The ABCs: Isn't the US Already Kind of Socialist?

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Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

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🗓️ 6 April 2017

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

You’ve probably seen the memes purporting to show just how socialist the United States already is by listing a bunch of government programs, services, and agencies. The idea that any government activity is synonymous with socialism has major political and strategic implications. After all, if our country were already at least partly socialist, then all we would have to do is keep gradually expanding government.But simply electing politicians to office or watching the government expand by its own momentum has never been, and never will be, enough. Economic power is political power, and under capitalism the owners of capital will always have the capacity to undermine popular democracy—no matter who’s in Congress or the White House.This is the last episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism. Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book for just $5 at the Jacobin store: https://www.jacobinmag.com/store/ The sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.Chris Maisano is a contributing editor at Jacobin and a union staffer in New York.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Good evening. Thanks everybody for coming to the last installment of the ABCs of
0:11.2	socialism series.
0:12.8	I'm Jason Farman from Jacqueline magazine.
0:16.3	We've been really excited about how this has all been working.
0:18.5	We're very grateful that everyone came out.
0:22.4	You know, a lot of people say that had Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the Democratic
0:28.1	primary, that he would have gone on to beat Donald Trump.
0:30.5	This is something I think a lot of us have heard that Bernie would have won.
0:33.4	Today, you know, in March of 2017 we'd be living, we're watching the Bernie Sanders
0:38.2	administration's first 100 days unfold, right?
0:42.0	You know, and there's a question, right? So what would that actually mean? Would we be living in
0:45.2	socialism? Would we be on our way to socialism? How long would it take? And, you know, if so, why, if not, why? and I think these are there's reasons we have to ask these questions
0:56.8	not to talk about the merits of the Bernie Sanders administration that could have been or the first hundred days or what you can accomplish but
1:03.6	sort of to understand what the horizons are that we're striving for. If we think
1:09.7	that electing Bernie Sanders would have actually yielded socialism.
1:13.4	I think that suggests a set of tasks for socialists, you know, along one course.
1:18.8	If we think that that elections is one aspect and there are other avenues that we have to pursue that suggests a number of other tasks and I think that as socialists particularly in the small position that we're in we need to think about where we want to go long term and sort of have that inform the decisions that we're
1:33.0	making here and now. So I think the question about whether socialism does or does not
1:38.4	equal more government exclusively is an important question as what we're
1:41.7	taking up tonight.
1:43.0	We'll have Chris Meizano here to take this up.
1:45.2	He's the one who wrote the chapter.
	...

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