Every time I turn on my T.V. these days, I witness the American conservative movement lurching further and farther into the right. It disturbs me quite deeply at the same time it amuses. Taking advantage of the settling despair caused by a crippled economy, these right-wing nut jobs have managed to crawl out of the dark fringes and find a steady place in the mainstream. They have even succeeded in resurrecting an old dormant bogeyman. The red menace. Ask any social, religious or hard right conservative what socialism is, and it might as well be satanism. And the likely reason(s) for their resistance will be as follows: it's un-godly, it's undemocratic, it's un-american. So let's examine those reasons, shall we ?
SOCIALISM IS UNGODLY:
Since most religious right-wingers are fundamentalist Christians, I would like to quote from the words of the Synoptic Gospels. In the parable of the rich man (Gospel of Luke 18 18: 30) To paraphrase; " a rich man asks Jesus what would bring him eternal life, Jesus replied ' follow God's commandments, give your possessions to the poor and follow me'. The rich man despaired for he is of great wealth. And Jesus proclaimed ' it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Jesus, as it is written about him in the gospels, championed the inclusion of the poor and the disenfranchised and disavowed hypocritical purity. He favoured pacifism instead of violence, mercy instead of vengeance and consolation over sorrow (Beatitudes). In most of his life's mission, he preached about love and respect for one's neighbour and foregoing personal interest in favour of someone else's. In doing so, a person can expect a just reward in heaven. A philosophy very similar to the socialist virtue of "my neighbour's best interest is mine as well". So while it's true that social justice principle is skewed towards secular humanist rather than religious philosophy, I can argue that the common good values in socialism is in many ways consistent with Jesus' teachings of moral rectitude.
SOCIALISM IS UNDEMOCRATIC:
The ideals of socialism do infringe on one freedom. The freedom of opportunity. In other words, the social value system is an impediment to greed. Self-preservation is a natural human instinct. So, as people, we are all prone to look after our own interest. But how much or how many do we really need ? Is it a natural need for a person to gain as much as he can ? Or does a governing body have the moral authority to limit what one can have so there's plenty of resources left for the others waiting in line ?
Capitalist economists argue that socialist policies are regressive and unsustainable ideas that undermine exponential economic growth. What they fail to tell us is that they are working on just one side of the economic ledger. The top side. In the top-down world of capitalism, gains and losses only project corporate and investor numbers, consumer indexes and market dividend reports as models for either growth or regression. So, as ordinary peasants, we are held slaves to private sector interests. If Big Oil is losing badly on Wall Street, then those losses gets passed on to the consumers by means of higher prices at the pumps. Is that democracy ?
Wouldn't it be in the best economic interest of the everybody if we are on top of the list of priorities. After all, we are the ones that power our consumer-driven economies. Wouldn't it be more democratic if we can have voice in determining our own economic destiny rather than have the powerful few who control capital decide for us ?
SOCIALISM IS UN-AMERICAN:
It frustrates me to no end when I hear someone like Sarah Palin describe the American Revolution as something that was borne out of Americans natural abhorrence to taxation. In her usual ignorant style preaching to her equally ignorant crowd, Palin defines government-specified taxes as evil, failing to note that while governor of her state, she drew her salary from government collected taxpayer money.
The Revolution did start with a simple tax revolt. But it was predicated by a number of other events and ideas that combined, led to a social and political insurrection that eventually formed a new republic.
Chief amongst those were the ideas of liberalism as understood by the virtues of Enlightenment. The motivational philosophy of republicanism, inspired by Rousseau's Enlightenment theory of "social contract" powered the revolution's political thinking on liberty and natural human rights. The revolution rejected the aristocratic oligarchies that dominated the prevailing mercantile economy of the time and championed the right to their own economic destiny.
John Adams, one of the founding fathers and second president of the United States, in one of his famous letters at the revolution's outbreak wrote: "There must be a public passion for the public good and the public interest. Honour, power and glory must be established in the minds of the people or there can be no republic or any liberty. Men must pride themselves in sacrificing private interests for the public good when they stand in competition with the rights of society ".
The revolution was founded with the simple idea that freedom is only attainable through social equality. And that perseverance of doctrinal social equality and justice is determined by the realization of the common good. The very doctrine that socialism ascribes to be.
So I ask the question one more time. What is so wrong with the principles of socialism ?
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