Chris Hedges: Why I Am a Socialist

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



Why I Am a Socialist
Posted on Dec 29, 2008

By Chris Hedges


The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know truth from lies. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism—one that will insist on massive government relief and work programs, the nationalization of electricity and gas companies, a universal, not-for-profit government health care program, the outlawing of hedge funds, a radical reduction of our bloated military budget and an end to imperial wars—or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite and shackled and chained by our surveillance state.

The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. But this does not mean our corporate masters will disappear. Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote, “that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Force and fraud are all they have left. They will use both.

There is a political shift in Europe toward an open confrontation with the corporate state. Germany has seen a surge of support for Die Linke (The Left), a political grouping formed 18 months ago. It is co-led by the veteran socialist “Red” Oskar Lafontaine, who has built his career on attacking big business. Two-thirds of Germans in public opinion polls say they agree with all or some of Die Linke’s platform. The Socialist Party of the Netherlands is on the verge of overtaking the Labor Party as the main opposition party on the left. Greece, beset with street protests and violence by disaffected youths, has seen the rapid rise of the Coalition of the Radical Left. In Spain and Norway socialists are in power. Resurgence is not universal, especially in France and Britain, but the shifts toward socialism are significant.

Corporations have intruded into every facet of life. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes. We drive corporate cars. We buy our vehicular fuel and our heating oil from corporations. We borrow from corporate banks. We invest our retirement savings with corporations. We are entertained, informed and branded by corporations. We work for corporations. The creation of a mercenary army, the privatization of public utilities and our disgusting for-profit health care system are all legacies of the corporate state. These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_why_i_am_a_socialist/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. The longer I live, the more my experiences tell me that some form of

democratic socialism is the best form of government.

Sure, it's harder to become a multi-billionaire under such a system, but it's also harder to fall to the level of street person.

For me it would be worth giving up Bill Gates, the Walton family, and every other billionaire if it meant that nobody was living on the streets.

I think Americans overestimate the amount of material goods they need to be happy. This morning I talked to a woman who lived in Mexico for eight years. When she returned to the States, she was struck by how much people talked about their Stuff and thought that they needed Stuff to be happy.

Actually, research has shown that once your basic needs are met, your level of happiness depends more on your interpersonal relationships than anything else.

[KoKo]

6. I remember when DU was young we had quite a few socialists

who used to post here. They either left or were banned for some reason or another and at the time, I found their views too far left for me. After 8 years of Bushies and what we now know about the results Clinton's DLC policies, I think I'm finally in agreement with Chris Hedges. All our efforts to become engaged with our Democratic Party through the grassroots, faxing, phoning, writing letters and protesting in the streets seemed to change nothing about the way our Democrats in Congress voted or reform from their many weak Congressional investigations that produced nothing but blather and sound and fury that signified nothing for change.

Conyers, Leahy and Waxman... Where are the prosecutions? Where is the change? They promised us changes in HAVA and bills on verified paper ballots after the 2004 Election in the "Basement Hearings."

What came of it? Nothing. If folks in the grassroots hadn't kept pushing for Election Reforms and Paper Ballots we wouldn't have even the small improvments we have in some states.

Yes...Chris Hedges makes some good points and I'm pretty much open to seeing some form of socialism take root and flourish.

[Tansy_Gold]

10. I was a socialist when I signed onto DU in mid-2001 and I'm still

a socialist. :hi:

But I'm a pragmatic lower-case one who knows that voting for a Socialist candidate who has no chance of winning is about as stupid as it gets.


We'll see what happens. I guess it all depends on how bad it gets and for how many.



Tansy Gold

[KoKo]

13. Thanks for "hanging in here," then.....

Voices of Resistance are definitely still needed. :D

[Dr.Phool]

14. I've always been a Socialist philosophically.

I think I'm gonna finally bite the bullet and join the Democratic Socialists. At least I'll get some good reading material in the mail.

[Warpy]

7. The red of my youth has been diluted to a pleasant pink

as I've realized that only a mixed economy of socialism and capitalism can best meet our wants as well as our needs.

