February 29, 2020
By Patricia Sohn
In the mid-19th century and early in the 20th century, socialism was a nouveau idea among anti-monarchist and anti-establishment quarters seeking to carve out a place of power and prestige for themselves in their local and regional contexts, as well as in the world order. Because of our particular experience with the Cold War, in the United States our discussion of what socialism means has been relatively limited in most contexts to what the Soviet Union and Cuba did. That is, for us, Lenin’s étatism, or highly centralized state with command economy, and Stalin’s combination of Lenin’s étatism with totalitarian rule, have been – in terms of our own rhetoric – the sum total of what socialism is.
There are a wide range of “socialisms,” however. Because the terms socialism and communism have both made their way expressly into the current 2020 U.S. election cycle, I think it is worth taking a moment to think about socialism more broadly than our Cold War context allowed us to do.
Let me preface what I am about to say with the admonition that Lenin’s and Stalin’s brands of socialism are, for me personally, politically, and ideologically, as anathema as would be human cannibalism. Indeed, they are a form of human cannibalism in my view, part of a spectrum of manipulation and oppression of human souls. They are grotesque forms of top-down control of the many by the few, and, to my mind, they have little if nothing to do with Marx himself, particularly in his observations regarding the plight of factory workers (see especially chapters 10 and 15), and his scathing criticisms of the then new phenomenon of the centralizing nation-state. Marx’s critiques of the centralized state are well-known and profound. To suggest that Lenin’s étatism and command economy are in keeping with that critique requires vast stretches of the imagination verging on fantasy. Indeed, both Lenin and Stalin appear to have enjoyed that fantastical ability to suspend disbelief in regard to their ostensible relation to Marx as a social scientist and social theorist. I am in no way an apologist for Lenin or Stalin.
That is, we do not want Lenin’s or Stalin’s version of socialism or communism in this country. They are dangerous forms of rule that are, by definition and by nature, authoritarian and totalitarian in structure and experience. Were we to end up with this type of regime in the U.S., I predict a second Civil War. Nothing less. Americans are not prepared to lose their Constitutional civil rights, for which we have all fought very hard, to the Soviet-minded among us.
Interestingly, a third, and, to my mind, more authentic Marxist thinker of the late-19th and early-20th century offered a form of socialism that emphasized what he referred to as a radical and always renewing democracy. That is, authority should be handled at the local level, and power should be regularly rotated among members of the community either by election or rotation. That was Trotsky. Not surprisingly, Stalin had Trotsky exiled; he died for his democratic views of socialism and critique of the centralized Soviet state.
Something much more influenced by Trotsky’s brand of socialism appears, to my understanding, in social democracies such as Israel (although I have not seen it in writing in regard to Israel), and in the Scandinavian social democracies. Since I know far more about the Israeli case, I will talk about it. We in political science in the U.S. are apparently reluctant to call Israel a social democracy, almost certainly because of our Cold War history and inherent distrust of communism. Nonetheless, that it was established as a Labor democracy – something between a communist and a socialist state in its earliest moments – is non-controversial among scholars of Israel. Pick up any History of Zionism book, or book on the Zionist movement. It moved over time from a regime more Lenin-influenced under David Ben Gurion, in which all societal communication with the state was mediated through the political party, to a more Trotsky- and American-influenced social democracy with a thriving civil society by the early and mid-1970s (because it is controversial for some Americans, I will not provide sources here, but I am happy to do so upon request). Ninety percent of the land of the state was still owned by the state or a state-affiliated agency as of 2005, and 90% of the economy was still state-run or strongly state-influenced ten years before that, as of the mid-1990s. Both of those numbers remain high today. So, despite the efforts at neo-liberal changes to the economy, which are real and important, Israel remains a social democracy. And it works well. Walking through Israel from a political-ethnographic standpoint, social democracy is the norm by which most people measure change (and even yell about and decry it at times), and neoliberalism is the nouveau.
