Aside from being a rhetorical attack line, Biden and Democrats in general as “socialist” needs further articulation.
(2022) “Today, 36% of U.S. adults say they view socialism somewhat (30%) or very (6%) positively, down from 42% who viewed the term positively in May 2019.” (Pew https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/09/19/modest-declines-in-positive-views-of-socialism-and-capitalism-in-u-s/ )
October 04, 2020,
One of President Donald Trump’s current attack lines on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is to brand him as a socialist. It was a label he deployed at the presidential debates on Tuesday, and it was reportedly one of the most commonly used words at the RNC in August.
Americans are divided on whether Joe Biden is indeed a socialist — 35% think he is while 37% think he isn’t. Republicans overwhelmingly say that he is (71% vs 11%), while Democrats tend not to think so (56% vs 18%).
Do Americans like socialism?
In a list of ten ideologies YouGov put to Americans, socialism ranked fifth in terms of favorability. Three in ten Americans (31%) have a favorable view of socialism, while 47% do not. Another 13% aren’t sure, and 10% don’t know what the term means in the first place.
By contrast, ‘capitalism’ is favored by 55%, ‘social democracy’ — the term often used outside America to describe the systems in place in Scandinavia — is favored by 45%, and ‘conservatism’ by 43%.
Least favorable are ‘totalitarianism’ (6%), ‘fascism’ (7%) and ‘authoritarianism’ (8%).
There will be some speculation about whether the state acts as a residual claimant on the profits generated by state-owned enterprises that are operated independent of government management.
Is it time to revisit revisit James Meade’s theory of “liberal socialism” in order to understand both “temporary nationalization” as a response to the financial crisis in the West and the Chinese experiment with “socialist market economy.
Is this the way in which full socialism gets implemented.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is described as a multi-sectoral market economy where the state sector plays the decisive role in directing economic development, with the eventual long-term goal of developing socialism.[1]
The socialist-oriented market economy is a product of the Đổi Mới economic reforms which led to the replacement of the centrally planned economy with a market-based mixed economy based on the predominance of state-owned industry. These reforms were undertaken to allow Vietnam to integrate with the global market economy. The term “socialist-oriented” is used to highlight the fact that Vietnam has not yet achieved socialism and is in the process of building the basis for a future socialist system.[2] The economic model is similar to the socialist market economy employed in the People’s Republic of China.
[…]
The socialist-oriented market economy is a multi-sectoral commodity economy regulated by the market, consisting of a mixture of private, collective and state ownership of the means of production. However, the state sector and collectively owned enterprises form the backbone of the economy. It is similar to the Chinese socialist market economy in that many forms of ownership, including cooperative/collective enterprises, communal, private and state ownership models co-exist in the economy, but the state sector plays a decisive role.[5]
Vietnam is the most pro-free-market country in a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center, with 95% of its citizens supporting a free market system.[7]
Originating in the Chinese economic reforms initiated in 1978 that integrated China into the global market economy, the socialist market economy represents a preliminary or “primary stage” of developing socialism.[3] Some commentators describe the system as a form of “state capitalism”,[4] while others describe it as an original evolution of Marxism, in line with Marxism–Leninism similar to the “New Economic Policy” of the Soviet Union, adapted to the cohabitation with a globalized capitalist system.[5]
[…]
The socialist market economy is presented by the CCP as an early stage in the development of socialism (this stage is variously called the “primary” or “preliminary” stage of socialism), where public ownership coexists alongside a diverse range of non-public forms of ownership. The CCP maintains that despite the co-existence of private capitalists and entrepreneurs with public and collective enterprise, China is not a capitalist country because the party retains control over the direction of the country, maintaining its course of socialist development.[1] Proponents of this economic model distinguish it from market socialism as market socialists believe that economic planning is unattainable, undesirable or ineffective and thus view the market as an integral part of socialism whereas proponents of the socialist market economy view markets as a temporary phase in development of a fully planned economy.[6]
Cui Zhiyuan traces the theoretical foundations of the socialist market economy to James Meade’s model of liberal socialism in which the state acts as a residual claimant on the profits generated by state-owned enterprises that are operated independent of government management.[4]
Chinese economist Cui Zhiyuan argues that James Meade’s model of liberal socialism is similar to China’s socialist market economy and can be used to make sense of the model. Meade’s model of market socialism involved public ownership of firms with independent management — with the state acting as a residual claimant to the profits generated by its enterprises, but without exercising control rights over the management and operations of its firms. This model has the advantage that the state would have a source of income independent of taxation and debt, enabling a reduction of the tax burden on individual incomes and the private sector while promoting greater equality. Cui points to the Chongqing experience with municipal state-owned enterprises enabling high social expenditure alongside low taxes and extremely high rates of growth as validation of the socialist market economy model. The Chongqing model used state enterprise profits to fund public services (including housing), providing the main source of public finance and enabling Chongqing to lower its corporate tax rate (15% compared to the 33% national corporate tax rate) to attract foreign investment.[4]
Three years ago Trump claims Biden was trying the same thing in 2020:
In his acceptance speech at the end of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Democratic Party rival Joe Biden of seeking to turn America into a socialist state.
Warning that Biden was a “Trojan horse for socialism,” Trump said the Dems candidates, Biden, and running mate Kamala Harris would push a socialist agenda that would destroy the American way of life.
In his typical scaremongering style, Trump said, “If you give power to Joe Biden, the radical left will defund police departments . . . no one will be safe.” He also implied that the Democrats support “anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flag-burners.
Apparently, it is a Republican script that had been agreed upon. In mid-July, Vice President Michael Pence cast Biden as a “Trojan horse for a radical agenda” and portrayed the 2020 election as a choice between “freedom and opportunity” or “socialism and decline.”
Trump thinks that many Americans still have the stereotypical view of Communism as a straitjacket system carried over from the Cold War era that pitted the U.S. against the Soviet Union.
In a Gallup poll published by Frank Newport on October 4, 2018, titled “The meaning of ‘Socialism’ to Americans Today,” 23 percent of Americans understood socialism as some form of equality. Most significantly, only 17 percent said socialism meant government control of business and the economy, which was half of those who had the same view in 1949.
Just like democracy has evolved over the years, socialism has also refined itself. Of course, China comes to mind in conversations about progressive socialism, which is why Trump is perennially painting a negative picture of the country to divert Americans’ attention from its viability.
https://ekklesiagora.medium.com/james-meades-middle-way-598c9e2d5ca0
James Meade was, perhaps, the most innovative social-democratic theorist of the 20th century. An economics professor at the London School of Economics and, later, at Cambridge University, he won a Nobel Prize in economics in 1977. His Wikipedia page notes that he is remembered for his theories related to international trade and economic growth, but there is no mention whatsoever of his role in shaping modern social democratic thinking. There is also no mention of his profound influence upon John Rawls. Even the online Encyclopedia Britannica entry for him fails to mention his unique contributions to social democratic theory. My goal here is to give a brief introduction to his contribution to social democratic theory.
Inequality thwarts the democracy of the marketplace and distorts price signals. If some people have too many votes relative to others, it allows them to manipulate prices and encode misinformation. The price system, therefore, becomes inefficient and, insofar as it is distorted, useless. If you want to use the pricing mechanism for rational economic planning, you need a relatively egalitarian distribution of wealth. Of course, you cannot have pure equality any more than you can have pure democracy — perfection is unobtainable. The pricing mechanism, although it needs an egalitarian distribution of money in order to function properly, also needs some relative inequality as well. People must be allowed to have some profit margin in order for the price system to function. Differences in prices will necessarily result in differences in the distribution of income and the relative profitability of one course of action over another helps determine prices.
