“Creeping Socialism” Would Be Good For America
Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, and Joe McCarthy-style conservatives constantly complain that “Democrats would impose European-Style Socialism on America.”
And how bad would that be?
Will Americans be hopelessly corrupted by national health insurance, mandatory vacations, paid maternity leave, rent subsidies, or larger child allowances?
After all, Australia hasn’t been destroyed yet – despite having gun control, a national health system, a substantial minimum wage, 4 weeks mandatory vacations and 2 weeks guaranteed sick leave.
Actually, millions of older Americans already have socialism, and they love it.
They strongly approve of Social Security, Medicare, and military pensions. They aren’t really opposed to socialism or (more accurately) Social Democracy – so long as they are the prime beneficiaries.
But some conservatives still wax nostalgic about life in America “when men were free.”
Yes — free to work until they dropped, free to be dependent in old age on their relatives, and free to go without medical care.
Prior to the New Deal, all social and employment risks were borne by the individual. If a worker was injured, they bore the cost of that injury themselves. If a senior citizen was no longer able to work and had no savings, they would be left destitute. If an individual lost his or her job, there was no compensation or unemployment benefits. For many, it meant hunger and impoverishment.
Well into the 20th century, some conservatives predicted that economic doom would follow every social improvement – such as female suffrage; the eight-hour day; the end of child labor; worker’s compensation; Social Security; Civil Rights laws; and Medicare.
When Harry Truman proposed National Health Insurance, the AMA accused the White House of “trying to turn a brave, risk-taking people into a bunch of dainty, steam-heated, rubber-tired, beauty-rested, effeminized, pampered sissies”—easy pickings for the godless Soviet cold war foe.
Any day in Sweden, we were led to assume, free dentistry would mutate into a secret state-police apparatus and a sprawling archipelago of reeducation camps.
This plays on a long-standing competition in America between “freedom” versus “paternalism.” ‘Freedom’ usually means the freedom to gamble – by not getting vaccinated, not wearing a motorcycle helmet, owning plentiful guns, buying unregistered securities, not buying health insurance, or running huge ‘cons’ like Alex Jones.
Republicans generally paint Democrats as ‘Karens’ and paternalistic busybodies. Guilty as charged — Democrats do create more safety nets. (In part, to rescue the Republican risk-takers.)
Republicans paint the Democrats as a party of grievance and special interests, who simply wanted to pay off lazy minorties, rather than being interested in the good of America as a whole.
Donald Trump even had a press release which stated: “Congressional Democrats Want to Take Money From Hardworking Americans to Fund Failed Socialist Policies.”
According to journalist Paul Street, America was considered “great” when fundamentalist Christianity reigned, and the masses kept their heads down and their mouths shut. Today (per MAGA devotees), an arrogant radical elite wants to weaken this once-pure nation — by replacing virtuous hard-working God-fearing Americans with lazy, criminal, and otherwise inferior people of color and dubious sexuality.
Actually we need more “Creeping Socialism”…..
And the best place to start is on the job-site.
Since the 1970’s, many American workers have been hammered by what Michael Lind calls labor arbitrage. He points out that “You can shut down a unionized factory in the Midwest, leave your older workers with nothing, and open up a new factory employing cheaper, more docile labor in South China or Mexico. The profit of your firm goes up because the wage share of the profit has gone down.”
The CEO of a crowd-working company explained his business model:
“Before the internet, it would be really difficult to find someone, sit tham down for ten minutes and get them to work for you, and then fire them after those ten minutes,
But with technology, you can actually find them, pay them the tiny amount of money, and then get rid of them when you don’t need them any more.”
It seems certain that the number of ‘good jobs’ will continue to diminish. That is why benefits must flow from government, ‘Tax credits’ alone will not be enough to fix the problems of the low-wage social contract. The federal government must become a substitute for aggressive unions.
Otherwise Jeff Faux will be correct:
“A non-union America will be a low-wage America. Most people will work harder for less. Employer contributions to pensions and health care will be a thing of the past. No longer even remotely threatened with organized resistance, employers will make “on-call” contingent work the norm. People will spend their working lives patching together a marginal income with constantly changing temporary and part time jobs- with the predictable increase in personal and family stress. Few workers will have vacations and paid sick-days, and even fewer a forty-hour week. Unions, after all, are the people that brought us the weekend.
Employer-employee relations will increasingly resemble what they were before the New Deal. Laws against discrimination and employee protection may remain on the books, but without pressure from unions they will be harder to enforce. The humiliations of working life under raw capitalism will reappear: abusive supervisors, dirty and unsafe workplaces, being ordered about like a child, daily assaults on one’s dignity, impossible demands, speed-ups, and wage theft by employers.”
Lane Kenworthy outlines an alternative vision of social insurance:
“Think of a stereotypical member of the modern ‘precariat,’ working irregular shifts at a coffee shop and driving for an on-demand ride service. In the contemporary United States, such a life can seem hopeless – grueling, unpredictable, with a danger of real privation. Now imagine the same person in a country where everyone has government-provided health insurance, access to good-quality child care and preschool, paid parental leave, paid sick leave, free or low-cost college, a decent pension, and subsidized rent. With benefits provided by government rather than by employers, people will have a better life even if their income remains modest.”