Chris Matthews Wants to Know Why Socialism is a Bad Word in America
When my family lived in West Berlin, some of the simple personal freedoms Germans enjoyed — freedoms that we here in the US don’t have — amazed me. They were small things, really – like no speed limit on the autobahn (highway), and no legal restrictions on the drinking age. Such restrictions have become so commonplace for us, that we can scarcely imagine life without them.
I told a German friend of mine that I found it odd that her fellow countrymen had so many more personal freedoms than we do in America. She shrugged her shoulders and said, with a sly smile, “We know first hand what socialism is, and constantly fight it. You don’t know it when you see it.â€
Until recently, I didn’t realize the depth of the truth that statement held. Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain refused to label Barack Obama a socialist, probably because he didn’t want to be accused of mud-slinging. On Friday, Chris Matthews, host of Hardball on MSNBC, brought the S-word out into the open for just few brief moments.
With socialized health care inching our way, it’s more important than ever that we stop using the vocabulary handed to us by leftists. We must force them to defend the real-world ramifications of their ideas, rather than gloat about the cheerful figments of their Utopian imaginations.
Yesterday, with the health care vote just hours away in the Senate, Matthews brought his guests, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), onto his show to discuss health care.
One accusation Matthews constantly flings at Republicans is that when they were in control of Congress and the White House, they didn’t “fix†health care, and that every time the Democrats have tried (to socialize it), the Republicans have said they had a better answer—but have done nothing.
The short answer is that we do not believe a capitalist system is a broken system, simply by virtue of being capitalist. Nor does the system’s profit motive make it evil. Flaws in a capitalist system will not be fixed by socialism.
Matthews asked:
“Why is socialism a pretty okay word in Europe? It’s not a hated word in Europe, Sen. Sanders. But United States it’s a bad word. What’s the difference between the two cultures—when it comes to medicine?â€
Sanders replied:
“In Europe, for many, many years’ people have seen democratic socialist society’s policies provide health care to all people. They have seen these countries provide free college education to working families, and they’ve seen a much fairer distribution of wealth and income. In this country, for a variety of reasons, you’ve had a right-wing Republican Party and a centrist Democratic Party. In my view, not effectively representing working families, being dominated by big money interest. So what you have seen in recent years is the very richest people become richer, while the middle class collapses and poverty increases. I think we have a lot to learn from Scandinavian countries.â€
Then Gregg said:
“…Why doesn’t socialism work? Because it undermines the basic core of American values. First the people have choice. Second the people are entrepreneurial and want to go out and be, create better things by being entrepreneurial. Thirdly, people expect to be rewarded for that. We have a capitalist system. And it works pretty well to have a capitalist system. Now, Bernie doesn’t like profit, I understand that, he is a socialist. And it appears a lot of people in his party doesn’t like profit either.â€
And once again the window slammed shut.
Communism is a deadly enemy of capitalism.
Just as terrorists hide in plain sight, under the cover of political correctness, so do radical leftists hide their identities and ideology within the political system. Until both are identified by name, and their terminology is truthfully defined and exposed, both will remain deadly enemies that continue to defeat us on our own soil.
Socialsim STEALS freedom. And any shade or degree of socialsm steals freedom. It’s been happening slowly in the US since 1932. We’ve just been asleep, preoccupied, complacent, taken our eyes off the ball, or agreeing with this or that step taken — and they’ve been legion over the years. Even with this monster called “health care reform” — so much of the opposition focuses on cost/deficit/economics. OK — no argument there, certainly. But the REAL horror of this fascist effort is that it brings Americans to the brink of being entitlement slaves and rapes our Constitutional freedoms beyond anything any of us ever imagined. And when it’s done, folks, it’s DONE. Ain’t no going back.
Anyone who doesn’t understand that can’t find their @$$ with both hands and a compass.
Chris Mathews needs to uprade his curriculum, whatever courses he has taken are not enhancing his ability to figure out basic facts of life. I am sure he has a private health insurance policy.
Who’s he kidding, anyway. GE is tired of supporting him. Isn’t that obvious?
Then, I wonder why Comcast wants the network, but maybe checking to see who the majority stockholder is might give me a clue.
Sanders embarrasses himself with the foolishly naive notion that we should be more like Scandinavia. That’s like comparing apples to plutonium. Whatever peace and prosperity is enjoyed in the Nordic hood has been made possible by the alpha dog that lives on the other side of town.
