Right. But I do think it is usual in the US to say that the USSR was a socialist state, is it not? In western Europe, that would sound really strange. We had our own socialism, so the communists’ attempt to claim the term didn’t really catch on.
I wasn’t sneezing at anyone; it is just that for me, it seems part of the definition of the terms “working class” (or “proletariat”) and “middle class” that factory workers and farmers belong to the former, and not to the latter, category. Of course, this use of these terms is pretty much bound up with 19th and 20th century political theory, especially Marxism; and that is probably why class terms are almost never used in the Dutch political debate.
Although I won’t deny that there is a historical link between Calvinism and capitalism, I do not have the impression that the average Calvinist now thinks in the way you describe them. At least, not in Europe; or at least, not in the Netherlands. The extreme Calvinists are very conservative, but they are not particularly right wing economically. Our extreme Calvinists (who hold two seats out of 150 in parliament) are the guys whose website is unavailable on Sundays. No real capitalist would do that. Checking their reaction to the government’s plans for next year (which were presented a few days ago), I see that they want more money for development aid and less cuts on special health care for disabled people. They state that “the government should be a solid shield for the weak”. Overall, I would say that they are a centrist party economically, while being extremely conservative.
So, as others have suggested, I think that the line of reasoning you sketch is more typically American than typically Calvinist.
By the way, are there many Calvinists in the US? I thought that the religious right mainly consisted of Evangelicals.
Quiz question of the day: what is the American virtue?
(The answer will be provided by a European, so you might have to take it with a grain of salt. But the question is not ironical, and I take the term from on of the greatest American thinkers.)
One of the greatest American thinkers, hein?
Emerson held “self-reliance” to be a very American virtue, didn’t he?
But would that be the nation’s reliance upon itself or each American’s reliance upon him-or-herself? Or perhaps the reliance of a group of American citizens (a family, say, or a congregation or whatever) upon themselves?
As for the Marxist definition of “proletariat”, it’s the class of people who don’t own their own means of production and who therefore have to sell their labour to someone else to earn their bread. Today, at least, the economic standard of the proletariat in this sense seems to vary significantly (and at least in Sweden factory workers and school teachers alike seem to have roughly average wages).
All of it. From the readiness to start a war without international consent to the hatred against government-provided health care, and from the predominance of evangalicalism (which stressed personal conversion rather than predestination) to the high status of the “self-made man”, a lot of American culture make more sense when you think about it in terms of the ideal of self-reliance – in everything, and on every scale.
Just for the record, we’re not all like that. Unfortunately, those who are (probably actually a minority) tend to be very loud and willing to resort to any means – violence not excepted (and often favored) – to see their policies put into force.
Also, those who purport to espouse “self-reliance” tend to be far from consistent in doing so. They are quick to claim credit for their own actions when things go well for them, but just as quick to blame others when it doesn’t.
To a certain extent, that is true, and the examples I gave were all of a politically right wing kind. But doesn’t the ideal of self-reliance transcend such political barriers? To take a more or less random example, because I recently noticed this, the Burning Man festival sounds left wing and anarchist (though I may be wrong about this), and yet it states self-reliance as a core value it wishes to promote. Harold Bloom is politically left wing (I am not wrong about this, though the claim may surprise some), but his theories of creative genius have the idea of achieving self-reliance at their core.
I may be completely wrong, of course, not being in the US; and what one would need to establish the claim is an intricate comparison of US and European culture. But let us at least stress that the ideal of self-reliance can manifest itself in more ways than a libertarian political philosophy.
Very true, of course – but that is probably the case with almost every ideology. How can you hold on to it if you cannot blaim the failures onto someone else?
I don’t think it is, actually. My sense of this was kind of vague, so I searched a right-wing site for “soviet union” and sampled five of the top ten hits, and none of them actually used the word “socialist” or “socialism” to describe it. I think it’s much more common to call the USSR itself “communist” rather than “socialist.”
Now, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear people attack some policy as “socialist” and then compare it to the Soviet Union. One of the hits on that site described the governor of New Jersey selling off the state-owned broadcasting network, saying that government-owned TV and radio should’ve ended with the Soviet Union. But that’s just another example of the phenomenon I mentioned where some people feel free to describe any economic policy to the left of Ayn Rand as communist.
Burning Man is a great example. The mere fact that it takes place out in the middle of the desert, where you have to bring everything you need to survive, should be a clue. I think it illustrates the paradox of libertarianism - a philosophy that presents itself as liberal, even anarchist, but remains fiscally conservative because of its fixation on private property. (Does that make it the opposite of modern European Calvinism?)
To someone interested in local economies, Burning Man represents a grievous transgression against sustainability. I think you could even take “Shade” as a comment on that fact.
Granted. My post may have been a bit lazy since I definitely wanted to point toward the Calvinist heritage rather than today’s movement. As for socialism, judging by the current US media discourse it seems the average American couldn’t possibly define the term. It’s become synonymous with “in opposition to far right-wing principles.”
Which is largely symptomatic of a more general ignorance of political principles on the part of a large segment of the American populace. I remember a number of years ago, somebody conducted a survey in which a number of Americans were shown two quotations, one from Karl Marx (I believe, although I’m not certain, that it was from the Manifesto) and one from the US Declaration of Independence. They were asked to identify which of several documents they thought each quote was from, and whether or not they agreed with it. The majority of people surveyed identified the Marx quote as being from the US Constitution, and stated that they strongly agreed with it. They identified the DoI quote as being from the Communist Manifesto and stated that they strongly disagreed with it. The hatemongers rely on that ignorance.
If this is what you are referring to, people apparently thought that Marx’s classic statement of socialism, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, was or could have been in the US constitution.
Perhaps it rather testifies to a certain ignorance of the history of ideas than to substantial political confusion? I mean, is the maxim »From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs» really something that Jefferson or Franklin couldn’t conceivably have written?
For the US constitution is not actually inconsistent with (democratic) socialism, is it? Would a socialist president really be unconstitutional?
To the best of my knowledge, socialist parties are not illegal in the US, and I think they never were (even in the Haymarket or McCarthy days).
Agreed. There is certainly nothing inconsistent between socialism and the principles upon which this country was founded (in fact, some of us believe that true democracy can only exist with a socialist economic system), but far too many people in this country have been fooled into believing otherwise, because they don’t understand what the labels mean – and hence, they act largely against their own interest.
Yesterday, a survey was published here in Sweden according to which 47.3 % of the Swedish people believe in rising unemployement in the country – but only 12.5 % believe that their own employers will make any cuts in the staff at all.
(Perhaps, the Europeans that didn’t go west in the 19th century were as much prey to that dream and stayed home convinced that things – for them at least – would soon take a turn for the better.)
That isn’t a contradiction, is it? If 12.5% of the employers make cuts in the staff, and the other 87.5% don’t hire any new employees, unemployment will rise (perhaps dramatically).
Also, employers can contribute to unemployment even without cutting staff - by not hiring people to replace those that retire or quit, for example.
Edit: Which is sort of like making cuts, but often cast in terms of “restructuring”, at least where I work. It’s not a direct layoff, which is what I’d think of answering this question.
So, in reference to the presidential debates, I have seen the expression “winning on points” come up quite often. This seems to mean something like “winning, but not super convincingly”. But why does it mean that? And what is the implied contrast, i.e., what do you win on when you don’t win on points?
But the question is not ironical, and I take the term from on of the greatest American thinkers.)
