An honest leftie? In the American MEDIA? Who’d a thunked it!
Lawrence O’Donnell: Yes. And I’ve been a liberal for so long that I still call myself one. I didn’t change to “progressive.”
THR: But you have referred to yourself as a socialist.
O’Donnell: Yes. A practical European socialist which, as it turns out, we all are, if you know that Social Security … is a socialist program, and that Medicare is a socialist program and that all economies of the world are mixed with some capitalism and some socialism and they just vary in their degrees.
THR: So you have no objection when conservatives call President Obama a socialist?
O’Donnell: No. But if they’re honest about it, they would call themselves socialist, too. Newt Gingrich preserved the socialist state. He never once introduced a bill to repeal Medicare.THR: Would you object if a Republican introduced such a bill?
O’Donnell: No, because I think it’s an honest position. I hope Rand Paul does if he becomes a senator. There are people who honestly hold themselves in opposition to socialism. But there isn’t a single one in the U.S. Congress who does.
True enough.
So believing in some modest aspects of the welfare state (as it currently exists in the UK or elsewhere) makes one a socialist.
This contributes nothing useful. Pretty much the same could be said of most socialists WRT free market economics and WRT capitalism.
The man (Lawrence O’Donnell) speaks sense of a sort:- we do all live in mixed economies. But to whom is that news?
Only intellectual pygmies, or those trying over-hard to make an extreme point, claim validity for quantisation of opinion into the binary.
Best regards
Yes actually, it does. I think the point he makes that there is less distinction between the Republican and Democratic mainstream than either pretend is certainly not the ‘widely accepted’ view to most people in the USA and if you think otherwise, well, I would say you are simply wrong. Indeed much of the underpinning of the Tea Party phenomenon is that more people are belatedly coming to that realisation.
‘Modest’? Are you aware what portion of GDP the ‘modest’ socialism of things like the NHS consume?
Most american “liberals” take enormous umbrage at any suggestion that they, or any of their ideas, are socialist. It’s this whole “we are in the centre” dogma, trying to always pretend to be moderates and everyone else is an extremist.
This is also good and honest as well-
The resurgence of the term “progressive” is one of the clear indicators that the Anglosphere post-New Left has in fact entirely abandoned “european socialism” and returned to its Victorian era roots as a moralist puritan reform movement. Which is what makes them short-term scary, but long-term doomed.
It’s this whole “we are in the centre” dogma, trying to always pretend to be moderates and everyone else is an extremist.
I suppose it’s to be expected that that would work, since “extremist” is associated with terrorism due to the media penchant for referring to terrorists as “extremists”. I get what Barry Goldwater was going for with his “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” line, though I see why it didn’t work. The problem with the line is it needs to isolate the extremism within the liberty. Maybe it could be reworded as, “The extremest form of liberty is a virtue (and moderation in pursuit of vice is none of the government’s business).”
to the lunatic libertarian/anachist fringe any form of government is ‘socialism’ and there is no difference between America and north korea. thats why saying that Newt Gingrich is a ‘socialist’ is just dumb. Not even the dhimmicrats like Hussein Obama are real socialists though they are certainly a lot closer than the republicans.
O’Donnell is not “honest”, for example he claims there is “isn’t a single” person in the U.S. Congress who rejects the Welare State – that is only true in the sense that there are quite a few people in the House of Representatives who do (Ron Paul is not alone in this).
Nor is the Welfare State actually socialism – O’Donnell knows perfectly well what socialism is , and he most likely knows that Barack Obama is a socialist. But he chooses to confuse the issue by saying anyone not in favour of the repeal of all unconstitutional (although he does not use the word “unconstitional”) schemes tomorrow morning is a “socialist”, it is not “honesty” it is a deliberate confusion of the basic matters.
Ian B. – Progressivism as a Victorian moralist puritan reform movement. Not really – some Progressives (both in United States and Britain) were moralists, but most held even what seems like “Puritan” views for very unpuritan reasons. For example, Prohibition (to the Progressives – and remember, contrary to Hollywood and so on, Progressives had a big hand in it) was NOT a matter of personal morality, or even of “getting right with God” – quite the contrary, Prohibition (like all Progressive Reform movements) was about the “good of society” the benefit of the collective.
Theologically those Progressives who claimed to be Christians (not all did of course), was very much part of the “Social Gospel” about as far away from Puritan (Low Church – in British terms) theology as it is possible to be.
Remember the orginal “Fundementalists” (most people seem to have forgotten that the “Fundementals” essays did not include attacks on biological evolution – for the simple reason that most of the original “fundementalists” SUPPORTED this scientific theory) were utterly opposed to the Progressive Social Gospel – both theologically and politically.
