Democratic Socialism in the United States

"Mujer, me quiero hacer rico!" dijo el hombre.
"Ya somos ricos, mi amor," contesto su esposa. "Quizas algun dia tengamos dinero."

Socialism and the United States of America

From: Maurice Miller To: (cybrgbl@deltanet.com)
Subject: Fw: Greetings
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 13:56:46 -0700
Hey Rich!,
How are you doing? You may not remember me, we exchanged e mail a couple of times about 2 months ago and I really enjoyed our correspondence. I have a couple of questions that you may be able to help me out with. The first one is about creating a web page. My wife and I would like to get a web page going, however, we can't afford to purchase software. What (if any) free web page host via the Internet would you recommend (we have a moderately slow 386 with the capacity of 133 MHz and we have a small monitor)? Any leads that you could give us would be great. Once we get our web page going, may we include a link to your web site? I love your web page, I visit it often, I would definitely say your page is among my top five favorites, and I think you are a very intelligent man and a good person (kinda like me).
Also, I have a few questions about political parties. Let me preface the following by saying I am not excessively knowledgeable concerning politics and I am speaking from the context of moderate poverty and quite a bit of dissatisfaction with the status quo. I just turned 33 not to long ago and for the first time I have the desire to start getting involved (in one way or another) with politics. I am not satisfied with my financial/economic situation and I'd like to make changes for myself, my family, and others who find themselves on the welfare system or the poverty level. I am full time college student in Oregon working on a Bachelor's degree; I work two part time jobs; my wife works one part time job; we have one child (a two year old boy named Jacob). To get by we are on food stamps and we live in Section 8 low income housing. Not everyone on the welfare system is a lazy no good ignorant loser, yet this seems to be a pervasive stigma that is carried around in peoples minds. This is frustrating because many times I have to deal with this assumption being projected towards me. I am not a lazy person, I am not a loser, I am not ignorant, I have skills, I have gifts, and I do have lofty goals that I am actively striving for. Don't get me wrong Rich, I'm not complaining, without the food stamps and the Section 8 housing we would go hungry and we would be homeless. However, from an insider's perspective, the welfare system really does seem to perpetuate poverty and it does create an insidious emotional dependence. When on welfare, one has to report any type of changes in income, etc. If these things aren't reported fast enough or accurately enough (this also holds true for Section 8 housing) you are completely cut from the program. Food stamps and Section 8 Housing are really "lorded" over those who happen to be on these programs. This leaves one with a feeling of insecurity and I have to constantly fight the tendency of being stressed out or worried about my family's basic survival needs. It's tough to focus on other things when you are surviving on a meager level (Maslow really hit the nail on the head when he set forth his hierarchy of needs paradigm).
I realize that there are many in this country and world wide (India, Bangladesh, Sudan, etc.) that are much worse off than us and I am thankful for what I have (health, my wife, my son, a place to live, a car), however, I hate the welfare system, I hate our poverty, and I desperately want to get off of welfare. I have tried (and am still trying) to get my family off of welfare, but to be honest, I am very frustrated of banging my head vs.. the wall and I am a little angry over the lack of my success so far. Where am I going with all of this? Activism and politics (maybe). Our financial situation has led me to do some basic research about the different political parties in the hope that I can get involved with one in order to make a difference for myself, my family, and possibly the poor in this country. Am I suffering from delusions of grandeur? Maybe, but I still want to get involved based on the hope that I can make a difference. Call me an idealist, but I think one person can make a difference. I just need direction and encouragement. People tell me that I am tenacious and maybe I am, but I know I do not want to give up or lose hope. If I do I am afraid that I will become hopelessly embittered. Now, my question is how can I start to get involved in order to make a difference? There has to be more than just voting. Voting is good and I do vote, but there has got to be more than just that.
Recently, I found an interesting web site which offers a brief synopsis on the political parties. The only political party that seemed to greatly interest me is the Democratic Socialist Party. Rich, do you know anything about this party? Can there be such a thing as a Democratic Socialist Party? Is this just a smokescreen? What are your thoughts? Are they atheistic? Are they replete with feminist? If they are, I feel I am wasting my time. The Democratic Socialist party didn't address these issues on their web page and they have not answered my e mails (it's been almost two weeks). The only other party that somewhat interest me is the Democratic party, however, I can't afford to join them, their membership fees are beyond our budget. Isn't it almost an oxymoron that one has to pay to join a political party?
