Consider two anecdotes:

The First: Recently I tried to get into the mind of a Trump supporter that had posted a status about the liberal media and their unfair treatment of the president. I had a logical path to lead this person on, thinking I had a silver bullet: we both agree there is bias in journalism. But if journalism is truly degenerate these days, why and when did it happen? I argued that the degeneracy of the press could be traced to Reagan-era media consolidation and privatization, which caused the rise of news-as-entertainment. Outlets like MSNBC and Huffington Post, I said, were merely marketed to liberals; they did not represent substantive left-wing thought. And Fox News is worse, peddling outright lies like the “Puppermaster” fantasy of George Soros, or the birther myth. So you shouldn’t blame Rachel Maddow for liberal “fake news”; Reagan, Milton Friedman, and Roger Ailes are the real culprits. Checkmate, or so I thought.

Nope, he said. The problem isn’t capitalism’s inevitable drive towards marketizing everything. The problem is liberal cynicism, “the media”, broadly construed, lying in order to bring down a man they considered a Nazi. My pro-Trump acquaintance acknowledged that the liberal media thought it was doing the right thing by demonizing Trump. But he was certain they were motivated by pure, hateful ideology.

The Second: R.L. Stephens recently came out with an amazing critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between The World And Me. Coates’ critically acclaimed book is a long-form essay on how he sees racism in the United States and the world. What Stephens takes issue with is Coates’ framing of racism as a force of nature, not a historical, class-based process: “One cannot subpoena an earthquake”, Coates writes. He proposes no solution, positing essentially that white people must self-reflect to the point where they are “woke” enough not to be racist. Stephens, on the other hand, writes that

The racialized tragedies faced daily by the masses require us to embrace class struggle, not       Coates’s demobilizing metaphysical maxims about how white people “must ultimately stop     themselves”…the only way to defeat racism was to fight it, every step of the way.

What tied these two incidents together in my mind was the implicit or explicit rejection of material causes for events. The pro-Trump guy from above could not fathom that the ideology he hated had its roots in capitalism, the economic system he loved; Ta-Nehisi Coates chooses to describe racism as an almost mystical force rather than the product of early capitalism’s desire for free labor and its many ramifications. Neither seems to be able to tie their abstract problems to the concrete reality of economic and social life, or propose a decent plan for dealing with said problems.

This fairy-tale of wicked ideologues is increasingly common across the discourse. At its root is a rejection of materialism and material conditions. Rather than acknowledge that ideology has its roots in history and economics, and is not simply the result of cabals of like-minded individuals enforcing their will upon the world.

The philosopher Hegel insisted that ideas and clashing ideologies propelled history forward; Marx and Engels said famously that they “found Hegel on his head” and “flipped him over”. In other words, materialism here refers not to avarice or selfishness but to an analytical frame that views history as the result of economic and material forces, not a battle of ideas.

Ideology, particularly American reactionism, is rooted in material conditions: many fundamentalist Christian strains grew out of rejection of the New Deal; the adding of “under god” to the pledge of allegiance was aimed at countering godless communism (thought the pledge itself was written by socialist Francis Bellamy; modern conservatives use abortion as a wedge issue to divide Left-leaning voters. In each case ideology served a particular function for the ruling class, strengthening and consolidating their sway on society.

My pro-Trump friend realized that a “liberal media” exists, but couldn’t conceptualize that it’s societal function might be to serve as the liberal wing of a capitalist state, and to make its owners money. Coates details in exquisite language the abject misery inflicted upon black Americans, but seems to provide nebulous solutions: White Americans should engage in rigorous self-criticism, but interracial mass politics is off the table, or ignored.

When presented with irrational ideological conclusions, the answer is not to respond with more dogma. Rather, presenting material conditions and solutions may dispel the smoke of vicious belief. That is the thesis of the Sanders crowd: Clinton ran on the phrase, “they go low, we go high” to indicate a campaign centered on national honor and decorum; they should have said, “when they go low, we provide material solutions to your problems, like free healthcare, education, an end to corporate dominance, and the empowerment of the working class”. To be fair, Clinton’s slogan was probably more attractive than mine.

