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The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood…Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.
-George Orwell, “Can Socialists Be Happy?” 1943
I start with Orwell because people often forget that he remained a socialist even as he mounted critique after critique of the U.S.S.R. and other totalitarian-Communist states. Because the first argument one often faces in the U.S. when one suggests socialism as an alternative to the current political-economic structure is that Communism failed. But reading Orwell’s essays from the 40s, from an England struggling against Nazism on one side and yet learning of the brutality of Stalinism, is to remember that it is possible to have an intellectually honest critique of the states that called themselves socialist and to still advocate for socialism.
Also because in this essay, Orwell noted that it was impossible to know what would happen under the socialism he wished for, only that it had to be better than what we had.
And so, here I am, nearly 70 years later, ruminating on the word “socialism.” Because more and more it’s a term I identify with, claim, am turning over and over in my head. As words and phrases like “feminism” and “anti-racism” mean something to me, but are contested, nebulous, strange, I return to Orwell’s goal of a socialist society and wonder if it’s possible, still, to hope.
The U.S. right now, of course, talks about socialism a lot. But most of the people talking about it know very little of what it really means. Socialism is a catch-all term for “big government,” which lately seems to mean any government program that helps people of color–even if that program also helps white people. Tim Wise notes that when social services began to be seen as programs that helped nonwhite people, rather than, as the New Deal had, explicitly privileging white folks, they began to be much less popular.
Socialism now, then, is used as an epithet by people who hate one another–or perhaps fear one another would be more accurate. The Tea Parties are full of hateful language, from Sarah Palin’s “reload” to the chants of “Take our country back.”
But as an old friend asked me the other day, just how far back do they want to go? To Nixon? The fifties? Slavery, perhaps?
Sarah Palin, argues John Nichols, in her rush to throw insults at Barack Obama, inadvertently brought socialism back into the political discourse in the U.S. In her extended stay in McCarthyism (between Goldwater and the Klan), Nichols notes:
“Palin’s determination to present socialism as the alternative to casino capitalism had a remarkable impact. In the spring of 2009, a survey by the Republican-friendly Rasmussen Reports polling group found that one in five Americans viewed socialism as a preferable system to capitalism. Another 27 percent of Americans said they weren’t sure whether they preferred socialism or capitalism. A bare majority–53 percent–was still rooting for the system that Americans had for decades been told was ‘the only alternative.'”
My colleague (comrade?) Erik Loomis has argued here that the American Left has failed to articulate an alternative to the casino capitalism Nichols describes, and I agree. Americans seem only capable of seeing the world in binaries: capitalism as we have it, perhaps with a few modifications to support the poor, or Stalinist communism. If you’re lucky, you only have to argue about Cuba.
But the fragmented Left is scrambling for ways to organize across silos. This weekend’s One Nation march drew more people to the Washington Mall than Glenn Beck has, but it remains to be seen if the coalition between organized labor and old Civil Rights organizations like the NAACP can ignite a movement that crosses generations.
Which is what leads me back to Orwell’s definition. Like Orwell, I have no clear picture of what my ideal world looks like. But I want it to be one where we organize around love and compassion for one another, not fear and anger. I want understanding that racism, sexism, homophobia are not individual failings but systemic crises that require social solutions. Social justice. Social.
At the blog Questioning Transphobia, Queen Emily notes that many of the problems facing the transgender community are not problems unique to transgender people–they’re problems that are shared across oppressed groups. She writes:
I highlighted Anne’s on-point needs assessment: “decriminalization, housing, education and employment.”Full employment, universal health care and universal education would address a lot of that. A lot.
Of course, employment and health care and education won’t do away with all the ‘isms, but combined a more equitable distribution of wealth could do a lot to break up the structural racism and sexism that have continued to leave communities of color poorer and leave women making 77 cents to men’s dollars.
I want a world in which people are doing things they love because they love them. Imagine what people could accomplish if instead of bosses who make us feel like shit in order to get away with paying us less, we could spend that time truly doing what we love and getting good at it. Rather than wondering what happens if we don’t have money as an incentive, why don’t we think about the things we could do if we didn’t have to worry about money?
I don’t want Stalinism or Castroism. But I do take inspiration from the democratic shifts in Latin America, from countries moving without violence toward a better society for all. Despite the anger and the attempts to reinstitute a hierarchy–through violence, of course–Latin America perseveres with its experiment.
Global capitalism is crumbling and people are angry. They’re taking to the streets around the world, and they’re looking for a solution. Isn’t it the time now to think about real, long-term changes? About not “taking the country back,” but taking the country–the world–forward?
Slavoj Zizek wrote recently:
We will be forced to live ‘as if we were free.’ We will have to risk taking steps into the abyss, in totally inappropriate situations; we will have to reinvent aspects of the new, just to keep the machinery going and maintain what was good in the old–education, healthcare, basic social services.
It’s time to move this conversation out of a few journals and into the streets, workplaces, and bars. It’s time to come up with a real alternative, now, for ourselves.
I am writing a paper on George Orwell and the article that you quote from “Can Socialists be happy?” at the moment. I like the way you use this quote to show that there is a difference between the concepts behind socialism and its implementation. It is strange to me that many people don’t consider Orwell a socialist because he criticizes Stalin’s Russia in Animal Farm. He is criticizing Stalin’s power abuses not the ideology that led people to decide that their country would be better off without the tsars. In my mind there is NO doubt that his political convictions were to the left. He fought against Franco in Spain and he lived with the poverty stricken in the North of England and France to gather research for his book Down and Out in Paris and London. Animal Farm is a critique of how Stalin implemented the theories of communism to gain power. It is not a critique of the idea of a fairer society. It is a critique of some aspects of human nature. In a similar vein, 1984 criticizes a totalitarian system where power is abused and the desperate measures implemented to keep that same power.
I like your thoughts. I agree that people don’t really know what socialism means today. I believe that is because unfortunately very few politicians are really fighting for a real principle today. Words like socialism, left, right and centre are just bandied around to appeal to people who have always voted that way because their parents and friends do. It seems to be more a question of fighting to keep or gain more power. Fighting for power in itself is not fighting for an ideology. It is just trying to secure a safer position in society for oneself. I really enjoyed listening to Poutou, the Anti-capitalist candidate in France recently. His straight way of talking about how he feels society can be improved was really refreshing. Whether you agree that society would be better if his party’s ideas were implemented or not is one thing, but at least we have someone who has a real vision as opposed to someone who just jumps on different bandwagons to get more votes.
In his article, “Can Socialists be Happy?”, Orwell approaches the question of happiness in general and from a philosophical point of view rather than a political one. For him the human quest for happiness is a short-term concept. It is found when something that someone doesn’t have is obtained. It is a feeling that only comes in contrast to unhappiness. He is saying that socialists should not be looking to create a perfect world. Utopias are essentially boring and unsatisfactory places to be. Look at Brave New World by Aldous Huxley or The Giver by Lois Lowry. Orwell’s socialism refuses to detail what measures would need to be adopted in order to implement it in society. I believe his socialism is more an attitude to life rather than a political position. That is the reason why we find it difficult to compare his ideas with policies and ideas adopted by so called ‘socialist’ politicians today.