Young Americans for Socialism

Just what kind of socialism are you talking about and do you favor it ?

If someone asked me that question, I would be completely baffled. “Both” seems to be answer of choice even if you are far, far to the left of the American center.

You might interprete the question as “Do you want more soc1alism in this country than there is at the moment”. But if people read in such a way, than the conclusion would be that people under 30 want, by a small margin, to make the country less soc1alist than it currently is.

A more likely reading is that people answer this question as if it said “Do you vote Republican” Yes/Not last time/I would never, in which case the results match quite well with election results for the age group.

The filter appears to work again… Can’t you make a rule that allows all words, including the s-word, in the comments as long as it was in the original post?

Could this be a result of the Republicans’ invocation of the socialist bogeyman (“well, if Obama is a socialist, socialism must be pretty good”)? Or, since Rasmussen didn’t define the terms, might under-30s simply have no idea what either capitalism or socialism are?

Badly worded polls produce bad data. This reminds me of the recent Pew poll on religion where 30% of those claiming to be atheists said they believed in god. The Poll deliberately didn’t define the word, and all it showed was a lack of understanding.

This is the same thing. I would imagine that many think of “socialism” in terms of the social democrat model of Europe, that is increased government-administered social safety net programs. But the poll would have to give this as an explicit option and compare it with the south American style current where major industries are being put under the direct control of the government.

Actually worrying about capitalism, socialism and communism is fighting the 19th Century philosophical wars all over again. All the groups were mistaken. It turns out the who “owns” the means of production really doesn’t matter, it is governance that is the important factor. We have “public” ownership of large corporations, but the “owners” have no effective say in how the enterprises are run. As recent events have shown they have been run for the benefit of the managerial class.

During the heyday of the USSR it was the nomenklatura that benefited even thought the enterprises were owned by the state. What all large enterprises have in common is a lack of democratic governance. In no cases does the public have a say. The closest cases to real democratic governance are to be found in worker’s cooperatives and mutual benefit societies. Notice that mutual savings banks and insurance companies have all but vanished in the US.

At least in a few places, like Germany, workers get a seat on the board and are guaranteed some role in managing the enterprises, but the public is still powerless. There is a lot of work to be done, but first one has to stop arguing about things which don’t matter.

We may be less exceptional in attitudes than we have been, but we’ve still got exceptional institutions — weak parties, the Senate, etc. So it seems a bit soon to declare “the end of exceptionalism.”

All the same, I agree–something is afoot. Think too of the way Obama was able to laugh off the “you’re a socialist” charge last year. That would have been hard to imagine in, say, the 1980s.

On the term social democracy: People who know about these things have told me that part of the reason Americans don’t use the term is that because of the (thankfully defunct) Social Democrats USA, the term has had a very distinct meaning within the US labor movement–the very place you’d think to discover people who’d find the term useful–and it’s an unsavory meaning to many of the people who, absent SDUSA’s history, might have found it an accurate label for their politics.

I’d be willing to bet large sums of money that most of the people answering this question have no idea what anything we might reasonably call “socialism” is, and I doubt the poll tells us anything about whether socialism, properly so called, is in better favor than it used to be.
But I suspect that this has always been true, and yet such poll results as these would have been inconceivable even a decade ago, so I’m sure that this poll measures some real change, even if we’re not sure what change it measures. Harry b. may be on to something. Any other ideas?

I think that should be Fasc1sm, Steve, or F4scism

I am waiting for the poll that says 30% of American under 30 think they are black.

Perhaps the shift is partially due to the fact that, for the last 8 years or so, the most visible and vocal advocates for no-holds-barred muscular capitalism have been utterly pathetic wankers, i.e. libertarians.

