I am a socialist - Democratic Underground

lancemurdoch

(180 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Oct-12-03 09:59 AM
Original message

I am a socialist

I believe in the maxim "from each according to ability, to each according to WORK". In other words, I think a worker should be able to keep the wealth he produces. I suppose in modern USA this is a radical idea, that someone should be able to keep the wealth he produces. When I watch the television channel the government lets General Electric use, NBC, or other corporate-controlled portions of the VHF or UHF bands, they usually say over and over again thet "socialism = big government", always trying to equate the two. Well for one thing, I am not a rentier, meaning I do not own any property I rent out, and I do not in a real sense own any capital, e.g. I do not get dividends from stocks, or interest from bonds (actually I do get a very small amount of interest from my checking account, but it is so negligible it can be ignored). But not being a rentier, means I do not own any rentier assets, thus in a sense whether the government controls corporations or whether it's in private hands means little to me, as it would be alien to me either way - actually somewhat less alien if government controlled it actually. But anyhow, I don't see workers controlling the means of production as necessarily needing government.

I do see as a long-term goal socialism, which basically boils down to in my mind "a worker being able to keep the wealth that he himself creates". I think unions are a good tool of getting this, the best actually. There is a tug-of-war between the workers creating the wealth and the idle class owners over which amount of money goes to wages and which goes to profits, and I think the leverage of organized workers helps tilt that towards the workers, so less goes to profits. I hope to see the day when all goes to wages and no surplus labor, or profits, goes to rentiers. I am less thrilled about political parties, whose main function I see as keeping the government from interfering with labor unions, and perhaps some other things. I see political parties as more or less guards trying to stave off the other side from sacking our side, but little more than that. Anyhow, I definitely give political parties secondary importance to other types of organizing.

As to political parties - I often vote for Democrats, although if someone like Lieberman was elected I would vote Green, to show that the party had moved too far to the right and thus had lost an actual voter because of this. As far as the candidates, Kucinich and Sharpton I like but realize are unrealistic. Gephardt has always been pro-labor so I am behind him. Dean I go back and forth in my mind about...sometimes I have a feeling I'd regret voting for him more than anyone. Kerry and Clark I probably wouldn't vote for, and there is absolutely no way I would ever vote for Lieberman ever.

I am proud to be a socialist and don't try to hide it. I do find people have irrational attitudes about it on the magnitude level of another particularly American school of irrationality within industrialized countries - that of religion. Personally, I think any system aside from one where workers get to keep the wealth they create as parasitic, and the attitudes of many people I meet nowadays sycophantic.