SOCIALISM FOR BEGINNERS

[Omaha Steve]

http://inthesetimes.com/features/abcs-of-socialism-for-beginners.html


The radical Left is becoming more mainstream—and conservatives are taking note.

BY RICHARD SEYMOUR
ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF PHIL WRIGGLESWORTH/JACOBIN
AUGUST 2016 ISSUE | JULY 7, 2016

IS IT POSSIBLE TO BUILD SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY? Setting aside this old doctrinal debate, most Marxists would have answered “no” without hesitation if that country were the United States. Yet here socialism is, rearing its head, fist aloft, in a country that was, for most of the 20th century, violently anti-socialist.

It is not that the Left is particularly strong anywhere in Europe or North America. Rather, the chronic dysfunctions of the neoliberal order have become acute. Suddenly, parties and leaders from previously marginal positions can experience tremendous surges simply by articulating popular discontent. So it is with Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and to an extent, Syriza and Podemos. The name of socialism is far less tainted than that of capitalism: 58 percent of young people in the United States see the former as the more humane system, according to a February poll. And “full communism” has even become a half-ironic refrain among the political youth, whose diligent meme-making helped turn a rumpled 74-year-old into an internet celebrity.

This is an exuberant state of affairs for a listless Left and a source of gnawing anxiety for the Right. Both camps hope to win the hearts and minds of an audience that may be newly receptive to socialism but has little practical knowledge of it. Two books out this summer suggest how each side may attempt to sway the red-curious millennial.

The Right insists that if today’s youth are skeptical of capitalism, it’s because they are simply unfamiliar with the horrors of its alternatives. Drawing on Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Problem with Socialism rehashes the neoliberal critique of socialism as a necessarily statist, tyrannical, inefficient system. His arguments are wearisomely familiar, his observations trite. DiLorenzo relies primarily on sweeping generalizations about what “all worldly experience” tells us. Were you aware, for example, that socialization always increases the costs of healthcare? Never mind that the United States spends 17.1 percent of its GDP on healthcare, compared to 10.4 percent in Canada and 9.1 percent in the U.K.

FULL story at link.