The Republican “everything is socialist except what believe” strategy is so poorly thought out. While I’m sure it stirs up some of the Republican base, I think the more common effect is going to be that those who oppose Republican policies are going to become more and more comfortable with the idea that either (a) they are at least mildly socialist themselves or (b) socialism is not a bad thing, it’s just something Republicans don’t like. When Obama policies start being labeled as socialism, all that will do is make socialism seem more and more moderate (i.e., “sometimes there are socialist policies in America and they work out okay,” which involves the decline of the stereotype that socialism = Stalinism). This is good for socialists and anti-capitalists, but very bad for Republicans, so I wonder why they stick with it.

Republicans and conservatives all across the board have spent the last 30 years decrying everything left of Genghis Khan to be “Socialism”, so there’s a hefty percent of the population who have grown up with this meme buzzing in the background. This was intended to associate Democrats and all non-conservatives as being in league with the evil Socialist Hegemony of the Soviet Block. But then, 20 years ago, they disappeared. But the rhetoric of Democratic reform = Socialism didn’t.

So, now here we are in 2009, with a large percentage of the under 30 population having been convinced that 1) the capitalist GOP kinda screwed things up and 2) the Socialist Dems are trying to fix things and talking about a lot of ideas many Americans approve of. So, the GOP tactic of associating Democrats with Socialism has backfired. Instead of making Democrats scary bogeymen, it’s made “Socialism” seem like a viable alternative.

Nevermind that this word you keep using doesn’t mean what you think it means. In the minds of most Americans, Socialism now encompasses Healthcare that, if not outright Universal, is at least affordable, a sensible foreign policy, more transparency in government and a transcontinental high speed rail network.

random under 30: “old people still think ‘US exceptionalism’ means something. lol”

news at 11.

I’ve always thought that since the U.S. is the most insanely capitalist country, democratic socialism would finally make its strongest showing there, too.

The under-30’s are just responding to language usage, but the general population results are significant.

I think the reasoning goes right back to Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: innovation happens mostly in large corporate settings, and so profits will become disconnected from individual merit. Then the natural inequality resulting from the structure of production is exacerbated and finally becomes too ugly.

It’s been a slow process but it is accelerating. In the U.S., technological change and the current round of globalization have introduced unacceptable incomes volatility into a social structure that had been getting fatter, happier, stupider at almost all levels. At the same time, the financial crisis has revealed the enormous corruption that keeps the top in power. Merit and profit are becoming disconnected.

I don’t know Quiggin, explain this to me.

For example, I grew up in a time when much electricity production in America was publicly owned and managed. Are you saying that youth today is more left than that, or just willing to de-privatize and re-socialize American electricity production, as left as they were in 1960? Are they willing to tax themselves to pay compensation to current owners, or just seize it via eminent domain?

They are selling off the bridges and tollroads. What are you talking about?

Steve: Is THAT what triggered the bad-word-moderating nanny?

You didn’t know? Soc1alism contains the word c1alis, and therefore it triggers Crooked Timber’s spam filter. Has been that way for ages, so I suspect they keep it that way just for lols. Because, well, it is extrely funny.

Right, it’s managed welfare-state capitalism. The ship of state is steered by enlightened experts like DeLong and wisdom-loving intellectuals like Yglesias. The media popularize managers’ decisions and actions, and every couple of years voters get a chance to approve. It’s a very old idea, most recently reincarnated as Lenin’s NEP.

What the heck does “social democracy” mean anyway?

Here are a few pointers, Bob:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy#Ideology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

While the concept might seem odd to many in the US, it is still pretty much the default assumption in most EU countries, even though the “Third Way” has made some inroads.

33:John, I will reread the Kenworthy, which I only skimmed, but I associate “social democracy”. at least as described in novakant’s first link and as practiced since the early 80s, with New Keynesianisn.

The growth in wage inequality and its association with the decline in unionism

See, I consider this a consequence of or contradiction within the New Keynesian paradigm. The focus on central bank inflation control or inflation targeting + deficit hawkishness will mean in practice that every negotiated wage or benefit increase will be matched with an increase in the NAIRU, and a loss in union jobs and negotiating power. The disinflationary policy will also mean an ever increasing capital accumulation and inequality. Any compensating safety net increases will put pressures on deficits.

