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Warder Public Library, Springfield, OH (Photo: Cindy Funk/flickr)
My wife, Disgusted in Euclid, actually came up with this, not I. She was saying that a lot of people confuse socialism with things like Stalinism and Maoism because of about a century of propaganda broadcast not only by capitalists, but by the old Communists themselves. “You want to see socialism in action? Go to the public library,” she said.
She’s right.
The public library is funded by everyone in the community one way or the other. In Ohio, it’s a combination of local property, sales, or income taxes supplemented by the State’s general fund, which is why Ohio has the best public library system in the country, according to the American Library Association.
Anyone can use the public library for free. Anyone can go to the library, browse, use their computers, check out books, movies, CD’s, whatever, all for free so long as one turns them in by the due date. Even then, if one doesn’t, most library fines are modest because they just want their stuff back so someone else in the community can use it.
Use of the public library is not means-tested, like food stamps or Medicaid. Jamie Dimon his own self can go to his public library along with someone stuck in destitute poverty and check out the same things for free. Only if the poor person checks it out first, then Jamie Dimon will just have to wait until the poor person returns it–his wealth gets no privilege at the library. Everyone supports the library, and everyone can use its services. Even if one does not have a library card, one can still go to the library and browse and read to one’s heart’s content until closing; no questions asked.
The public library system is socialism at its best, which is probably why the devotees of the capitalist system love to attack it and try to defund it at every opportunity. “No one is making a profit! Heresy! Destroy it!,” they cry.
They tried to do just that a few years back in Ohio. Democratic Governor Ted Strickland proposed cutting state funding of Ohio’s public libraries by 50%, with the full-throated endorsement of most Republicans and many Democrats. The libraries fought back. Every library posted the proposal at every check out counter with Strickland’s email address and phone number. You couldn’t enter a single library website without running into the same message.
Public reaction was swift and effective. The emails and phone calls poured in from all 88 counties, Republican or Democratic made no difference. Local media covered the story, and the outcry grew. Strickland backed halfway down; the state funding was cut by 25%.
So the libraries put levies on the local ballots. The Norquist anti-tax crowd, the Libertarians, and the Republican establishment vociferously opposed them. They nearly all passed with huge majorities. Why? Because this socialist system WORKS.
If it can work for the library, it can work for a whole lot of other things as well. It’s not a for-profit system, and it works better than its capitalist competitors(remember Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster Video?). It’s functional. It provides a social good that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, one that cannot by quantified and sold to the highest bidder.
The same model can, and has, been applied to everything from electric power to transportation to health care to education to the armed forces to space exploration to…well, you get the idea. Socialism can be self-sustaining because it can work. Capitalism, based on permanent expansion and accumulation of capital, can’t.
There you go. It’s one big reason I’m a Socialist.
94 Comments
Thanks, Barbarian – great diary entry and you expand on this much better than I ever could have!
Highly rec’d, of course!
Uhhm, no.
hate to rain on the family parade Mr. and Ms. Disgusted-Barbarian, but what you are actually talking about is a social service provided within a capitalist society.
What Democrats and the GOP argue over is the extent of providing social services to people, and how to pay for them. They are not arguing over capitalism vs socialism.
This is a common mal-assumption of many people. I haven’t checked into it, but is your view of the library as socialism the same view held by your socialist candidate for president? If so, he is perpetrating a fraud.
Neither the post office, unemployment compensation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the National Health Service and all government services are examples of socialism.
John Meynard Keynes, for example, was not a socialist.
The amount of misinformation misinforming people is staggering.
*Gah* as that noble soldier for imperialism, King Tuttle would say…
You either really don’t understand or don’t want to understand. All of the examples you cite ARE examples of socialism to one degree or another. Why do you think opponents of all of those examples deride them as socialist? Are they all misinformed, too? I think not, and completely disagree with you.
It is true that Democrats and Republicans aren’t arguing socialism vs capitalism, for they are both capitalist parties. It is also true that John Maynard Keynes was not a socialist. Keynes, however, realized that there had to be some socialist programs in place to save capitalism from itself.
So did FDR. So did LBJ.
Gah, indeed. Thank you for putting your ignorance on display for all to see.
Carnegie, the benefactor who funded almost 1700 libraries in the US, built them for social profit:
Current capitalism devotees don’t believe in this social profit because they see the end of growth, too. Better to abolish capitalist socialism because it would cause to much conflict for the lords becoming.
