h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was reading an article in Time magazine about the US election.

It was written by a Republican and one of the things he said was that America was on an inevitable movement towards European-style socialism.

I'm not too clued up on socialism so I have a question:

a) Why does America hate the idea of anything tinged as vaguely socialist? I know they have a history of opposing communism and I know they have a culture of working hard for yourself and your family and in general don't like the idea of big government programs, but the NHS got vilified when Obamacare was going through and many Americans seemed completely unable to see its myriad benefits over their style of privatised healthcare. How much of it is the media and the right wingers?

This thread is not intended as a 'bash America' thread, I'm just curious about how and why they think so differently about this issue (I'm thinking particularly of healthcare) than most Europeans. You'd be hard-pushed to find a Western European who would swap state healthcare for the American system, I should think.

Well, basically Elentari, it all comes from the right wing and the media... but I actually heard something today that made more sense then that even. A comedian said it is not Left against Right or Conservative against Liberal... It is Aristocracy against Democracy.

We are just like you but we presently are in a huge struggle to gain power to the people.

It's a sociological phenomenon. Early colonialists were protestant dissenters: they detested their European governments. Other, later European immigrants also generally detested their European governments for various reasons. Hence most of the US Yomericans come from dissenting stock that dislike / distrust government. Couple this with the ideals of Manifest Destiny, with each colonialist having a gun to kill / evict the indigenous "untermenschen", plus defend "their land" from other colonialists, then you have a "people" that are self-centred and mistrustful. Of course I simplify.

As I see it, America looks at Europe and sees massive welfare states which essentially bankrupt the host countries. I've seen it claimed that Britain has had to borrow money every single year bar two since 1945 because taxation goes nowhere near matching spending. Given that America has huge debts and a mammoth deficit already, it's easy to see why many are unwilling to take on a further expansion of the state apparatus and the associated monumental spending.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - John Steinbeck

I think there is something in Socialism that is at odds with the stereotypical American Dream.

But the U.S. already has health care for those who are over 65 years of age. It's called Medicare. It's been extraordinarily popular with conservatives and liberals alike for more than 45 years. Another "socialist" scheme is old-age assistance, which is called Social Security, and which has been around for about 75 years.

Everybody will get old if they live long enough. Most people can see some equity in this kind of transfer of wealth. Welfare is a different kettle of fish. It sticks in the craw of people who have worked hard to build up their businesses or their fortunes when they see their tax money being transferred by government to people who don't seem to be trying to make a go of it. They don't like to see Affirmative Action giving jobs to minorities who might be less qualified than white applicants.

My quick answer is because it is a way of tying you together with others and decreasing your independence.

I've been trying to understand all this for some time now.

I think there's a kind of mindset and value set that is - in many ways - a very noble and honourable one. It stresses the virtues of self-reliance, of hard work, of self-discipline, of family and of community. It stresses the possibility of self improvement and of ambition, and the possibility of transcending humble origins to achieve great things through sheer hard work. Combine that with a version of Christianity that adds a sparkle of divine endorsement to those values, and you have a powerful brew.

Combine all that together, and perhaps you get close to (for Europeans) an explanation for the phenomena whereby someone nearly bankrupts themselves paying for their medical treatment, but feels not resentment for the lack of state provision, but a deep sense of pride in their own ability to take care of themselves. I think there's a particular version of frontiersman-style masculinity that feeds into this too.

The problem with these values - laudable as they are - is that they overlook some fairly basic facts about the nature of society, and in particular a capitalist one. A society will be a pyramid structure of wealth and power, and all that's up for grabs is position. In other words, it's simply not possible by force of will and all of the virtues above for *everyone* to succeed. Someone is going to go without healthcare - the only question is who that's going to be. The economies of the UK and the US and others *require* unemployment. They *require* low paid jobs. The only question is who will be on those bottom few rungs.

And it's not a fair right for success. It's not a meritocracy. The prime factor in success or failure isn't hard work.... it's talent. No amount of hard work or luck would have made me David Beckham or Bill Gates or Albert Einstein. But it's not just talent.... it's also opportunities, which are determined very largely by starting position in life, especially in more unequal societies where huge educational advantages are available to a select few who go on to dominate as a group/class.

But.... if you're on the left like me and you start talking about wider economics or social factors or the way capitalist societies actually work, it sounds to those on the right as if you're arguing that there's no free will and that everything is pretty much determined by social and economic factors, with no room for individual agency. It's not my fault, blame society. But to my hears, the self-reliance rhetoric of the right just sounds painfully naive.

My current thinking is whether we can find a political system that embodies and rewards the values of the political right that we all agree are a good thing (self reliance, discipline, enterprise, personal responsibility, ambition and so on), but in the context of a fair society with a much reduced level of inequality and a much increased level of social mobility.