Social democracy may work well in Israel because it is a very small state. It was also explained to me in interviews with a number of Israeli officials over the years that, while public corruption exists in Israel, misuse of public funds before a population of Holocaust survivors, their children, and their grandchildren is something that few are willing to engage in with regard to social programs associated with social democracy. Israel is highly diverse within the Jewish community as well as across Jewish and non-Jewish communities with as many as eight languages regularly spoken. Nonetheless, in democracies such as our own that do not have a single shared loyalty (such as religion) other than our civic model, I am skeptical that same exercise of self-constraint could be true here. Some political actors at various levels misuse the funds that they have, and it takes a long time to correct it. Others are highly ethical and great civil servants. But the burdens of socialism do not fit well, I think, with our own country.
Israel is ethnically heterogeneous – not homogeneous as some believe – within the Jewish population and across Jewish-Arab lines. It has managed that diversity and pluralism both within the Jewish community and across Jewish-Arab lines far better under social democracy since the 1970s than it did under its earlier Ben Gurion-influenced forms of Leninist étatism (starting around 1948 and lasting for only a few short years, during which Palestinians who are now citizens of Israel knew periods of martial law). Intermarriage amongst Middle Eastern Jews and European Jews used to be a scandalous thing; since the 1970s and 1980s, it has become increasingly normalized and expected.
The following numbers are my own estimations: Since the post-Soviet immigrations to Israel after 1989, somewhere approximating 46% of Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern, Asian, African, or (pre-1492) Spanish origin (all together called, Mizrahim, in Israeli everyday speech). Somewhere approximating 38% of Israeli Jews are of other European origins. And somewhere approximating 16% are of Russian origin. Most Russian populations in Israel today address themselves as a separate bloc, politically, historically, and sometimes even ethnically, from European Jewish populations; Russians were treated in negative (sometimes eugenicist) frame as Eur-Asians by some European populations in relatively recent history (e.g., European eugenicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries addressed such populations as “Slavs,” who they regarded as a mixed-race and a much-hated ethnic group, among other Eur-Asian groups and communities.) I am extrapolating these numbers from early 1950s numbers and accounting for some population changes, including the post-Soviet immigrations. It is difficult to find confirmed data on ethnic composition within the Jewish community in Israel, as it tends not to be publicly provided in Israel’s highly scientific and extensive census data.
All of this observation is within the Jewish population and is to say nothing of the just over 20% of the overall population that is of non-Jewish origins, and which includes a wide range of faiths and ethnic groups of both historic and current quality. So, Israel manages its social democracy in an ethnically- and religiously-heterogeneous context, mitigating against arguments that suggest that social democracy can only work in homogeneous countries. Nonetheless, the vast majority has one unifying factor of religion across other cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and other difference.
Having spent several years living in Israel, I have had the opportunity to experience its medical system in small ways. In my experience related to allergies (and by research data in certain fields), Israel maintains among the best medical research communities and facilities in the world. In a number of areas for which there are great publications (sources available upon request), including Invitro fertilization, it is sometimes ranked first in the world. And the costs are shockingly low to U.S. sensibilities. The majority of medical research in Israel, as in the U.S., is nationally funded. That is, it is funded by tax payer dollars. That makes it a Public Good in the eyes of many Israelis (and Americans?). I am grateful that healthcare is no longer something that breaks people in the same way that it used to do.
Who you trust your socialist dollars to matters if you are hiring (e.g., electing) socialists to office. There is a substantive difference in real daily and life freedoms between hiring a Lenin, a Stalin, or a Trotsky. Can you tell the difference before they get into power? With the first two, say bye-bye to the U.S. Constitution, and, Hello, Big-Daddy-Totalitarian-State! These are political experiments with which we are familiar. Do not fool yourself that it will be different this time.