Do these institutions represent Marx’s socialism? Would A-merkins have any capacity for that socialism? If A-merkins were convinced of capitalist stagnation, would they demand their surplus be applied to cultural benefit?
Marx had nothing against public libraries, comrade. I’m sure he used them. I seriously doubt he would ever object to them or their purpose.
Sure, Carnegie donated money to fund libraries BECAUSE HE BELIEVED IN SOCIAL GOOD. Social good cannot be quantified and sold for profit in any economic system. It just is.
To answer your last question, Americans in Ohio did just that not so long ago.
I thought this topic would be pretty non-controversial. Silly me. I immediately am attacked from the right(Democratic Party apologist Donkeytale) and criticized from the further left than I(Ludwig, and no, Ludwig was definitely not attacking).
Socialism is not a doctrinaire ideology. It believes in using available resources to promote the social good for everybody. There are different ways of achieving social good within the context of socialism itself. Even Wikipedia recognizes this:
“Socialism ( /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/) is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy, and a political philosophy advocating such a system. “Social ownership” may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, direct public ownership or autonomous state enterprises.
There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them. They differ in the type of social ownership they advocate, the degree to which they rely on markets or planning, how management is to be organised within productive institutions, and the role of the state in constructing socialism.”
Socialism is a flexible and adaptable system. Maybe that is why capitalists and hard-core Communists alike view it as such a threat.
.
Yes, he sure did.
In Michigan too.
another good post, and a public library is a good example of one of the many worthwhile institutions that are not based on financial gain .
Thanks.
Thanks, and good for Michiganders.
OB -
Your post is not controversial at all. If anything the values you are championing here are widely accepted, but the label “socialism” has a lot of unnecessary & undeserved baggage associated with it. Some would argue that this baggage is in part created by some on the nominal left.
Most of the detractors have no idea how much diversity of thought lies underneath the “Socialism” umbrella, per the wiki excerpt you provided. It’s a shame, really.
Oh, and rec’d.
That’s just it. Public libraries are not based on financial gain. Neither are public health systems that don’t turn profits. Cuba’s is one of the best in the world. Their health care, not for profit health insurance system, is socialist. So is the British Health Service. So is the Canadian single-payer system, though in a different way.
And so is the United States Post Office, even though it was created before the term “socialism” existed. They all have two things in common: they all provide a social good that cannot be quantified, and they all work quite well when they have the resources they need to accomplish their goals.
The ONLY objective of capitalism is to accrue more capital. Anything that doesn’t do that is by definition NOT capitalistic and outside any true capitalist framework. Marx knew that. Lenin knew that. Hell, even Dick Cheney knows that!
And thanks for the comment, Mafr.
Yes, it is precisely that baggage that my wife was addressing. As somebody here once said, it may have been Daveparts, every time a socialist program has been effectively implemented in this country a majority of Americans benefit from said program and then politically support it.
When there actually are politicians who support it, that is. Now, there are few who dare do so, because most of them are either members of the ruling corporate class themselves or are beholden to them.
And thanks for the comment, Jest.
Marx against public libraries? Of course not.
A society based on capitalist “merit” is not one based on social good, comrade.
Are you confirming that “Americans in Ohio” are convinced of capitalist stagnation? Where do I go to join the revolution, comrade?
Controversy is good for you, comrade. You’re not craving centrist unassailability any longer, are you?
Capitalists destroy national socialisms by setting them against each other, by making them strive for invincibility. Marx’s communism would not have had the ideological rigidity you are averring to be threatened by “flexible” socialism. Socialism’s problem is the maintenance of capitalist values for the benefit of the nation-state.
Heh! No, I’m not craving centrist unassailability. That would make me a centrist. Perish the thought!
I find your definition of socialism a bit too narrow, comrade. You are describing Social Democrats, as the Europeans call them, with all socialists. Social Democrats seek to preserve capitalism by redistributing some profits in such a way that most people are satisfied with their standard of living and therefore won’t revolt.
Not all, maybe most, socialists want to at least mostly destroy capitalism because they are now aware of its longterm relentlessness and insidiousness.
As far as Marx’ communism goes, I’m really not sure what he had in mind for the end product, if anything. He was kind of vague. Maybe he meant something anarcho-syndicalist after the state “withered away,” like the society on the moon in Ursula K. Leguine’s “The Dispossessed.”
