INTERVIEW: Thomas Schaller

Two years ago, I was walking up Charles St. towards Mount Vernon Square to check out the annual Baltimore Book Festival. As I waited to cross the street about a block from the main part of the festival, I saw out of the corner of my eye a small table set up on the other side of the street. "Odd that they’re set up so far away from the other tables," I thought. I squinted to read what they were about. The Socialist Party of the United States of America. It seemed all too appropriate that they were positioned just out of spitting distance from everything else, and that the two people behind the table had no cover from the drizzle that had been falling all morning.

In spite of the prominence of such voices as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Howard Zinn, and even the late Studs Turkel, broadly socialist left-wing ideas have not, in recent years, found a secure place in mainstream American political discourse. Even still, 100 or so days into President Obama’s tenure, “socialism” has become a byword, in the mouths of ideologues like Eric Cantor and Glenn Beck, for all that is European, anti-entrepreneurship, un-American and therefore very wrong. In order to make some sense of the sound bytes, Splice Today contacted Thomas Schaller—professor at UMBC, Salon.com contributor, Colbert Report guest, and author of Whistling Past Dixie—to get his take on how socialism really figures in American politics. In our discussion, we started by defining socialism broadly as a political ideology based on a commitment to the creation of an egalitarian society based on people being able to seek fulfillment without barriers of systemic inequality, and that challenges the property relationships that are fundamental to capitalism.


SPLICE TODAY: When the average American hears the word “socialism,” what do you think he hears?

THOMAS SCHALLER: I suspect the average American hears and thinks “communism” when they hear “socialism.” I wonder how many Americans who have taken Social Security payments, unemployment insurance payments or Medicare benefits—some of the largest and most redistributive programs in the history of the planet—consider themselves to be the practicing beneficiaries of socialism they are.

ST: Forms of democratic socialism (I’m thinking of Eugene Debs and elements of the New Deal) had much greater political currency in the early 20th century. How did socialism come to be in the position it currently holds in the American political landscape?

TS: Socialism in the partisan sense gained a lot more traction in the early part of the 20th century in part because of the huge disparities in income in the United States, coupled with the then-inability of the two major parties to rig an electoral system to reinforce the partisan duopoly they enjoy today. There is no sign of the latter changing, but the reemergence of income inequality of a magnitude not seen in almost a century and the reemergence of all this socialist talk is no coincidence.

ST: In terms of third parties, the American Socialist Party makes Bob Barr and Ralph Nader look like leaders of enormous political machines. Why haven’t socialist ideas had more momentum in recent times?

TS: Few third parties gain any traction in our single-member-district, plurality rule system because such systems have been proven to inevitably gravitate toward two-party systems, for no power is attained for third-place finishers as is the case in proportional representation systems.

ST: How much of it is a function of our media environment?

TS: Socialist Party successes do not even rate with those of a Ross Perot or Pat Buchanan in part because, in the eyes of the American media, being labeled a socialist is barely a notch above child molester. In fact, a child molester who started a small business would probably get more favorable coverage than a self-avowed socialist.

ST: But where did the media stigma come from?

TS: I don't know, other than to say that we have a private, corporate-owned media and matters would be decidedly different if we had the American equivalent to Britain's BBC or Canada's CBC.

ST: Eric Hobsbawm, the historian, recently wrote that, at this point, both socialism and unregulated free-market capitalism have failed, saying that the world’s biggest governments are too addicted to maximizing economic growth. Do you think his vision is too polarized? Do you think the current recession represents a serious threat to the American, even the global, political status quo?

TS: I don't know Hobsawm's work, but I do know that Larry Bartel's new book, Unequal Democracy, dispels the notion that economic disparities are somehow the natural consequence of economic growth. In fact, the two-decade period of great growth in the United States following the Second World War was also characterized by greater income equity between top and bottom and, not coincidentally, high marginal tax rates approaching 90 percent at one point. So the notion that growth and socialist-style tax rates or redistributive programs are somehow mutually exclusive choices is a fallacy. Henry Ford wanted his employees to make a competitive wage for a reason—so they could afford to buy the very cars they built. Somehow, in the post-Reagan era we seem to think that shipping somebody's well-paid job with benefits and a pension to Chennai will result in the lower-wage Indian who now holds that job somehow buying the American product or service the American worker formerly produced. This is absurd.

ST: Really, just how socialist are the Obama Administration’s policies so far?

TS: The Obama administration's policies constitute the most dramatic growth in the size and scope of governmental action since the New Deal. We have a massive, Keynesian stimulus coupled with new domestic investments in education, health care and the environment, with a new regulatory (or re-regulatory) plan to prevent future credit crisis and reckless financial speculation. Capitalism requires regulated markets, and Obama's Cooper Union speech in March 2008 foreshadowed everything he is now proposing to reform Wall Street. Anybody calling these actions socialism understands nothing about the operation of free, open, and fair markets. When government uses its power to engage in fixed prices or no-bid contracts for military contractors we call it entrepreneurial capitalism, even though such actions are more socialist than anything Obama has proposed to regulate under- or unregulated financial instruments, mandate transparent accounting and require sufficient capital reserves.

ST: After the defection of Arlen Specter and the probable seating of Al Franken, it looks likely that the Democratic Party will soon have 60 potential votes in the Senate. If not towards socialism, might their newly filibuster-proof agenda move further to the left?

TS: Not much connection to the 60 votes and socialism, and I really don't think it changes the calculus that much. It's not hard to get one vote to make 60 right now, with Franken in there putting pre-Specter Democrats at 59 seats. After all, when the Liebermans and Bayhs want to make a fuss, Specter is probably going to be with them anyway, whatever his party label.

ST: Is the current recession a bad financial mess, or a broader crisis of free-market capitalism?

TS: It's both a really bad mess and an indictment of unregulated capitalism, which is a less efficient and less productive and less equitable alternative to properly regulated markets—and for all non-corrupt or predatory parties involved, from the top of the income ladder to the bottom. Look, when the financial services industry accounts for one-fifth of our economy, it's clear we have a serious problem. You can only generate so much growth from managing wealth without generating sufficient wealth to manage in the first place. Laugh all you want at the Germans and other European economies, but at least many of them realize you still need to make stuff in order to have wealth to invest.