In 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the candidate for president under the Socialist Party, received 915,000 votes, or 3.4 percent of the total ballots casted. This is a record amount of votes that a socialist candidate for president has ever received. Had Debs run for president in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, this Socialist candidate would have received 4,509,031 votes. Debs was running during a time when most people were caught in a whirlwind of economic turmoil. While the Great Depression was still a decade away, many workers were facing hardships never seen before. Unions were being dismantled, workers received minimal pay, and working conditions were extremely hazardous.
89 years later, while the United States is facing its greatest economic emergency since the Great Depression, socialism and socialist policies are becoming fashionable. The middle and working classes have displayed outrage at the bailouts of Wall Street, and the baldly spoken words of the wealthy. The New York Times quoted billionaire,Warren Buffet as saying, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Millions of people have lost both their jobs and their homes, while unemployment is as high as 8.1 percent, according to the U.S. Labor Bureau.
These conditions have led to an increasing popularity of what some may call socialist ideals. Nationalization of banks, universal health care, and 80 percent government ownership of corporate entities such as AIG are all, at their core, socialist policies.
Universal health care can be viewed as a socialist ideal because it would set up an institution in which the government has control of the health care of all American citizens. Each person, whether wealthy or impoverished, would have access to the same level of health care as the next person. This is quite unlike the current health care system in place, because many people, such as the poor and homeless, do not have access to any kind of health care at all. By socializing the health care system, people who are now uninsured would be able to go to doctors or specialists without spending a large amount of money.
According to thinkprogress.org, 56 percent of Americans favor nationalization of the banks. ABC News reports that by a two-to-one margin, Americans favor universal health care. This means that a majority of Americans want this country, the flagship of capitalism, to start pursuing socialist policies. A radical concept to consider is that President Barack Obama did not start the process, but is only continuing and expanding upon the socialist policies enacted by George W. Bush, a Conservative president, and outspoken advocate of free-market capitalism.
After World War II, Communist Russia became enemy number one of America. The United States and the USSR emerged from the war as the two superpowers of the world at this time, one being a capitalist society, the other a communist society. Russia immediately annexed most of Eastern Europe, which caused a surplus of fear in the United States that Communist Russia was bent on world domination. This led to the Cold War, which ended only when the USSR was dissolved after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. After being told that communism is the enemy of America, there were many instances of communist persecution in the United States, such as the McCarthy Era.
PBS released a special on Senator Joseph McCarthy as he began his career during the Red Scare, a period of American history where many people in society were accused of being communists. “Some had their passports taken away, while others were jailed for refusing to give the names of other communists. The trials, which were well publicized, could often destroy a career with a single unsubstantiated accusation.” McCarthy was eventually removed from power, because his accusations turned out to be untrue. Even so, this kind of discrimination against communist sympathizers, as well as the decades long Cold War, led to an overall negative view of communism and socialism in America, which continues today.
Professor James Holstun, who teaches English at UB and is an open Marxist, weighed in on what exactly socialism stands for. “Socialism and Marxism argue that democracy needs to be extended from the polling booth…workers should have the right to control their own work—control their workplace. So it’s sort of ultra-democracy.” Holstun then described instances of this concept at UB. “We have a union movement on campus, labor unions which assert the rights of workers here. To shape their work, to shape the conditions in which they work, and to shape UB, to a certain extent. Socialism is already here, in part.”
While Holstun does not see socialism becoming more popular in pop culture, he does see a growing trend of public support for social programs, as well as the government becoming more and more involved in private entities. “We’ve all seen [socialism] in the past couple of months, as the United States begins buying out financial institutions, as the government begins taking a larger role in the ownership of the economy and the direction of the economy.”
President Obama was labeled as a socialist during the 2008 campaign by the McCain camp, such as when in Sarah Palin’s first CNN interview, she said, “I’m not going to call him a socialist, but as Joe the plumber has suggested, in fact, he came right out and said it, it sounds like socialism to him.” His election and lack of public concern regarding the “socialist” Obama, it can be interpreted that most Americans may no longer consider socialism a forbidden taboo. Holstun said with a chuckle, “Even ‘communist’ was used against Obama. It’s kind of a swear word, it has deep roots inside American society, in particular. We’ve been the center of anti-communist culture, anti-communist activity in the world, really since the end of Hitler’s Germany.” As far as Obama is concerned, “As we know, Obama is no socialist. He’s interested in welfare for bankers, certainly. I’m not sure how much beyond that it goes.”
William Richardson, a sophomore political sociology major, is the president of the United Socialist Movement of the Americas (USMA) Buffalo chapter. This group is an active club on campus, cooperating with pro-Palestinian and Pan-Africanism groups on campus. The group allows people to actively discuss socialism in a friendly environment.