Even that had its problems. All I know is that in his lifetime Marx did support most political movements that I would call “socialists.”
No, I’m saying most Ohioans like and support public libraries, which are socialist institutions.
“The ONLY objective of capitalism is to accrue more capital.”
The number one example currently being Wall street, with its “high frequency” computer trading, generating absolutely zero real value, but resulting in multi million dollars pay offs for the proprietors.
Zero-sum you say? Ah, but what of comprador confidence and maintenance of capitalist order? Anti-negative sum is about the best crapitalists can produce, now.
O, there is the possibility that amidst the private theft they will fund router technology. Thank Moloch for small spin-offs.
Silly me, I thought that the ultimate socialist was Jesus Christ-and the ultimate socialism was Christianity…
Socialism’s problem is the maintenance of capitalist values for the benefit of the nation-state.
For some reason, that statement made me instantly think of the social(ist?) networks such as Facebook ,for one, which provide intimately personal fodder for corporatist,among other, objectives.
Sure, Christianity has socialist aspects. Monasteries and nunneries, for example, are definitely communal, even communist. Christian theology once taught that profit was theft.
Hmmmm. I suppose in that sense socialism, which can allow SOME profits to be made in business and trade, is slightly to the right of that kind of old Christianity.
Though it’s WAY to the left of the “success theology” so many Christian preachers preach in order to get their tax-exempt donations from their holier-than-thou capitalist congregations.
You mean by “socialisms” an expanded set of social services within a capitalist economy. A “safety net.” A truly socialist system would eliminate or greatly de-emphasize the capital markets and rely on government for financing, management and planning, at least for the major economic sectors and businesses.
One of the biggest problems with Progressives never being able to break out of the ghetto of their limited popularity begins with a debasement and lack of intellectual rigour.
You are trying to use the rightwing GOP definition of socialism here, which in itself is pretty funny as well as telling. So, then, you agree that Obama is a socialist?
An example of socialism would be a major US private business sector, say, the US oil industry and/or the banking industry, etc. taken over and run by the government, removed from the capital markets and wholly dependent on government financing.
Before you say “Medicare/Medicaid are socialism” consider that these programs are government subsidized parts of a broader sector “healthcare” that is privatised. For instance, nearly the entire caregiver side of the Medicare/Medicaid is private (VA and military medical centers the exception), yes, even the administration of the traditional Medicare is private (through government contracts) and of course, the Drug industry is a private enterprise. So, if anything, Medicare/Medicaid if it is an example of “socialism” is in fact “corporate socialism.”
I would describe it either as a hybrid but more truthfully as an example of “state capitalism.”
Ditto, the GM bailout and banking bailouts are examples of state capitalism.
And of course, Medicare Advantage plans and Medicaid HMOs, newer models introduced in this decade are private.
Anarchism – Socialism sans hierarchy and authoritarians.
ZEN Buddhist monasteries.
Actually most are anarchist as the ZEN Master is more a teacher than a leader as such and monks work all toward the common goal of the monastery and order to further the teachings as believed by that particular school.
If you are not sure what Marx had in mind perhaps its time you learned?
The basic idea is not that the industrial revolution should be destroyed or that the fruits of same, and also the material gains of the energy revolution (electric light/telephone/autos/aeroplane) and technological revolution (computing/cellphone/internets) that followed, its that workers will eventually seize control of the means of production and the redistribute the fruits of their labour according to each man’s needs.
In time the bourgeois will be destroyed, more specifically the private capital markets, the profits, and private ownership of the means of production by the wealthy class will be ended.
according to Marxist theory, this will occur because of flaws that are inherent within the structure of capitalism itself that inevitably lead to more and more of the wealth becoming owned by fewer and fewer people. This in turn increases the size and desperate economic circumstances of the proletariat who will wake up one day and seize control.
Ah me. Democratic sock puppets sure like to troll here but they wind up hooking for their efforts is the boot.
In my own adjunct theory, which I’m sure is not at all original, the very success of capitalism is conversely the seed of its destruction. As capitalism spreads successfully worldwide, the innovations, the growth and profit motives have and will continue to swell the population of the globe, degrade the environment and bring about new unforeseen consequences that will eventually reach a tipping point whereby people will need to recognise the necessity for cooperation and enlightenment or perish in the equivalent of some apocalyptic event.
