Re: “Socialist hogwash not a fix for country’s problems” (St. Albert Gazette, Sept. 8).
Hogwash is a very good term to describe Mr. McLeod’s article. I suspect we will see a lot more of this type of hogwash in the upcoming Alberta election. It's the kind of hogwash where you put a label on something then provide a few sloppy and false examples and then brush your hands together: mission accomplished. In this instance, the label is socialism but in an American context. However I suspect this type of argument will be coming to a province near you in the very near future.
Mr. McLeod starts by stating he finds it interesting that the Democratic Party is flirting with the far-left socialists. I suppose here he is talking about people like Bernie Sanders or 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now what is it that marks these candidates as far left? Their advocacy of a single-payer health-care system like Canada? Their call for free tuition for post-secondary students? We don’t know what Mr. McLeod is thinking. All he offers up is the word “socialism” and states that these Democrats are turning away from capitalism to socialism.
What is particularly galling is that in a discussion of democratic socialism Mr. McLeod trots out the totalitarian communism of Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, and the subjugated states of Eastern Europe during the Cold War to make his case.
For the record, Democratic socialists fought against the Bolsheviks the civil war after the Russian Revolution and against Soviet domination in Eastern Europe especially in West Berlin. Social Democrats have a history of standing up to dictators. In Nazi Germany, the democratic socialists were the only party courageous enough to resist intimidation and vote against the infamous Nazi Enabling Acts. Mr. McLeod needs to look elsewhere for relevant points of comparison. People who try to smear democratic socialism rarely use proper examples because it doesn’t do much for their argument.
Examples that should be used for democratic socialism are the Scandinavian countries. The usual criticism of democratic socialism is that the size of government becomes so big that it stifles the economy.
When we consider size of government, Norway, Denmark and Sweden rank first, second and fourth in size of their public sector among the wealthy industrialized countries in the OECD and therefore we would expect these countries to be at the bottom of the heap. Yet all three are among the top 10 wealthiest countries in the OECD. Norway ranks second overall and is ahead of the United States. Sweden and Denmark rank ninth and 10th just ahead of Canada. Now I would never take this one statistic to argue cause and effect and to say a large public sector is generally better, but certainly it would indicate that the reverse is not universally true.
Let us finish with Mr. McLeod’s California example. He states that California was the richest state in the union but since Jerry Brown has been governor, it is the poorest state in the union. I had to give my head a shake at that one. So I looked up a few stats. Under Jerry Brown, California moved from being the eighth to sixth largest economy in the world, jumping two places. Out of 50 states, California ranks eighth in per capita GDP, ranks 20th in unemployment at 4.3 per cent.
The claim that California is the poorest state in the union is misleading. It comes from the fact California, one of the wealthiest states in the country, has the highest poverty rate. There is certainly a conversation to be had about why there is so much poverty in a thriving economy with a very low unemployment rate, but it seems unlikely that a case could be made that it is because of democratic socialism.
What is vitally important for all of us in this day and age is that we look at specific policies of a government and do our due diligence as citizens to evaluate these policies. To be persuaded by stereotypes, labelling or appeals to emotions (especially fear) will be very dangerous to our democracy.
Al Meunier, St. Albert