They will outlaw certain words by callilng it ‘racist’.
Never mind that our president wrote and read out loud a decidedly racist book and got away with it, we will all be prevented from speaking the truth because words will be banned.
When I lived in Germany, the stores were all required to close at certain hours. On Saturday, they could stay open till 2 p.m. in the center of the city (Munich), but only till 1 p.m. a little further out. And if you needed anything on Sunday, forget it. When I was there, as I recall, Christmas Day was on Monday and then “Second Christmas Day” or St. Stephen’s Day on Tuesday. So there were three and a half days on which you were basically forbidden to make any purchases, unless you could find it at the train station or McDonald’s.
Do driving at 120 m.p.h. on the Autobahn and getting drunk at age ten compensate?
Chris Mathews’ Hardball – Hard Head would be better. If you can, do what I did. Watch his show for about 5 minutes on three or four different nights. Then you will see how this host operates. If you agree with him, he is your friend, just full of respect and fake admiration. BUT if you are aggressive in disagreeing with him, he will be all over you – like locust. He will interrupt you, ask another question while the guest is answering his first question, display extreme dissatisfaction and no respect. I cannot believe he has his own show? But wait a minute, so does, the other three loser on MSNBC – Keith Olbermann, Ed Shultz and Rachel Maddow.
Is it any wonder why these people do not have a clue? And people criticize FOX for being an arm of the Republicans?
Socialism is BAD because it is Un-American and against the US Constitution. Socialism is the concept of Government Ownership of Industry and Capital and a first big step to Communism.
Get educated here: http://www.commieblaster.com/definitions/index.html
Sanders is a lying sack and if Matthews doesn’t ‘get’ why socialism is bad then he must live within his own warped mind, as it is all around us…everywhere!
Oh, but I forgot…he is led more by emotions than intellect and wants to feel that chill up his leg given him by a Marxist. Nice diversion from reality? Who knows? Perhaps he is in the wrong business of lying to people…he could opt out and be a politician!….IN CUBA!
Hey, Chris, if you really want to know why socialism is bad, let me tell you. I was born and raised in the depths of socialism and lived it for 22 years and never once did I get that twinge running up my leg, mate.
I’m still trying to figure out why all these relatively wealthy people are pushing socialism on everyone. They must be exempt from it.
If you want 100% employment then Socialism is the way to go. Everyone will have a job. It’ won’t pay squat and it may well be menial and unrewarding, but then, so is everyone elses job.
During the depression a little flick came out. You may have heard of it there Chris. It was titled the Grapes of Wrath or some such…
At the time, there was 20% unemployment here in the US and 100% employment in the USSR. The Soviets would not allow the film to be shown in the USSR.
Here was the collapse of the Capitalist model. Destitute families forced to flee to other states in hopes of securing a job for the most basic of needs. Food, housing, clothing. The US in shambles…yet…the film was forbidden.
Why?
Because this destitute family owned a truck…an automobile. Something that no citizen of the doomed Socialist Republic could even dream of ever having. At that time cars were available to only the highest ranking party members. Even they could not afford to own one, but the state could.
Can you imagine the impact that this film would have had on a population of enslaved workers? The hypocrisy of their leaders, the incredibly poor quality of their lives would have been made evident in a moment and rebellion would surely have ensued. Trouble at the very least eh?….
This lesson seems to have been unlearned and idiots like Matthews are a prime example of that unlearning/ignorance. His is a chosen ignorance. As so many liberal leaders or mouthpieces will put their fingers in their ears and make noises to block out that which does not support their present indoctrination….much as the USSR did back then.
Chris with his leg utopia is a mental case at MSLSD. Socialism oppresses its citizens-distributes wealth-legalized stealing. Their government tells them what to do to gain ugly control over them. People are not zompies but are treated like them. This suppresses the God given talents that people have as individuals.
It seems to me that the whole discussion arises from a ignorance as to the real meaning of socialism. It is NOT communism, nor is it necessarily anti-captitalist or anti-entrepreneurial.
Some might do well to go back to school.
and before anyone else corrects me, ” … an ignorance” – no edit function that I could see.
