Photo credit: American Federation of Government Employees
During his State of the Union address, Donald Trump, who takes every opportunity to inflame imaginary fears, warned of an even more terrifying menace than those hordes of brown-skinned women and children pouring across our border to murder us. “Here in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country!” Trump declared. “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country!”
We don’t know how to break this to a president who’s never known much about history, but American socialism has been the driving force behind democracy’s most popular and successful programs for more than a century. Many Milwaukeeans know this very well, because the city was governed by popular socialist mayors for nearly four decades between 1910 and 1960.
Daniel Hoan—the city’s longest-serving socialist mayor for 24 years through 1940—was on the cover of an April 1936 edition of Time magazine, the conservative, national newsweekly published by Republican Henry Luce, citing Milwaukee’s expansion of public employment and successful economic management during the Great Depression. Time’s verdict on Hoan’s socialist policies: “Under him, Milwaukee has become perhaps the best-governed city in the U.S.”
Social Security is Socialism
But that realistic assessment of American socialism has never stopped other Republicans from shrieking in terror about diabolical socialist monsters destroying the American way of life every time Democrats try to pass programs benefitting most Americans. Republicans did it in 1935 to try to stop Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s creation of Social Security; in 1965, to try to stop Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s creation of Medicare and Medicaid and, most recently, in 2010, to try to stop Democratic President Barack Obama’s creation of the Affordable Care Act. Most ironically, Republicans were right to call those socialist programs.
American socialists began fading as a national force when the Democratic Party adopted many of their most popular social protections and benefits for working Americans. What Republicans were wrong about, of course, was to suggest there was anything un-American or undemocratic about socialist ideas. They’re also completely wrong to claim American socialism has ever had any resemblance to corrupt, totalitarian dictatorships that call themselves socialist. Dictatorships are top-down authoritarian governments filling the pockets of those at the top by oppressing everyone else. American socialism has always been a democracy-driven, bottom-up, grassroots movement promoting equal rights and protections under the law.
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Trump’s affinity for murderous dictators, personal corruption and disdain for democracy make Republicans look absurd attacking Democrats as radical authoritarians. It’s difficult for Republicans to portray Democrats as a red menace when their own president shamelessly cavorts in public with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Trump’s claim that socialist Democrats would turn America into Venezuela became embarrassing when corrupt dictator Nicolas Maduro began acting out a public parody of Trump at his most extreme by trying to close Venezuela’s border with lethal violence.
The Republican anti-socialism campaign is the one they would have run against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders if he’d been nominated for president in 2016. Now it’s even less likely to work. Sanders’ courage in promoting socialism’s valuable contributions to democracy is inspiring a growing slate of progressive candidates. Democrats proudly support continued expansion of affordable healthcare, aggressive action to reduce the extreme consequences of climate change and requiring the ultra-wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes instead of sometimes paying little or no taxes at all.
Young Americans Ignoring Scare Tactics
It helps that all those ideas have strong majority support across the country and that Trump is on the opposite side of every single one. The only major law Trump passed in two years did little to help any struggling, forgotten, left-behind Americans who voted for him. The $1.5 trillion Republican tax cut went overwhelmingly to Americans who have never struggled, are never forgotten by politicians and are never left behind when tax goodies are passed out; namely, millionaires and billionaires, including the Trump family. Corrupt capitalism can be a lot scarier than socialism.
American democracy works best when it balances both economic philosophies. Last year, Gallup asked young Americans (ages 18-29) whether they had positive views toward capitalism and socialism. Fifty one percent had a positive view of socialism, compared to 45% with a positive view of capitalism. That was a 12-point drop in the positive view of capitalism since 2016, when 57% viewed capitalism positively and 55% viewed socialism positively. It was an enormous drop in younger American support for capitalism since 2010, when 68% had a positive view of capitalism and 51% a positive view of socialism.
Republican scare tactics about socialism aren’t nearly as scary as what capitalism is doing to a whole lot of Americans these days, including young people entering the job market. Throughout American history, socialist benefits and protections have helped reduce human cruelty and damage to a free society from ruthless, unfettered, free-market capitalism.