The following is my opinion about the various politic parties, these may or may not be facts, and I may be misrepresenting the different parties, however, these are my thoughts and gut feelings. The reason I am sharing this with you, Rich, is maybe you can correct my thinking or offer additional insights. I suppose if I was to be labeled politically, I would be either a centrist or a pseudo-liberal (who is seriously thinking about joining the Democratic Socialist party). I get the impression that the Republican party (as a whole) seems to be for the rich and the status quo. At times I like the Democratic party, however, at times they are too liberal for me (and like the Republican party they are too expensive to join). The Libertarian party is somewhat interesting, yet they don't jive with half of my ideology. The Reform party seems to be almost like the Republican party. The Socialist parties (besides the Democratic Socialist party) are too communistic for my taste. The Labor party seems to be one dimensional. The Green party; The Pot Party; and The Natural Law party make me laugh and I don't take them seriously. The U.S. Taxpayers party scares me (they are so anti everything that I want to get my anti-perspirant out). I know very little about The New Party and the Patriot Party and both of them are so small it may be many, many years before they can even make a dent in the political scene or the social level. Last and least, The Nazi party. I have nothing but very searing comments about them and my comments would be full of expletives, therefore, I won't even bother to share with you what I think about them (you ears would smoke).
Rich, I would greatly appreciate any info and/or suggestions you could share with me about building a free web page and about politics, political parties, and attempting to make changes by getting involved. Thanks for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.
Maurice

      Dear Maurice,
      Geocities. For almost no money at all, a person can post their writings on a Web page with a worldwide audience. Never in the history of man has the individual had the ability to communicate to so many others for so little money. I suggest you take advantage of the opportunity.
      I run across socialists relatively often in bookish circles, the followers of Irving Howe. I see the socialists here and there - crackpots, born rebels, idealists with Ph.Ds in some eminently unmarketable field of the humanities – and my heart feels a mixture of sadness and compassion. Many are big-hearted idealists who yearn for an end to injustice, others are born blowhards wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt: all are not attuned to the reality of American political life. To be a "socialist" in America is to be in symbolic opposition, and not a part of the mainstream political process. Socialists do not influence the American social dynamic; they show up in trifling numbers as gadflies to political events. As for the neo-Nazis, black militants, religious zealots, man-hating feminists, anti-tax extremists, dogmatic atheists, social justice revolutionaries – they are beyond the pale; and having nothing good to say about them, I will remain silent.
      Socialism is largely a continental European import, smacking of the egalitarianism of Jean Jacques Rousseau. The social and political roots of the United States lie in Great Britain and the ideas of John Locke: that all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty, and property. Inside this founding idea, the United States after its inception quickly broke into two differing visions of what that all means. On the one side were the federalists led by Alexander Hamilton, and on the other were the democrats led by Thomas Jefferson. Federal…….. Democrat……….. Ever since then the tides and fortunes of American political discourse have edged from the Jeffersonian to the Hamiltonian conceptions of what the United States governmental policy should be. In this back and forth struggle, the European concept of socialism and the welfare state has not even been approached in the most liberal left-leaning periods. Even in the more desperate and unhappy periods of American history – the Civil War, Great Depression – the acceptable extremes of the political spectrum in the United States never moved terribly far from the center. With only two major political parties, if one or the other becomes too extreme and cannot appeal to the political center and some of the opposite party, then they risk losing everything. That, in a nutshell, is why socialists will never find support in America as they have in Europe.
      Never in its most conservative or liberal moments did serious people in America ever contemplate the extremes of fascism or communism in the 1930s. To have a candidate or position which is too extreme is to receive the death touch in American politics: look at Barry Goldwater as the conservative nuclear warmonger in the 1960s, or Dukakis being labeled a "liberal" in the 1980s – their campaigns never recovered in the eyes of the voters Some people claim the two party system in this country perpetuates a system where there is no real choice between the two parties. I would counter that the system changes slowly but surely, and that it confers on our country a political stability which is enviable and relatively rare. The United States is a moderate country by nature, built on compromise and faction – but the system works decisively against the extremes. The political parties themselves censure their members who stray to far from the center: look at conservative Eisenhower gently but firmly bringing an end to the anti-communist hysteria in the 1950s (re: his 1953 Columbia address, "Don't join the bookburnerns."), the liberal Bill Clinton moving the democrats towards the center by denouncing black radicals and anti-free trade organized labor in the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement negotiations and ratification. This is all, in my opinion, a strength of our political system and civil society.