I have seen aeveral socialistr c.ountries up close. I think scale matters a lot. It can work with a few hundred on a kibutz om Israel, though the country has become more capitalist. It is ridiculous to compare tiny Scandanavian countries to the USA Nobody in the world provides services to 300 million people and our government could not either. Too big. Note that when hippies founded communes in the 60’s they all failed. Social;is t medicine in Europe responded to the devastation of WWII and is being revised as we speak in places like Netherlands and Switerland. Ir got too expensive.
By the way. They don’t have free college for everyone, either. They track everyone early and limit seats. That’s wht we get so many foreign students. We pick up the slack of those who want college but are excluded.
Think of something else. All voters under thirty were fifteen or less when Clinton was president and have no memory of the Berlin wall. We gave ourself a peace dividend and stopped fighting while they took over education
Marx himself used the terms “socialism” and “communism” interchangeably; they meant the identical system to him. Historically, “socialists” distinguished themselves from “communists” in that they believed the communist workers’ utopia should be brought about piecemeal: through a bit of labor legislation over here; an industry regulation over there; etc. “Communists” believed in outright and immediate private property expropriation, which amounted, of course, to an immense violent act of theft against a country’s own people by its own government. Whether soft-core or hard-core, socialists in the past were at least honest about the authoritarian nature of the regime they sought to impose.
In the 1920s, a classical liberal economist named Ludwig von Mises wrote an important critique of socialism titled “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (later expanded in 1922 into a book titled simply “Socialism”). His paper is devastating and has never been refuted by any later writer on socialism (though it has been ignored). It turns out that Marx spent most of his efforts criticizing “capital” and “capitalism” but spent nothing on actually describing the details of how his socialist paradise would actually function economically. Mises sought to correct that omission by adopting the standpoint of a socialist, making the assumption that the entire world were run according to socialist doctrines, and tracing out the results. Keep in mind that his conclusions make no assumptions regarding the moral character or intelligence or integrity of the leaders at the top of the ruling elite; they can be as kind or as ruthless as you wish. The economic results will still be the same. Essentially, they are as follows:
When the government expropriates private property in the capital markets — meaning that there will no longer be any private ownership of factories, land, mines, power plants, farms, etc. — it will in fact be acting as one giant monopoly owning everything productive. Since private individuals no longer own capital goods, there is no private exchange of these goods: a factory owner cannot sell his factory to a mine owner, or vice-versa, because there are no “buyers” and “sellers” anymore; just one big monopoly over everything. Without private ownership and private exchange, however, there can be no meaningful PRICES for these things, because a “price” is a ratio — payable in money, of course — co-determined by both the buyer and the seller. And while the seller will want to get the highest price, and the buyer will want to pay the lowest price, the “equilibrium price” — the price they actually agree to — will reflect each other’s understanding of the FUTURE VALUE of the things that can be produced by that capital good. If the buyer of a factory truly believes that the products one can manufacture from that factory are going to have a much lower price in the near future, he will not be inclined to bid up the price of the factory; conversely, if he believes the price of the products one can make in that factory will increase — because of high preference and high demand by consumers — he will bid up the price of the factory. Not too difficult to understand. The important point is that the bidding by the capital owners takes into consideration a “market signal” — i.e., the future price of some consumer product — and is not merely based on their own self-interest (even if they believe this to be so). This buying and selling of capital by private owners allows the market for capital goods (again, that’s land, labor, machinery, factories, mines, forests, power plants, etc.) to coordinate itself with the market for consumer goods, so that ONLY SO MUCH machinery of a certain kind need be used for a particular consumer good; or ONLY SO MUCH land need be dedicated to growing a particular crop; or only so much steel need be used to create nails of a particular size; etc. These finely-tuned decisions are made — and as Mises proved, MUST BE MADE — on the basis of market prices…and market prices — MEANINGFUL market prices — can only arise when individuals privately trade things that they have a stake in; i.e., market prices only occur when things are exchanged that are privately owned.
Under governmental “public” ownership of the means of production, no meaningful market prices are produced because there’s only a monolithic monopoly that owns all the means of production. Without private ownership, there is no exchange; without exchange there are no market prices; without market prices for capital goods, there is no way to coordinate the market for capital goods with the market for consumer goods: there is no way to know if too much land is being used to grow a crop that people actually don’t want or need; there is no way to know if too much steel is being used to make nails of a certain size that people don’t actually want; etc. It’s sheer economic ANARCHY.
