It was a very entertaining and funny comment, simmering with rage, boiling with entitlement. “If you’re such a socialist, why don’t you tell us how much you give to charity!”

Listen. The only things I believe in are disco and chocolate. I’m not a democrat, a libertarian, a conservative, a socialist, an anything political. What I am is a pragmatist. But what does it mean to be a pragmatist in these strange, confused times? It means understanding one of the great lessons of the 20th century: that social democracy makes people rich, and capitalism makes people poor. Mom!! Umair’s being mean to me again!! Calm down, Tucker. Let’s think about it together.

Imagine that I asked you to take a baseball bat to a little old lady. Would you do it? Probably not. Now take a look at what the Washington Post found was happening at a nursing home owned by a private equity fund. Bedsores weren’t attended to. Colostomy bags weren’t changed. A long and truly grotesque list of disgraceful things. You wouldn’t take a baseball bat to an old lady — but when you suppose that capitalism is going to give a society things like healthcare, at the precise instant it’s letting elderly people die through negligence, then, my friend, what is the difference?

And yet in the American mind — or enough of them, at any rate — socialism is “charity”, and capitalism is “me getting rich.” But if socialism is charity and capitalism is getting rich then why is it that capitalism doesn’t take care of elderly people in nursing homes, but exploits them when they are their most vulnerable? Were those little old ladies paying their life savings to be abused and exploited? But, conversely, if socialism is charity — then what happens to you when are elderly, do you become a beggar? Do you see the problem here? This mindset reaches a dead end. The reason is that both of these ideas are badly mistaken.

Socialism isn’t charity, and capitalism isn’t you getting rich. Capitalism is backwards charity — by the poor, for the rich — and socialism is you getting rich.

If capitalism was you getting rich — why aren’t you? In America, capitalists — who are barely 10% of the population — have grown richer year after year, while everyone’s else’s life has simply fallen apart to the point they can’t raise emergency funds. If capitalism is “taking care of yourself” — then why is it that 80% of Americans go off to work, can never make ends meet, and have less saved than their grandparents? Taht doesn’t sound like “taking care of yourself”, LOL — it sounds like being taken advantage of. You are not taking care of yourself in any way through capitalism — you are taking taking care of capitalists, at your own expense. That expense is so steep by now that Americans live the poorest lives in the rich world by a very, very long way.

Do you think it’s just a coincidence that people in (gasp) “socialist” countries like Sweden and France are richer, enjoying higher living standards, by a long way, than Americans? Did a giant meteor made of gold hit them? Nope. The reason is that socialism, social democracy, makes you wealthy — and capitalism makes you poor. Now, this is outrageous and bewildering for Americans to hear — but America’s like the Soviet Union now: living in a parallel world, carefully constructed of ideologies and fairy tales, utterly divorced from reality, the world, truth. But the truth doesn’t care what the average Americans believes. It just is. Why is it that social democracy makes people rich — but capitalism makes them poor?

Capitalism is charity — for capitalists. You are giving them far more of your “labour”, as Marx would have said — which means in a modern context, your time, energy, creativity, emotions, imagination, and morality — than they deserve, and getting less than you deserve. When you pay for bank bailouts, gigantic executive salaries, endless privileges for corporate “people” than human people don’t get that is what is really a form of weird, culturally sanctioned, economically legitimated, socially enforced charity, by way not just of taxes, but norms, values, and expectations, too.

So if capitalism is taking care of capitalists — at your own expense — then what is socialism? I’d bet that many Americans really do believe that “socialism” — social democracy, in this case, because nobody’s suggesting an armed government takeover of your favourite microbrewery, except maybe in Rand Paul Ryan’s paranoid delusional fantasies — is charity: something that costs them, not benefits them. Even, maybe especially, the ones who want a better society. Deep down, I’d bet they still think that social democracy is a material sacrifice, with a moral benefit, in other words, charity.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Socialism isn’t charity — it is the precise opposite. Socialism is investment. At least the modern sort, social democracy, because nobody outside a college campus is suggesting communal dorm living by way of the Bolshevik revolution. It is investment that people make in themselves — so that they can enjoy greater wealth — which capitalism will always starve them of.