      Only once in over 200 years, during the seccession of the Southern states and the ensuing Civil War, has the center failed to hold and our form of government floundered seriously. The Constitution, adopted in 1789, is still the law of the land today in 1998. That is a big difference between the French who are on their fifth republic since 1789, or the Italians who after Mussolini and fascism have seen 45 coalition governments fall since 1945. The Russians entered the 20th century suffering under despotism, saw their situation become worse under socialism, and still have not significantly improved their lot as the 21st century beckons at the doorstep. Let us look at the larger picture and gain a sense of perspective!
      The United States currently leans towards the Hamiltonian conception of government, with a robust economy, strong economic growth, near invisible inflation, and scant unemployment. It is similar to the 1890s during the Gilded Age of railroad construction and oil discovery when magnates like Andrew Carnegie, Leland Stanford, Huntington, Rockefeller, and rose to prominence during an era of prominent economic growth. Today we have Microsoft, Netscape, Apple, Sun Systems and Bill Gates, Steve Netscape, Steve Jobs, among others, as the Industrial Age gives way to the Information Age. I personally lean towards the Hamiltonian ideal of centralized power and aggressive industry, and look at capital and vigorous private enterprise coupled with individual initiative as the best engine for prosperity and technological and material progress in society. This has been the combination which powered the dynamism of imperial Athens, Renaissance Florence, London during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, New York and San Francisco last century, and the Silicon Valley most recently.
      Yet there is a time and a place for everything, and as circumstances change it will become appropriate to move towards a government more activist in social planning and economic policy. This happened after the Great Depression in the 1930s, when much of the country was hungry and without hope. Roosevelt guided the country slowly out of that morass by use of an activist government intervening in the economy, vigorous social planning, etc. etc. etc. Some people claim our present prosperity will last for three or four decades uninterrupted. I hardly believe them. I know sooner or later it will be time for the country to move a bit to the left again a la Roosevelt and the New Deal. But I will not want such a liberal government to move too far to the left, as in socialism. A vocal conservative opposition waiting opportunistically for mistakes to be made, as well as an independent judiciary protecting certain property rights will make sure it doesn't. I am a radical centrist.
      Maybe I would be a socialist if I lived in some Godforsaken country where little opportunity existed to earn a living without government help; but any person with the drive and will to work hard can get by in the United States today. You might not get rich, but neither will you starve: the "poor" in the United States have a higher standard of living than many of the "comfortable" in Third World countries. That is obviously why so many of the most able and ambitious in the world fight tooth and nail to immigrate to the America. The availability of opportunity is precisely why so many succeed. Here in California it seems ever other fast food restaurant or gas station is owned by an entrepreneur from Pakistan, South Korea, or Iran! The high tech sector of the economy is draining many of the best minds from all over the world to the United States since America does not have enough trained workers!
      American is a great place for the dynamic and the determined; it is a country hard on its losers. When I say "loser", I speak in the marketplace language where an individual cannot sit down during a job interview and look across at an employer and smirk inwardly, "You would be lucky to have me work for you!" and know it to be true. While the sky is the limit for the ambitious and well-trained, America is tough on its drug addicted, the poorly educated, the weak, the helpless. Look at the homeless, the ghettos, the jails! Having lived and worked amidst the underclass, it is not so much that these people are actively discriminated against as they are ignored. They cannot and usually do not bring any marketable skills to mainstream society, and so they live removed from the centers of the culture. If you do not go out and get it for yourself in the America, nobody is going to give it to you. I have seen poor people in Mexico with only half a plate of beans to their name give you half of them; but in Los Angeles, you can live like a dog in the street and nobody will much care. But the vast majority of people in Mexico are bone poor, and most people in the United States are relatively affluent – if not extremely affluent! The gap between rich and poor has widened in the last two decades, but almost everyone is richer in the United States than they were even fifty years ago. But the American poor see fellow countrymen with more than themselves and the social envy sinks in and the green eyed monster of jealousy appears to feed on its own flesh. I want the luxury car. I want the big house. I want to be rich, too! If I cannot earn it, I will take it!
      Personally, I always pitied those poor sons of bitches in somber suits and ties rushing thither and hither laboring furiously from dawn to dusk. I see them in restaurants during the early afternoons as I am curled up with some old sage or poet and watch them poor over spreadsheets and talk animated about work and the office. They devote the greater part of their life's work to returning phone calls, meeting deadlines, budgets, reports, interest rates, clients, meetings, rates of return, business meetings – all in a gargantuan effort to keep a job, get ahead, beat out a competitor. They work all day long, five days a week (and often part of the weekend), virtually every day of the year – and then are thrown two measly weeks of vacation a year, like you throw a dog a bone. It is like squeezing a grape dry, selling the most precious commodity you own – your precious time! – for a price. Of course, such a choice in work often results in large affluence, power, influence – even fame, celebrity! They most likely would pity me as nothing more than a schoolteacher, living in relative poverty. An owner of various housing complexes in my neighborhood told me once with an air of disdain, "These people [apartment dwellers who own no property of their own] work all their lives hard and then they have nothing!" But to measure success in life by the hash of cash is to judge a life lived by only one aspect, and not even the most important one – in my opinion.
