Democratic socialism: We already know it works

This piece was originally published on Patreon

For the first time since its inception, socialism is not a dirty word.

And try as they might to compromise its integrity, critics know they are unable to address the concept on its merits, because democratic socialism offers policies most people would actually vote for, epitomised by the success of Ocasio Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and the election of Lopez Obrador in Mexico.

So they are forced to resort to the same old play book of character assassination and class warfare and spurious allegations.

But too few of us really understand what democratic socialism is, though at least three generations have lived through one form of it or another. Yet we have come to lazily accept those ‘better days’ as the best capitalism had to offer.

The great irony is that the prosperity that transformed America and its allies into robust first-world nations is owed not to capitalism, but to democratic socialism whose policies, (though not without their flaws), helped shape the better part of the 19th and 20th centuries. But we’ll get to that shortly.

What is socialism?

Socialism is not what occurs when all industry is owned by the state, that’s communism.

True socialism is when workers own the means of production. It is the co-op model for the global economy. It opposes private profits and believes that private ownership constrains economic planning and leads to irrational decision making that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a small minority.

Put simply, if the work you do results in profits for the company that employs you, you should be entitled to a share of those profits. When all workers hold some kind of equity in their own employment, companies and businesses are structured democratically where all staff are involved in operational decision making and there is greater incentive for productivity and efficiency. Socialism gives workers proverbial skin in the game. Work is no longer just a job that people can punch in and out of, but an investment in their own financial futures.

But democratic socialism doesn’t even go that far, embracing a public / private ownership model to guarantee full employment.

And, as I have written before, it rightly acknowledges the role of government as the private sector’s bank and offers corporate incentives like tax cuts and subsidies if it supports business and employment. (The private sector has been enjoying the benefits of corporate socialism for years. Yet somehow it objects when they are directed towards workers and households).

What is democratic socialism?

Democratic socialism believes that employment, education and health care are a universal human right, along with the right to organise into unions. It recognises there are significant conflicts of interest in the way the global economy is currently structured.

It advocates for full employment and the right to meaningful work that covers the basic costs of living.

It opposes the use of gender and racial discrimination, coercion, brutality and violence to defend the status quo.

It believes in the responsibility of government to plan economies to ensure sustainable employment, and an equitable distribution of resources in a way that ensures a basic quality of life for the greatest number of people. (Besides which, real democratic socialism recognises that the wealthy needn’t pay a cent more in tax to ensure that, to quote Ocasio-Cortez, “nobody should be too poor to live”).

It recognises the existence of an ever fragmenting class system and advocates for policy that address the gross inequality that pervades the current economic order of, to paraphrase journalist Elliot Gabriel, “monopoly-finance and surveillance capitalism, commodifying and intruding into every aspect of existence.”

This is not a new or radical concept. In fact, much of the developed world has benefited greatly from democratic socialism since at least the end of WWII.

Democratic socialism: We already know it works

The thing is, we already know democratic socialism works. Our parents, grand-parents and great-grandparents were all beneficiaries of its policies, before they pulled the proverbial drawbridge up behind them. Social Security. Medicare. The minimum wage. All the result of democratic socialism. The New Deal was a form of democratic socialism, (but in order for it to pass Congress, it was legally structured to exclude African Americans and other minorities, Roosevelt’s unforgivable concession to the South).

Post-War public spending & job guarantees across the US, UK and Australia. Women’s suffrage. The Voting Rights Act. The right to form unions and job programs for the unemployed:

Democratic. Socialism.

These things all helped to create and enrich the middle class, without which we would still be mired in Great Depression style living standards.

Whether they know it or not, white America has long been the beneficiary of democratic socialism, while the rest of the country, and the world, has been forced to live off its table scraps. Perhaps the wave of white supremacist sentiment sweeping the globe can be interpreted as the white middle class being forced to confront for the first time, a significant decline in living standards that most of us have long been accustomed to.

Yet, instead of recognising they have been lumped in with the rest of us, too many conservatives, Trump supporters and out-and-out racists have the audacity to blame immigrants, black people, women, the LGBTIQA and ‘political correctness’ for their economic dispossession instead of recognising that the system was always designed to put workers at a disadvantage, and the remnants of the white middle class are simply its latest victims. Welcome to the real world.

One would hope that, despite our political differences, instead of turning on each other, we should all be aiming our vitriol and discontent at the system itself, and those whose deliberate acts of legislation has led to what anthropologist, professor David Graeber describes as “managerial feudalism”: a system so precarious and with so few rights for workers that it has forced upon us a great compliance.

Graeber argues that the very structure of the job market is a long-standing political project and form of social control that systematically extracts wealth and resources, channeling it to the barons of industry, creating a permanent pool of unemployed that it makes alternative employment so difficult to come by that it keeps workers just insecure enough that they cannot rebel either against government or the conditions of their employment. (And thus, we turn on each other, instead).

The greatest trick late stage capitalism has ever played, is convincing the public it has always been this way. But in reality, over the last 30–40 years we have witnessed the great dismantling of the democratic socialist state, and watched as it was slowly replaced by financialisation and corporatocracy.

We are only just beginning to see the true nature of capitalism as more than half of America’s population now lives below the poverty line, while the underclass in the UK and Australia continue to grow.

Millennials may not remember — or even have been alive for — the last drops of prosperity that trickled through the 80s and 90s. Regardless, it is young people that are now driving the engine of democratic socialism and are responsible for its growing popularity.

Many may not have been alive for the New Deal or post-war job guarantees, but millennials are the first generation to experience less prosperity than their parents, grand-parents, or great-grandparents.

We have lived through the privatisation of schools and publicly owned assets. Older millennials have lived through two major financial crises, and two Gulf Wars. We’ve seen the cost of basic health care become prohibitive to all but the wealthiest of our communities. We know it’s harder now than almost during any other time in history to find a full time job, and even if we’re lucky enough to hold one down, it’s unlikely to cover the cost of living and thus requires us to plunge ourselves into ever more debt just to keep the lights and heat on.

As I mentioned before, democratic socialism is not a new concept. Government once existed to serve the needs of the great majority. Finally, it seems more of us are coming to the conclusion that if it was good enough for our grandparents, and it’s good enough for the private sector, then it’s good enough for the rest of us.

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