The only ongoing debate will come when any industry needs to be shifted from public to private or private to public.

An obvious example right now is health care, which is an unmitigated disaster in the private sphere and cries out for some degree of nationalization into the public sphere.

I'd be hard pressed to find anything in the public sphere that needs to be moved into the private sphere after the past four decades of rabid privatization of everything held in public hands, but it's certainly not out of the question in the future.

If we don't abandon pure doctrines and adopt the messy mixed economy that does so well in so much of the developed world, we will sink rapidly into third world status. We're almost there, already.

[Dr.Phool]

2. We need it now! K&R!

In Florida, on January 1st, our electric bills are going to skyrocket by 25% so that Progress Energy can start building 2 nukes 10 years down the line. Excuse me? Isn't that what investors are for?

They're imposing a 25% tax (on top of already too high rates) on every customer. And the elderly and many others will NEVER see one dimes worth of benefit from it in their lifetime.

This is fascism at it's finest, and not one Democrat or Republican will say "NO" to this corporate robbery.




:kick:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. This is what we need

Socialism isn't perfect, but it appears to be the only political system that doesn't succumb to greed or power, which are the downfall of capitalist democracies and communist ones.

[Donnachaidh]

4. We'd better do it SOON

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3663260

The Military Industrial Complex is jonesing to *put down* the American public the moment that public comes to the realization that it is well and truly fucked under Corporate Capitalism.

[KoKo]

5. This is an excellent read.

and his caution at the end:

If Barack Obama does not end the flagrant theft of taxpayer funds by corporate slugs and the disgraceful abandonment of our working class, especially as foreclosures and unemployment mount, many in the country will turn in desperation to the far right embodied by groups such as Christian radicals. The failure by the left to offer a democratic socialist alternative will mean there will be, in the eyes of many embittered and struggling working- and middle-class Americans, no alternative but a perverted Christian fascism. The inability to articulate a viable socialism has been our gravest mistake. It will ensure, if this does not soon change, a ruthless totalitarian capitalism.

[MasonJar]

8. The government we have is a total loss; I am game for a new direction.

If Obama is smart, he will stick to his promises. If he does not, he will soon be just another hack. America needs "change." If O does not deliver it, then we must demand it.

[dcsmart]

9. socialist food for thought...what is true socialism

Why socialism? Two reasons.

The United Nations estimates that more than 2 billion people around the world live on less than $2 a day, while 6 million children starve to death or die from easily preventable diseases each year. That's another Holocaust, each and every year.

We have the absurd situation of lacking funds to develop sustainable energy technology, while the U.S. spends more than $100 billion a year to kill Iraqis for oil. We have the most advanced medical technology in the world, but 45 million people go without health care insurance.

Those absurdities--in short, the contradiction between the capacity to create and capitalism's inability to distribute to everyone--helped create the movement for socialism, with the aim of taking the power out of the hands of the private mega-rich who use their wealth for personal gain and putting it into the hands of the people who actually do the work.

Socialists believe that, not only do workers have the right to take over the economy and run it democratically, but that if they do not, the capitalists will continue down the path of war and ruin until they destroy the planet.

The other source of the socialist movement came from the experience of the limitations of Liberalism from Below and the question that has emerged time and again: Do you accept the limits imposed on the struggle, or do you go beyond them and question the whole system?

For instance, it was in the struggle to force FDR to keep to his promises that unionists finally decided they needed to organize a series of citywide general strikes in 1934 that set the stage for the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations union federation in 1935 and the mass sit-down strikes that followed.

The liberal union leaderships were afraid to launch these strikes because it would mean confronting the police and embarrassing FDR. It took socialists and communists to say, "If the choice is between FDR's friendship and winning a strike, we say strike."

Martin Luther King Jr. followed a similar path. He helped win the end of legalized Jim Crow, but he recognized that poverty and institutionalized discrimination remained, which led him to say, "You have to ask how people can go thirsty in a world that is two-thirds covered with water."

When you ask that question, it leads you in the direction of the socialist critique of capitalism.

