My Maine State Representative called me a socialist but ignored my question to him...

I recently posted a comment on social media noting that NYC Mayor Mamdani asked New Yorker City dwellers to set their air conditioners at 78 degrees in the context of a severe heat wave and concern about the power grid and was then widely attacked by the right. When MSNBC pointed out in their broadcast that Mamdani’s 78-degree recommendation came from the US government’s own Department of Energy, the US Government immediately (within 24 hours) deleted 6000 web pages related to energy savings.

When I asked my Maine State Senator for his take on this example of information removal by his Republican party, he ignored my question (over the course of several emails) and instead attacked socialism, suggested that I might have “been bitten by the socialist bug’, and said that “perhaps (I) don’t believe in our Republic.” Three things struck me about his response.

• First was his unwillingness (or inability) to respond to my question about his Republican party censoring energy and climate information.

• Second was his total lack of curiosity about what I believed or why, opting instead for assumptions and accusations. Had he asked, I would have explained why I prefer prosocial forms of democracy such as market humanism over the US form of capitalism.

• Third, his comments suggest that he doesn’t understand what socialism is. (It is possible that he knows what socialism is but prefers to argue against a straw man. I would rather ascribe his behavior to ignorance than dishonesty.)

I assume the comments about socialism by my State Representative were triggered by the mention of Mayor Mamdani, who identifies as a Democratic Socialist. This is a problem in two ways. First, he assumed - without asking any questions - that I was a socialist because I named one in a post. Second, it reflects a lack of knowledge about the broad umbrella term socialism.Democratic Socialism, social Democracy, and classical Marxist socialism are not synonyms any more than automobile, pick-up truck, go kart, and Formula 1 racer are synonyms. I can’t do anything about his unwillingness to answer a constituent’s question or his lack of curiosity about what a constituent believes. I can, however, offer some information about the history and key features of major western political and economic theories/systems, explain briefly what market humanism is, and share why I prefer it to either capitalism or socialism.

• The Western Roman Empire during the 4^th and 5^th Centuries was a vast centralized administrative bureaucracy controlling large-scale plantations heavily dependent on slave labor. As it gradually disintegrated, power reverted to local warlords and Germanic tribes (Franks, Visigoths, Lombards, etc.) that were often based on kinship and usually without consistent legal codes or economic systems. They often integrated aspects of Roman law into their regional agrarian kingdoms.

• In this setting, the Manorial System evolved as peasants and slaves banded together for protection under lords of large estates, trading labor and allegiance for protection. As the multiple separate estates under the Manorial System merged into ever larger entities, Feudalism evolved as the dominant political and military framework. Under both the underlying manorial system and broader feudalism, there was a strong hierarchy. Individuals could be granted privileges but had few (if any) rights; they were passive subjects rather than active or engaged citizens. (The concept of innate human rights did not appear until the Enlightenment in the late 17^th Century.) During the Black Death in the 14^th Century, Europe lost about half of its population resulting in severe labor shortages resulting in wage increases and labor mobility. During the 15^thand 16^th Centuries, populations shifted toward cities beyond the control of feudal lords. An increase in global trade and the growth of towns and cities led to a powerful merchant class dependent on wealth rather than land ownership for status and power. Local decentralized control shifted to more centralized nation states.

• By the 16^th Century, feudalism had been replaced by large nation states in the form of monarchies. Mercantilism became the dominant economic theory. It sought to increase a nation’s wealth under a state-controlled economic system through trade surpluses and gold accumulation. It held that the world’s wealth was finite and a nation could only become richer and more powerful by taking wealth away from another nation. This ‘zero-sum’ approach led to exploration and extractive colonial empires. This economic approach and the politics that supported it were dominant until the mid or late 18^th Century,

• Mercantile capitalism and increased commerce during the 16^th Century led to the growth of industry (e.g., the cloth industry in England), and laid the foundation for private property and wage labor. With the invention factory systems and the complex division of labor during the Industrial Revolution in the late 18^th Century, capitalism became dominant. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations published in 1776 provided the first classical theories for free market capitalism. Beginning in the 19^th Century, capitalism spread beyond Western Europe and by the 20^th Century had became the dominant socioeconomic theory globally. Capitalism is a broad term, but at its core it refers to systems that see capital as central and causal to societal growth and structure: anything that is good for capital and those who own and control capital will ultimately benefit society. There are many versions of capitalism, including:

  • Laissez faire, with absolute private property rights, free enterprise, minimal government intervention (little regulation, low taxes, free trade). This characterized the US during gilded age

  • Welfare capitalism which blends competitive free markets with heavy state regulation and robust safety net. This is seen in the Nordic Model in Sweden and Denmark. This is a form of capitalism that has borrowed heavily from socialism and is sometimes referred to as prosocial capitalism. It overlaps with social democracy, a form of socialism.

  • State capitalism, where government plays a major (controlling) role in managing resources and the economy, picking winners, and subsidizing favored industries. China is good example of this.

  • Corporate capitalism, where large corporations and multinational conglomerates own and control most of the resources and industry. An example is Japan and its kieretsu system.