Let me put that in plain English. Charity makes you poorer — it’s a transfer. Social democracy makes people wealthier. In lasting, transformative ways. It makes them richer. It lets them live longer. They are happier. It makes their democracies more robust. Their living standards rise dramatically as a result, to levels that no other system in human history has been able to achieve — neither communism, socialism, nor capitalism. That is perhaps the greatest discovery of the 20th century.

(My feeling is that even those Americans who are emerging social democrats still don’t really believe or understand that social democracy is a good thing because it makes people wealthier, not just because it is a nice and kind thing. They are driven by a moral imperative, the sense that they should do the right thing — even when it costs them. But the point of social democracy is that the right thing, the moral thing, is also the best thing for you materially, too. Social democracy is not a material sacrifice with a moral benefit. It is a material investment with both moral and material returns . Or, in simpler language: you’ll be richer, wealthier, live longer, and happier — not be poorer but nobler.)

Let me illustrate all that. Remember the elderly people being preyed upon at the nursing home? It illuminates a crucial rule — capitalism will never care for anyone when they are at their most vulnerable. It will prey on them as savagely and viciously as it can get away with — even (LOL, tears, literally little old ladies).

Now imagine that every American took the money they pay for healthcare — and put it towards a British style NHS instead. Would that be “charity”? Not at all. It would be the single best investment Americans could make. Remember, it’s the same money. Only now, they would have a working healthcare system that would last forever (yes, really.) It would be free to use — whenever they needed medicine or surgery or treatment, they’d simply go to the doctor, clinic, or hospital…and never worry about a bill again. Imagine how good that would feel.

It’s the same money. Only now, it’s going to “taxes”, instead of “deductibles” and “payments.” But who cares what we call it? It’s going out of American’s pockets already, isn’t it? Only if it goes to capitalism, what has been happening will continue happening — prices will skyrocket, and quality will fall, to the point that whatever healthcare is available is a bad joke — or a shameful disgrace, like the nursing home above. That’s because capitalism takes care of capitalism, while it exploits you. But if it goes to (gasp, horror) public healthcare, socialism, precisely the opposite will happen: prices would stabilize, then fall, and healthcare would finally be free and available to everyone.

Do you see the point? Me paying for your healthcare is not charity. It is not something I give to you, but realize no benefit from myself. I will have better healthcare, too. When I “give money” to a “socialist” healthcare system, I’m not doing so out of charity — with the expectation that it will help you, but not me. I am doing precisely because it will help me. And in fact, it is the only way that I can help me most, by also helping you. It is “charity” when I “give money” to a capitalist healthcare system — because then I am basically paying all those grotesque CEO salaries, for no good reason whatseover.

(If we are investing in each other, but that way, we both realize a greater return than we could have otherwise, we are not acting merely altruistically. When we make mutual investments in each other, we are doing just that — investing in one another, with the hope of a return. That is very different from me giving money to a beggar or a pauper. I have no expectation that doing so will materially benefit me. Perhaps I feel good about myself, or I fulfill some ethical duty — a moral benefit. But I expect no material gain whatsoever.)

Now, that brings me to the point. That logic — that the best way to help me might also be to help you — feels utterly foreign and alien in America. Like it can’t possibly be true. Why is that? It’s because Americans have been taught that all interest is self-interest. I am your adversary and opponent in a grand contest for scarce resources — this is the only, and natural, state of the world. But that also means that the world is divided up into altruistic and egoistic acts — I can either act for own benefit, or for someone else’s benefit, at the price of my own.

One can act for one’s self, or for others — but there is never a case where both exist. Let me make that clear. For Americans, I’d bet it’s a little weird and uncomfortable to imagine a situation in which their self-interest is also someone else’s self-interest. That by helping you, I could ever possibly help me, too. Americans are taught to believe that what should feel good is to contest and compete for things which are in limited supply — money, status, power, looks — not that they can give each other what they all need, in abundance. They’ve been taught that there is no such thing as a shared interest — only adversarial self-interest.

