Making Socialism Commonplace

While Sanders' highlighting of a kind of corporate socialism on display during the government's bailout of Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 was spot on and appropriate, his candidacy might be better served by referencing the existing functional, popular, and successful socialistic programs from which all Americans currently benefit. These include but are not limited to publicly funded police and fire services, the construction and maintenance of our roadways, a K-12 educational system, a national network of library services, the National Park Service, the safety net of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Perhaps framing the Medicare-For-All proposal as a cost effective expansion of an already successful publicly funded program, Sanders can put in better perspective the practical benefits of an active socialistic policy that operates as an instrument of the common good. In this regard, he might also underscore the advantage to employers a national health care system will afford. By absolving business owners of the responsibility of providing health care for their employees, it will make available resources to reinvest into the company in the form of higher wages and the resulting increase in production as well as the possible expansion of the company's infrastructure.
In this way, misplaced and erroneous comparisons to Soviet-style authoritarian rule can be dispelled as the a red-baiting and disingenuous tactic it is designed to be. It might also be helpful for the Sanders campaign to emphasize its connection to a long line of American social democratic thought the recent history of which includes FDR, Henry Wallace, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Paul Robson, Keith Ellison, and Robert Reich, just to name a few. The current policy offerings emanating from the Sanders' movement can therefore be seen not as radically new proposals but rather as an extension and result of a much larger continuing body of progressive thought. When viewed in this manner, the corresponding programs of publicly funded higher education, broadened universal child care, the elimination of crippling student debt, and the guarantee of a living wage can now be regarded as policy decisions made in accordance with progressive principles of basic fairness, an adherence to humanistic values, the fulfillment an authentic democratic vision. Going forward, Bernie will be well-advised to bring greater attention to these fundamental elements underlying his movement and message.