Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

It is very curious that the word that best describes the division of politics & morals in the United States is rarely used in public: socialism. Until the Cold War, socialists and the Socialist party were not coy about their beliefs or their goals. Marx was celebrated in churches, printed on pamphlets, and was the ideology of several cabinet members in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration. However, later, because Marxism was the basic tenant of the failed Soviet Union, the words, socialism, Marxism & Communism have been tainted in America, though not so much in the rest of the world. Socialism is still a primary component of all European national governments and most of their political parties.

Philosopher Emanuel Kant equated socialism as “the most good to the most people,” and it's practiced in government as group-needs-override-individual-wants. Technically, socialism involves social ownership & democratic control of “the means of production,” which in political practice results is State ownership of natural resources, labor union ownership of business, and redistribution of wealth. The Nordic countries, often held up as the West's socialist ideal, use a combination of private & State ownership, centralized planning & economic interventionism, but there are many brands of socialism, for example, there's also Christain & Islamic religious socialism. Bizarrely, there's even the oxymoronishly named, Libertarian socialism, described using inpenetrable jagon involving “automony” & “coordinated” in the same sentence, but the socialist keyword “solidarity” does make an appearance. All of these socialisms just illustrate the confusion that surrounds the concept, and why no one group has a monopoly on the word or definition.