Can We Talk about "Socialism"?

I fear the Democrat party is walking — heck, running — headlong into a trap. Embracing the label of “Socialism” is the surest path to re-electing Donald Trump. More to the point: it isn’t the right label to describe what most of us seek.

As Michael Smerconish, Chris Cuomo and other reasonable commentators have pointed out: Socialism is defined as government ownership of the means of production. That is to say government owns and operates all businesses and industries from the telecom companies and the media, to the steel mills, farms, restaurants and barbershops at the logical end of the spectrum. While there may be a handful of folks on the edges who are naive enough to think that sounds great, the vast majority of progressives don’t want anything of the sort.

Similarly, you won’t find many conservative Republicans who think the only thing government should do is provide defense against external threats, which is what a truly “free-market” system would be. Eliminating laws and law enforcement, fire protection, public roads, sewer systems, electric grids, waste disposal, water, etc to allow the “free market” and private enterprise to reach its fullest potential might sound appealing to the anarcho-capitalists out there, but I don’t think many conservatives would be on-board with that.

Sensible people recognize that all of us should be required to pay for the provision of essential services, protections and infra-structure that allow markets to function well because we all benefit from them directly or indirectly. The vast majority of progressives, moderates and conservatives agree that market competition and profit incentives encourage innovation, hard work and a vibrant economy. Nobody wants to eat at a government run restaurant.

We disagree about what services should be viewed as “essential” in allowing markets and the people to flourish. Conservatives reasonably worry that if everyone is guaranteed the essentials of life — food, shelter, transportation, medical care, personal safety — people will lack an incentive to work and the whole market will collapse absent a workforce. Progressives can and should reasonably counter this by arguing that if children grow up without adequate food, shelter, personal safety, education and healthcare they cannot meaningfully compete in the marketplace. Market capitalism works because of competition and if half of the population is prevented from competing while 10% is given a get-out-of-competition pass due to inherited wealth and privilege the market cannot work at maximum efficiency.

The “right to compete” should be the label progressives adopt. Everyone should have a reasonable opportunity to achieve economic success and growing up with the basic essentials is necessary to have a fair shot. Incentive to work comes from people’s desire to have more than the basics, which means we are NOT advocating equality of outcomes. In fact, we cannot even reasonably argue for equality of opportunity. Plato elegantly demonstrated that “equality” would necessitate having all children raised in an identical environment — meaning taken from their parents and raised by the state — and I don’t think anyone would favor that.

Rather, as Robert Reich argued, what we need is to make Capitalism work for everybody, not just those at the top. Over the last 35+ years the rules of the game have been twisted by the games’ past winners to make it nearly impossible for 50% of the population to do better than tread water. Before the 1980s CEOs were expected to balance the needs of shareholders against the needs of employees and the community in which they work. Since then business schools have trained people to believe that a CEO’s only obligation is to maximize returns for the shareholders. That’s not good for the population, nor is it good for the health and innovation of the market. We have to un-rig the game.