Day 1172 – The Three ISMs
Saturday April 4, 2020
211 Days until the election on November 3rd
291 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
I don’t like to use the word socialism or pretty much any word ending in ‘ism” because it has to be defined by whomever is using it, and it is misdefined, or defined very differently by those opposed to the person or group using it originally. That’s how you get to terms like antidisestablishmentarianism ( but not Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch* which is the name of a former town in Wales of which only the abandoned train station remains )
*And yes, I know how to pronounce it.**
** “Slan-Fair-Postwingus-gullgerah-drobwith-santasillio-go-go-go-goch”
There are three ISMs I would like to talk about today:
Capitalism – Individuals (and corporations) helping themselves.
Socialism – Individuals and corporations being helped by their government
Marxism – Individuals banding together to form an economic unit (and perhaps run the government)
All three suffer from some sort of drawback. All three have advantages. All three are used by their proponents to bludgeon the other two with the drawbacks of the system being bludgeoned.
In our political discourse Marxism rarely comes up other than a quote here or there. e.g. “Religion is the opiate of the people.”
What most people forget (but not you my brilliant readers because you are – well, brilliant) is that Marx was a good newspaper man and he reported on the political goings on in Europe during the time of our Civil War. It is believed that Lincoln read his columns and that informed our President of how to handle various European situations. (I also wonder how Marx living in a one room apartment with his wife and maid managed to get the maid pregnant.)
So let’s look at capitalism. One can say we are a capitalist society and not get stoned; don’t try that with the word socialism as Bernie keeps demonstrating. Yes, we have to point out that the socialism Bernis is talking about is what is going on in Europe, not the socialism that was going on in Europe. Blah, blah, blah.
Michale Lewis, in his book “The Fifth Risk,” points out that in the midwest where they grow wheat and corn, Senators out there are opposed to socialism, but try and take away their grain subsidies and they become socialist real quick.
And lots of Republican politicians like to talk about freedom and capitalism and letting people be free to make as much money as they can via their own initiative and hard work. Blah, blah, blah. In every example I’ve ever heard of them pointing to someone being successful, there has been some form of government regulation, assistance, intervention.
Unfettered capitalism leads to a concentration of power into the hands of a few and they take advantage of that power to the detriment of others. The same is true, more abstractly of socialism. Some folks like the idea of a strongman coming in “to clean things up.” The problem with that scenario is they don’t leave. Mussolini, Castro, Billy Jack ( Okay. he never got his chance. He was a fictional character, but his real life star ran for President with the idea that he’d become President “clean things up,” then hand it over to the VP to run things after that. See the movie! I would like to see a President call a bunch of fools into a meeting, say, “I’m sorry but now I’m going to have to take care of this,” take off his shoes and socks and run in a circle kicking them all in the mouth. [That btw is the whole premise of the Billy Jack movie.] )
Or as Tocqueville said (it was him wasn’t it) “Power corrupts, Complete power corrupts completely.”
Of these systems, these ISMs, when taken to extreme don’t work very well. And any of these systems can find cases that fail at any given point in their trajectory.
There is also the role of the government in helping the people they govern and the economy of their country. Governments have two ways to help (or hurt) an economy. They can buy stuff (called fiscal policy.) And they can print money (called monetary policy). PS – They can also take money out of the economy via selling bonds to decrease the amount of available cash in the system and thus tamp down inflation (also called monetary policy.)
I am not an ISM guy. I am a “What works” guy. To be specific I’m a “what works now” guy. I don’t want it called Capitalism, or Socialism, or Marxism, or Catholicism (Wait? How’d that get in here? Never mind.)
If you want to see the failure of capitalism look at The Great Depression, The Great Recession, or any modern Republican administration since WWII (except Eisenhower, who was lucky enough to inherit the great programs of Roosevelt and have no industrial competition because the rest of the world was in shambles.)
The failure of the Republican administrations has gotten more and more pronounced, and more strident, as their administrations have moved along. Thus their motives have become more obvious, and their real benefactors more revealed. They are in it for themselves. They are controlled by the very rich. The feed at the trough and now they make no bones about it.
The worst part of that is that now, with the Trump administration they don’t even understand the basic concepts or premises of the Federal government.
We are in the worst pandemic that perhaps this country has ever seen, and one of the worst economic downturns ever, and we have the people in the administration throwing masks into the public square for the governors of the states to fight over like starving dogs. This is not the America I knew as a kid, or as an adult.
Hoover did a lot of good things as an individual, before becoming President. However, his approach and concept of what the country needed in the time of economic crisis did not help the country. It was the bold actions of a New York governor that pulled the country through the hard times. This man inspired a generation. He tried things. Not all of them were successful. But he tried things, he got the country moving. He understood the pain and suffering of people and he worked to alleviate it.
Many of the programs we take for granted today are due to his efforts.
Call them socialist, capitalist, marxist, or The New Deal.
It is time to try things. Bold things. Things that might work (You do that to discover what will work.)
Unfortunately, we have an administration that is weak, timid, and uneducated. There will be no help coming from them. We are left on our own. We can fight in the town square or we can band together to fight for all, and suffer some, but for the greater good.
It is not clear as of this writing where we will come out.
211 Days until the election on November 3rd
291 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS In the Tunnel
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