Alternatively, the recognition may come only after an apocalyptic event.
If there are any humans left….
[:o)
No. No. No, no, NO! You just don’t get it. Social services are NOT “within” the capitalist economy. They COMPETE with capitalism within the AMERICAN, or pick your European Country, economic system. They are NOT capitalist in nature.
In fact, they pose a threat to capitalism, which is why the capitalists you support are doing their damndest to get rid of them.
You accuse me of using the GOP definition of socialism. That’s only partially correct. Yes, Medicare and SS are socialist ideas at least partially funded in a socialistic manner. But there the semblance ends. Obamacare, or forced purchase of private health insurance, is definitely NOT socialist.
Neither is Obama, as I’ve said I don’t know how many times.
But I agree with you on the GM bailout and bank bailouts, and on Medicare Advantage. Those are more like state capitalism.
Well, you’re right there. You are sometimes a difficult entity to comprehend, Donkeytale.
WRONG !!
Capitalists had little or nothing to do with any of the innovations that occurred in the last 200 years. They were discovered and developed by individuals and/or groups who worked in a cooperative way to bring them about.
Think Bell Labs and DARPA and CERN and even Edison ( were all the work was done by his team working cooperatively). The profit came after the idea and in Edison’s case he lost nearly all of it.
Bell Labs was run as a strictly research entity of itself was was dissolved right after the ATT monopoly was dissolved.
Corporations and capitalists coopt, steal and buy (only when necessary) other peoples and or groups ideas. Of themselves they are only interested in an profit they can make from it. They are not the least bit interested in innovation. RCA was one of the biggest offenders in this area, by the way.
re: Profit as theft
Marx 1844: Profit of Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/…/capital.htm
“Even if capital itself does not merely amount to theft or fraud, it still requires the … The profit or gain of capital is altogether different from the wages of labour.
IIRC, certain Judaic and Islamic law continues to view profit in a different light than currently accepted Western practice.
When you have the time or inclination, google up Ttheft of Tesla patents”.
Individualist Anarchism v. Communist Anarchism and Libertarianism:
So, are the communists correct in seeing that cultures based on capitalism can neither be just nor peaceful?
You are right about how technologies were created, CM, but Donkeytale, much to my surprise, makes a cogent point about the consequences of an economic system that needs unlimited growth in order to survive.
And that system is indeed capitalism. It’s not the innovations and new technologies themselves that are destroying the planet, it is how they are being used to generate profits that is doing so.
I think they are.
Here is the real problem with using your definitions OB.
Europe is a great example. Western Europe specifically. These are capitalist countries with an expansive welfare state. They appear to the untrained eye to be socialist, but in fact all of the expansive programs are funded through taxes on corporations, private property, income tax, capital gains taxes.
The basic structure and source of the western European welfare state is the bourgeois. The government that doles out these benefits is bourgeois.
Just as in the US, which has had a lesser social safety net than Western Europe. Some of this, maybe most, is a result of the Euro response to WWII and the devastation which put a damper on the psychology of individualism in a way that it did not in the victorious suddenly wealthy world leading USA, not to mention the looming spectre of the USSR and puppet states on the back doorstep.
However, at least since Thatcher, the European political system has also whittled away the safety nets, and the Euro safety net exists solely at the pleasure of the bourgeoisie.
What the bourgeoisie gives, the bourgeoisie can take away. As we are seeing today in Western Europe and the US both.
Liberals are capitalists who recognize some limitations of market competition and prefer state-regulated monopolies in some cases and government ownership in others. These alternatives are only selected because capitalist arrangements fail. In this sense, A-merkin social services were within a capitalist economy and not in competition with it. I.e., the “social services” were bounded by the limits and preferments of capitalists and were usually a collectivism for capitalists, e.g. a utility’s distributed benefit was preferable to a chaotic market or monopoly.
Please elaborate on the threat your islands of so-called competitive socialism present to capitalists. I think you are mischaracterizing capitalists’ current motivations.
Well, yes, of course, “capitalism” doesn’t invent anything.
Capital however, funds and designs and sells these innovations in a mrket based system, (regardless of their inventors, whom in many cases were the government itself!). Thats my point.
I’ll argue, even farther at the risk of being called a rightwing capitalist, that the private capital markets operating from the profit motive actually do all these innovative enterprises much, much better than any state run system ever could. Uhm, if they didn’t, China surely would not have turned capitalist. If the state could work these economic growth and innovation models better they wouldnt have needed to change. Why would they have otherwise?