  • Crony or oligarchic capitalism, where close ties and significant overlap exist between business and political leaders, as is often seen in emerging nation oligarchies.

• Socialism emerged in response to the huge disparities in wealth, power, and living experience between those at the top and everyone else, and was proposed as a replacement for capitalism in response to the clear harms and abuses of unfettered capitalism. Socialism is an umbrella term for a collection of economic systems and philosophies of governance that prioritize society and social well-being rather than capital and the owners of capital. Some forms of socialism include:

  • Electoral or democratic socialism: reforming capitalism to be more prosocial and mitigate its harms and abuses. It uses a hybrid of private and public ownership and preserves democratic governance.

  • Social democracy leaves much of capitalism and private enterprise in place but uses government to constrain capitalism, both to mitigate its abuses and to favor pro-social goals like progressive taxation, welfare programs, and a strong safety net. It will use redistribution of wealth and resources to minimize inequality.

  • Libertarian socialism advocates worker control through unions and uses tenant groups to own and/or manage housing. It favors decentralized or local control. It may take the form of either radicalism or incrementalism.

  • Marxist-Leninist socialism believes in a nationalized economy with central control through a bureaucratic management class. It results in one party authoritarian rule and its dependence on rigid dogma consistently causes it to fail. It is often framed as a transitional stage as societies move from capitalism to communism.

  • Market socialism combines public/worker ownership of the means of production with free market mechanisms. Instead of government or central control of things like prices, businesses operate in competitive markets, Profits are shared among workers.

  • Eco-socialism focuses on protecting the environment and its resources.

• Market humanism is the most recent socioeconomic paradigm. It shares with capitalism the belief that markets are the most effective tool for distributing goods, but it rejects capitalism’s focus on wealth and measures of wealth. It sees maximizing social prosperity rather than maximizing wealth as the goal, and defines social prosperity as the effectiveness of society at solving society’s problems. This is an important difference. In capitalism, an industry that causes cancer and an industry that prevents cancer are both valued based on their contribution to measures of wealth like GDP. Market humanism would favor and prioritize the industry that prevents cancer over the industry that causes cancer.

As to my personal beliefs, I am NEITHER a socialist nor a capitalist. I recognize that both approaches contain some positive elements with preserving. I think the political and economic systems seen in the Scandinavian nations, sometimes referred to as the Nordic Model does the best job of capturing the best of both systems. As noted above, this is a form of pro-social^[1] (rather than pro-capital) capitalism. I like it because it pairs a free-market capitalist approach with robust social safety nets. It combines strong private property rights with high taxes to provide generous public services, including universal health care, free education, public pensions, and universal access to public infrastructure and recreation. Rather than prioritizing the ability of a few individuals to maximize their wealth and power, it prioritizes ensuring that income and education gaps are minimized and that economic and social mobility are high.

No political or economic model is (or can be) perfect, but the Nordic Model of social democracy has much to recommend it. For example:

• It is characterized by high rankings for functional democracy (per the Freedom in the World surveys and the Democracy Index).

• It is characterized by strong support of choice. For example, in Sweden local governments allow families to use public funds (vouchers) to pay for education at private schools.

• It is characterized by strong property rights, strong enforcement of contracts, and low barriers to business. (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden consistently rank in the top 10 nations easiest to do business in.)

• It is characterized by low levels of corruption. (Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland are among the 10 least corrupt nations out of 180. The US ranks 29^th.)

• It is characterized by strong support of labor. The Nordic countries have the world’s highest ranking for protecting workers’ rights. Workers have good coverage by strong unions with robust collective bargaining systems.

• It is characterized by free trade, little product market regulation and strong product market freedom, combined with collective risk sharing to protect against the risks of unconstrained capitalism.

• It is characterized by high satisfaction, with top rankings in the World Happiness Index, based on metrics of real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption.

Some pro-social aspects of United States society include:

• Public K-12 education

• The USPS

• Public libraries

• Municipal police and fire departments

• Public water supplies

• Municipal sewer systems and garbage collection

• Social Security

• Public health departments

• Medicare and Medicaid

• SNAP

• Interstate highways (like 95, 295, 93, 91, and 89 here in New England)

• Mass transit and municipal transportation

• Public parks (national, state, and municipal)

• Coast Guard and the armed forces

These are all taxpayer-funded, state-managed, sometimes collectively owned systems that are designed and operated to provide equal and universal access to essential services. When someone (like my Maine State Senator) tells me they dislike socialism, I wonder how many of these overtly socialist public services they wish we only provided to those who had enough capital to purchase them privately from a for-profit enterprise.

Over the last year, I have come to see market humanism as a better way for a society to solve societal problems. I will write in more detail about market humanism in a later essay.

^[1] Prosocial refers to actions intended to benefit others, society as a whole, or the greater good. It encompasses behaviors like sharing, helping, comforting, cooperating, and volunteering. Prosocial traits and behaviors are essential for community building and fostering positive social connections. Prosocial behaviors are distinct from antisocial behaviors that are intended to benefit the individual and tend to disrupt harmony and increase divisiveness, intolerance, inequality.