Many people find it strange that Obama is criticised for Socialism, because according to the normal world definition of Socialism, he is not a socialist.Now, some liberals are suggesting that socialist is not so much referring to economic theories, that it is a racist code word for black.
It is time to investigate the truth of these conflicting claims about Socialism.
The technical meaning of socialist in the rest of the world is "government ownership of industry", and by extension, "a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended." As a political ideology, Communism is usually considered to be a branch of socialism. So Communist and Socialist can be used interchangeably in some contexts. But the word "Communist" had an even more emotional meaning between 1945 and 1990, when the communist "Soviet Union" was America's most feared military enemy.
Socialism, even as a theory, was not popular with whites in the Southern US. It was a direct threat to their traditional economic system where black people did all the dirty, heavy work for the whites, and received little or no compensation for it.
The white segregationists of the south accused communists of inspiring the Negroes to rebel against the white masters in the 1950's to 1970's. Because of the alleged support that that the African Americans got from it, Socialism came to mean "racial integration and removal of class distinctions between black and white". In Apartheid South Africa, Communism was regularly cited as being the inspiration behind the black revolt, and this helped gain a fair amount of support for the Apartheid government from the conservatives in the USA.
Throughout the Civil Rights struggle, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People), which promoted equality, was accused by white southerners as being inspired by and supported by the Communists.
This book "The Ugly Truth About the NAACP" written in 1955, can be found online here at the University of Southern Mississippi Digital Library.
A Quote from Page 3:
"... the subversive designs behind the current crusade of the misnamed NAACP and its fellow travelling fronts to force upon the South the Communist-inspired doctrine of racial integration and amalgamation."Of course, back in the sixties, Communism was far scarier than socialism. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, invoking "Communism" sounds outmoded. This means a necessary reversion to the word Socialism to describe racial equality and wealth sharing.
Socialism also has the fearful Nazi tie-in as the word Nazi evolved from "National Socialism", a fact that almost every conservative southerner could probably tell you, even though apparently 75% of Oklahoma high school students don't know who George Washington was. It is also a fact that the Nazis were socialists in name only, but this second fact is not well known in the USA.
Picture of protest signs saying "Race mixing is Communism" from the days of integration protests in the sixties. You might have to click on the image to see the word "Communist" on the protests signs.
I suspect you're right. Basically the label 'socialist' (and earlier, that of 'communist') is often simply applied to political and social views which do not accord with those of the group.
ReplyDeleteIf you recall, during the Cold War, the phrase 'godless communists,' was prevalent adding the weight of atheism to the opprobrium. That cachet does not (yet) seem to have attached itself to socialism ("godless communists" - 92,300 hits; "godless socialists" - 6,460 hits).
Communism and socialism are more distinct than you make out - although generally communism is arrayed to the left of the political spectrum, along with socialism, although to the extreme left. Communism is both an economic and political system, whereas socialism is primarily an economic approach. (We'd best leave the Marxist dialectic out of this for the moment ;-)
I would hazard to say that the vast majority of those who use the term have only the vaguest idea of what socialist theory actually proposes.
And, certainly you're right. The 'National Socialist German Workers Party' (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) was neither socialist (their primary financial support came from industrialists) nor a true workers' party (succeeding largely because of the fragmentation of the opposing centrist and left parties).
In fact, Mussolini, the other European fascist leader of the WWII period, actually was a socialist for quite some time - at least before his Fascist epiphany.
Actually, to return to Communism in parting, I've heard it defined as, 'government of the people, by the people, for the people.'