Likewise, people need to be careful over the extent they wish to believe Marx somehow hated capitalism. Au contraire, he knew its wonders as well as its flaws. He knew that its spread was a consequence of historical development, a necessary progression from the Aristocracy through which the working class would eventually triumph. Part of the evolutionary process, so to speak.
And that is what I meant by the seeds of its own destruction. The success will lead to eventual collapse due to over population, environmental degradation.
This is actually in line with Buddhist conception of the dual human nature. Human nature is inherently flawed and must be transcended. Human nature has both its wondrous and its evil traits. Both the wonderful and the evil are to be avoided on the path to nirvana.
Greed, which is the essence of what makes capitalism tick is one of the evil traits. Capitalism works so well because it is based most closely on human nature.
Greed is the motivational force that propels. The success based on this greed knows no earthly bounds. It cannot be stopped. Thus, the conundrum of capitalism: too much cincentrated wealth and power in too few hands. Too much growth leads to too much success leads to too many people, too much degradation.
One might say a middle path needs to be sought between the extreme poverty and degradation of the environment and the extreme wealth and consumption generated through capitalism, or the end result will be catastrophic.
Now, that’s just wrong. Capitalism has not been the primary source of funding for the research of any significant invention since maybe the 1930′s.
You’re right about Marx to an extent. I think the more he studied capitalism, the more he grew to hate the people who benefited from it. It’s easy to do when you are both intelligent and poor, as Marx was.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my definitions. What you’re describing in Europe is Social Democracy. Social Democrats try to be the “middle way” or “third way” between REAL socialism, or Communism for that matter, and capitalism.
Some of the systems they set up actually ARE socialist institutions. The problem with the Social Democrats is that they think the fundamentals of the economic system must be capitalist in nature, and that the self-destructive aspects of capitalism can somehow be controlled.
They are not really Socialists at heart. Their actions in Europe are proving that point right now.
Social services in America are a threat to capitalism because their very existence shows people on a daily basis that there is another way to get things done besides relying on the private, for-profit market. They may have been established by liberals, as you call them, or Social Democrats, as I call them, but they are still socialist institutions. It’s the set up and the objective if the institution itself that makes it socialist, not the intentions of its creators. Any bureaucrat knows this. And I are one(lol!).
The very idea of social services is anathema to pure capitalists and corporatists. Why do you think that the most fanatical promoters of the holy free market never cease in their efforts to destroy every social service institution in this country, be that destruction eliminating funding or privatization?
The objective of social services is to help citizens in the community in a plethora of different ways, but never to make a profit. They don’t always succeed in their objectives, but they do have them.
To a capitalist, if the goal of anything isn’t more profit, then it is either heresy or nonexistent. To most capitalists, social services are heresy. They are a threat to their ideology and thus to their system. To a few, they are a necessary tool to prevent capitalism from destroying itself and a means of acquiring power for themselves. Those few I call “liberals.”
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I wasn’t talking about funding primary research, I was talking about the funding the innovation into new products and services that are marketed and sold through the capitalist system.
What I am describing is a capitalist economic system..Social democracy is a political system that is controlled by the bourgeoisie, the same class who control the economic system.
Ah, so capitalism DOES innovate worthless crap like packaging and advertising, therefore it innovates! No, I don’t think so.
There…fixed it for you.
You are fixated on the innovation/research part. Or you are playing at being willfully obtuse because you as usual have a muddled, convoluted sense of what you think you know and wish to hide it by playing stupid internet tricks. IOW, your infoboobtube is lit is on but its very dim up there, eh Barbie?
I know you prefer me to flame you rather than show up your ignorance in a calm discourse, so then you can feel justified in dismissing me. Whatever.
For instance, I recognise that Google didn’t invent the internets, D’uh. I got that much from Cmauk’s comment, there is no need for you to repeat it. That was Al Gore or maybe someone else connected to the government who invented the internet.
However, the government didn’t finance Google nor did it fund/develop Google’s search engine through its primary research, nor did it package up Google into a bright shiny package, nor did it expand Google across the globe. All that resulted from the capital markets
And please, spare me the moralising about what the govt coulda/shoulda/woulda done if only theu paid closer attention to the mighty Barbarian from Ohio. And no, I dont own shares in Google, blah blah blah.
