by A Socialist » Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:34 pm
Sorry, I am a busy man, but I will kick things off here now.
I personally think the idea of Obama being a socialist is totally preposterous, and is a mockery of everything real socialists like me stand for. If anything, Obama's bank and auto bailouts are corporatist fascism, because, rather than nationalizing all the banks and auto companies, he is instead funding private financier to run them (or at least, that has always been his stated goal). Essentially, Obama is not a socialist because:
-His healthcare plan is not universally public, a lot less than even places like Canada and the UK. His healthcare insurance scheme is meant to only cover those who cannot afford private insurance. He has said that he wants to keep the free market and private companies as the main providers of healthcare, and that he does not believe a European style healthcare system is appropriate for America. He has refused to nationalize the healthcare industry, he only wants universal coverage, he still wants the market to be the primary provider of health insurance, not socialist in the least.
-Obama has bailed out banks and auto companies, but usually has not nationalized them unless totally necessary. Rather, he wants to ensure that they can continue to function in private hands with private financiers, much like the fascists did. A fellow wrote a book entitled "Liberal Fascism" in which he compared Rooselvelt's New Deal to the stimulus packages of Hitler and Mussolini, and found remarkable similarities. Socialism is NATIONALIZING the means of production, not funding private production.
-He has consistently asked workers to make cutbacks to their wages to support their higher ups. Look at his auto bailout plan. France has a very right wing president in Sarkozy, but even he gave an unconditional auto bailout, with no cuts required for auto workers. Obama was more right-wing, and saw fit to make cuts to the salaries of hard working people.
-Obama wants to cut taxes for most people. Rather than having people hand over their wealth to the government to be distributed across society, Obama wants more people to keep more of their wealth for themselves. Obama has raised some taxes on the rich, but many non-socialist governments have done that at times.
-Obama comes from a party, the Democratic Party, that is primarily funded and counts many bankers and wealthy businessmen amongst its ranks. Obama joined the Democrats because he supports the agendas of those kinds of people. He did not join the communist party as he did not support that agenda.
-Obama's main base of support is not the working class, it is upper-middle class students and well-to-do people. The working class generally backed Clinton in the primaries. If you look at his base of support, you will find Obama is running a middle/upper-middle class, even at times upper class, political movement. His base is not the workers, but rather those people who would be least willing to give to the workers.
There, as you can see, none of these things are socialist in the least. Obama, if he was in Europe, would be a conservative. David Cameron is more of a leftie than Obama!
John Hodgkins, Leader of the Nationalist Party of Kafuristan
ANY MORE!!
