Llewellyn King: U.S. Democratic Socialists should look abroad and decide what they really support
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, America’s best-known Democratic Socialist.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Historically in parts of the British Isles, there were shortages of family names which is why a disproportionate number of the Welsh are called Evans, Jones or Williams.
Yes, my first name is Welsh, but I believe we were of untrammeled English stock with possibly a smidgen of Dutch.
I mention these things because names, and what they mean, are becoming troublesome or seem to be.
The Democratic Socialists of America might rue that name. They might have gone for one with less baggage — perhaps the New Democrats, The Fair Vote Party or the Better Shake Democrats.
They are Democrats and they haven’t fallen far from the tree. But calling themselves socialists is causing good country club Republicans to shake uncontrollably, spilling their martinis, olives and all.
Socialism is a toxic term for most Americans. Classically, it is a political philosophy which posits the means of production and distribution should be owned by the state.
You might note that it isn’t indistinguishable from communism, which, in the days of the Soviet Union, kept the Russians and their vassal states in subjugation.
But that isn’t what today’s Democratic Socialists want. Even if they haven’t articulated it well, what New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and that old warrior of the left, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, want is the kind of democratic socialism that Scandinavian and Nordic countries practice, and mostly pull off: a government-provided social network plus capitalism. {Editor’s note: David Morales, almost certainly the next mayor of Providence, is a Democratic Socialist.}
For those countries, this means high taxes, free education, free health care, subsidized but good transportation, and annual six-week vacations. It also includes tax-funded parental leave — where both the father and the mother can stay at home for lengthy periods.
Ostentatious wealth is frowned upon. For those on the bottom rung of the income ladder, there are comprehensive aid services.
Underlying not just Scandinavian-Nordic socialism (AKA social democracy) is a desire to perfect society, to make it fairer and kinder.
In two countries I know something about, Finland and Sweden, I find people proud of their social-democratic systems, but also railing against them for the smothering nature of the state.
U.S. left-wingers support socialism because they want a genteel, kind world. They don’t want what we have now: some with billions and some homeless. They want health care without strings for the sick, and freedom from the fear of financial ruin from catastrophic illness.
Britain, which has an extensive social network, is a country suffering under an unsustainable burden of good intentions. Welfare provisions, known as “benefit” aren’t only killing the British economy, but also the British spirit.
The Wall Street Journal, in a clear piece of reporting, details the nightmare of good intentions that is impoverishing Britain. As the Journal pointed out, in some circumstances, a patient with a real or imaginary phobia can get a new leased car every three years. A phobia or a “fiddle”?
Somewhere in its post-war history, the idea of a fiddle — a little something on the side — became part of the Brit psyche.
When I worked for a newspaper in Fleet Street, like other reporters, I had access to a motor pool of drivers who drove us around London as we needed. They also did editorial assistant jobs, like finding the nearest phone box — which, in those days before cell phones, were so important.
The driver I had was a huge man who, of course, was nicknamed “Tiny.” One day, Tiny confided to me that he had another job. While he was driving for the editorial side of the newspaper, he was simultaneously signed up as a delivery-truck driver and getting fully paid for a job he never did.
When I told him that was appalling, he said, “It’s my fiddle, everyone has a fiddle. What about your expenses? Aren’t they a fiddle?”
Well, they were. Reporters were compensated by “expenses.” They were told how much to overcharge the company and held to it. Newspapers allowed differences over and above what we actually spent.
I mention this to explain how the British welfare system has been so abused, and how the British are at peace with cheating the system.
The government — the “nanny state,” as it is called — tries to ease all human difficulties, and it has reached a point where the real economy can’t afford the social welfare it has been so proud of providing.
France and other countries that have taken this gentler socialism route have also found themselves choked by it.
The Democratic Socialists of America need to decide what they are for and what it will cost. Being hostile to the status quo isn’t a policy.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.