Even in such matters as eugenics it was not just Roman Catholics who opposed the Progressives – it was Protestant “Fundementalists” also.
Also philosophically Progressives in the United States REJECTED “Victorian moralism” – they openly supported the Pragmatist School that held (in opposition to the Common Sense school) that there was no such thing as objective good and evil (that these were just matters of taste) and indeed that there was no objective right or wrong (no objective truth or falsehood) in anything.
Why do you think that leftists like O’Donnell lie without shame – they do that because they believe that “truth” is simply anything that is usefull to them. They do not need to be Marxists to hold that (indeed a classical Marxist holds there is such a thing as objective truth – although only the final class in the final society can see it), William James and the other pramatists (perhaps Pierce, but certainly Dewey in his youth) taught this.
However, I agree with Ian B. that Progressivism is doomed (just as Socialism is doomed) – but not because it is “moralist”, it is doomed because it will produce economic breakdown.
Objective truth does exist – and one example of objective trugh (which is true whether any one believes it or not – and whether it is “usefull” to anyone or not) is that Progressivism and Socialism do not work – period.
The Welfare State will indeed produce bankruptcy and tham may lead to socialism (please note – the Welfare State is not socialism in its self, the Cloward and Piven idea is for it to produce economic breakdown which in turn leads to full socialism), but then socialism will just make things WORSE (not better).
This is the fundemental flaw in socialism that Progressives can ignore (because they tell themselves that they are not socialists – so although they endlessly expand the state they need not worry their heads with what the consequences of socialism would be) and Marxists are under a direct ban (from Karl Marx himself) from examaning.
Marxists are forbidden to examine in advance how socialism will actually work in detail, in the sense of the fundemental problems with it, – as this would be “unscientific” “utopean socialism” according to Karl Marx. Thus these supposedly “scientific” socialists can totally ignore objective reality (without formally claiming that objective reality does not exist – they need not be Pramatists). However, refusing to examine the fundemental problems of socialism (and attacking with hated and contempt anyone who does) does not make these fundemental problems vanish. They continue to exist – as every socialist system discovers in practice.
2+2 does not = 5. That is the real reason the left are doomed in the long term.
P.S.
I am not a fan of “liberals” – even in the 19th century to say “liberals = libertarians” is not true in many cases.
However, for someone like O’Donnell to call himself a “liberal” is a sickening lie. Even the worst liberals (even “Radical Joe” in Birmingham in the 1860’s) understood that the vast majority of income and wealth must be in private hands (not “distributed” by the state – or some other “public power”) if a society is to be in any real sense “liberal”.
Socialists in the United States started to call themselves “liberal” in the 1920s – partly because they had a “liberal” (as in “broad”) view of the powers of the Federal government – but it was NOT mostly for that reason. The real reason was as a deliberate DECEPTION – because they knew how most people would react to socialism, i.e. to the doctrine of murder and plunder, under the Red Flag of blood and death.
“But O’Donnell does not believe that” – perhaps he does not (I would have to talk to him, or read more of his stuff to know for sure), but I do know that anyone who is so slippery with words (as the quotations show) is not to be trusted.
So certainly not an “honest leftie” – they do exist, but Mr O’Donnell is not one of them.
Of course there is a difference between the USA and North Korea… a bit like comparing influenza and bubonic plague… but supporting a vast regulatory welfare state is indeed socialist… care to take a guess at the size of the US government’s slice of the pie?
And are you saying the huge number of ‘entitlement’ programmes in the USA are something other than socialist redistribution of wealth? And how would you describe Bush’s and John McCain’s support for the vast transfer of money called “the bailout” with its associated de facto nationalisation of a huge chunk of the financial system? The term “socialists” works… but then so does “fascist” actually, at least in strictly economic terms. Is that your idea of how things work in a “Free Enterprise” system?
And face it, step back from Gingrich’s very splendid rhetoric and ask just how much did he actually try to roll back the state as opposed to just slow its growth?
No that is exactly what modern socialism is 🙂
Paul, you’ve read enough of my maunderings- here and on the Eternal Thread at the LA and Gawd knows where else to know what I’m talking about. And you’ve got enough book learnin to know full well that the Progressives were a later stage of the religiously fervent social reform movements of the nineteenth century, directly descended, with technocratic idealism taking the place of God as a direct driving force. But just to pick up on one thing-
How the gosh darn hell can you possibly try to pretend that Puritanism was something about “personal morality”? and not “the good of society” and “the benefit of the collective”?
This is the mob that launched a ruinous civil war on England just to impose their will on society. This is the mob that set up a ghastly military dictatorship that imposed social rules on the whole of society including the legendary “No dancing” and “no sports” because they’re bad for people.
