Socialism

Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps

During the last decade, we have witnessed the loudest and perhaps most uninformed campaign against socialism in the U.S. since the Communist-scare orgy of  Roman Catholic, Republican, closeted-homosexual Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s. Tea Party loudspeakers, like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, spew demonizing invective about the evils of socialism. Their aversion to socialism seems unimpeded by education or understanding.

In the current hard times, which I believe are about to get significantly harder for more Americans, it may serve American voters well to open a book and read about the successful worldwide applications of socialist ideology. I hold little hope this will actually happen in a country hypnotized by flat screens in all sizes.

One of the best socialist programs of the Great Depression was the Civilian Conservation Corps (1933-1942), which provided housing, employment and skill-training for 2.5 million American men between the ages of 18 and 25. While it was unfortunately a male-only and racially segregated program, it did have 200,000 African-American enrollees with African-American administrators in a segregated part of the program which provided equal pay and benefits for its members. This was advanced social policy for the time.

The CCC mobilized, housed and trained its members to do land management, including forestry, fire control, flood control and erosion control. Unlike the industrial push of other socialist-inspired government agencies, CCC's focus was on America's heartland and its rural populations. National parks, dam projects and levee projects were part of the CCC's work which vastly improved rural infrastructure across the U.S., while providing food, housing and employment for citizens who would have been homeless and indigent.

The concept of the CCC would offend the Libertarian, who would see it as unfair competition for those corporate interests who would like to exploit labor and exploit public resources which belong to the people. The current Tea-Party Libertarians, like Bachmann and Rand Paul, would rather see unemployed 18-25-year-olds in the inner city wield automatic weapons in the drug trade than wield shovels for the good of the country. All in the name of some hollow narcissistic ideology of "personal freedom".

As Americans have turned their backs on national isolationism, many have turned to this new personal isolationism, embodied in Tea-Party rhetoric: "Build it yourself! Run it yourself! Take the profits for yourself! Society be damned! Don't ask me for taxes! Don't expect me to pay for schools, hospitals or elder care!"

Well, as a fan of democratically applied socialism, I say to the Tea Party folks, "Good luck." I am old enough to know that Tea Party supporters will eventually get old and sick. I am old enough to know the randomness of reversals of fortunes in life. I also know that I would not be alive today without social programs and the funding of science by government.