But we’ve lost that frame of analysis. Postmodernism, and the overwhelming onslaught of modern mass media have us looking at Twitter and Facebook for the reasons behind things. This means my pro-Trump friend thinks posting about liberal bias is a crucial part of politics. Ta-Nehisi Coates seems to think that cultural critiques of racism and endless talk of “bodies” is a crucial part of anti-racist struggle. Not to suggest that Coates is equally incorrect: He’s a great writer with an eloquence I envy, and I think that Between The World And Me has given a lot of people a lot to think about. But I see a common thread of politics and the struggle for justice reduced to analysis of culture.

It seems likely that center-left liberals and far-right conservatives both subscribe to Milo Yiannopolis’ thesis: Politics is downstream of culture.

The first step in defeating Trump and company is to understand that they are not evil for the sake of it, and they are not evil because of their uncouthness. They are evil because they are the result of a decades-long movement on the right towards a brutal variant of state capitalism and xenophobia.

The defeat of the right-wing ideologues currently running the country will not come when we “stand together”, “learn to love one another”, or any such amorphous truism. It will come when millions of working- and middle-class Americans band together to enact a specific progressive agenda.

The post Material Conditions First! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A great tradition of American business is to create demand when consumers are really not asking for anything. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way professional sports franchises work to expand their profits.

The National Hockey League is probably less guilty of excess than the National Football League, Major League Baseball or the National Basketball Association. But that did not keep the St. Louis Blues hockey franchise from taking the first step before going to the public well with an announcement on Oct. 1 that its home, the Scottrade Center “needs major renovation.” How major? Well, let’s say to the tune of $50 million. This comes at a time when St. Louis is succumbing to blackmail from the National Football League to build a $1 billion new stadium for the football Rams. Most opponents of this kind of bribery by a sports league or franchise say that the way to stop it is for a city to just say ‘no.’

As we have previously reported, this can be a very self-destructive approach for any single city to take toward a team or league. The corporations hold the best hand and can always take their chips and move elsewhere, most likely to a community that will do just about anything to gain the prestige of a new major sports franchise.

The St. Louis Blues are now saying that their building needs $50 million in renovations. The next step will be a not-so-veiled threat, asking (in the form of a demand) (a) for taxpayers to bear the cost of such renovations, or (b) for a new building to replace the 21-year old Scottrade Center, or (c) to leave St. Louis for perhaps Saskatoon (they did that once before), where they think they can get a better deal.

None of these options is good, and none of them is really necessary. Scottrade Center opened in 1994 at a cost of $200 million for construction. Much of this sum came from taxpayers. The typical cost of maintenance for such a building is two to three percent of the cost of construction per year. For Scottrade, that would be $4 to $6 million. As is the norm for professional sports franchises, the Blues, who own the building, do not make their books public. However, they are obviously doing maintenance on an on-going basis, and to most observers, the building seems very up-to-date.

I am reminded of the former St. Louis Cardinal baseball slugger, Mark McGwire. He is well known for his time in St. Louis as a prodigious home run hitter, for his use of a performance enhancing drug (PED) (which was legal in baseball at the time) and his failure to tell the truth before a Congressional committee investigating PEDs in baseball. Often forgotten is how he shilled for Cardinal owners in 2000, saying that Busch Stadium II (opened in 1966) was falling apart and that there was need for a new stadium. I maintain high respect for McGwire for a number of things, including walking away from $30 million in salary that he was due, because he felt that his knees would not permit him to be an effective player for the Cardinals. I don’t know what is worse, his trumpeting the Cardinals’ cause for a new stadium or the owners more or less putting him up to it. When in doubt, point the finger at the owners.

In any event, the Blues are now raising the “facility issue” only twenty-one years after the building opened. It’s not “state-of-the-art,” which is code for “help us find a way to get more public subsidies to cover expenses.”

Between 1960 and 2000, professional franchises in all sports built, or had built, new facilities. It made sense then because the older buildings were somewhat antiquated. The old Arena where the Blues initially played did not have air conditioning, and rest rooms could best be described as “a challenge.” But now we have franchises, particularly in football, asking for new stadiums when there is no demand for them from their fans. In fact, the fans resent the call for new facilities because ultimately they will pay for them as taxpayers.