Americans have been taught everything in life is zero-sum — I must take a thing from you, to have more of it myself. But things like healthcare, education, and retirement do not work like this. We have the most and best of them when we invest in them together, as a society.

This, my friends, is at the root of why so many Americans are so profoundly confused — a cynic might say ignorant. If you believe that everything in society is zero-sum, that I must take it from you to have more of it myself, then everyone’s interest must be inherently naturally opposed to everyone else’s — and of course, such people become hostile, cruel, paranoid. That is how the world sees America now — because it is precisely how many Americans act. But all this is based on a strange, foolish, and mistaken myth. I don’t need to take your healthcare to have more for myself. We are both best off when we give it to each other. There is no “zero-sum bound” here.

Let me give you another example, so it’s clear. Imagine that every American took the very same money they’re paying to manage their “retirement accounts” — these didn’t even exist until the 1990s, so it’s not like they’re God-given — and put it towards a public retirement system. The very same effect above would occur. Suddenly, every American would be able to retire. All those billions and trillions that Wall St soaks up for “managing” retirement accounts (LOL — it takes three clicks) would suddenly be put to a far more socially productive use.

So who taught Americans this strange, bizarre idea, that they can never, ever have a shared interest — that every individual is opposed to every other, until Darwinism winnows out the most brutal — because everything in society is zero-sum? It’s hardly a coincidence that the first part is the foundational principle of capitalism. And it’s hardly a coincidence that the second part is the foundational principle of patriarchy and dominance, slavery and segregation. America’s history is intimately bound up with this strange and foolish belief that I must take from you to have more for myself.

Only it’s not true. Remember that nursing home? You don’t support public healthcare just because you want those elderly people not be preyed on by capitalism. You also support public healthcare because you realize that you yourself will be one of those old people. The things which matter most in life are not zero-sum. I need to don’t take yours away so that I can have mine. If we both cooperate to give them to one another, we will all have more.

And that brings me full circle. Capitalism isn’t you getting rich. If it was, you’d be rich. Capitalism makes you poor. Socialism makes you rich. That is because capitalism is not an investment in anyone but capitalists, really. It does not lead to more to go around for the ordinary person — which is what investment should do. The average American is not better off now than a generation ago — they are worse off. Why is that? It’s because they keep giving their resources — time, money, ideas, savings, incomes — to capitalists (what other choice is there?), and capitalists simply skim off as much as they can for themselves, no matter how much anyone else suffers. Just like they did to the little old ladies. Hence, life going nowhere — while a handful of capitalists, like Bezos and Zuck, grow unimaginably rich. But what if Americans invested all those very same resources in one another — instead of letting capitalism have them?

Then the zero-sum boundary of capitalism would be broken. There would be more and better things in society to begin with. Healthcare, education, media, transport, retirement, income, savings, jobs. People would be better off cooperating to give one another all these things in abundance than they are competing for a fixed supply of them. That is the great lesson of social democracy. That is why people in social democracies are rich — but Americans are poor.

Americans don’t quite know it, but they have ended up like Soviets. They’ve been indoctrinated by a one-dimensional ideology for so long — capitalism, for everything, everywhere, all the time, no dissent allowed — that their entire worldview is one-dimensional, too, now. Comrades! In Soviet America, capitalism make everyone rich! It sure doesn’t seem to have worked out that way, does it?

Socialism is not charity. It is investment. Investment is how we grow more things for the future. Without more socialism, none of America’s great problems will be solved — ever, period, full stop. Capitalism is not you getting rich. It is you getting capitalists rich. Capitalists invest, too — but not so that you get richer. So they do. Soviet America’s challenge is undoing the twists and turns of all that convoluted illogic — so that it can see, think, and walk straight again. Instead of going in circles — and ending up nowhere.

Umair

November 2018