Bill Maher may have said it best while interviewing presidential candidate Bernie Sanders: “[Americans] hear socialist and they think herpes, Bernie!” (source). To many, the word socialist brings up images of Greece and a horribly governed economic downturn or even (mistakenly) thoughts of the axis powers during World War II. But that is just because we don’t know what socialism is. To us, it is the “other”, or opposite of capitalism. It’s that thing used by Hitler and Stalin to run their oppressive countries….right? Wrong.

So on to what it really means:

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines socialism as: “a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies.” (source) At first glance this might sound extreme or monarchist. But it’s not (well too much of anything is bad, that’s why there is a great medium between capitalism and socialism, but more on that in a bit). What Americans have to realize is that the US already is a socialist country! One of our most beloved and celebrated presidents in history, FDR, had very socialist ideals and brought about very socialist programs that to this day are what have made America strong, productive and successful. Because of his ‘New Deal’ plan, we now have social security, paved roads/highways throughout all communities, fair housing laws and countless other programs that if left to the workings of capitalism and private industries, would have never existed. FDR implemented these socialist programs because he saw a huge benefit and value to them for the American people but knew they were not something that corporations would be interested in funding. There was no foreseeable profit in them.

On top of that, the government itself is socialist. The idea that we organize branches of government to regulate laws and drive progress is a very socialist ideal. A purely capitalist system would require leaving all organization of commerce and services to private industries and hope that everything turns out ok. According to Adam Smith, one of capitalism’s founding architects, capitalism is the belief in the “invisible hand” or the idea that if government does not interfere, influence, or organize any systems of commerce/business, then things will work themselves out to their best case scenario; demand from the public will drive supply, therefore creating ever-more efficient and satisfactory products and services. This idea works great in industries like technology or consumer goods industries; because of it, we now have extremely advanced things like the smart-phone or fully-stocked supermarkets. But this system would in no way promote businesses to initiate and innovate in areas like public works projects, health-care, or public safety/national defense. Unless there’s an immediate and foreseeable profit to be made from a project, companies will not touch it, capitalism will not touch it. If we were a completely capitalist society our freeway system would be an incredibly slimmed network of roads that connected amazon/ebay/walmart/every other corporations straight to their stores and warehouses that charged the average Joe driver either $100 per use or a monthly subscription fee of $1,000…or for the low-low price of $10,000 you could get the freeway yearly season pass, what a deal! 😀

Once we accept that socialist ideals must be adopted by any forward-thinking country and ignore the already ingrained, mainstream-media driven image of socialism being evil, we can begin to focus our efforts in areas of need that only the government could properly coordinate and regulate, some of which they already do (ie the military, health-care, environment conservation, public works, education, etc.)

Lastly, and previously mentioned, socialism does not have to be at odds with capitalism, in fact, it works very well with it and should be used jointly with it to govern a country. No one is requiring us to choose one or the other and run with it…why not both? That’s where democratic socialism comes in.

To learn more about democratic socialism, check out the DSA’s FAQ page: here

If any of this resonated with you, please consider hearing out the ideas and policy suggestions of presidential candidates on the not so right.