We need to stop the madness. The first step is to allow the cities to “bargain collectively” with the owners and the league. It’s not just the players who need the protection of collective bargaining; it’s the cities. Divided they fall, as one city after another succumbs to the demands of owners. The cities have little leverage. The only way to correct this is to form a committee at the U.S. Conference of Mayors of those cities with professional sports franchises. They need to (a) lobby Congress, the president and the courts to enact anti-trust legislation to stop the blackmail, and (b) for the cities to collaborate in refusing to give in. That leaves the leagues with no place to go.

As is the case with so many problems in our country, we are distracted. Consumer focus is not an essential part of capitalism. The damage done by professional sports franchises to our communities is not our greatest problem, but the solution is one that is do-able and which does not involve public money. We need to shout a clear message that we know what they are up to and how to stop it. Can we do that without getting distracted? I’m not betting on it, but I’m hoping.

The post The sports-stadium blackmail game, and how to stop it appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Notes from a lecture by political economist Richard Wolff, author of Capitalism Hits the Fan: Capitalism is sick and American capitalism is the disease. To understand this we need to understand the history. In the 1970s real wages stopped rising. In the U.S. the people believe that upward moving wages is a good for economics and stagnation leads to decline. Since we are in stagnation why aren’t people concerned? Why aren’t we discussing how we need to adjust? Are we in denial as individuals? Well, no. Workers reacted by trying to fix it.

First, workers worked harder. Second, women joined the work force but this took income for clothes, a second car, and child care. Third, we worked longer hours, more than most other industrialized countries. This only made us more exhausted as we still sought the American Dream. Fourth, we borrowed money. We took collateral on our homes, cars, credit cards. We borrowed money for education thinking if I only had more education I could reach the American Dream. That didn’t work either. It only put us more in debt and gave the money to banks. And fifth, we became anxious and sick over worry about our debt. The attempts at fixing capitalism by workers have not worked.

What did employers think about this stagnation? Employers thought that if they could get production up and lower wages, this should fix the economy. But it didn’t. What happened instead? It helped the employers by giving them rising profits but it made the gap between income of employers and workers increase, raising inequality. The U.S. began losing the middle class. Employers/CEOs joined the 1% and more workers were becoming part of the poor class. Employers and CEOs began ‘buying’ congress and the judiciary to keep the profits flowing to their pockets. When they saw there were cheaper workers in other countries, they shut down American businesses and moved them to Mumbai, using jets for their travel along with the internet to run their businesses. But with the American worker now losing jobs and not able to afford to buy the products employers are now making over seas, employers begin to realize they don’t need to sell to just Americans, so they find markets in other countries.

In 2008 something happened to disrupt this whole American capitalism. Capitialism crashed. CEOs and the financial system became terrified. They didn’t trust one another and they wouldn’t help one another. Where did they reach out for help? The U.S. government. The financial industry demanded credit and to be bailed out by the government. The banks got help but the workers didn’t. Unemployment skyrocketed. Inequality got worse. Governments cut, cut, cut. One of the big cuts was in education. This was the one place workers thought they might get ahead but instead their future was to be hurt.

The workers begin to see what is really happening. They see the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. But what can they do? Do they get to help make any decisions within the corporations or do the corporations just tell they what to do? Who is making the decisions about their work and jobs? Boards of directors and the share holders make the decisions which affect the workers. Why are all the profits going to the 1% and none shared with the workers?

Richard Wolff believes we need to change the whole American capitalist system. We need to put democracy back into the decisions which affect workers. We need democracy in the work place. This could cure the sick capitalism. Workers need to help make decisions including decisions about technology and pollution. Workers should help decide where profits go. They should design the jobs and help run the enterprise.

