“Barack Obama is a socialist.”
Heard that one before? Of course you have. In fact if polling is
to be believed, it’s more likely than not that you have accepted
this premise at some point in the not too distant past.
Two summers ago a
poll conducted by Democratic strategists James Carville
and Stan Greenberg found that 55 percent of registered voters
nationwide believed the term socialist accurately applied to Obama.
In fact 33 percent of respondents — a third of all registered
voters in the nation — believed the term applied to Obama “very
well.”
More recently a Pew Center survey on
some of our nation’s most commonly used ideological labels revealed
that 60 percent of Americans have a negative impression of the word
“socialism.”
But is Obama a socialist? And if he’s not — what is he?
Certainly there is a compelling case to be made that Obama is a
socialist in the contemporary sense — much like the French
Socialists, who are proposing massive tax hikes on the wealthy
after securing the presidency and majorities in
France’s Sénat and Assemblée
Nationale.
Europe is littered with such tax-and-spend parties — including
Germany’s Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands and Spain’s Partido Socialista
Obrero Español (both of which ruled coalition governments
in their countries until 2009 and 2011, respectively).
But is 21st century European socialism — which has led to
a full-blown recession and pushed the world to the brink of a
second global financial crisis — really socialism in the way that
Karl Marx envisioned it?
Obama has never advocated doctrinaire socialism (which is based
on government ownership of private property and the means of
production). Certainly he has made good on his promise to “spread
the wealth around” via unprecedented government intervention in the
free market, but he cannot be called a socialist in the mold of
Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro or Kim Jong-Il.
“What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward,
is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving
ownership in private hands,” columnist Thomas Sowell wrote recently.
“That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright
ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own
businesses in the private sector.”
Sound familiar? This is precisely what happened during the
recent recession. For example, government-mandated loans aimed at
boosting homeownership were clearly among the root causes of the
economic downturn - but when the sub-prime bubble burst blame
was placed exclusively on “corporate greed.” Of course at the same
time politicians were absolving themselves of any responsibility,
they were forcing taxpayers to subsidize massive bailouts of these
“greedy” financial institutions.
So if Obama isn’t a socialist, what is he? Economically speaking
it’s far more accurate to say that he is a fascist — a supporter
of dirigisme, in which government manages the economy
through central planning, not collective ownership. Fascism did not
seek to stamp out the innovative, wealth-creating potential of
profit-seeking investment and entrepreneurship - instead it sought
to channel those innovations (and funnel that wealth) to the good
of the state.
“In fascist Italy the state pays for the blunders of private
enterprise,” Italian social critic Gaetano Salvemini wrote in
the mid-1930s.
When business was good, “profit remained to private initiative.”
However when downturns came (as they inevitably do), “the
government added the loss to the taxpayer’s burden.”
“Profit is private and individual,” Salvemini wrote. “Loss is
public and social.”
This is the basis of fascism’s “third way” between laissez-faire
capitalism and Marxism. It’s also precisely the economic system we
see at work in America today, a centralized bureaucratic oligarchy
in which farm subsidies, investments in “green jobs,” Wall Street
bailouts, Export-Import Bank subsidies and numerous other
taxpayer-funded incentives manipulate the market to serve specific
political purposes.
Obviously the fascist analogy isn’t perfect. Unlike Obama,
fascists abhorred class warfare (and labor’s efforts to foment it)
because such societal divisions ran counter to their nationalist
ideology. And while fascist economic policies can certainly
perpetuate the redistribution of wealth, they also tend to create
powerful privileged elites that leverage tax dollars and political
favors so as to manipulate the market in their favor.
So is Obama’s brand of 21st century socialism/
nouveau fascism really “more insidious” than pure socialism, as
Sowell suggests? Yes, because unlike socialism - the public
sector never “takes a loss,” as the recent bureaucratic bailouts
made clear.
Also consider this: Is any property really “private” if the
government can take it based on little more than a whim? And is any
sector of the economy really “private” as long as government can
swoop in and set its prices and production quotas? And finally, is
any market truly “free” if government can compel citizens to make
specific purchases?
Of course not — all of which makes Obama’s ideology dangerous
no matter what label we slap on it.
