Responding to Liz Wheeler

Liz Wheeler has challenged the Left and liberals to respond to her five attack points on democratic socialism. 

Wheeler uses lots of quick-shot soundbites while we write lots of books and do long and defensive blog posts and podcasts. For all of our good work we don't get very far. People are busy, the bosses and capitalists have the advantages, we function in a system that divides people and forces us to compete with one another, and capitalism brings out the worst in people for a time as the system falls apart. I'm going to try to respond to Wheeler's attack as she presents it. This will not take longer to read than it will to listen to Wheeler's tired attack. 

One: For us at Oregon Socialist Renewal the "Democratic" in "Democratic Socialism" is there as a point of emphasis. Socialism is democratic in the sense that it extends democracy and working-class power into every area of life. "Democratic Socialism" also refers to a specific tradition in the socialist movement, and one that we have mixed reactions to.

Socialism is NOT "government giving away lots of free stuff" and "government taking over the means of production and distribution." Socialism IS people collectively mobilizing through their workers' and peoples' government and through other democratic means to take power over their lives and their working and living conditions.

Two: Socialism has been the only answer to exploitative and ruinous capitalism, and it has been attempted most often in colonized, people-of-color-majority, and capitalist-plundered and war-ravaged countries. These countries and peoples take up their struggles for socialism with distinct disadvantages: the U.S., other imperialist powers, and multinational corporations squeeze them and make them bleed. And socialism can take generations to develop, with forward and backward movements, just as any other system develops. Revolution is not a straight line and socialists are not magicians who can pull utopia from a hat---and we do not say that we are.

Where has capitalism worked? In what capitalist countries are workers not exploited? Which capitalist powers cede power nonviolently and democratically? Which capitalist countries do not lurch from crisis to crisis or from war to war? Which capitalist countries have not had their breadlines and unemployment lines? 

Three: The wealthy should indeed pay a fair share in taxes, or more, and if we can use taxes to lower their numbers and rid ourselves of them then we should. They don't create wealth or value, and they suck an incredible amount of resources from society. But taxation is not our whole policy. We're about creating a democratic economy that provides for the people and restores the environment, an economy that works for us and is under direct social control. Wheeler & Company are moving in the opposite direction and are okay with drowning us all if their profit-driven boat floats.

Four: Socialism is not about "big government" and "the government" giving orders. If society goes through the work of building new democratic social institutions, committing to restoring the environment, planning where our resources will and won't go, committing to racial and gender justice, and ensuring that everyone has rights and a voice and all that is needed to live then the nature and purpose of government changes. Each one of us may have less stuff, and less junk will be produced, but all of us will have what we need within reason. No society, including capitalism, is static. Our question for Wheeler & Company: what stops capitalism from moving from a system of free enterprise and inequalities to fascism?

Five: Not everyone in Wheeler's room wants fairness---probably no one in that room does, in fact. The idea that taking care of one another means stealing from someone is only logical under capitalism, but it skips over a key point: the capitalists make their wealth through the thefts of time, labor, land, and the national sovereignty of colonized and oppressed peoples, and through gendered and racialized oppression and the destruction of our environment. Still, there is something in Wheeler's argument that's correct in a sense. If we do have to "steal" from someone to help one another then let's do that by expropriating the wealth of those who have taken our labor, land, resources, and rights. Socialism is about building society based on the democratic understandings that an injury to one is an injury to all and that power should flow from each of us as we are able to those who do productive labor in order that all of us should be free and provided for without exploitation.