Workers need to criticize capitalism. They need to find an alternative to the present system. Richard Wolff suggests democratic worker capitalism. Labor needs to organize. Workers need to rebuild unions. They need to look at examples working in other countries. An example he suggested workers should look at is Mondragon Enterprise in Spain that has been functioning since 1956. It is a 100,000 cooperative where the CEO makes only 8 times what the highest worker makes. Workers can only work at a repetitive job for 2 hours. Workers serve on the Board of Directors and make decisions on market sales and distribution based on need and make decisions about salaries. They run their own bank and a university. They use profits for lots of research.

Wolff believes that only if we can democratize the corporation, capitalism might survive. The workers need to be part of the process, not just employers.

The post Can democracy cure American capitalism? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The biggest difference between today’s super-rich capitalists and the robber barons [a much more descriptive term] of a hundred years ago appears to be style. Handlebar mustaches, wool suits, top hats and protruding bellies are out of fashion, but today’s plutocrats share the same values of the captains of industry of the early 20^th century. In fact, they openly long for that so-called Golden Age, when capitalism was unfettered by pesky consumer protections, labor rights, bank regulations, income taxes and safety nets. We’ve seen it all before.

We’ve also seen how the Progressive Movement of the early 20^th century figured out how to reign in the excesses and help create a thriving middle class. The trouble is that, today, many of the accomplishments and lessons learned in earlier days of progressivism have fallen by the wayside—whether through corporate-influenced legislation and/or regulation, by complacency or by a failure of memory. But the lessons and ideas are still out there, and progressives need to reinvigorate them.

That’s what veteran labor journalist Sam Pizzigatti writes about in his new book, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class. In a post at Inequality.org, Pizzigatti suggests five public policies—all of which were on the table during the Great Depression—that could put the U.S. back on what he calls “the plutocracy-busting track.”

One: Income disclosure

Require the rich to annually disclose the income they’re reporting to the IRS and how much of that income they actually pay in taxes.

Pizzigatti notes that, in the 1930s, progressives proposed just such a measure, contending that disclosure would make it harder for the wealthy to play games with taxes. It would also make it easier to see which loopholes need to be plugged.

But, in an intriguing historical footnote, Pizzigatti points out that:

In 1934, progressives actually added a disclosure provision to the tax code.  But the super rich counterattacked with a media blitz that tied disclosure to the infamous Lindbergh baby kidnapping. If all rich Americans had to disclose their incomes, the argument went, kidnappers would gain a wider pool of targets.

The 1930s obsession with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping proved to be a powerful detour, and the provision was scrapped. But the basic premise behind income disclosure remains a solid idea, says Pizzigatti. And today we’ve got the the technology to make it happen.

Two: Leverage the power of the public purse against excessive corporate executive pay

Pizzigatti knows that government can’t set specific limits on what private corporations pay their executives. But Congress could impose limits indirectly by denying federal government contracts and subsidies to corporations that lavish rewards on top executives.

This is not a new idea, either, notes Pizzigatti. But it’s one to build on:

In 1933, then-senator and later Supreme Court justice Hugo Black won congressional approval for legislation that denied federal air- and ocean-mail contracts to companies that paid their execs over $17,500, about $300,000 in today’s dollars. But the New Deal never fully embraced the Hugo Black perspective.

Pizzigatti suggests that we could actually do that today, “by denying federal contracts and tax breaks to any companies that pay their CEOs over 25 times what their workers are making.”

Three: Give Americans a safe alternative to private banks.

There’s precedent for this idea, too, says Pizzigatt:

For Louis Brandeis, a reform giant who also became a Supreme Court justice, prohibiting financial institutions from speculating with the savings of average Americans always remained a top priority.

In the early 1930s, Brandeis advocated the expansion of postal savings banks, a system — in effect since 1911 — that paid 2 percent interest on modest savings accounts maintained with the post office. That expansion never took place, and postal savings banks withered away. They deserve a second shot.

Four: Tax undistributed corporate profits.

America’s biggest corporations are currently sitting on stashes of cash that have hit mega-billion levels, says Pizzigatti.

Money that could be invested in creating jobs sits instead in income-generating financial assets that only sweeten corporate bottom lines and executive paychecks.

A similar problem plagued the nation back during the Great Depression, and progressives pushed for a stiff tax on these “retained earnings.” In 1936, Congress passed a watered-down version of this tax that didn’t last and didn’t make much of an impact.