      Now I would not begrudge the industrious businessmen or women their frenetic lifestyles of building and buying and winning and amassing, if that indeed were the manner of life they were born to lead and makes them happy. I would also ask them not to prejudge me, since money is something to which I am relatively indifferent. What I would tell you is to examine where you want to go in life and identify what you need to do to get there. If money is important, go into business instead of complaining about the present political system. I seem to remember you claimed you intended to go into psychology as a therapist after graduation. Follow that course, and I have no doubt you will be off welfare soon enough: I see the amelioration of your poverty as coming from your individual efforts more than through collective political action.
      Being not much better off financially than yourself, I can empathize with your money problems. Money cannot buy happiness, but it clearly can calm the nerves. Don't I know it! My mother used to tell me, "There is a huge difference between having enough and not enough. But there is not much difference between having enough and more than enough." Having been both poor and more than comfortable in her life, my mom much preferred the latter. Your problem is that you as a full-time college student are trying to support yourself and your family by means of a hodge-podge of part-time jobs! Finish your studies as soon as possible, begin your career, and soon enough you will find yourself financially self-sufficient. You are intelligent, disciplined, and God-fearing; and it seems clear the future will bring you a professional career, greater earning power, and the middle-class lifestyle it sounds like you deserve. Patience!
      I would also urge you, despite onerous and worrisome money problems, to enjoy your present situation fully. Look at your wife as she sleeps next to you in the early morning, oblivious to your gaze. Feel your son's tiny hand when it takes your own when he wants to lead you into his room to show you a toy or picture he painted. Let his laughter lighten your worries! Enjoy today, for who knows what tomorrow will bring? Your wife might get sick; your son will grow up faster than you think! Carpe diem, qua minimum credula postero! Be happy in a beautiful sunset and take pleasure in the smell of a neighbor's roses or in the small kindness of a stranger – such things are always free! In the winter of life, you may well look back and wonder how you let relatively trivial quotidian concerns take up so much of your time and energy which could have been better used to love your wife and raise your son as a better and more thoughtful husband, a more loving and attentive father. Things always work out.
      You may not get rich as a therapist, but you will not need to rely on the government or anyone else for material assistance, either. And from our few exchanges of e-mail I suspect it is not only about the money, anyway. Than I would argue that you are entirely typical of our age. It was, after all, the omnipotent Bill Gates who made the following claim: "Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning." following quote by Montaigne:
"We are great fools. 'He has spent his life in idleness,' we say; 'I have done nothing today.' What, have you not lived? That is not only the most fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations... To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most."
But Bill Gates is rich beyond my wildest dreams! And I want to be rich, too! Well, I wish you much luck. But I hope with such a materialistic outlook you do not end up like Aristotle's "prosperous fool" who is so bewildered by money and equating money with happiness that he "therefore imagines that there is nothing that it cannot buy." So many people hold a Bill Gates or Donald Trump up on a pedastal, equating personal value with material wealth if what is one of the more bizarre practices in our culture. Well, I apologize for the length of this response. But you opened a number of cans of worms in your e-mail which required some space to answer fully and frankly. Having asked me, rest assured I have answered you as honestly and candidly as possible.
      Very Truly Yours,
      Richard
While galvanizing action of the federal government, I also favor the majority of government diffused towards the where politicians more often than not know better how to satisfy the needs and of the local population than some bureaucrat sitting a thousand miles away in Washington D.C. is but a necessity, Tom Paine. The appropriate size of government is and should be properly debated and changed as the needs of the day dictate, but I agree with the traditional American belief that the government which governs least governs best. This all runs directly counter to socialist government which would be a massive, invasive edifice which would permeate almost all aspects of our lives much more than it does currently. That would be a good thing for a poor family who lack medical insurance. Socialism tends to lean towards the losers in a society, as capitalism tends to favors its winners. I do not advocate abandoning the poor, and I think my professional life attests to that. However, I think society works best when the ship is tight and efficiently run with the majority of its resources devoted to that which works. As long as there be opportunity for the poor to rise through hard work and exertion, then
      Very Truly Yours,
      Richard

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