Imagined Property - thoughts from out there

Socialism?

Today The Nation kicked off a 'dialogue' on socialism with Barabara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher's essay "Re imagining Socialism".   This will be an interesting discussion.  For while economic determinism is way way out of fashion, I suspect that many of those on the left, including myself, still believe... they believe that somehow the socialist utopia will arrive with the collapse of capitalism.  Ok I may be over stating the faith but many socialists believe that the present financial crisis portends the revolution. I want to point out, paraphrasing Mao, that neither the crisis nor the hoped for revolution will be a tea party.  The future will be interesting and not necessarily nice.

This is why this discussion about socialism is important.  If capitalism is dead or dying and socialism is next up, then it is important imagine and re-imagine socialism.  It is also necessary to remember that socialism was never defined, never described and never tried...  Owens, St Simon, Marx amongst others wrote about socialism and even tried out a few socialist ideas.  But they all left out a lot of the details. Almost any utopic or nice social ordering can be called socialist.   And here it is also important to remember that at the height of the first or second wave of socialist debate, at turn of the 19th century, for every passionate socialist of the left, there was an equally rabid socialists of the right.  Some have argued that the capitalists claimed the center.  So if we are to talk about socialism, we may also have to use be clear that we mean socialism of the left.   And this may require that we mention fascism and think about what went wrong with communism - and explain what socialism is and is not... 

Here I would like to note that I am aware that there are many problems with using 'left' and 'right' to describe political views.  The words, left and right, describe where people sit (or hold themselves) in relation to each other.  The words do not say anything about the substance of belief.  As most people know the idea of using these words to describe politics comes from the revolutionary French Assembly. For me, ideas about left and right needs to be developed if only to better understand what socialism might be.  For the purposes of this and many other essays socialism is on the left and capitalism is on the right.  

The problem with both capitalism and socialism is that they can only be understood as abstractions - theoretical concepts.  In itself, capitalism doesn't exist any more than socialism.  Reality, lived experience, doesn't come with such labels. So as  abstractions capitalism or socialism can take many different forms. Some see capitalism as life with fine choice - plenty of food, nice cars and constant entertainment. The experience of socialism at the same time is often seen by way of contrast with capitalism and as such uncomfortable and, likely, boring.  Of course, some describe capitalism as systems of exploitation and misery ...  regardless, it is difficult to reduce either capitalism or socialism to short descriptives and the labeling of some countries as capitalist and others as socialist has always been misleading as the whole story was likely more complex.

As well as being abstractions, the words, capitalist and socialist, reflect a value judgments - either good or bad depending on one's political perspective.  Those on the "right" may see capitalism as good and socialism as bad while those on the "left" may see capitalism as bad.  But here even as a simple value statement, the words become complicated because both words were seen for may years as words of the left.  The reason for this may be that capitalism and socialism were words used by intellectuals (and university teachers), many of whom were identified as socialists - of the left.  It was this group who then provided labels (capitalist, socialist, fascist, left, right and so on) for everyone else... and here it needs to be pointed out that many people, politicians included, genuinely believed themselves to be beyond ideology of either the left or the right.  As was the fashion- they did not see capitalism as an economic or social ordering or even consequence of human activity. But those who professed no ideology were more likely to be in favour of capitalism than socialism even if they might not have used the word, 'capitalism'.  Socialism was, however, even less socially acceptable as a word or descriptor. In the US few people even dared to identify as 'socialists'.  For years, the mere mention of capitalism served to identify oneself as of the left...  there was no need and some risk to say the 's' word in public. 

At the same time, a working understanding, even caricature of capitalism and socialism emerged. Capitalism came to refer to the corporations and private sector and rich people while socialism came to be associated with government and public initiatives.  The difference between the two was grounded in a disagreement over whether government could solve social problems through taxing and spending. The image though was of the capitalist as strong and independent while the socialist was weak and dependent on government (hand outs etc).  For some capitalists were winners and socialists were losers...   

After the fall on the wall in 1989 capitalism was triumphant. In the 1990's  the world became flat leveled by capitalist aspirations for more and more and more - capitalism.  By the new millennium highways, schools, hospitals and food banks were being re designed around cost centers with profit as the key to success. Socialism seemed quite dead, but this was an illusion.  Socialist tendencies lived on. Socialism could be seen in public health care and education, in unemployment insurance and old age benefits - and in progressive income tax.  Of course, many of these socialist activities could also be seen as Christian charity and good governance but the idea that those who could, helped others is clearly part of most socialist images.  And if one's view of socialism includes socialism of the right - the dark anti communist (and strangely pro capitalist) kind of socialism - this too never disappeared from the world scene. This socialism of the rich, the 'privatize profits and socialize losses' kind of socialism continued to shape a number of governments.  But this was the kind socialism developed by the fascists - the brutal socialism of Mussolini who got the trains to run on time and the corrupt horrifying socialism of Hitler who got Germany working again - and would not likely be described as socialist.  More likely this kind of socialism would be described as state capitalism, crony capitalism or simply as corrupt ...

