Multiple Historians Comment on: What Is Socialism in 2009?
It seems that whatever President Obama talks about — whether it’s overhauling health care, or regulating Wall Street, or telling schoolchildren to study hard — his opponents have called him a socialist. “Socialism” was an epithet on many placards at protests in Washington over the weekend. What does the word mean today, nearly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall? What role has the label played in American political history?
Patrick Allitt: What’s All the Fuss?
[Patrick Allitt is the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University in Atlanta. He is author of “The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History.]
It’s odd that so many critics of the administration should use “socialism” as a devil word. In fact millions of Americans, including many of these critics, are ardent supporters of socialism, even if they don’t realize it and even if they don’t actually use the word. Think of two elements of society that enjoy overwhelming popular support despite being government owned and operated.
The first is the public schools. Horace Mann, in early 19th-century Massachusetts, pioneered the project of creating publicly funded schools for every child in the state. The idea caught on widely and in less than a century had been emulated by every state in the Union. No Child Left Behind, endorsed by a conservative administration, is the most recent incarnation of this huge, centralized socialist project...
... You could even take the view that the armed forces are organized along socialist lines. Government owned and operated, bureaucratic, centralized, exempted from competition, they are widely beloved all the same. Private military contractors, on the other hand, such as Blackwater, arouse more suspicion than support; there is a taint of dishonor to being a mercenary. And as Machiavelli showed 500 years ago, mercenaries are far less dependable than citizen armies...
Andrew Hartman: Conservative Principles and Anxieties
[Andrew Hartman is an assistant professor of history at Illinois State University. He is the author of “Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School,” and is currently researching a book on the culture wars.]
Recent denunciations of Obama’s proposed health-care plan as “socialist” have taken some observers by surprise, especially since the foreign threat of socialism receded two decades ago when the Soviet Union imploded. But, as historians should know, the degree to which conservatives invoke the specter of socialism has always been more calibrated to domestic anxieties than to foreign threats.
Elizabeth Dilling’s 1934 catalogue, “The Red Network: A ‘Who’s Who’ and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots,” serves as an instructive prototype. Many of those listed were never members of the Communist or socialist parties, yet made their way onto a list of people who composed “the Communist-Socialist world conspiracy.” The list included Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, John Dewey and Jane Addams...
Matthew Dallek: A Long Tradition
[Matthew Dallek is the author of “The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics.” He is a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a fellow at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.]
The raucous debate about how President Obama’s health care reforms will affect the American way of life has led to a surreal discussion about socialism in 2009. While the socialism label is useful to conservative politicians attempting to fire up the faithful and while some far-right critics are racists eager to paint Obama as vaguely un-American, historical memory is also fueling this debate. Several factors are propelling this trope.
Portraying progressives as socialists is partially traceable to late-19th century debates, when defenders of unfettered capital blasted labor radicals and progressives for undermining America’s free markets through a socialistic agenda. The early to mid-20th century witnessed a robust debate about the effects of socialist ideas and socialist politics inside the United States.
From the Red Scare after World War I to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s rabid attacks on domestic Communists after World War II, exaggerated fears of left-wing collectivism repeatedly rattled American politics; thus, it’s unsurprising that an ambitious progressive president would bring these fears back into sharp relief, even though the cold war ended two decades ago...
Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore: Understanding Socialism
[Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore teach American history at Cornell University and are the authors of the forthcoming book, “The Long Exception: An Interpretation of the New Deal from FDR to Obama.”]
When socialism can be used interchangeably with fascism — as it often is in the heat of contemporary political debate — Americans are playing with historical fires they do not understand. The muddle is telling.
America has not had a politically meaningful socialist movement since that of Eugene Debs early in the last century. The Soviet Union has perished, the Berlin Wall has fallen, and capitalist China is our No. 1 industrial competitor. Against such a political landscape, what meaning could the phrase socialism have even as an epithet?...
Read entire article at NYT
Patrick Allitt: What’s All the Fuss?
[Patrick Allitt is the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University in Atlanta. He is author of “The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History.]
It’s odd that so many critics of the administration should use “socialism” as a devil word. In fact millions of Americans, including many of these critics, are ardent supporters of socialism, even if they don’t realize it and even if they don’t actually use the word. Think of two elements of society that enjoy overwhelming popular support despite being government owned and operated.
The first is the public schools. Horace Mann, in early 19th-century Massachusetts, pioneered the project of creating publicly funded schools for every child in the state. The idea caught on widely and in less than a century had been emulated by every state in the Union. No Child Left Behind, endorsed by a conservative administration, is the most recent incarnation of this huge, centralized socialist project...
... You could even take the view that the armed forces are organized along socialist lines. Government owned and operated, bureaucratic, centralized, exempted from competition, they are widely beloved all the same. Private military contractors, on the other hand, such as Blackwater, arouse more suspicion than support; there is a taint of dishonor to being a mercenary. And as Machiavelli showed 500 years ago, mercenaries are far less dependable than citizen armies...
Andrew Hartman: Conservative Principles and Anxieties
[Andrew Hartman is an assistant professor of history at Illinois State University. He is the author of “Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School,” and is currently researching a book on the culture wars.]
Recent denunciations of Obama’s proposed health-care plan as “socialist” have taken some observers by surprise, especially since the foreign threat of socialism receded two decades ago when the Soviet Union imploded. But, as historians should know, the degree to which conservatives invoke the specter of socialism has always been more calibrated to domestic anxieties than to foreign threats.
Elizabeth Dilling’s 1934 catalogue, “The Red Network: A ‘Who’s Who’ and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots,” serves as an instructive prototype. Many of those listed were never members of the Communist or socialist parties, yet made their way onto a list of people who composed “the Communist-Socialist world conspiracy.” The list included Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, John Dewey and Jane Addams...
Matthew Dallek: A Long Tradition
[Matthew Dallek is the author of “The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics.” He is a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a fellow at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.]
The raucous debate about how President Obama’s health care reforms will affect the American way of life has led to a surreal discussion about socialism in 2009. While the socialism label is useful to conservative politicians attempting to fire up the faithful and while some far-right critics are racists eager to paint Obama as vaguely un-American, historical memory is also fueling this debate. Several factors are propelling this trope.
Portraying progressives as socialists is partially traceable to late-19th century debates, when defenders of unfettered capital blasted labor radicals and progressives for undermining America’s free markets through a socialistic agenda. The early to mid-20th century witnessed a robust debate about the effects of socialist ideas and socialist politics inside the United States.
From the Red Scare after World War I to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s rabid attacks on domestic Communists after World War II, exaggerated fears of left-wing collectivism repeatedly rattled American politics; thus, it’s unsurprising that an ambitious progressive president would bring these fears back into sharp relief, even though the cold war ended two decades ago...
Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore: Understanding Socialism
[Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore teach American history at Cornell University and are the authors of the forthcoming book, “The Long Exception: An Interpretation of the New Deal from FDR to Obama.”]
When socialism can be used interchangeably with fascism — as it often is in the heat of contemporary political debate — Americans are playing with historical fires they do not understand. The muddle is telling.
America has not had a politically meaningful socialist movement since that of Eugene Debs early in the last century. The Soviet Union has perished, the Berlin Wall has fallen, and capitalist China is our No. 1 industrial competitor. Against such a political landscape, what meaning could the phrase socialism have even as an epithet?...