Re: President Obama and Socialism

It's hard for me to keep up with you; just after I try to whack down the fascism mole, I face the socialist one. I'll oblige, but again, I have to say I don't find these arguments even remotely interesting when compared to a substantive discussion of the President's plan. (That is, simply describing the public option as "socialist" shouldn't convince me or you about its merits.)

It's not at all out of bounds to argue Obama's a socialist, though it is misguided. No doubt Obama has increased government spending (as President Bush did in the last months of his term). But socialism requires more than that, which is where I think the nuance gets lost. Simply increasing welfare spending at a time of extreme economic conditions (when it makes sense to increase welfare) does not mean America's turned into France, let alone the former U.S.S.R.

Labor laws, for example, are hardly as restrictive as they were in India pre-1991, and government ownership in the private economy isn't nearly at People's Republic levels either, even after all the recent bailouts (see this much-cited graph).

So, no, I don't think "socialism" is at all a "usable descriptor," because it carries a heavy trolley of historical baggage that obscures discussion rather than illuminates it. As AEI scholar Steven Hayward nicely wrote at NYTimes.com, it always requires further definition, which usually tends to reveal personal politics and not at all an objective dictionary:

But that story has come back to me as I listen to the commotion about people calling Barack Obama a socialist. If we understand socialism in its strict definition — central economic planning and public ownership of the means of production — then the president is obviously not a socialist (with a mild caveat for the auto bailouts, the banks, etc).

But if we step back a moment and consider “socialism” more broadly as a step increase in political control of or intervention in the economy — whether it be through a revival of Keynesian-style stimulus and things like “cash for clunkers” subsidies, or through a government semi-takeover of the health care sector — then the charge appears more salient.

And that's the thing -- I don't think Keynesianism is the equivalent of a Great Leap Forward or a Gosplan, which makes the accusation of socialism much less persuasive to my mind.

Still, the whole thing runs into a pseudo-discussion: instead of talking about whether or not a public option will necessarily hinder private competitors, we face again and again this socialist charge. It's not a bad rhetorical ploy, and it works like this: if Obama's a socialist, and socialism is U.S.S.R. and Mao's China, then clearly his policies will take the economy off the deep end.

But if what's going on is much less than socialism but instead a firm part of America's political discourse, what's so bad about it? If we could only throw out these silly ideological monikers, we'd have a much more productive debate. (See, for e.g., Richard Thaler's excellent editorial in the Times last fortnight.)