Calling names when all else fails as you sense you are losing a debate never has any fundamental, lasting effect. It’s usually off the mark anyway and by its nature, a fleeting insult. It may feel good for one’s 15 minutes of fame, but that’s it. If you have a whit of decency, it might even result in regret. Yet politicians seem to like it, particularly when it comes to attacking anything associated with public, government action.
Hence we have a March 2 statement from state Sen. Duey Stroebel’s office criticizing state involvement in vaccines, saying that COVID 19 vaccine distribution shows the “pitfalls of unchecked, government central planning…..” Or Sen. Ron Johnson telling Fox News on March 21 that Democrats want to flip his seat in order to “complete the socialization of America.” Or business woman Diane Hendricks, as quoted in a ProPublica report in Journal Sentinel on Aug. 12, saying she wants to stop the U.S. from becoming “a socialistic ideological nation.”
Perhaps she speaks from personal knowledge of socialism as she legally benefited in 2018 from $36 million in government-provided tax savings, according to the ProPublica report.
Think about it. If you get a tax break, use state or national parks, receive Social Security, drive on publicly funded roads, receive an agricultural subsidy or have discounted flood insurance, are protected by bankruptcy law, enjoy clean water, does this make one a socialist? Of course not. And assuming it did, is someone suggesting that socialists be sent off to reeducation camp?
Are attempts at bridging the urban-rural broadband gap with public funds “socialistic?” Such an endeavor, much needed in our rural areas, means sustaining our farming systems, rural tourist communities and schools.
Perhaps, as Mariana Mazzucato notes in her book, “The Entrepreneurial State,” such government-sponsored efforts can “crowd in” investment, meaning they stimulate private investment that otherwise would not have occurred in areas without government-supported projects like broadband.
These “public goods” are elements of a healthy economy that do not arise spontaneously from the forehead of the smoothly functioning marketplace, since the proper “signals” regarding demand and supply are not heard due to structural problems in the economy. These goods do not fit into a nice theory of the marketplace because they stand outside it in large part.
Socialism is the ownership of the means of production by the state, by government, which is not something that has ever proven efficient or successful as history has shown. That debate died in 1989.
In some of the countries I worked in, calling someone a socialist or even leftist could actually get you killed, and sometimes did. Having lived in the “socialist” republic of Sudan in the early 1980s, toured Poland during martial law in 1983, and worked in Nicaragua during the Ortega regime, futilely searching for a Coca-Cola, I feel confident we are not slouching towards “socialism.”
So why the popularity of the socialist epithet? Let’s be frank — labeling people and policy as “socialist” is an easy sound bite and, short term, may even be good politics. After all, socialism, central planning, indeed anything hinting of government regulation is a familiar refrain to a cold war generation that learned to fear declarations emanating from government. And that, as we see repeatedly from the right, is the point — fear. That’s the underlying goal — make people fear the provision of public goods by public institutions — such as parks, schools, roads, security, even voting places — as evidence of a dark, malign place, a “socialistic ideological nation.”
Yet public institutions, the government, “unelected bureaucrats” to use a Republican favorite phrase, need to step in with thoughtful policy initiatives on occasion. People deserve and need services, particularly those not magically provided by the marketplace. There is nothing “socialistic” about it. It’s just smart governance and public policy, offering opportunity where the market cannot do so efficiently. If critics wish to call that “socialism,” they would be wrong, but that’s their prerogative.
In my name-calling lexicon, I will continue to label it good governance.
Peter F. Kranstover spent 30 years as a foreign service officer with USAID in Latin America, Africa, Pakistan and Washington, D.C. He lives in Cedarburg.
