A worthless poll taken by the Pew Research Center seems to say that a great many Americans oppose capitalism and favor socialism. The questions were phrased this way: “do you have a positive or negative view of capitalism . . . of socialism.
The results don’t mean much because neither of those terms were defined.
Thanks to political rhetoric in a bitterly fought campaign, a good many people equate capitalism with the fraud committed by some financial institutions which created the debt crisis that caused the great recession. It is not surprising that a good many Americans have a negative view toward that particular set of crimes committed by a small number of capitalists.
On the other end of the political spectrum, government assistance to anyone for any reason was labeled socialistic. Thus, Pell grants to poor students, Social Security checks to seniors, Medicare, veterans pensions and a long, long list of other benefits that the people provide themselves through government become “socialistic.”
Socialism has a definition. It is a system under which government owns the means of production and distribution. The government owns everything and determines who gets what. Russia had a socialist system. So did China and Cuba. Cuba may be the only socialist society left — and it is creeping slowly toward a mixed system in which government still makes most of the decisions but private businesses are allowed to develop and grow. Russia and China left socialism behind years ago because it doesn’t work.
The U.S. has a capitalist economy. It is also a democracy. In a democracy, the people have the power to change the society in which they live. A democratic government can determine how its economy is structured.
In America, for a couple of examples, the people have decided to provide a free education to youngsters from kindergarten through high school. The people have also decided that private schools can exist, charge tuition and make a profit on their operations. Tax-supported public schools are not socialistic. Private schools are capitalistic.
If the people in their wisdom decide that higher education should also be 100 percent tax-supported because the new world of work requires a higher level of knowledge and training that would not be socialistic either.
For similar reasons, Americans have decided to build highways in their states and to create a national highway system. It is not accurate or useful to label these government decisions “socialistic” even though the highways are open to public use without charge.
Because the human creature has selfishness built in, the powerful will exploit those without power unless they are reined in by law. Capitalism is the most efficient way to generate wealth that people have yet discovered. But wealth is power. The wealthy will use their power to generate still more wealth and will dominate unless society steps in and regulates their activities with the goal of preventing the development of a money-based royalty that lords it over the rest of the people. Readers of history know that just such a royalty developed in Europe, resulting in bloody revolutions and mass migrations by the serfs to the New World — which became the United States of America.
Using the power of the people through government to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor and to give most people a fair shot at a good life is not socialism. It can be a capitalistic democracy that works for the great majority of its citizens.
That’s what we have built. We should try very hard to keep it.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
