sandwiches and socialism
By shag carpet bomb • Jan 11th, 2009 • Category: Archiving, Class, Democrats, Election 2008, Obama, Politicscleaning up my email and came across an inquiry from a reader which i’d somehow missed. at some point, i’d written this:
“Because, remember: socialism is about condescendingly sharing *your* sandwich, not about asking why the other guy doesn’t have a sandwich to begin with. fuck.”
that was a snide comment about a thread on the LBO discussion list. that thread referenced the comment obama’d made about socialism. I, along with Shane Taylor, had suggested that the many democrats had responded to the charge the Obama was a socialist with their typical attempts to, not only distance themselves from the label — normal operating behavior for dems and liberals — but also did so by making socialism out to be laughable.
others replied that this was not so for Obama because Obama had ‘bravely’ (cough. hack.) said that of course he was a socialist if by socialist one meant that you shared your sandwich with someone who didn’t have one.
my reply:
“i don’t think that what is going away is the idea that socialist
are scary. all they did was laugh at the idea that anything related to
obama or the dems are socialist. the socialists are scary meme is more
intact than it ever was.B, when Colin Powell endorses obama he took McCain to task for saying “No, he’s not a muslim. He’s a good family man….”
Powell said that the right answer was, “So what if he is?”
Big difference between “so what if I am a socialist?” or “so what if he is a socialist” (and then having a discussion about that) versus saying, “Oh lord no! Obama is just a nice guy who shares his sandwich and thinks we should all share sandwiches. And we all know that’s not scary socialism! How funny you people are to think he’s a scary socialist. Castro is a scary socialist!”
later, I also wrote that socialism is not about sharing sandwiches. that would be welfare capitalism:
i love all this talk about a movement while everyone applauding is basically sitting on their ass doing zippo expecting everyone else to do the heavy lifting.
sharing? sharing implies you own something to begin with. socialists don’t condescendingly spread their wealth. socialist don’t say, “Oh wow. I have a peanut butter sandwich and that guy doesn’t. I’m going to share my sandwich with him.”
socialists are about rooting out the reasons why that other guy doesn’t have a sandwich to eat to begin with.
socialists create things with their labor and the things they create nourish and sustain everyone. and they are better people for their labor: they realize themselves through that labor.
for christ sake.
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