And King had a decision to make about Vietnam. Liberalism from Above insisted that the cause of civil rights would be damaged by taking an antiwar position. In essence, LBJ offered civil rights in exchange for King's support for killing Vietnamese people. King could either accept that offer or move beyond it--which he courageously did in 1967 when he declared that "my government is the primary purveyor of violence" in the world.

SEE COMPLETE ARTICLE:
http://socialistworker.org/2008/12/19/the-case-for-socialism


Here is another meaning

Socialism is the collective ownership by all the people of the factories, mills, mines, railroads, land and all other instruments of production.
Socialism means production to satisfy human needs, not as under capitalism, for sale and profit.

Socialism means direct control and management of the industries and social services by the workers through a democratic government based on their nationwide economic organization.

Under socialism, all authority will originate from the workers, integrally united in Socialist Industrial Unions. In each workplace, the rank and file will elect whatever committees or representatives are needed to facilitate production. Within each shop or office division of a plant, the rank and file will participate directly in formulating and implementing all plans necessary for efficient operations.

Besides electing all necessary shop officers, the workers will also elect representatives to a local and national council of their industry or service—and to a central congress representing all the industries and services. This all-industrial congress will plan and coordinate production in all areas of the economy.

All persons elected to any post in the socialist government, from the lowest to the highest level, will be directly accountable to the rank and file. They will be subject to removal at any time that a majority of those who elected them decide it is necessary.

Such a system would make possible the fullest democracy and freedom. It would be a society based on the most primary freedom—economic freedom.

For individuals, socialism means an end to economic insecurity and exploitation. It means workers cease to be commodities bought and sold on the labor market, and forced to work as appendages to tools owned by someone else. It means a chance to develop all individual capacities and potentials within a free community of free individuals. It means a classless society that guarantees full democratic rights for all workers.

Socialism does not mean government or state ownership. It does not mean a closed party-run system without democratic rights. Those things are the very opposite of socialism.

"Socialism," as the American Socialist Daniel De Leon defined it, "is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at end. That is socialism, nothing short of that." And we might add, nothing more than that!

Remember: If it does not fit this description, it is not socialism—no matter who says different. Those who claim that socialism existed and failed in places like Russia and China simply do not know the facts.

Socialism will be a society in which the things we need to live, work and control our own lives—the industries, services and natural resources—are collectively owned by all the people, and in which the democratic organization of the people within the industries and services is the government. Socialism means that government of the people, for the people and by the people will become a reality for the first time.

Socialism has never existed. It did not exist in the old U.S.S.R., and it does not exist in China. Socialism will be a society in which the things we need to live, work and control our own lives—the industries, services and natural resources—are collectively owned by all the people, and in which the democratic organization of the people within the industries and services is the government. Socialism means that government of the people, for the people and by the people will become a reality for the first time.

To win the struggle for socialist freedom requires enormous efforts of organizational and educational work. It requires building a political party of socialism to contest the power of the capitalist class on the political field, and to educate the majority of workers about the need for socialism. It requires building Socialist Industrial Union organizations to unite all workers in a classconscious industrial force, and to prepare them to take, hold and operate the tools of production.

You are needed in the ranks of Socialists fighting for a better world—to end poverty, racism, sexism, environmental disaster and to avert the still potent threat of a catastrophic nuclear war.

SEE FULL ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.slp.org/what_is.htm


EDITOR
PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY
http://timetofight.tumblr.com/

[KoKo]

11. kick for a great read whether you agree or not...still worth it..

:kick:

[katty]

12. america...it's a memory

perfectly put Chris:


>These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires.

[HamdenRice]

15. I keep thinking about the Bob Marley song, "You're Playing us Too Close"

The corporations had a good thing going especially under Clinton. They got too greedy, extorted too much, especially in energy, and FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) industries, especially credit cards and mortgages.

They brought the whole system down, and now everything is on the table, including a socialized FIRE system.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. They're like the buffalo hunters of the 19th century

who were greedy for the profits that came from selling buffalo robes and nearly hunted the animals to extinction.

If you're going to be a predator, you can't kill ALL your prey.