Listening to folk and reading blurbs on the Internet, it occurs to me that a lot of folk have difficulty distinguishing between socialism and being a social democrat, such as Bernie Sanders. As we learned from Sesame Street, “one thing is not like the other” similarities perhaps but not the same.
Some definitions from Wikipedia:
Socialism is a political ideology and movement which has proposed a set of social and economic measures, policies and systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
Social democracy is a political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving welfare state provisions, collective bargaining arrangements, regulation of the economy in the general interest, measures for income redistribution, and a commitment to representative democracy.[1][2][3] [italics [mine]
There you have it; in socialism the government owns the means of productions – companies, in a social democracies companies are privately owned but government works to ensure that there is an economic justice applied to the income derived from these companies through various ways. Perhaps it is best just to compare Russia to the Scandinavian countries. Russia is a socialist country that only recently has seen fit to use a bit of capitalism. The Scandinavian countries are social democracies that have successfully provided a high standard of living for all their citizens through social justice means.
In a recent Des Moines Register a poll showed that 43% of Iowans consider themselves to be socialists. Say What? Socialists? But they really aren’t socialists; they are social democrats like the Scandinavians and other European cousins. They want the wealth redistributed more equitably than it is now in our country.
Now, where are our presidential candidates in all of this? Bernie Sanders is easy. He clearly states he is a social democrat, and from the above definition we can now understand what that means. He is not a socialist, despite what name-calling takes place by his opponents.
Hillary Clinton calls herself a progressive democrat. Is that just another word for a Liberal? David Sirota explains the difference between the this way; he says, “there is a fundamental difference when it come to core economic issues. It seems to me that traditional ’liberals’ in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A ‘progressive’ are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.” Hmm, sounds a lot like a social democrat doesn’t it.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t real differences between Hillary and Bernie, there are. Bernie want a single payer medical system (socialized medicine), Hillary doesn’t; she wants to keep those insurance companies private.
What we have in this country and have had for a long time is a mixed economy. We combine capitalism, socialism, and social democratic ideas. We want free enterprise but we also want socialized medicine for retired folk and those of ill health. We want life insurance companies but we also want social security programs maintained. Most Republicans want that, so, in that sense they are social democrats.
There are a lot of folk today who profess that they really want to go back to frontier days and have as little government as possible. I find that a bit romantic and also naïve. The country has just changed too much over the years to go back to a pioneer type government. We are a big country and we need a big government to take care of the needs of citizens. Strangely I find that Republican administrations have grown the size of government and Democratic ones reduced it. Look at the numbers of recent administrations. But I wander off.
What I am interested in here is understanding what we mean when we throw terms around. Understanding the terms we understand who we are better and what our political concerns are. I suspect that most folk in the country want the social justice that a social democrat like Bernie Sanders promotes, but they may not support the name. So, if you ask them if they are a social democrat they will say, ‘no way.’ But if you lay out the programs a social democrat advocates such as minimum wages, higher taxes for the wealthy (progressive taxes), health care for all citizens, equal educational opportunities for all citizens and the like, they are for those things.
As for me, I’m a Communal Populist.
