Socialism, Capitalism, and the Obama Agenda

Is Democracy Synonymous with Free Market Economy?

The Tea Party Patriots and Republicans have charged Obama with “spreading the wealth”: warning of Socialism. Can he defend his policies to the fans of the free market?
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Michael Moore’s newest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, criticizes our American style of free enterprise Capitalism, claiming that it damages the working class. He cites that the recent bailout of Wall Street to help stave off the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression is proof that Capitalism, particularly Crony Capitalism, is a failure.

Moore states that Democracy is not the same as capitalism, and that corporations are decidedly not democratic institutions. He also claims that true democracy is threatened by powerful corporations.

The Tea Party movement, made up of political protesters fed up with what they see as out-of-control government spending, have made a name for themselves by carrying signs that depict President Obama as a Maoist, Communist, Nazi Fascist, and a Socialist, even sometimes portraying him with a Hitler-style moustache.
At the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, opening speaker, Tom Tancredo, blamed the ignorance of immigrants and illiterate poor people for the election of Obama, to whom he referred as a “socialist ideologue”, drawing cheers from the conservative crowd.

With such a vociferous debate about economics and politics, it has been increasingly difficult to discuss the issues affecting our country.

How Socialist is Obama?

In the now famous conversation between then Senator Obama and Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber”, Obama was recorded on film telling him that he was in favor of “spreading the wealth”.

Obama’s actual quote, as recorded by Jake Tapper on ABCnews.com, is that he believed that “if the economy’s good from the bottom up, it’s good for everybody,” and that “right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Ron Radosh of Pajamas Media cites Obama’s relationship with New Party, an outspoken Socialist political organization, as proof of his Socialist values.
Radosh lists the party agenda of “full employment, a shorter work week and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal ‘social wage’ to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity” as equal to Obama’s own agenda.

Dedicated Socialist activist, Billy Wharton, claims in his article in the Washington Post that Obama is decidedly not one of them. He cites as proof Obama’s support of Timothy Geithner, and other appointees who are closely tied to the big banking industries such as Goldman Sachs, and his hesitancy to comprehensively address regulations and financial reform. He also notes Obama’s lack of full support for the single-payer health care system, and even the public option.

Comparisons made by some of Obama to infamous “Socialist” leaders of the past have been at best hyperbolic. Hitler, the champion of the National Socialist Party, redistributed wealth in his society by seizing Jewish assets in a racist campaign that led to Genocide. Stalin established totalitarian Communism by the systematic nationalization of property and the slaughter and exile of the upper class.
Obama’s policies, by comparison, seemed to have the support of the electorate who democratically voted him in on a landslide.

Spreading the Wealth: a Communist Plot?

In an interview with Family Security Matters editors, Joe Wurzelbacher misquoted this statement as intent to “redistribute the wealth”. The difference in syntax in this quote could bet a tipping point for the accusation of Socialism.

Joe Wurzelbacher claimed in this interview that he believes this policy will lead to Socialism in America, and this is troublesome precisely because government handouts to poor people tend to make them expect more, and discourages ambition.

Redistributing wealth in socialist economies often invokes images of Russian or Nazi officials seizing wealth and property from the rich in order to give them to the poor. Income-adjusted taxation, such as the one we have in America, where the rich pay a higher percentage of taxes than the poor, are a mild form of redistribution of wealth.

Often the money from taxes goes to improve the standard of living for the poorest population, in the form of welfare or public education. Other publicly funded programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, use taxpayer revenue to support the poorest population and the elderly and disabled in their time of need.

Conservatives like Matt Kibbe have been resisting these policies for years on the basis that the “welfare state” encourages a lack of productivity, and unfettered free market capitalism is the key to American prosperity: a rising tide lifts all boats. This is similar to Reagan’s policy of the “trickle-down economics”, which is based on the premise that an affluent upper class would naturally support a robust middle class.

America is not a true Capitalist nation with a pure free market economy, nor is it on the fast track to Soviet-style Socialism. Since the days of FDR and the “New Deal”, the policy that is credited with helping us recover from the Great Depression, America has been a constant balance of both principles. Capitalists are given limited free-reign to make profits, while at the same time a social safety net has been established to ensure the security of the underclass.

Following the deregulation years of the Bush Administration, it would seem the American population has spoken out with their votes on which way they would like to see the pendulum swing, Tea Party backlash notwithstanding.
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