The exhausting media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign left in its wake a long list of key words and phrases that I hope linguists somewhere are picking apart. One particular keyword always left me hung up; socialism.
Sarah Palin and John McCain — and even Joe the Plumber — tried to establish a negative aura around then-candidate Barack Obama by saying his plans for the nation bordered on socialism. Many responded to the soundbites by recoiling in horror, but why were we seeing it as an accusation? What did we really know about this thing that we all seem so sure that we don’t want?
The goal of socialism is, Albert Einstein wrote in 1949, “to overcome and advance beyond the predatory stage of human development.”
The notion seemed noble enough to warrant investigation.
The search for a better understanding of the key word brought me to the national conference on socialism on Dec. 6, an event made possible by the Party of Socialism and Liberation that took place at UCLA.
Admission to the conference, the PSL’s website read, would be $50, or $35 for students, adding that “no one will be turned away for lack of funds.” I felt confident enough with my vague understanding of socialism to snidely observe that this was adorably socialist.
After an hour and a half of listening to speakers, while scribbling notes in the two-thirds-full lecture hall, it became apparent that these people have their own list of key words and phrases.
It includes, but is certainly not limited to: capitalist regime, ruling class, workers/working class, socialism, liberation, oppression, bigotry, exploitation, brothers and sisters, struggle, solidarity and sexism.
Each was shoved into every speech at least twice.
“Overthrow” should also be noted as a contender. “Comrade” was said enough times to appear to warrant listing, but in fact doesn’t because 75 percent of its uses were by only one man — a vigorous comrade introduced as the future mayor of Los Angeles.
A typical emphatic sentence uttered could sound something like this: “Brothers and sisters, the (ruling class/capitalist regime/capitalist ruling class) has (oppressed/exploited) workers and has promoted (bigotry/sexism), which leaves us only to join in solidarity to (overcome/overthrow/struggle against) capitalism and bring socialism and liberation to the people.”
After about an hour of listening to variation after variation, it all sounded about as redundant as a monotone priest’s sermon and about as informative as a Palin debate response, with every sentence being a syntactical rearrangement of the preceding sentence.
Socialist sentiment often centers on Al Einstein’s and others’ notions that the root cause of the predatory nature in humans — the one that produces income, moral and educational inequalities in America and other countries — is capitalism.
One might assume this to be a given fact for the majority of the audience in this lecture hall that afternoon. Whenever it was reiterated in a spirited run-on sentence, however, the audience would egg the speakers on from the edges of their seats, with stationary raised fists and quick shouts of “That’s right!”
But a politically-on-the-fence 22-year-old public college student, who is still digesting a year’s worth of political campaign speeches consisting largely of recycled and repackaged rhetoric, is likely to lose interest in this kind of talk at an alarming rate.
Indignation is at a surplus in the marketplace of ideas and anyone who knows the most basic principles of Econ 100 understands that this means its market worth is approaching zero, all of which isn’t to say that these points aren’t valid.
It’s just to say that they’re not trying to sell me the real valuable ideas; the ones that provide solutions, provide structure, provide not only sentiment against the current system, but also a detailed outline of what we can move toward.
A non-emotional discussion of what a socialist governmental structure would be and how it would function, though, did not seem to be the goal of this national conference. Instead, it looked to this less-than-novice political observer to be more of a celebration of the tenets of socialism; advocating equalization of the social playing fields and de-marginalizing minority groups (note that both of these goals are also professed by Democrats).
No one in the room seemed compelled to give a clear answer as to what socialism is today and how it can be the skeleton of a dominant power system.
This conference was not for the introductory level, apparently. During one Q & A period on the subject of labor unions, a UCLA student naively asked how one can manage to work against capitalism while still surviving in a capitalist society with capitalist pressures.
Clustered murmurs and giggling among the crowd ensued, amounting to a mass response of: “Through solidarity and struggle, numb-nuts! Get with the program.”
At one point the vice president of the party gave a mystifying explanation of the meaning of socialism. After acknowledging that socialism can seem abstract and esoteric, he explained, “Socialism means that not only does the PSL come to fight; they fight to win.” So much for concrete definitions.
If you listen to a person like George Orwell, you might consider the possibility that the word “socialism” imploded a long time ago. Orwell included it in his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” in a list with five other political words that “have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.”
If you’re dumb enough to listen to a person like me, perhaps you’ll think that socialism is in the midst of a long and enduring identity crisis. It results from a certain kind of selective hearing that seems to plague the typical American political player. It filters out big questions like those that sprang from Einstein’s analysis of how to make socialism work.
He wrote, “The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: How is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”
Unless they address big issues like this, the topics of these conferences will remain capitalism. Not socialism.
Until they level with old “Al, the righteous” — an adjective I am not using here mockingly — preachers of socialism and liberation will keep trying to steer the discussion toward heaven, but it will inevitably boomerang back to hell.
Benjamin Zitney is a senior journalism major and the news editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
Excellent article. This has been one of the most common-sense op/ed articles I have read from the 49er.
I agree. You addressed real concerns and didn’t filter your perspective through the most extreme point of view possible. I’m not used to reading articles like that.
Seriously, though, your writing was spot on from beginning to end. Keep it up, Benjamin.
This is way too rational for a college newspaper.