Ciao, looser.
OK, fine. Thanks.
Libraries are not just collections of books.
The library is also somewhere to go when there’s nowhere else to go. In the summer it’s cooler (at least ours here is). In the winter it’s warm and dry, and it’s always quiet.
It is a community resource of many dimensions. We love the internet and are glued to our computers for too much of the day. There are lots of people who don’t have computers. And there are lots of people who don’t have homes. They can get online in the library.
Libraries have LIBRARIANS – truly remarkable people they are too.
Libraries have new services: audio/video material, ebooks, computers, lectures and meetings, immigrant services, etc.
I can get loans from any of 96 branches in Toronto. The main branch has thousands of musical scores available.
I do a lot of library searching, reserving, and downloading online.
I can keep track of all my loaned books and renew loaned material online.
Libraries are better than ever!
I wish the hours were extended. I’d love a 24/7 library.
It’s “loser,” loser. Learn how to spell if you want to be taken seriously. Your reliance on Spellcheck has failed, much as your logic does. How many people are you, anyway, Donkeytale?
Well, I’ve got a cold and have to get up early. Thanks for playing.
I reserve many of the Book Salon books and try to read them before the Salon date. I can ask better questions and learn from some very special people.
Sorry you are not feeling well.
This is a great diary.
You did good!
Libraries aren’t just textbook socialism, but socialist file sharing. Imagine if you will if the idea for public libraries had been just proposed today! There’d be widespread apoplexy, there’d be fainting and paroxysms of outrage, there’d be (corporate sponsored) pitchforks and torches, the copyright nazis would be paying politicians cubic fucktons of money to stenograph legislation to kill the idea in the womb.
Libraries are a model that must scare the shit out of powerful men and women who cannot abide the idea of a common public good not built on a profit model. Libraries are highly subversive.
Absolutely – well put!
The powers that be here in Toronto (the idiot mayor and his minions) are trying to bring about ‘the death of a thousand cuts’ for the library system.
But Dems are different! They’re not like the GOP! There’s a huge difference between the parties!
F*** Strickland for that crap. Sounds like he was trying to out
-Kasich Kasich (who still be him in 2010).
Beat, not be. Sorry.
*standing on chair clapping wildly*
thank you so very much ohiogringo – i can’t wait to share your post with a few relatives of mine … tweeted and recommended
X2…! Congrats, OB…! A very worthy Frontpage effort…! *g*
Ah me, bringing up the rear as usual … just left a link at the end of Our Mr. Smith’s Friday Night Lights post about a documentary telling the story of a small village public school, from the days when we almost slipped into the Red Darkness, that would have about as much chance as a public library of being instituted today.
Here’s the link to the movie at the internet archive:
Great diary. Thanks
Damn good stuff, Barbarian.
Why don’t you sign up as as speechwriter for one Barack Obama?
On second thought, scratch that; too late now, and anyway, for him talk is way-cheap.
Don’t be a stranger here, y’hear? :o)
There have been so many, many, times when Obama could have used things like this to scorch republican’s asses, and instead, at every turn, he’s rubbed unguent on them and revitalized them from the whomping which progressives were so instrumental in inflicting on them.
Can. Not. Reward. Him.
Democracy: noun A system of government where everyone is equal but some are more equal than others.
“In my own adjunct theory, which I’m sure is not at all original, the very success of capitalism is conversely the seed of its destruction.”
Indeed. Faust meets Marx.
I am in general agreement with your thoughts here on this subject (and as always value your outstanding questions). However, Ohio Barbarian has a valid point about the threat posed by, at least partially, socialist institutions like public libraries. The threat they pose is an ideological one. When I hear arch-capitalists railing against such arrangements, I’m always reminded of how “important” it is to quash dissent in the weakest of poor nations: They must not serve as examples to others; Other options must not be allowed to succeed or even enter the public’s consciousness. Like your point about the motivation of Carnegie, capitalists may have a reason for attacking entities like public libraries that can’t be quantified in terms of immediate profit.
At first I thought OB’s reaction @3 to your initial comment was a bit harsh. However, you seem to have proved his point about putting ignorance on display.
