TABOO LABELS

By Tom Kando
 
(originally written and posted on 12/14/14)


Notice some of the taboo labels in our political lexicon: Being called a “Marxist” or a “Socialist” is the kiss of death. Advocating for the “working class” is similarly unwise. One is only allowed to advocate for the middle class. Even the progressive folks at MSNBC and moderates like President Obama never speak of the “working class,” only of the “middle class.”

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with Marxism, Socialism and the idea of the working class. These things are no more wrong than are concepts such as “Capitalism,” the “ruling class,” the “military-industrial complex” and other similar constructs.

I am not a Marxist. I am eclectic. Karl Marx was one of the seminal minds of the 19th century, a giant in the history of ideas, one of history’s most important economists and philosophers. Here are a few others: Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, David Hume, David Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, G.W.F. Hegel, Thorstein Veblen, Max Weber, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, members of the “Austrian School” such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, and many others.

The strange thing is that, whereas ALL of these men have made enormous contributions to our understanding of society and of the economy, Americans single out Marx, and ONLY Marx, for severe opprobrium.
All great social and economic theories have flaws as well as value. There is much to be learned from Marx and there is much to be learned from Adam Smith. But in the U.S., Marx is singled out as the Anti-Christ.

Then there is that other taboo word - Socialism. Illiterate Tea Partiers use words such as Socialism, Marxism, and Communism interchangeably. To them and to the demagogues who lead them, all that “left-wing stuff” is the same.

In fact, “Socialism” includes:
The British Labor Party and former prime minister Tony Blair, who was a staunch ally and supporter of President George W. Bush;
Current French President Francois Hollande and his ruling party;
The Dutch labor party (PvdA), currently part of the ruling coalition;
The German Social Democrats;
Dozens of social-democratic parties that frequently run the governments of advanced and highly democratic countries. These countries enjoy prosperity, mixed capitalist economies, and even monarchy, as do Britain, Holland and Scandinavia.
The American Democratic Party is also a socialist party, to some extent.

It is much better to equate Socialism with social democracy, rather than with Communism. The latter was the extreme form of socialism carried out in the Soviet Union for about seventy years.

It is equally bizarre that the words “working class” have practically disappeared from our discourse. You will find no reference to the “working class” in the media any more. And we are still being told the absurdity that the “mainstream” media have a liberal bias! Just a few decades ago, the category “working class” was a key element in all professional analyses of American social stratification (see Lloyd Warner, Edward Banfield, etc.). Today, not even the Occupy Wall Street movement dares to use that label any more.

Why have such verbal taboos developed in America?

Well, for one thing, the way Socialism was enacted in the Soviet Union was an abomination. Stalinism and Communism gave Socialism a bad name, as did other atrocious perversions in places like Cambodia and North Korea. But isn’t judging Socialism on that basis the same as judging all of Christianity on the basis of the Spanish inquisition or the Salem witch burnings?

Then, there was a Cold War that lasted half a century. And even before that, since the 1920s, Americans have been taught that Communists and Marxists were the Anti-Christ. Anti-communism became a deeply ingrained part of American culture, and only American culture: Only in the U.S. was it a crime to be a communist.

There has been a wholesale flight to the right, the indoctrination of the population, the now widespread and generalized fear to do or say something that might be construed as, God forbid, un-American.

But there is much to be learned from Marx. His analysis of surplus value, the declining return on investment, external markets, capitalism in general, social class, alienation, and many other subjects remains compelling in many ways.

And there is much to be learned from the other great theorists I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

In America, Marx was singled out as the bête noire because of what happened in the Soviet Union and because of the Cold War. This cultural quirk will probably rectify itself after the brainwashed generation is gone.

© Tom Kando 2013

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