If you really can’t see the genesis of the modern socially authoritarian state in the Cromwell regime, if you can’t see that puritan societies in England and the New World were characterised by authoritarianism and social engineering “for the good of society” then I don’t know what to suggest. Do you know why Cromwell’s funeral was the gayest, jolliest day in England since the Civil War?
He was Tony Blair with a big wart, that’s why.
Taking from the young poor to give to the old rich is NOT “socialism.” It’s worse.
Can you name a communist regime not run by old men in ugly limos, KipEsquire?
Unfair Paul. He is honest. Honest about being a “liberal” and I am pretty sure the author of this blog post was talking about that. As Ian B pointed out most people in his position maintain the absurd fiction that they are from a priestly media class of utterly impartial reporters, dedicated to impartial truth and blind justice.
That this guy admits he is a socialist, in America, is honest. Everything else about him may be loathsome but kudos for being straight about where he is coming from.
Also Paul, reading through what you wrote again, I’m not sure what definition of “socialism” you’re using if you can say that the welfare state isn’t socialism. You seem to be using is as a synonym for marxian communism. Socialism is a wide, general term, like “conservatism”.
One way of looking at it is to see it as literally social-ism. The idea of social government. All governments have some element of that, of course, so we can say that a socialist state is one whose driving force is socialism.
I think you may be emphasising Marx a bit too much. Our enemy stopped keeping copies of Das Kap under their tear-stained pillows decades ago, and we as libertarians need to adapt to that reality. I don’t believe you could point to a single significant person on the modern left who wants a workers’ state. The socialism of the modern left is not marxist.
Imagine Marx and Engels falling finding a time machine and coming to the modern era, and going to a meeting of leftists. Surrounded by talk of gay rights, Islamophobia and saving polar bears, they’d be dumbfounded.
Nothing to do with welfare state, with Marxism being yet something else entirely. Paul seems to be right on the mark – the popularly-prevalent semantic confusions notwithstanding.
Alisa, the word socialism has been applied to a wide variety of movements; christian socialism for instance, which was primarily about charitable work among the poor and stuff like that. The Labour Party in Britain dabbled with nationalisation but never went for it wholeheartedly beyond nationalisation of key industries under Attlee. Indeed Eleanor Marx and her acolytes walked out of the party because it wasn’t marxist. It has always though undeniably been a socialist party. As Keir Hardie said,
“I have said, both in writing and from the platform many times, that the impetus which drove me first into the Labour movement, and the inspiration which has carried me on in it, has been derived more from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth than from all other sources combined.”
All it shows, Ian, is that you are not alone in dismissing semantic clarity to the detriment of truth.
Alisa, it does no good to deform the language to confirm one’s own expectations.
My point exactly.
The ‘welfare state’ means providing for people’s ‘welfare’ via state managed economics transfers… redistribution of wealth from producers to favoured designated ‘poor’. In what sense is that not a ‘socialist’ undertaking?
Redistribution of wealth according to politically derived formulae is what modern socialism does rather than immediate wholesale directly nationalisation. Certainly the ‘Welfare state’ is an aspect of socialism rather than the totality of socialism, but in the last 50 years in the Western World it is the primary tactical application of it.
So now the welfare state is called ‘modern socialism’? That was my point about semantics: words no longer mean what they originally meant. And so we arrive at a situation where everyone who is in power now or had been in power throughout the previous century, is/was a socialist, just as everyone is a fascist too, plus a capitalist fascist at that – so much for clarity. I will concede though that it is very likely that O’Donnell shares in this semantic confusion, and so he may still be an honest lefty, rather than an evil one. And at least we can all agree that O is a Marxist – or can we?
Alisa, there’s no “originally meant” about it. Socialism has a long history and has covered many political ideas. Lots of words are similarly vague. Take “Christianity” for instance; I recently defined it as “believing that Jesus is the son of God”, then Paul Marks pointed out, what about Unitarians? It’s very hard to find a good precise definition, but it doesn’t mean the word is useless. Just rather grey. The same is true of the word “socialism”.
Actually this is a classic leftist trap that is well worth not falling into.
“Well we have not engaged in wholesale nationalisation like the Labour party in the 1960 so we are not socialists…”
Oh yes they are. All that has changed in the tactics and methods to eventually bring the means of production under state control. It does not matter what they call themselves if the underpinning objectives remain the same and allowing them to change titles like chameleons is a huge tactical error, much like conceding the term “liberal” to people who are utterly illiberal.
The Welfare State is in fact a legacy of the day when Labour were indeed ‘classic’ old school socialists who simply nationalised whole swathes of British industry in a way Marx would have approved of heartily. The failure of mass nationalisation lead to the privatisation of the Thatcher era but it was an incomplete revolution because it left the Welfare State in place.
