Why Is Socialism Always The Answer?

I'm OK with Russell Brand.  Granted, I think he gave Katy Perry a bit of a raw deal, but you can't tell me she didn't know what she was getting into when she married the guy.   But by himself, in small to moderate doses, he's okay and he makes good points (witness his destruction of MSNBC's Morning News Panel a few months ago.  A beautiful thing, since I'm not a fan of MSNBC or corporate media in general and I respect people who are willing to challenge/call bullshit on their friends or ideological bedfellows rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks on the other side as most people are wont to do.)

Last week, the folks at Britain's New Statesmen gave Brand the reins to edit and produce an issue of their fine publication.  The New Statesman, like Brand, is left-wing and Brand went on Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman to promote the issue.  He also wrote this piece, entitled:  'We no longer have the luxury of tradition.'

This piece is lengthy and it's well thought out and Brand, as ever, makes some interesting points but I also felt a familiar sense of resignation as I read the piece...  there was nothing fundamentally new on offer here- nothing fundamentally transformative or even revolutionary.  No, instead it was just a clarion call- an impressive one, I'll grant you, to return to the spiritual roots and beliefs of socialism once more.  So I gotta ask:  why is socialism always the answer?

It's a bit incoherent and Brand acknowledges he likes stuff/materialism and agrees that individualism exists, but ultimately, we've got to get back to the spiritual roots of the land and work on what made socialism/that fluffy amorphous concept known as 'The Left' so great to begin with.   I'll grant you that Brand is writing this for a British audience from a British point of view, but it's more or less the same over here.   Conservatives represent big business, corporations, evil, etc, etc, etc so the answer, naturally is more big corporate trade unions and more big corporate governance.   Capitalism is the problem, we're told, therefore socialism must be the answer.

Well, what if that's wrong?  What if we've never actually seen either ideology the way it was meant to be seen?  If you think about it, we're not really a capitalist system now.  Government intervenes in the market all the damn time, the corporations game the tax code for their benefit and rake in corporate welfare by the bucketload.  We're more corporatist that capitalist- and if you have a problem with our 'we're on the verge of just not pretending about it anymore' corporatist government, well then, welcome to the club, we've got jackets.

My problem has been and remains that nothing fundamentally new is happening, politically speaking.  Brand seems to be hailing from the slightly riotous/Occupy branch of the fluffy amorphous concept known as The Left- and let's be honest, while there's a lot you can say about the Tea Party (it's no where near as effective as it once was, I think) at least they got something done.  Occupy was about expressing yourself and feelings and all that other hippy dippy protest bullshit that looks great on camera but accomplishes very little in the way of anything practical.  (It will be a very good day for America when the last hippy dies and nobody can tell the young people 'well that's what worked when we were protesting 'Nam.'   I could give a shit about how you protested Vietnam*.  I don't know man, I wasn't there!  It's like the unseen baggage that prevents The Left over here from doing anything useful or effective and  most importantly of all, it's a shackle to the past.)

(Conversely, the answer to every problem posed to a Republican/Conservative is always some variant of the refrain:  'too much government regulation' and 'taxes are too high.'   Those are the same fucking talking points that Reagen used for crying out loud.  My thoughts on Reagen are more or less the same as my thoughts on Vietnam:  I don't know man, I wasn't there!)

Brand, to me, undoes his argument when he admits he doesn't think it's worth voting.  I'm afraid I'm going to have to call bullshit on that.  You have to vote.   Voting is all we have and most of the time, it probably won't make the damnedest bit of difference one way or the other but occasionally, it does.  The problem isn't voting- it's that people don't take it seriously.   People just vote based on what they read in the newspaper or see on television.   I shop.  I read.  I research because I do take it so seriously.  Since I've turned 18, I've voted for sensible Republicans, I've voted for Democrats and I've voted for Libertarians, Greens and the Independence Party.  I vote for what I believe in and for the candidates that believe what I believe and yes, that may be idealistic and maybe a little naïve but if more people believed that, we'd be in a lot better shape than we actually are.

Brand seems to think that since Osbourne, Cameron and company are all from the same crusty old boys network that there's nothing worth saving or voting for.  Fuck 'em all.  Well, who didn't vote better people in, Russell?  You get the government you deserve and if people aren't willing to work to elect people that represent them and their beliefs, you can't be surprised at what you end up with.   Plug in and make your revolution happen.

The problem goes deeper than that, though- it's a fundamentally a structural issue.  First-past-the-post, Westminster style democracy produces a relatively low number of parties (usually 2, maybe 2.5 or three if you're lucky) and that can and usually does lead to corruption and paralysis.  We need to explore more representative voting systems like proportional representation or multi-member district systems. (I was very, very happy to stumble across this a few months back.  There should be more of this happening.  Everywhere.)  There are ways that we, the people can make a system that's more democratic, more fair and more responsive to everybody instead of just increasingly fewer and fewer people.

Relying on old ideologies, whether capitalism in it's current corporatist form or even bring out the old drums of socialism again ignore the fact that those ideologies are inherently vertical.  Someone is at charge and someone is at the bottom.   Power in the information age is going rapidly horizontal- we need ideologies that acknowledge that or better still, we can abandon all of them and just stick to my personal belief in government:  help those that need helping and leave everyone else the hell alone.

*Obviously, I care about Vietnam.  It was a horrible war and we shouldn't have been there and I have nothing but respect for those that served in that war- and when people tell me about how 'that's the way we did it when we were protesting 'Nam' I get angry and want to retort with things like 'yeah, how many veterans did you spit on when they got back, hippy?'  So in general, massive respect to those that served.   If you didn't, please hush.