Trump, on the other hand, knows how to handle money. Some have called him a monarch. As a monarchist, I have no problem with that. Benevolent and Constitutional monarchy works all over the world. I would rather an ethical monarch over a corrupt parliamentarian any day if those are the choices, and they do appear to approximate some of our choices in the U.S. in recent decades. Let us hope for better in our Future! If anyone can unravel our medical juggernaut, Trump can. And to those doctors who say they will not be in the medical profession anymore if they cannot make 5 times, or more, what I make for the same number of years (or sometimes fewer!) of post-Secondary education and training in the field, I say: I have some nice land for you in Vladivostok. We will be happy to send you there.
In sum, if you are voting socialist, be careful of what you are buying. Most socialist and communist regimes have been authoritarian or totalitarian in nature. Most are not social democracies like Israel or the Scandinvavian model, both of which join a free market with high taxes and an effective, large social program net. Most are not even like China, which shows increasing openness to religion, for example. Most socialist and communist regimes are like Cuba — ‘tho I must profess my love for Cuban music and food. Only a few have been nice social democracies with democratic freedoms. The American Way still stands as our own best option.
Note added, 8/9/24:
I stand betwixt, but also in the pleasant position of being happy with either outcome in the coming election. I would sincerely love nothing more than a woman President, and a woman of color even more. There is a lot that I value very highly in Kamala Harris’ politics, and in her choice of running mate.
And I continue to value the center-right of the Republican Party, and Donald Trump’s politics on the economy in particular. My Grandfather used to say: Nothing works if there is not Trade. I am convinced that Trump knows that; and he knows how to work it better than anyone else — not just on the ticket. In my view, he is among the best business people anywhere in the world. He knows the best. He works with them. He can fix our economy, as he has already shown once.
I am ethnically pluralist by family origins — it is in my being, so there is no way to avoid it. It is part of me and a high priority to me. I am religiously pluralist and it comes from my being, from my family origins. There is no way around it and (legal) Religious Freedom is a high priority to me. I love East Asia and East Asian cultures; it is a high priority to me. I am both northern and southern European in family origins, so those cultural ties are important to me as well. Born in the U.S. to parents who were born in the U.S., I am part-Philippine; it is part of the core of my being. I will note that the Philippines is one of the countries for which one can have joint citizenship with the U.S.; another is Israel.
So, I am a pluralist. Some people believe me not to be a hawk because of my culturalist orientation and interests. My form of hawkishness follows Buddhism for those who know, The Art of War; when the time comes, it is time to be a hawk. Not before. And not after. Seek peace until all legitimate possibilities for peace are gone, even if it takes 100 or 120 years. Why? A straight-forward answer: Buddhists, such as myself, believe that we receive less in Karmic punishments if we do so — empirically. We believe in Divine punishments — loosely speaking, called Karma — so we seek peace until all hopes for peace are passed. And we hope that our Spirits are fully with us in it. That is, in any case, my understanding of my religion. But once that time is past: a hawk is a hawk when the time comes to be a hawk; that is, then it is best not to equivocate, and be a hawk with all of your Ki. (I digress.) So, I do speak for peace and flowers, but not in the way that one might imagine.
And, I am a 2016 Trump convert to the Republican Party, having been an Independent or center-left Democrat for most of my life (now center-right in my middle age). Centrist-moderate-pluralists rarely make their voices heard; perhaps it is time, since I do believe that, by the numbers, centrists are the majority. I think we as a country have more greatness in our future, and wide new options for cooperation.
***
- Dr. Patricia Sohn, Ph.D. is an associate professor. She specializes in Middle East (MENA) politics, Israel politics, and to a lesser extent, Palestinians; and particularly the intersection of religion and politics, comparative judiciaries (as institutions) and politics, and gender politics. She has newly emerging interests in MENA, Europe, and Asia, including ritual politics, political theatre, culture and institutions, and a phenomenology of politics (as real experience). She has interests in historical institutional, political sociological, micro-level, and grassroots analysis of state and society. A prime example of the American melting pot, she has heritage from the Philippines, Prussia, Spain, Ireland, and Holland.
- The views herein are those of the author; they do not represent her employer, nor any other entity.
the arena: people and politics 