Indeed the Welfare State is the poison legacy that marks the failure of Thatcher’s incomplete revolution to fundamentally change the ground rules and break with the socialist core that remains at the heart of the British state.
So you are saying that the welfare state (by which I understand “free” this and that, paid for by the taxpayer) is a means to nationalization of the means of production? How so?
How can it not be so? The ‘crown jewel’ of the Welfare State is the NHS, i.e. the socialised (i.e. nationalised) medical system. Moreover it is so massively propagandised that most Britons think that the alternative to the NHS is no healthcare. Likewise council housing, a vast system of state funded dependency that the alternative to which is, in the minds of most Brits, mass homelessness.
These welfare state programs not only consume huge amounts of the national wealth, but also directly nationalise vast swathes of the economy (the vast majority of UK medical care and low income housing)… so how is that not ‘socialist’? There is a great deal more to socialism than state run car companies.
OK, although it is a bit of a stretch to see the NHS and council housing as productive industries (such as car makers). Now, what about the US, to which O’Donnell refers?
They would be if they were in the private sector.
Medical care and housing and not ‘productive industries’?????
I said it’s a bit of a stretch, at least in my mind:-)
What about the US?
Er, what about the US? I do not understand your question.
Oh and how is nationalisation of medical care and a big chunk of the housing market “a bit of a stretch”?
If I understand you (and I may not) a nationalised car industry would be socialist but nationalised housing and medical care (i.e. The Welfare State) would not be socialist. Why?
There is no NHS in the US, and nothing else that had been nationalized before Obama (except for education?) – so how does the US fit the definition of socialism as ‘tactics and methods to eventually bring the means of production under state control’?
Anyway, feel free to drop it if you like. I prefer a semantic separation of ‘socialism’ and ‘welfare state’. I think it better serves clarity on substance, but I am well aware that I am in a minority (won’t be the first time:-))
Perry, your last comment did not show up before I posted mine. Yes, I concede the NHS and the housing point, it’s just still difficult for me to think of it as an industry.
The way I understand ‘welfare state’ is taking taxpayers money and giving it to someone else (through pensions, loans, social security etc.), without actually producing anything.
OK, I get it now. If all these functions can be performed by private players (as they can), then they can be seen as industries having been appropriated by the state. You win:-)
There were many socialists before Karl Marx, Ian B.
But they did know what socialism was – collective ownership.
Handing out “bread and games” to the Roman mob was not “socialism” – although it was demented.
Even if these principles had been applied to the entire Roman world (not just to Rome and a few other cities) it would not have been “socialism” – it would have been bankuptcy and breakdown.
Although, admittedly, socialism (collective ownership of the means of production) leads to the same thing.
The source of collectism coming from the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Errr Plato and the others had never heard of Jesus.
Nor had the people who took so much production into State ownership in ancient Egypt and many other places.
Various socieites have tried socialism (even late Imperial Rome tried a bit of it – with state owned factories and even big state owned farms, although it was still not the norm) it always ends badly.
Perry’s point.
Is America libertarian – no.
Was it libertarian even in the 1950s – no.
Does that make America socialist – no.
There is also another point to be kept in mind here.
The America of the 1950s was big government – but sustainable big government (it was not even a Welfare State – let alone socialism).
Sociologists like Parsons were actually correct when they described American society (remember they were describing the America of the 1950s) as functional.
I would have argued that the American government was much too big (in size and scope), but I would not have argued that American society was on the road to collapse.
It is only with the 1960s “Great Society” programs and later changes (the last changes made by Barack Obama of course) that the United States is formally committed to bankruptcy and economic and social breakdown (it was NOT thus committed in the 1950s – and, indeed, it could have changed direction till quite recently, theoretically speaking America could actually still change direction – although I would argue that practical politics means it is too late).
And I repeat – bankruptcy and breakdown are NOT socialism. Although they may be used as an excuse to impose socialism (as Cloward and Piven intended).
A workable definition of a socialist, for us, would be someone who turns to government first to ‘solve’ things if they see any sort of problem, whereas libertarians would first see if the market could sort it out.
For instance, we don’t need NHS. There are plenty of other ways to insure people’s health. These would be private enterprizes, suitable to their regions and customers, not a one-size-fits-all ‘service’.
And would there really have been no housing for workers if the councils hadn’t provided it? That’s not likely!
Whatever the program, our opponents will always try to expand government powers, since centralisation is their ultimate goal.
Socialism is communism designed by capitalists.
By redistributing income rather than wealth, it meets the proles expectation that somebody else’s money will be given to them, the truly wealthy’s expectation that their capital will not be touched and cripples the higher earners who who are only going to be anti-government trouble makers anyway.
My nomination for SQOTD.