe down the road in energy resources, where Democratic Socialism needs to intervene, health care reform being the major priority.  

I see some things that Mayor Mamdami is doing in New York, under this label, that are necessary and reflect the will of the people, such as the rent freeze, and the establishment of city operated grocery stores in parts of the city that are considered grocery "deserts."  I've seen the same thing happen here in Chicago, with local people working to establish cooperatives in areas of the city where there's no grocery store, or pharmacy, nearby.  Chain stores put the local grocers and pharmacies out of business, then, when they discovered that they can't make the same kind of profits they do elsewhere, they close down and leave the neighborhood without a grocery store or a pharmacy.  Democratic Socialism either makes sure that stores don't shut down, or they lead the community to provide the infrastructure for a local investor to be able to operate, and compete, to provide goods and services. 

And let's say it one more time for effect.  Democratic Socialism is NOT Communism, it is the polar opposite of Communism.