A stronger tax today just might.

Five: Cap income at America’s economic summit.

In a world in which Congressional Republicans refuse to even talk about raising taxes on top earners by even 3 percent, this is probably Pizzigatti’s most pie-in-the-sky idea. But if we want a rational discussion of revenue, it’s worth talking about.

First, the historical context:

In 1942, in the midst of a war-time fiscal squeeze, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent tax on all individual income over $25,000, the equivalent of about $355,000 today.

Congress didn’t go along. But lawmakers did set the top tax rate at 94 percent on income over $200,000, and federal income tax top rates hovered around 90 percent for most of the next two decades, years of unprecedented prosperity.

America’s rich fought relentlessly to curb those rates. They saw no other way to hang on to more of their income.

So, what is Pizzigatti proposing? A restructured top tax rate that would give the rich what he calls “a new incentive.”.

We could, for instance, set the entry threshold for a new 90 percent top rate as a multiple of our nation’s minimum wage. The higher the minimum wage, the higher the threshold, the softer the total tax bite out of the nation’s highest incomes.

Our nation’s wealthiest and most powerful, under this approach, would suddenly have a vested interest in enhancing the well-being of our poorest and weakest.

Pizzigatti concludes his fascinating history lesson this way:

Years ago, progressives yearned to create an America that encouraged just that sort of social solidarity. They couldn’t finish the job. We still can.

The post 5 plutocracy-busting ideas from America’s progressive history appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Who is Nouriel Roubini, and why should you care about what he says? First his credentials: He is the cofounder and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, an independent, global macroeconomic and market strategy research firm. He holds a doctorate in economics from Harvard University, has been on the faculty of Yale University, and is currently a professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He has been an advisor to President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and the IMF.

From Cassandra to sage

In 2005, he predicted that home prices were riding a speculative wave that would soon sink the economy. Wall Street scoffed, and called him “Dr. Doom” and “permabear.” In September 2006, he warned the IMF that the United States was likely to face a huge housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence, and, ultimately, a deep recession. In a few short years, his once seemingly overly negative, doomsday predictions have been matched, if not exceeded, by reality. Which is why I think it’s important to listen to Roubini when he has something to say about the economy.

On August 12, 2011, he sat down to an interview with the Wall Street Journal and predicted the chances of a double dip recession are now greater than 50%. At best, he said, we can expect subpar economic growth going forward for an extended period. One of his most unexpected statements was this:

Karl Marx had it right. At some point capitalism can destroy itself, because you can’t keep on shifting income from labor to capital, without having an excess capacity and lack of aggregate demand. And that’s what has happened. We thought that markets work but they’re not working; . . . It’s a self-destructive process.

FYI: Because of our current economic instability, Roubini is keeping all of his money in cash and out of the stock market because of the threat of another crash. To underscore this point, he mentions an associate who just took $1 billion out of the market. He recommends this for at least the next three months to avoid a loss of 40 to 50 percent. He says “better safe than sorry.”

If you want to know what our economic future may hold, this twenty-minute interview is worth your time.

The post Nouriel Roubini: Double dip recession possible; capitalism destroying itself appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Evo Morales, the first indigenous President of Bolivia, was elected to office in 2005 with 53% of the vote. His platform was to reclaim the country’s natural resources for Bolivians, and strengthen the rights of the country’s impoverished indigenous majority, workers and women. He was reelected in 2009 with 63% of the vote.

In his first term, Morales introduced the concept of the buen vivir or “Living Well” into Bolivia’s discourse. His argument was that the western world was based on material accumulation, and this led to economic policies that were destroying the planet. Rather than trying to “live better,” he said our goal should be to “live well.” His suggestion has taken the Indigenous world by storm and now is a common theme in Indigenous summits. It has also been incorporated into the new Ecuadorian constitution and adopted by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Other countries as far flung as Norway and Spain have shown an interest in what is going on in Bolivia.

