OH: Socialist Party Candidate for US Senate Responds to Claims that the Democratic Party is on a "March toward Socialism" (a TPID Exclusive)

In preparation for a piece at Poli-Tea surveying the ongoing debate over the Obama administration and Democratic-majority Congress's "march toward socialism," I contacted Dan La Botz, Socialist Party candidate for US Senate in Ohio, and asked the following question:

On the heels of health care reform, and ahead of financial regulatory reform, what is your response to the claim that the Obama administration and Democratic majority Congress are on a "march toward socialism"?

Rather than reply with a soundbite or slogan, Mr. La Botz was kind enough to provide an in-depth response, which is reproduced below in full, and with his permission.

Dan La Botz on "The March Toward Socialism":

Historically, socialism grew out of the labor movements of the nineteenth century, and its basic notion was the working people, the workers and farmers who formed the majority of the society, should democratically control the government and the economy for the benefit of all. The Obama administration, which came to power in the midst of a severe economic crisis, has demonstrated that its principal preoccupation has been to save American capitalism, the banks and corporations. Billions of working peoples’ tax money has been redistributed to banks, insurance companies and corporations, but we have not gained any control over those institutions. On the contrary, they continue to exploit working people and to block the road to reform.

The measures taken to deal with the crisis, first by the Bush and then by the Obama administration, such as the nationalization of certain financial institutions and the buying up of the stock of industrial corporations, are similar to those taken by other capitalist countries—from Japan, to Mexico, to France, to Sweden—during other recent crises. (I have discussed these issues at greater length in the articles “The Financial Crisis: Will the U.S. Nationalize the Banks?” and “The Financial Crisis: A View from the Left.”) Throughout history when there is an economic crisis, the capitalist state and capitalist parties have intervened to save the banks and corporations, sometimes by nationalizing them, and then later have sold them back to private investors.

The Republican and Democratic Parties, both dominated by the banks, insurance companies, and multinational corporations, serve their interests. Working people need their own political party, but such a party will only be constructed by an independent and militant social movement fighting for change. We need to build a powerful movement of working people that can demand that the large corporations be socialized, taken over the government, but democratically controlled by the people of the United States.

What would socialism mean? Here’s an example. The U.S. government now owns almost half of General Motors, so why don’t we turn those plants to green production—solar panels, wind turbines, hydrothermal equipments—to solve both the economic and environmental problems we face? We could as a people democratically elaborate a plan for the banks and corporations which we own, a plan to be carried out by workers collaborating with consumers, advised by environmentalists.

We would not run these plants or others for profit, but rather to take care of the human needs of the American people. We would not wage war to control the world’s oil, but rather wage peace to share our knowledge and experience to help the rest of the world achieve a decent standard of living. Such a sharing of economic know-how, raising the world’s living standards, would also the kinds of immigration issues we now face, because people migrate in search of a decent standard of living, and most wouldn’t be forced to migrate if they had jobs and security in their own countries.

The Obama administration proposes that a government run by corporations also regulate the corporations in order to save the corporations from destroying themselves in their chaotic struggle to control our nation's wealth and resources. Obama's government, like Bush's did, acts as a kind of super-executive committee of corporations, working to coordinate the corporations so they will be more successful in wringing their wealth from us. Socialists argue that America's working people make the country run, and working people should also run the country. There is all the difference in the world between those two visions and programs.