My other thought is whether a key difference between the US and the UK experience is that the UK has already tried a lot of the right wing libertarian neo-liberal (although it was just 'liberal' back them) laissez-faire small government and found the results unacceptable in terms of the poverty and inequality that resulted. I'm thinking in particular of the second half of the 19th century and the first decade or so of the 20th.

Otto, although I think that the mindset you describe does exist in the US, and partly explains their attitude to socialism, I think it's far from enough to explain it. I'm thinking about the survey that showed that the majority of Americans think that the phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is in the Constitution:

http://www2.law.columbia.edu/news/surveys/survey_constitution/

I'm also thinking about the huge number of US industries that couldn't exist without state subsidies or military spending. In other words, tax and spend is OK, just not on things like welfare or health (which benefit everyone rather than a few).

Rather, I suspect that the US attitude toward socialism developed based on cold war propaganda, and has been maintained because it is useful to the powerful. I don't know if I'm right about this - anyone know anything about the history of the US attitude towards socialism before the cold war?

I'm yet to see the obvious answer, which is that America is a company founded, developed and brought to the forefront of the world economy by capitalist principles. Of course they're going to be wary of any change.

B

I always wonder what 'European-style socialism' actually means. When I hear the phrase, what immediately springs to mind is Scandinavian socialism, not Soviet communism. While the latter would appear to have failed, the former is widely considered to be spectacularly successful as far as I've heard, although there remains some question over how effectively it can be applied to nations with larger, more diverse populations.

Democracy in the U.S. was successfully twisted to serve the ends of the prohibitionists over between 1850 and 1920. The income tax came about because the prohibitionists needed to counter the argument that the federal government would lose too much tax revenue if liquor sales could no longer be taxed.

What we now regard as the American Right Wing had a significant isolationist contingent during the twenties and thirties. Nowadays, thanks to the two Bushes, right wing orthodoxy sees no impediment to invading countries when the national interest [which in too many cases correlates with the vested interests of them and their friends and families] requires it. In the thirties and forties, because the right wing wasn't going to do battle against the Axis, the Democratic left and center contingent was forced to go to bat. So, the Democratic Party kind of owned the war franchise during World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. Starting with George Bush Senior's incursion into Iraq in 1990 [which, granted, was definitely an aggravated assault by Saddam Hussein on Kuwait], the war franchise passed into the hands of the Republicans, with behind-the-scenes orchestration by the likes of Dick Cheney.

So, things have a funny way of shifting longterm. Do we, as a nation, want to abolish the income tax and go back to heavy taxes on liquor so as to finance the federal government? I doubt it. Would the Republican leaders like to go back to the isolationism of their grandparents in the thirties? Again, I don't think that will happen.

Who knows which alliances will exist fifty years from now? Drinking and isolationism are no longer hot-button issues that galvanizes dozens of millions of people. Communism is dead as a practical
alternative to capitalism, but capitlism's discontents are manifold and all too obvious.

Someone needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with some new ideas.....

I'm inclined to agree with Dogster (post 9). Most people I know can't even tell the difference between communism and socialism and don't bother learning, they seem to be inextricably linked in their minds.

Communism /was/ generally distrusted before the Cold War began, but nowhere near at the same level. Ironically, before World War II started, I believe fascism was gaining a certain popularity.

But obviously I learned about all of this LONG after the fact, I don't have any first-hand experience.

Interesting views everyone, thanks.

This is a very simplistic way of looking at it and I'm far from an expert on their system but here's my view of it, using healthcare.

American healthcare and insurance is provided by private companies.

Private companies exist to make money.

Therefore what is done will not necessarily be in the best interests of the patient but what will make the most money for the company. (I do not accuse the medical staff, but it is an abvious conflict of interest. For example patients may be sent for tests which they don't really need. Coverage may be denied or payouts refused in certain circumstances.

I can't imagine the monthly costs between paying for health insurance and (to use a UK example) the amount of National Insurance which is paid towards the NHS makes much difference. So why not have a state system?

Because then everybody has to pay for it, and all they get is goverment standard healthcare. Whereas some might want to pay for private healthcare, but can't afford to pay that if they also have to pay to an NHS style system.

How do you figure that? Generally these things don't actually require drastic increases in taxes, no matter what the opposition says.

Well, I would say the Americans figure that.

Right, but you put that forward as a reason for not having state healthcare so, really, it looks like *your* opinion.

The thread was about finding out why the US feel like this, not much point in saying my own opinion on it.

Curiously, Communist China (yeah, Communist as in
the Peoples' Party) is farther from Socialism than
most Capitalist countries.

There is no Employment Insurance protection.
No dole. No subsidized housing.
No old age retirement benefits.
No national healthcare system.


~jwf~