Capitalism (private-for-profit) vs Socialism (at public expense) Sept. 1, 2019 Dr. Ray
Dr. Cornel West on Joe Rogan’s podcast, July 30, 2019
Socialism is part of America. The pledge of allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy, a socialist. The song “America the Beautiful” was written by Elizabeth Lee Bates, a socialist professor. America’s greatest poet, Walt Whitman, had deep ties to socialism. America’s greatest philosopher, John Dewey, was a democratic socialist. Helen Keller was a socialist. Martin Luther King Jr. was a democratic socialist. Democratic socialism is as American as apple pie, however, in the American mind, socialism becomes associated with communism. Upton Sinclair was a socialist – he helped put anti-child labor laws in place. Lots of Americans don’t want to have socialistic laws because they see them as giving free rides to the poor or people who don’t work hard, but what makes you think that the rich don’t get free rides?
When a wealthy business owner dies and their children inherit a massive amount of wealth, isn’t that also a free ride?
When a rich parent knows the headmaster at a prep school, thus allowing their children to get in because of the connection and not merit, isn’t that a free ride?
Earlier this week I put on my black clergy vestments to stand on a street corner in our late August summer heat, to be a part of a demonstration against our governor’s efforts to cut funding for Medicaid, leaving more than 100,000 Missouri children without healthcare.
I have found that wearing a clerical collar to protests cuts down on the number of people who shout obscenities at us, and fewer pickup truck drivers lift a single middle finger in our direction to announce their IQ.
But one brave, patriotic, American did use his time while stopped at the light to repeatedly yell at me, “For free? You want to give everyone health care for free?”
It is very difficult to have a meaningful conversation with someone at a noisy intersection where more than 60,000 cars pass every day. But shortly after my time baking on the sidewalks, I attended a dinner at which I was seated across from a man who is a cancer patient. He talked passionately about how he was having to fight for his life against the poor healthcare he had received locally, traveling to a famous cancer center to receive the help he needed.
And he peppered his narrative with repeated assertions that “Obamacare messed up healthcare in America, ever since Obamacare passed, healthcare stinks.” Again, he was a cancer patient and I didn’t want to debate him and, honestly, for people like that, debate is really just a shouting match since obviously his views were not predicated on any information.
But both the man yelling at me from his car and the man woofing down his delicious tacos are symptomatic of a problem we have in America with being terrified about the prospect that someone might get something of value without paying for it. Without knowing much about what the word means, they assume that every public program is socialism.
Reich posted this meme that would have you believe that Republicans tried to scare people to keep Franklin Roosevelt from starting Social Security in the 1940’s and, in the 1960’s, to keep Lyndon Johnson from starting Medicare. While there was considerable conservative opposition to both programs, they were both passed with bi-partisan support. Though they are made to look old, these political buttons were forged in 2009.
The partisan divide that has so paralyzed our current government is worse than it has been in any time in the past century. The man at dinner who was certain that he got better healthcare when 80 million Americans didn’t have access to healthcare, might not have been concerned, even if he had he known that I am one of those 80 million who is on some form of Obamacare, so that if I should have the misfortune of discovering that I have cancer, I would at least be able to access the same horrible care he is receiving.
You would think that someone who is a cancer patient would want everyone who is a cancer patient to get appropriate care. And I would even go out on a limb and say that this patient I met is not a bad guy, but he has been trained through the polarization of the political rhetoric of our day, to dehumanize those of us who did not end up working for a large corporation with great healthcare benefits.
What I want you to go home having heard me say today is that everyone you hear trying to use “socialism” as a scare word, doesn’t understand what the word means. And everyone who assumes that our budget pockets are bottomless, doesn’t understand economics. America has a blended economic system. Some of it is private and some of it is public. The current problem is that the economic system has been manipulated to keep shoving resources up to the top 1% which is going to destroy both capitalism and public services if we do not correct course and, my own belief is, that the course correction needs to be dramatic and it needs to happen soon.
I sometimes meet with the parents of young men who are in Federal prisons. One of these very passionate and loving fathers is an avid Trump supporter who, before I blocked him on social media, used to constantly send me videos and articles by right wingers who were condemning socialism. In a quiet moment after a support group meeting, over a cold beer, I pointed out to him that he is employed as a bus driver. The buses in Springfield are owned and operated by City Utilities which is a publicly owned utility company.