Morales’, philosophy of “Living Well” has since been enshrined in Bolivia’s new constitution, and is becoming the basis of a global movement against consumerism, the extraction of natural resources for profit, and current models of development for third world countries. The new Bolivian charter emerged from a social and political process with extensive grassroots participation. Its hallmarks are that it protects biodiversity, respects indigenous right to land and territory and preserves and protects water resources, which Morales believes should never be privatized.

In brief, the indigenous concept of “Living Well” means having all of one’s basic needs met, while existing in harmony with the natural world, as opposed to “living better” by seeking to amass more and more material goods at the expense of others and the environment.

Bolivian President Evo Morales’ 10 commandments to save the planet, life and humanity

President Morales offered a series of “ten commandments” that he thought should underpin the new “Living Well” model:

First:  a call to end the capitalist system.  The capitalist system was inhuman and encouraged unbridled economic development.  The exploitation of human beings and pillaging of natural resources must end, as should wars aimed at securing access to those resources.  Also, the world should end the plundering of fossil fuels; excessive consumption of goods; the accumulation of waste; as well as the egoism, regionalism and thirst for earning where the pursuit of luxury was taking place at the expense of human beings.  Countries of the south were heaped with external debt, when it was the ecological debt that needed paying.

Second, the world should denounce war, which brought advantage to a small few, he said.  In that vein, it was time to end occupation under the pretext of “combating drugs”, such as in South America, as well as other pretexts such as searching for weapons of mass destruction.  Money earmarked for war should be channeled to make reparations for damage caused to the Earth.

Third, there should be a world without imperialism, he said, where no country was dependent upon or subordinate to another.  States must look for complementarity rather than engage in unfair competition with each other.  Member States of the United Nations should consider the asymmetry that exists among nations and seek a way to lessen deep economic differences.  Moving along those lines, he said the Security Council — with its lifelong members holding veto rights — should be democratized.

Fourth, he said access to water should be treated as a human right, and policies allowing the privatization of water should be banned.  Indigenous peoples had a long experience of mobilizing themselves to uphold the right to water.  He proposed that they put forth the idea of forming an international convention on water to guarantee it as a human right and to protect against its appropriation by a select few.

Fifth, he said the world should promote clean and eco-friendly energies, as well as end the wasteful use of energy.  He said it was understood that fossil fuels were nearing depletion, yet those who promoted biofuels in their place were making “a serious mistake”.  It was not right to set aside land not for the benefit of human beings, but so that a small few could operate luxurious vehicles.  It was also because of biofuels that the price of rice and bread has risen; and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were now warning that such policies must be prevented.  The world should explore more sustainable forms of alternative energy, such as geothermal, solar, wind and hydro-electric power.

Sixth, he said there should be more respect for Mother Earth, and the indigenous movement must bring its influence to bear in fostering that attitude.  The world must stop thinking of Mother Earth in the capitalist sense — which was that of a raw material to be traded.  For who could privatize or hire out his mother?

Seventh, he stressed the importance of gaining access to basic services for all.  Services such as education and transport should not be the preserve of private trade.

Eighth, he urged the consumption of only what was necessary and what was produced locally.  There was a need to end consumerism, waste and luxury.  It was an irony that millions of dollars were being spent to combat obesity in one half of the globe, while the other was dying of hunger.  He said the impending food crisis would necessarily bring an end to the free market, where countries suffering hunger were being made to export their food.  There was a similar case with oil, where the priority lay in selling it abroad, rather than domestically.

Ninth, he said it was important to promote unity and diversity of economies, and that the indigenous movement should put forth a call for unity and diversity in the spirit of multi-lateralism.

Tenth, the world should live under the tenet of “trying to live well”, he said, but not at the expense of others.

He said the best way forward lay in social movements, such as the indigenous people’s movement, which would not fall silent until it had brought about change.

The post “Living Well” in Bolivia appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Tea Party demonstrators carry signs calling President Obama a “socialist.” Fox News warns of a “socialist takeover of the United States.” GOP talking points focus on the “Democratic socialist agenda.” Not since the Cold War have the words “socialism” and “socialist” had such a prominent role in our political dialogue. It’s as if Glenn Beck brought Senator Joseph McCarthy and his “red baiting” back from the dead. But the political noise aside, how do Americans really feel about socialism?

