Using factual labels essential to debate

_Editor’s note: This is the first in a weekly series of opinion pieces about the upcoming elections. The call for submissions in last Monday’s Daily Lobo stated there would be two parties represented each week. However, we received no Republican submissions, so this week a libertarian columnist will go solo.
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One of the most popular epithets to fling around against Barack Obama is the charge that he’s a socialist — and/or communist — out to destroy the United States with his Marxist — and/or Soviet-style — agenda. Let me just say that people who make these claims have dealt their credibility a blow by combining and misdefining several different political and economic philosophies. That said, I’m not here to defend Barack Obama in the conservative-bashing article you may be expecting. I’m here to separate the truth from fiction and educate those on both sides to encourage rational and intelligent debate.

Let’s start with some basic definitions. There are two different paradigms being discussed here: one is governance systems and the other is political economy. Terms such as “democracy” and “communism” are examples of the former, and terms such as “socialism” and “capitalism” are examples of the latter. To reiterate, socialism is not a form of government. It is an economic system, like capitalism, that can be combined with a governance system such as democracy. Now, with those basic distinctions out of the way, on to some definitions.

First, beginning with political economy, capitalism is what happens when private-sector actors freely exchange their private goods and services for private profit. Socialism, on the other hand, is public — though not necessarily “collective,” a term popularized by Soviet-style planned economies — ownership of the economy; or in the case of mixed (or market) socialism, ownership of large, key sectors of the economy.

Next, moving on to governance systems. I want to explain some differences between the most common forms of communism. Communism, in its most basic form, is the achievement of a classless utopian society through common ownership of property, usually through the state, with stages of transition from capitalism. Socialism in this view is seen as a bridge between capitalism and communism.

Marxism is the core philosophy behind all forms of communism, and is based upon the idea that human history is continual class conflict, which must be ended through the overthrow of the oppressors by the oppressed. However, the idea of an elite vanguard party leading popular revolution to speed up the change from class conflict to communist utopia was added by Lenin, which some consider to be a detraction from pure communism. Marx’s original theory did not advocate a preplanned uprising, but rather a spontaneous one that would occur on history’s own time.

Basically, class conflict was Marx’s idea, but active and violent class warfare was Lenin’s.

Now, on to social democracy. When people call Obama any one of the aforementioned labels, what they should really be calling him is a social democrat. Social democracy involves the state taking a major role in redistributing income equally, which includes owning key industries to make sure they are managed correctly to that end. Social democracy also involves the creation of a large welfare state for the public good, which in turn requires higher tax rates to finance those programs. It must be noted that, though at first it sounds quite similar, this does not match up with the governance system of the Soviet Union. Rather, for much of its history, the Soviet Union was simply a one-party totalitarian state with a centrally planned socialist economy geared for military production, grounded in the repressive philosophy of Stalinism.

Finally, I will mention that there are many more nuances to all the governance styles and forms of political economy mentioned in this article that there is simply no space to discuss. Instead of leaping to conclusions about my credibility if you, the reader, find facts missing, I suggest that instead you look up the answers to your own questions. Then, in your next discussion this election year, share what you have learned instead of repeating what MSNBC or Fox News has said. Rationality doesn’t have to go out the window during an election year, and intelligent thought doesn’t have to be buried by sound bytes and party lines. By taking the time to separate the facts from the rhetoric, on both sides, voters can return their focus to the candidates’ stances on the issues that affect them, rather than joining in on the unproductive mudslinging that modern American campaigning has become.