Get money

By Deauwand Myers

With the United States gearing up for another presidential election in 2020, the words "socialism" and "communism" have been thrown around a lot by the political right in the U.S.

People use communism and socialism interchangeably, but this is a fundamental mistake. Communism and socialism are both socioeconomic, sociopolitical models meant to equalize the populace, insofar as making everyone part of one economic class. In communist societies, the working class owns everything, and the goals thereof are communal.

Arguably, no true communist society has ever existed, and attempts at such a thing, like that of the defunct Soviet Union, created a ruling class of wealthy political elite, mass poverty, and rank corruption. Socialism's main goal, like that of communism, is equality.

In this model, workers earn wages and consume as they wish, while the state owns and administers the means of production. This model has been tried in several countries, and yes, it too led to massive poverty and a political elite ensconced in wealth and power.

But the American right, and conservatives worldwide, are being intellectually disingenuous when they claim the left wants to pursue hyper-socialist agendas at the expense of creativity, wealth creation, and freedom. The political left understands all advanced democracies have been socialist democracies for generations now.

Every advanced democracy on the earth, including the United States, is a hybrid of capitalism and socialism. Public transportation, highways, military expenditures, medical care for military service men and women, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, public secondary education, public grants and scholarships for tertiary education, regulatory bureaucracies safeguarding food, drugs, the environment, air travel, and law enforcement are all paid for and in service to the society as a whole, via taxation.

Politics is really about the divvying up of a nation's limited resources to whichever party is sufficiently powerful enough to have its wants be met through the political process, i.e. voting. This is a very important point.

In racially diverse countries like the United States, one where there's a long, bloody history of disenfranchising people of color, particularly the indigenous and black folks, the state used its massive resources to give wealth and the access to produce wealth to some (whites), whilst freezing out everyone else.

Whether it be redlining (disallowing black folks to buy homes wherever they choose, thus forcing them to live in segregated neighborhoods, often renting instead of owning homes and property), discriminatory disbursement of the G.I. Bill (a huge social welfare program for servicemen returning from WWII, wherein they received sweetheart mortgage loans and university scholarships), or agricultural subsidies (after being sued, the USDA paid millions to thousands of black farmers and their families for the systematic practice of rejecting black farmers from these resources), white politicians again and again purposefully sought to deny black folks the tools to access wealth.

This is why, even today, the average black family has $5,000 in wealth, versus $100,000 for white families.

What we have in America, and to a lesser extent, Korea, is a perversion of every moral and religious belief I'm aware of. Our governments give to the rich and take from the poor, mainly through taxation.

Most people know the statistics, but basically, the top 1 percent of wealthy people have over half of the world's net wealth. Moreover, this group of the fabulously wealthy had less than $1 trillion in the waning days of the Clinton administration, to over $7 trillion in 2015.

Concern about wealth concentration isn't about envy, something the right often spouts. When wealth concentrates to these levels, you end up with the violent rise of undemocratic governments calling themselves socialist, when really they are mere dictatorships.

Capitalism without regulation, safeguards, and some meaningful distribution of resources so that working people have decent wages and a livable existence, is nothing more than uncivilized greed, and it will tear apart any advanced democracy unwilling to address wealth inequality in meaningful ways.

Besides the usual suspects (white supremacy, misogyny, and xenophobia, for example) the worldwide rise of rightwing populism, and a rejection of the neo-liberal world order is partially due to the strain the working and middle classes feel in trying to make ends meet, juxtaposed with the gaudy displays of conspicuous consumption by the rich and uberrich.

Politicians beware. Being wealthy and playing with the wealthy can end your political careers, or worse. One reason the backlash of ex-President Park Geun-hye was so massive and quick: her laissez faire attitude toward normal citizens, like her belated response to the Sewol disaster, or her coercing wealthy patrons via corporations to enrich her already wealthy pseudo-spiritual friend/confidant, Choi Soon-sil.

The right needs to confess. We are all democratic socialists, to some degree. No lasting civilization in this age can thrive if its main objective, above all else, is to "get money."

Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul.