Nobel laureate Paul Krugman is dismantling the right’s attack on what some see as an increasing embrace of socialism in America — by defining what actual socialism is, explaining that most Americans support European-style social democracy, and revealing that right-wing radicals’ attack on so-called socialism is really just an effort to dismantle social democracy and democracy.
Actual socialism, Krugman says, is government ownership of the means of production. What some on the right decry as socialism is social democracy, which Krugman explains is “an ideology that is OK with living in a mostly market-driven economic system in which some people make much more money than others, but one that advocates policies to tame markets and inequality with progressive taxation, safety net programs, and regulations.”
Americans overall support social democratic priorities, Krugman finds, citing a YouGov poll. That includes replacing private health insurance with national government insurance, government paying college tuition, and government building public housing.
But social democratic programs, which Krugman calls “as American as sliced bread,” also include programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, a national minimum wage, and progressive taxation.
“There is,” Krugman writes, “a real groundswell of dismay over an economy that increasingly favors a tiny group of billionaires, and a political system that all too often works on these oligarchs’ behalf. When people say that they favor socialism, surely what they are often really saying is that they are angry about the rise of oligarchy. They are not demanding a dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Krugman asks, “Why, then, does it look as if socialism is on the rise?”
“Mainly,” he answers, “because right-wing propagandists continually smear social democratic policies as socialist, trying to make popular, mainstream policy ideas sound extreme. And some Americans who are basically social democrats in effect respond by saying, ‘Well, if that’s socialism, I guess I’m OK with socialism.'”
Krugman concludes that while there are “left-wing radicals in America, they have no realistic prospect of getting their way.”
He says that it’s “important to understand what the current uproar over socialism is really about. For the most part, it’s an attempt to distract from the danger posed by the important radical movement in America — that of right-wing radicals who want to dismantle both social democracy and democracy itself.”
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