Socialism Not Top Choice For Bad Crow Readers

But enough about you

The newsletter edition that turned into a Jacobin/socialism advert was not very popular, but I still want you all to embrace socialism. What Fred Friendly said about television as he walked away from his job as president of CBS news applies to capitalism as well: “Television makes so much at its worst that it can't afford to do its best.”

This is presuming that capitalism has a best.

Look around you. Can we count on a market solution to climate change? Not hardly: what we can expect are markets capitalizing on whatever damage climate change inflicts. Can we count on a market solution to health care, among its myriad industries? to environmental justice? to thoroughgoing social welfare in any form?

Will capitalism give us mandated paid sick leave, paid parental leave, anything at all that developed countries which have operated under at least the threat of full-blown socialism afford their denizens?

To whatever extent markets here are willing to accept regulation, the credit goes to the threat of more dire regulation, and the first order of following business for the affected concerns is to begin undermining the new regulatory regimen.

Republicans are a solid bloc opposed to any impingement on markets unless they’re angry with a particular sector. Democrats means test everything in an effort to make whatever it is unpopular with whomever doesn’t receive it. Make a dollar more than the Medicaid cutoff? You’re at the mercy of a market where the federal government assures private insurers of their profits — including by opening up Medicaid and Medicare to private operators — in exchange for a few concessions.

And of course Democrats are prone to corporate capture too, if not at the same rate as Republicans, as witness Chuck Schumer’s efforts to fast-track pipeline permitting after receiving massive cash injections from corporations involved with pipelines.

A little while back I was looking at social welfare benefits in France, among which is the opportunity to graduate college with no significant debt. Medical school tuition there at the moment is €450 annually, which at the current exchange rate is $450 U.S. (Much more expensive for non-residents, as one might expect, in the €10,000 vicinity.) Medical school tuition in Hawai’i is $37,000 U.S. annually for residents, $70,000-plus for non-residents.

Medical school in France lasts nine years, so students who complete it are looking at a massive €4,000 tab for the whole experience.

A robust welfare state provides citizens a much greater opportunity to resist capital’s attempts at undermining their quality of life. Employment protections, eroded though they’ve been in France, still allow for protests and strikes, and the basic social welfare provisions keep most people from destitution.

And they get great paid vacation benefits.

My point, such as it is, is that I simply cannot see anyone looking at the various crises, extant and impending, that we’re facing, and seriously thinking well, the market will save us; capitalism will save us. It won’t. It can’t. It’s not built to. It can’t afford to, as I’ve had Fred Friendly say. And we’re running out of time.

So think about it. Join a socialist organization, Democratic Socialists of America or Socialist Alternative, the base for Kshama Sawant’s various triumphs over the corporate servants of the Seattle City Council, or whatever. They’re cheap. See what they’re up to, which in some cases won’t be much, but the thought really does count.

The way this country treats its own is absurd. It’s a farce. It’s a tragedy. And capitalism isn’t going to remedy that.

Listening to Keith Jarrett’s “The Köln Concert” again, which just finished playing so off I go.

Socialism, straight in the mainline.