Constance Chien ’10
Features Editor

When I tell people I’m a socialist, they give one of three reactions: they shrug and say “cool;” they give me a strange look and attack me for my beliefs (this can be not fun); or maybe they smile in reconciliation with another fellow Marxist.

I, for one, believe that socialism has value in today’s society, despite the leftover bad feelings for the movement from the McCarthy era.

I say this because what socialism means is that we become a community and that we support a government that will, in turn, protect and sustain us by either controlling labor or allowing the workers to control labor.

In doing so, we prevent certain failures of capitalism, namely the potential to exploit the people through corporate greed and monopolizing.

In theory, socialism isn’t all that bad.

There are already many socialistic elements of our society that are well appreciated. Public schools, anyone? And highways? These elements are not called socialism explicitly (if they were, I imagine crowds would protest their additions out of fear of that word), but they are very much so socialistically controlled.

The socialism that is often associated with books like “1984” or “Animal Farm” isn’t really the whole picture. In fact, the situation in “1984” (a book by George Orwell in which an authoritarian government controls every aspect of citizens’ existences) could indeed happen with an economic system based on capitalism.

The potential for an authoritarian government isn’t limited to when governments have socialism as an economic system – not at all.

The potential for unmerited and unwelcome control of the brainwashing sort exists in pretty much every form of government, no matter which economic system the government may follow.

In fact, I may argue that the American politics in the 1950s is a good example of how government can take control of its people.

Ironically enough, this period was a time when the government tried to get rid of any trace of socialism and communism in American society.

And yet, government in this period took on authoritarian characteristics. It took on an aura of suspicion. It tried and jailed people unfairly for having certain associations or beliefs, or for having sympathies with the political Left. In other words, it became what we now associate with the faults of socialism.

Furthermore, capitalism is a system built on greed. Seriously.

The reason why people say that capitalism works is because it encourages competition because people want the best for themselves out of a “natural” human tendency.

Capitalism reduces us, therefore, to cultural clichés.

We don’t have to be greedy. Human nature isn’t universal and immutable, and even if one is of the belief that it is, I believe that being nice to one another is a fundamental quality of being human.

We can and truly could become supportive of each other if we all decided to. Socialism doesn’t have to go against antiquated, cynical notions of human nature.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (to whom I, as well as many Americans. affectionately refer as “FDR”) faced the same opposition regarding his New Deal plan that that the Democratic Party currently draws for its “socialistic” views on health care. FDR is essentially the reason we got through the Great Depression.

With the recent economic crisis, perhaps we should reconsider the capitalist morality of unrestrained, unwise economic growth and greed. Perhaps we should trust one another and pull through with socialism.

Socialism implies a system in which we help each other and everyone is treated with due fairness, so why is “socialism” a word with such negative connotation?

I’d rather be economically governed by a well-informed government that closely regulates and supports me rather than by the cold trappings of an economic system with only one rule: be greedy, and look out for only yourself.