Ergo, as we say in logic classes, he draws his salary from a socialist institution while I draw mine from an institution that I started that receives no tax funds and is supported by the donations of consumers. . . so, he is a socialist and I am a capitalist. And, as happens so often in those kinds of exchanges, none of what I said seemed to make any difference to him at all.
But before anyone feels the need to prove to me that they also went to high school, I understand that the common use of the terms socialism and capitalism are not being used in a technically correct way. What we are really talking about is what is paid for individually and what is paid for corporately.
The cost of public schools, Kindergarten through 12thgrade, is paid for through public funds, largely levied as property taxes. It doesn’t matter if you have kids in public schools or if you ever had kids at all. We have determined that it benefits our society to have an educated public and so we all pay taxes to support the schools. And then, in a more convoluted way, some of our taxes go to support state universities and to a lesser degree, private colleges and trade schools. Somehow, people have been taught to think of K through 12 as being free because that’s how you operate a capitalist society, but a K through 16 system would be socialism.
Whether you personally go to college or not, you get to live in a better society if the people who will take care of you at the hospital did go to college. Whether it is a trade school, a professional school, or a liberal arts college, you are benefited by living in a society in which people have been able to be trained, educated, and prepared for specific careers. If you don’t believe me, go home this afternoon and paint your own car.
There are moments when I really wish that I could be a political speech writer because when you are trying to make someone like Chris Matthews understand a complicated issue, you have to break it down into bite-sized pieces, and, evidently, y o u h a v e t o s p e a k v e r y s l o w l y….
As Dr. Cornel West makes so clear in our wisdom lesson today, the United States has always had a blended economy with some of what is called socialist or publicly funded programs and some that are capitalist, or private. My suit, my shoes, my glasses, shirt and tie were made by capitalists. But this morning, I woke up to publicly subsidized electricity, lighting and air conditioning my home. I showered and made coffee with publicly subsidized water. I drove here on public streets. Our streets are protected by a publicly funded police force. Our borders are protected by a publicly funded army, navy, and air force. Our building is protected from fire by a publicly funded fire department.
And though I stopped by a capitalist restaurant on my way here, the pork, poultry, dairy, and grain products on my plate were all subsidized, in one way or another, by the public.
The military has lately weighed in again on school lunches because they now fear that America’s kids are getting to be too fat to fight.
As a pastor, I would love to see our nation go to universal health care coverage because it is morally right to take care of sick people whether they are rich or poor but we will do it because it is cost effective. I wish that we could make college tuition-free because we want the children of the poor to have the same educational 
and career opportunities as the wealthy, but we will do it because all of these countries already do and if we are going to economically compete in a global market with these countries, we will have to do it too.
Speaking of fake memes . . . most of us have heard the 19thcentury French political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, quoted as having said that “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Look, Tocqueville visited America during our genocide of native Americans and the expansion of our use of African slaves.
He didn’t think that we were all that good. In fact, he spoke at length about the irony of how popular our churches in America are, and how cruel we were to Indians and black slaves. . . a kind of social schizophrenia that continues to this day as we, a nation of churches, want to grind the children of the poor up to make the bread for the tables of the rich. He did, however, think that we were hard working and fairly ingenious.
When everyone gets a living wage, has access to decent healthcare, and education, and housing, then everyone, the rich and the poor, get to live in a better, happier, and healthier country.
Unlike our President, I have been to Denmark. I didn’t go to buy Greenland. I went on the rather more obscure goal of visiting the home and grave of Soren Kierkegaard . . . which, I understand, can only mean that I have issues but that will not come as a surprise to any of you.
After a frozen slog through the icy slush of Copenhagen, I was warming up over a mug of hot coca and met an attractive young Danish dentist. When she found out that I was using all of my time in Denmark looking up Kierkegaard memorabilia, she insisted on giving me a personal whirlwind tour of Copenhagen.
She was an immigrant from Iran, but you could have never met a native-born Dane who was higher on Denmark than she was.
We walked through the frozen but festive Tivoli Gardens, and the largest open-air mall in the world, featuring many of the classic Danish designs in china, furniture, and electronics. In the midst of the crowded mall, she threw her arms wide and said, “Do you see any beggars? Do you see anyone who is homeless? Is there anyone who does not have a warm coat or good shoes?” She explained, “Sure, we have a 50% tax rate, but we have no poverty and almost no crime.” She said, “I live alone in a house with a view of the ocean and I have two Mercedes. Taxes don’t matter if you still get to live a prosperous life.” And she, my friends, is a socialist. But more than that, she is a decent human being who has empathy, and that is what I am hoping to see more of in America.