Two recent national surveys shed light on this question: One conducted by the Pew Research Center, and the second by Rasmussen.

The Pew Research Center tested reactions to words and phrases frequently used in current political discourse. “Socialism,” “capitalism” and “progressive” were among words tested, and the results are surprising. Indeed, socialism is a negative for the majority of Americans, but not all Americans. And, only a slight majority of Americans regard capitalism positively.  In one of the most unexpected outcomes, a whopping 68% of respondents reacted positively to the world “progressive.”

According to the Pew survey, when considering respondents as a whole, 29% say they have a positive reaction to the word “socialism,” while 59% react negatively. When it comes to the word “capitalism” 52% react positively compared with 37% who say they have a negative reaction.

Who knew that one in three Americans has negative feelings about the word “capitalism”, and that one in four has a positive reaction to the word “socialism?” This is an amazing survey result in a country that rarely teaches about socialism in its schools, or has any meaningful media coverage of socialist countries or European social welfare states.

It gets even more interesting when we look at the Pew survey results by political affiliation:

Not surprisingly, 77% of Republicans react negatively to “socialism,” while 62% have a positive reaction to “capitalism.” Democrats are more evenly divided: 44% react positively to “socialism” and 47% react positively to capitalism”

When it comes to young people, women, people with low incomes, and the less educated, fewer than half react positively to “capitalism.” This makes sense, as these would be the groups who benefit least from a capitalist system.

No surprise, about six-in-ten Republicans (62%) react positively to “capitalism,” compared with 29% who have a negative reaction. About half of independents (52%) have a positive impression while 39% react negatively. Among Democrats, 47% react positively to “capitalism” while nearly as many (43%) react negatively.

When it comes to the word “progressive” 81% of Democrats, 64% of independents and 56% of Republicans have a positive reaction.

Other interesting findings in the Pew Survey:

• Among those younger than 30, identical percentages react positively to “socialism” and “capitalism” (43% each), while about half react negatively to each.
• More than twice as many blacks as whites react positively to “socialism” (53% vs. 24%). Yet there are no racial differences in views of “capitalism” – 50% of African Americans and 53% of whites have a positive reaction.
• Those with a high school education or less are more likely to express a positive view of “socialism” than do those with more education.
• Only 51% of moderate and liberal Republicans have a positive impression of “capitalism.”

The recent Rasmussen survey on opinions about socialism and capitalism also had interesting and surprising results.

According to the survey:

Sixty percent (60%) of U.S. adults nationwide say that capitalism is better than socialism, whereas 18% disagree, and 21% are not sure. So, according to Rasmussen, fully 39% are not completely with the American capitalist program. Young people under 30 are closely divided on the question. While Republicans and unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly say that capitalism is better, just 43% of Democrats agree. Twenty-four percent (24%) or almost one in four Democrats say socialism is better.

Additional Rasmussen findings suggest Americans are not happy with the behavior of capitalist institutions and the current corporate/government relationship:

• Seventy-three percent (73%) of Americans believe that Goldman Sachs is likely to have committed fraud as charged by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Seven-out-of-10 Americans believe that government and big business work together against the interests of consumers and investors.

• Just 24% believe the government is capable of adequately monitoring the dealings of Wall Street financial firms. Fifty-three percent (53%) say it is not.

What is remarkable about these two surveys is that, while capitalism is still the favored economic system of most Americans, a surprising number are open to socialism.  And this at a time when Republicans and corporate owned media are churning out socialist scare stories and misinformation 24/7. Perhaps it is a sign of widespread economic distress and a loss of trust in the capitalist institutions that is shifting the American opinion on both capitalism and socialism.

The weakness of these surveys is that there is widespread confusion over the meaning of the word  “socialism.” For sure, confusion exists about socialist countries with state-run economies, such as Venezuela, vs. social welfare states with heavily regulated capitalist economies, such as Norway and Sweden.  Many respondents had positive feelings about both capitalism and socialism suggesting a desire for a European social welfare state model.

The post Who knew? Americans like socialism appeared first on Occasional Planet.