This, of course, is not the socialism which the Nation wishes to re imagine.  In their article Ehrenreich and Fletcher describe what they meant by socialism when they explained why socialists did not have a ready prescription to heal current economic woes.  They write:

... we should explain that socialism was an idea about how to rearrange ownership and distribution and, to an extent, governance. It assumed that there was a lot worth owning and distributing; it did not imagine having to come up with an entirely new and environmentally sustainable way of life. Furthermore, the history of socialism has been disfigured by too many cadres who had a perfect plan, if only they could win the next debate, carry out a coup or get enough people to fall into line behind them.

At the same time they argue that there is a "great project of collective salvation" which must be undertaken to replace the anarchic madness of capitalism.  Their inspiration is the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the labour movement. Their call is for organized solidarity in the face of increasing poverty and injustice caused by the economic crisis. It is clear that their socialism is of the left. 

I wonder though if many Americans will accept this socialism unless they realize the dangers of refusing this path.  The problem is that if socialism follows the collapse of capitalism,  then the greatest danger may well lie with a socialism of the right.   The desire to avoid socialism, simply because it is socialist, may feed a willingness to to whatever is necessary to restore capitalism - but if capitalism, like Humpty Dumpty, cannot be put back together again, socialism of the left needs to be seen as the next best thing...  and what this socialism will look like is not simply "not capitalist" but "not fascist" as well. 

Enough - already

I began a post the other day and then stopped - I was trying to write about property, the object of this blog and realized that I want to write about the financial crisis.  Today the stock market fell again. And they can still fall further.  My brother pointed out that the crash of '29 took three years to happen - the markets fell and then plateaued and then fell again and stabilized - until 1932 when they had lost 80% of their value.  So the markets can still fall.  

And then my mother asked if this was all happening because so much money was stolen. My answer is yes and then no.  At the time the guys took the money, no one called it theft.  

Who are these guys?  First, they are nearly all men.  Second they range in age from 30 on up but the majority are, I imagine, boomer and later boomers.  Third, while many may not be 'well born', most have a university degree typically in business or economics from an American or Americanized institution. And most importantly, these guys are the well paid captains of industry and finance.  For twenty years they were the winners - the ones with the million dollar homes, the holiday houses, the private jets, flash cars, white teeth, and gold plated retirement packages. 

And how did they get the money?  They were 'paid' for services rendered...

So why on earth, the question becomes were they paid so much money?   This is the tricky question because the various answers usually avoid the question.  Some say that these guys simply paid themselves - they had their fingers in the till... that was part of the story but there were a number of reasons executive pay rose so quickly and so high.  There was the real or imagined competition between corporations for management talent and the willingness of corporate boards to pay through the nose to get it.  This leads to the second reason given for the high salaries - the owners of the corporations, the shareholders, did not care how much management was paid as long as share prices and dividends increased faster than inflation...

Both answers point to the real problem - and not surprisingly the problem was structural.  The story begins with the idea of the company which after WWII became the story of the publicly owned corporation (family and private corporations were still important but not the main vehicle for commercial activity). As the story goes men returned from the war ready to build something, a family, a house, a business. (Women were forced home to new houses in the suburbs and men went to work.)  For many of these guys, they had lived through a time when government was good - good government won wars, created jobs, provided social security and so on.  The world view was one where businesses made things and government solved social problems.  

The 1950's and 60's were periods of unimaginable growth in North America ...  by 1970 the place was rocking and the WWII vets were clearly in charge.   Then there was the problems of the 1970's - the oil shock and incredible inflation.  For the WWII vets this was an unpleasant reminder that the economy could still be scary.  Throughout this period neo liberal ideas about government and the market were gaining ground.  And then WWII vets started moving on - retiring and dying...   in many places veterans of the Korean War took charge.  The world view was increasingly one in which the point of business was to make money and the point of government was, well, to get out of the way...  

By the 1990's the children of the WWII vets were in charge and for these guys, the only point was to make money.  And while the rhetoric was about making money for shareholders, the real point was to make money for oneself - so much the better if one was also a shareholder.  Government was not the place for any man with ambition to be (and maybe this explains why so many women were able to get good jobs in government).  Politicians were seen as crooks and gangsters, taxes as theft and regulation as completely useless.  By this time most of the guys believed that the market would provide - and for the guys it surely did.  

Given the objective was to make money, then those guys who made money deserved to be paid a king's ransom...  who cared if they destroyed the business, sold the capacity to make or build anything to the Chinese, as long as they seemed to make money.  And who cared how they made money as long as people believed and still bid up the price of the shares...  but with money as both the goal and only measure, the temptation to cook the books grew and, as we all know now, it proved too much for too many of the guys to resist, especially for those in the financial sector.  These guys, these wizards of finance, produced nothing but money - or rather clever financial instruments which inflated the accounts of their employers and justified huge salaries.  In a way they did not so much as 'steal' as swindle - like middle men in a pyramid or ponzi scheme they took a cut of the imagined gains before the gig was up....

And in this version of the story - I think that it is more than coincidental that the great stock market Ponzi scheme began to collapse in 2007 - some 60 years after WWII...  you see the children of the WWII vets, boomers and those just a bit older, were retiring - taking their money retiring to Florida (or other warmer places) buying houses for their children and pretending that the good times would last for the rest of their lives...