Assuming you browbeat enough workers and managers, you can still produce stuff under socialism, but because you lack private property and price coordination, you cannot produce stuff that PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT, because there’s no way for consumers to send an economic signal to producers. Thus, under socialism, you can make lots of mop handles, when what people actually need are more mop heads; you can create big steel railroad spikes, when what people actually require are little steel roofing nails–this was actually the problem with the former Soviet Union (and their various ministers figured out a neat trick to lie to western socialists: they would take the mop handles that no one wanted, and take the big steel railroad spikes that no one needed; and price them according to the WESTERN market value of these goods; then they would add up these prices and declare “Look how high our GDP is! Isn’t socialism wonderfully productive!” Many western economists — like Paul Samuelson — were fooled by this practice. Yes, a GDP arrived at in this way might look impressive, but it represents a money-value of a series of goods that are pure MALINVESTMENTS from the Russian consumers’ point of view; it represents a GDP for goods that consumers weren’t asking for, and therefore represents a waste of Russia’s productive resources).
The upshot of all this, as Mises showed, is that a socialist economy must soon waste all of its efforts producing things people don’t want or can’t use, and must soon use up and consume its own capital — since it can never tell when it is using too much of it or too little of it. This is the formula for complete economic collapse. What, in fact, kept historical examples of socialist countries afloat for many decades beyond their true life expectancy was the fact that the whole world was NOT socialist; the socialist country existed in a sea of real market prices, and real market coordination, provided by the NON-SOCIALIST countries. (Apparently, the Chinese under Mao used to price many of their raw materials according to prices they saw listed in old Montgomery-Ward catalogues!) This was in addition, of course, to outright subsidies that western nations like the U.S. gave to communist countries.
As for countries like Sweden, they are, of course, not “socialist” in the above sense. Private individuals can still own the means of production in Sweden, which is basically a capitalist economy with many restrictions and regulations. Mises dubbed such a system “interventionism” and showed in other essays that interventionism is not a “third system” between capitalism and socialism. It is an inherently unstable system in which every regulation must lead to unintended consequences in the structure of production — a shortage here; a glut there; etc. — and in which the only way to deal with the consequence is either to abolish the original regulation (unlikely for purely political reasons), or impose a further regulation to deal with the new problem (far more likely). But then the problem only repeats itself on another level, for every restriction on market activity has some unintended consequence in production, and will invite further regulation.
In sum, we can answer Chris Matthews thus:
1. Socialism is immoral since it must begin with an enormous act of theft — expropriating people’s private property.
2. Socialism must sustain itself by the use or threat of brute force — a ruling elite BY RIGHT gets to make decisions as to the economic and political destiny of the “common man.”
3. Socialism cannot coordinate its producer-goods markets with its consumer-goods markets and therefore leads to complete capital destruction and utter waste of natural resources (including a waste of the resource called “labor”). This problem is inherent in centralized ownership of the means of production, and cannot be solved by fast computers or sophisticated math. It wasn’t solved in the Soviet Union; it wasn’t solved in communist China; it wasn’t solved in North Korea; it wasn’t solved in Cuba; it wasn’t solved in fascist countries like Italy under Mussolini; it wasn’t solved under National Socialism in Germany under Hitler. It cannot be solved except by private property and free market exchange of producers’ goods.
4. Halfway systems like interventionism are not stable “third systems” but must always veer either toward a freer, capitalist system, or toward a more authoritarian, socialist one. As far as healthcare is concerned, there is no country with single-payer systems that don’t have chronic shortages, enforced rationing of certain procedures, lack of innovation of new drugs and new techniques, and long, long, long waiting lists. In these countries — UK, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, etc. — the people’s presumed “right to medical care” is nothing more than a “right to be put on a waiting list.” If any private medical care is permitted to exist, it becomes so scarce in relation to the demand, that the price for it soars, and then only the very wealthy can afford it.
In short, “socialism” is economic POISON and people must be warned NOT TO DRINK IT.
Just like medicare and social security and FDIC are socialist programs that have failed. FDIC was the root cause fo teh banking crisis has people no longer had to worry about risk in their depsoits and demanded banks go for the higer and higher return. Social security is broke. If instead of giving the money to the government the FEDeral government would have simply manadated savings for retirement in the 1930’s every retiree would be a millionare atm. Medicare is failed again because it took freedom away from the users of the system. Instead of paying the doctors, hospitals ect the government could have given vochers and allowed the people to make the choice of what to do. Yet are politicans are too afraid to talk about any of this.