The New Keynesians arose in part as an attempt to create a counter to both the New Classicals and the inflationary 60s and 70s, but I think their failure is staring at us from the abyss right now.

There are, I think, possible answers: a higher acceptable rate of inflation, say 3-5%, or a higher accepted level of deficits, or a much larger government footprint in the economy including more control, not regulation but ownership, of production and pricemakers, but these ideas, as far as I can see are in direct violation of the social democrat/New Keynesian paradigm and/or practical politics.

But this is obviously an old, heated, and complicated argument. But I am very pessismistic about how we will come out of this current recession.

Finally, and I didn’t mean to take this thread, but since Ireland and the UK have better safety nets than the US but have had their Minsky moments, I might speculate that the stability of the Western EU might have less to do with the social spending and more to do with a tighter control of the “commanding heights”, especially FIRE & energy.

But I am over my head and out of my league.

novakant, whilst I can agree to your conclusion – I don’t think the evidence is so very straightforward on the average Swedish happiness: not if suicide rates are a measure.

By the way, are you European? In 34 you seem to have an odd view of Europe: whilst it is certainly the case that there is on average more social security than in the US, it’s odd to see this as anything else than a difference in gradation. Isn’t the US economy a mixed economy? The third way is, by the way, just a little game socialists played here, in Old Europe, whereby the elite of the socialist parties adopted neoliberal policies – & specifically low tax policies – in an attempt to get elected given socialism was – and still is to a large extent if the electoral voting is a measure – dramatically unpopular.

If anything, the young European has proven to be very conservative of late (one might be tempted to temper the Obtimism here: young Americans are closer to Europe for an accidental reason: Europe has become much more American since Reagan).

PS to my coments @40

I should add that GE, no bleeding-heart charitable institution, when it surveyed the entire insurance industry to find the best company to fund it’s key employee deferred compensation agreements , did so by choosing cash value contracts from NW Mutual–and so openly noted in it’s proxy statements.

PPS–I should have added the same with your other posts as well–not that you exactly are breathlessly awaiting for, or feel the psychic need for approval from types like me.

I also second your comments about unions. Strangely to some, this “man of the right” feels that the only thing that will ever restore even a sembelance of a level-playing field world-wide is the presence of a healthy union movement in developing countries as well as the industrialized ones. (The Wobblies were premature!)

In fact, US union leaders would do their members the most good by taking union dues and using them to fight for unions in foreign countries. However I realize they fear charges of not directly helping their domestic membership and are thus loath to do so–but if properly explained I feel it could be done. No amount of union organizing in the US will keep a single American job safe as long as there is a Bolivian tin miner left alive willing to leap at the chance to double his dollar/day salary (exaggeration for emphasis) assemble washing-machines for Whirlpool.

US union leaders would do their members the most good by taking union dues and using them to fight for unions in foreign countries.

No, please, leave us alone!

I don’t think it is about people following Obama, about ideas of socialism. I think its more about people looking to other countries, such as England, Canada, Sweden etc., to see how there style of socialism has become successful for them. Hopefully, right-wingers will open their minds and look how to solve problems, rather than point fingers or use scare tactics.

The right wing assault on and re-naming of any progressive idea as “Socialism” began with the perversely effective response to Harry Truman’s proposal for a National health Plan to the “Damn, do-nothing 80th Congress”.

The AMA and the AHA mounted their campaign to name anything new in health care as “Socialized Medicine; and it was amplified by the McCarthy ascendancy and red scare of the early 50s.

That we have spent sixty years with the witless sobriquet of Socialized Medicine attached to any change is long-overdue for a counter-assault.

I suggest we abandon all talk of “reform of the health care system”. This is easily done, since there is NOTHING about what we have that can be accurately described as SYSTEMIC.

Time to rebut every accusation of socialism by an insistence that it is time for Democratized Medicine.