When asked whether or not accusations accusing Obama of being a socialist were warranted, Richardson did not agree. “I don’t think you could classify Obama as a socialist at all. Anyone who is an advocate of free trade, like Obama, cannot be classified as a socialist. Free trade hurts the workers of our own country, and people need to understand this.”
When asked why people regard socialism in such a negative light, a look of frustration came across Richardson’s face. “I believe people view socialism negatively because they don’t know anything about socialism. Whenever socialism is brought up, people immediately think of communism, especially living in such a capitalist society.” Richardson has been surprised, however, at the amount of public support garnered for socialist policies, such as the nationalization of banks and universal health care. “It does surprise me, yeah, because of how immersed into capitalism our country is. These policies aren’t exactly socialist, but there is a growing amount of support for them, and this is a good thing.” On a more local level, one of the goals of Buffalo’s USMA chapter is lower tuition costs for students at UB, and all other campuses in the area. With their involvement in local protests, as well as their open-mindedness to new members of their group, USMA Buffalo is a group whose mission is to advocate change and human rights for all people.
The flip-side to this is the stigma of being a socialist, where a negative stigma is attached to their beliefs. A week before a meeting, members of the group posted fliers around campus at UB. As the week wore on, the members noticed that all of the fliers went missing. In the desk of their meeting room, all of the fliers were crammed into a drawer, covered with profanity as well as accusations of the group being a bunch of “commies.”
The USMA Buffalo chapter is not alone in representing socialism in the Buffalo area. Voice of Revolution, a publication of the US Marxist-Leninist Organization (USMLO), is distributed all over the UB campus. It is printed in both English and Spanish, with most of the articles focusing on human rights, the end to war, and freeing political prisoners such as Mumia Abu-Jamal. Buffalo Forum is another publication distributed by the USMLO, and is distributed primarily in the Western New York area. It makes the same arguments as Voice of Revolution, and both of these publications are distributed for free.
Holstun describes many local movements which are socialist in nature. There has been a slight growth of labor unions, and younger people are becoming more involved in unions at earlier ages. Holstun himself is a member of a board set up by the university called a “sweat free advisory committee.” It is “designed to review contracts for the production of goods with the university logo. And we’ve recently voted to stop buying from a supplier that exploits its workers and fires its workers if they attempt to join a union.” Committees such as this help to spread socialist ideals. “That to me would be a sign of socialism, mainly people taking control of their workplace and exercising democratic principles in their workplace and a sign for other workers, too.”
It could possibly be said that socialism has already pervaded itself into the American system. “It’s very interesting. If you look at how the country’s set up, do we already have socialism? Well, what sorts of social functions have we nationalized already?” asked Professor Holstun. “Defense, highway system, healthcare to a certain extent. Universities to a certain extent. There is a kind of social investment into education.” The fact that there are already facets of America that have been socialized, it’s not impossible that Americans may warm to socialist ideals.
“What we are seeing is people thinking about more and more things as being capable of being socialized in this way. In other words, they see them as a social necessity, as opposed to something that people have to take care of by themselves.” Holstun asks that people should be asked, “Even [those people] who would not exactly self-identify as a communist, ‘Do you believe people should have the right to free health care? Or that poor people should have excellent medical treatment?’ I think most people would say yes. So that’s a kind of impulse, which I would call socialist.”
While a majority of Americans may support universal health care, they do not realize that this can be construed as a socialist policy. Other people may see it as just a human right. The same people calling for socialist policies may also be the same people that hate communists. Professor Holstun remarked upon this phenomena. “You can get one and the same person to say ‘I hate communists and communists should be driven out of our schools, even out of our country.’ These same people will say, ‘I think I should be able to get Medicare, I think I should have universal health coverage.’” Holstun just wants people to have a more of an open mind toward socialism. “What American socialists and communists like myself are interested in, among other things, is for people to look at their own beliefs and see that socialism isn’t as scary as they may have been taught.”
In America, a great deal of the twentieth century was spent fighting communism and socialism everywhere during the Cold War. In present day, however, socialism is no longer looked upon as the enemy. In fact, many people already advocate socialist ideas as solutions to the economic turmoil the country now faces. While a figure like Eugene Debs may never arise again, if the economy worsens and slides into a depression, the major political parties may face a crisis that can only be solved with socialist ideas, giving rise to a movement that would change what Americans think of democracy.
America will probably never become the United Socialist States of America. The last line of The Communist Manifesto is “Working men of all countries, unite!” But if Americans continue to open their minds to socialism, a populist cry may be heard soon in this country, saying “Working Americans of all class, wealth, and race, unite!”