Yes Obama is a socialist, and I don’t doubt that if he thought he could get away with it he would try to bring full blown communism, not must socialism but communism to the US. The damage that the socialist in the White House are doing to the US will take many decades to repair, and I doubt if many understand the blood that is going to be spilled around the world because of the current disastrous foreign policy.
Did anybody else see that fingertip in his mouth ?
-sockpuppet
I look at socialism as a means to an end. That end is totalitarianism. Socialism is a way to sap the will of the people. But it does so very slowly. The government chips away at the freedoms of the people, almost imperceptibly at times. This means that people become habituated to it and since most of us are creatures of habit, we will continue on in a system that slowly erodes our freedoms (as it has been doing since the 1930s) until the government controls every aspect of our lives. And I mean every aspect, just like in 1984.
As Saul Alinsky said, “the issue is not the issue”. With respect to socialism, I think there are many radicals who could care less about socialism but are only interested in it as a means to secure power. Totalitarian power is the ultimate end of socialism.
It's a "bad word" because whenever it is used, it is used to describe the fascist/authoritarian movements of the 20th century that often ran under the "socialist" or "communist" moniker.
Cuba/Cambodia/USSR were to socialism as Chile (under Pinochet) were to Capitalism.
Not at all. They struggled against it. Alright, some people did. They still, to this day, have some of the oppressiveness of the Nazi era. Such as homeschooling laws, that were written under Hitler and they still enforce. By no means did I mean to imply that Germans had more freedom than we. My point was simply as Americans we don’t recognize it. Socialism is very out in the open in Germany, and sadly still a prominent political force.
Hell, NO!
EVERYTIME YOU “LOBBY” OR SUPPORT THE CREATION OF YET ANOTHER GOVT. PROGRAM YOU SETTING THE STAGE FOR ANOTHER INCREASE IN TAXES.
EVERY GOVT. AGENCY COSTS MILLIONS TO STAFF, AND THE RESULTS ARE ALMOST
INVARIABLY NIL.
WE, AT ONE TIME HAD SUNSET LAWS, OR RULES, THAT CHECKED ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AN AGENCY; THEN, IF BAD, IT WAS ELIMINATED. NOW
AGENCIES, BUREAUS, ETC. ARE NEVER ELIMINATED, AND COSTS GO UP.
THE STAFF HAPPILY VOTES FOR THE SCOUNDREL (DUMMY) WHO CREATED THE AGENCY SINCE THEY WANT TO KEEP THEIR EASY JOBS.
DON’T SAY “THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW” BECAUSE THEN THERE WILL SOON BE
ONE SUPPORTED BY LAWYERS WHO GET RICH FROM ENDLESS LEGAL CASES.
THE “AGENCIES” ARE MADE TO SOUND GOOD, BUT TYPICALLY THEY DO VERY
LITTLE, AND ALWAYS ARE VERY EXPENSIVE FROM AN EXPANDING STAFF (WHO
OF COURSE, WILL VOTE FOR THE GUY WHO PROMISES TO KEEP THE AGENCY.)
Guilt trip, would be my ‘take’. Liberals — as differentiated from progressives — believe as they do for the following reasons: guilty over their own success; angry at the success of others(i.e. failures); obsessed with “fairness”; obsessed with “tolerance” because their own behavior is so hypocritical they hope by not judging others they themselves won’t be judged.
I agree. Also, I think were we have our “failures” is where communism has been slipped in to “fix” things. More regulation, more intervention…
Which illustrates clearly, a fact that hold true to this day, that even our poorest citizens are better off than those forced to live under communism.
Better read up. Socialism most definitely is necessarily anti-capitalist, as that is the primary meaning of the term. As for being anti-entrepreneurial, if you’re anty-capitalist you are by definition anti-entrepreneurial also, as all entrepreneurs are capitalists. As for it not being communism, you’re just nitpicking there. But I’ll agree with you in so far as not all socialist regimes were also communist. Many were (and are) fascist. (Yes, I’m using the actual accurate definitions of the terms, not the leftist “words mean whatever we want them to mean” definitions. Deal with it.)
True enough. I think it can be said that socialism is soft tyranny to communism’s hard tyranny. It’s a little bit like being given a choice between syphilis or gonorrhea. Either way you’ve been screwed.
Obama is the spokesman for a gang of commies working in the White House which, ironically, is protected by our constitution; literally and physically.