You advance as an example of your own acumen the idea that a whole category of people are without “intellectual rigor” (@22), have a misanthropic view of the world worthy of Paul Ehrlich (@28 and 41), exhibit an apocalyptic imagination befitting a fundamentalist Christian (@28), imagine that your current environment is a reflection of the whole of human nature in your deference to greed over, for example, cooperation (@41), confuse correlation with causation (@40), take one of the oldest ideas known to modernity as your “own adjunct theory” (@28), ascribe positions to those with whom you are arguing that they have nowhere here demonstrated (@49), and top it all off by slinging ad hominem attacks as a way to stubbornly extricate yourself from the discussion.
Nice work.
Excellent point. In a nation of ever-dwindling public space where it is harder and harder to “do” something unless you have money (by which I mean shop), public libraries are, at the very least, better than the fucking mall. And personally, I’d rather pay to double the salary of every librarian in the country than fund a single cop or soldier.
The public library, the Post Office, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare. They are all tax supported for the common good (and the common decency) without any requirement of repayment (except to a degree as to Medicaid and welfare.)
By “common decency,” I mean that it takes one mf of a people to demand that people starve to death because they got into financial trouble. Hell, even in Dickens’ England, they got basic food and shelter at debtor’s prison.
But a capitalist society that provides to those things is a very different animal from a socialist society.
I am not saying that with any judgment as to which is better. I am saying only that they are different..
Respectfully, Strickland was different from a Republican Governor who wanted to cut funding for the libraries drastically.
If a Republican Governor tried it, Republicans in the legislature would have been with him or her, as would Republican voters who either did not care about books and tapes or who could afford their own. But, the Democratic legislature would have fought the Governor tooth and nail and gone to the media. And the Democratic people would have sided with the their legislature and fought the Governor as well.
When a Democratic Governor launches a Republican program, though, Republicans are secretly glad and the Democrats in the legislature side with the Governor. And a majority of Democratic voters will start defending “their” Governor and “their” legislators. Result, no “he said she said” minutiae for our lazy, triflin’ press to report about endlessly.
Voting for a DINO executive is far worse than taking a risk that the DINO might lose.
As I like to say, if you don’t like socialism, get the hell off my sidewalk.
http://youtu.be/jhpiuFRwB3M
Well, donk, I gotta hand you this one. The issue is control of the means of production by the working class, not social services. Otherwise, the founder of modern socialism would be Otto von Bismarck!
It’s an example of how the right has driven the terms of discussion so far to the right, going back at least to FDR, that even unemployment insurance is socialism.
Balderdash! Bismarck set up the beginnings of a welfare system explicitly so as to ensure the willingness of the working class to fight for the empire.
Ohio Barbarian, and the Missus, ya’”Did Good!” Congrats.
So, here is my small disagreement, of sorts. Public libraries carry foward the community-wide “good” and in the form that “empowers the Individual” and to the generic “public good.”
In contrast, the finacial cost, as per the Internet access, has to be taken into consideration even when this miniscule cost leads to “empowering the Individual” and especially when the result creates a community-wide Public Good.
In this same contrast, your local public utility bill, can be “re-worked” to empower the Individual and provide a Public Good. Take, for example, here in the Sonoran Desert, and due to the heat, gas utility bills for residential users could effectively be discontinued in the months of July, August and September. Thus, the elimination three months of administrative costs, would be a boon to gas customers and their pocket books.
Of course, I do not much favor the European-oriented “ideas” that arrived onto our shores due to the Great European Migration, and thusly, I much prefer the “ideas” that animate my Indigenous Hemispheric perspective and which is for a “consensus” Democracy predicated on “empowering the Individual” and which brings forth the community-wide “public good.”
Therefore, the “ideas” that animate the socialist, anarchists, communists, among others, is not old hat, but will eventually fall away via the past times of the Neanderthals. Take, for example, here in the Sonoran Desert, the median age of whites is 44 years, for African Americans the median age is 37, and for Chicanos, the median age is 18. Thus, the demographics and the future, will require that we take the old chewing gum off the bed post, shine our cowboy boots, and make sure that hat is readily available as our progeny, carry us out due to our old age, knowing that coffins/caskets, don’t have ample pockets to store our accummulated wealth.
Jaango
Good morning OB and Disgusted, and thank you for what should be an unassailable example of something that works perfectly for the greater good. I’d also like to join in the appreciation of librarians. One of my favorite friends was a librarian and is now doing other good work. The library is an ideal place to get “socialized.”
Rec’d, of course!
Superb, thought-provoking diary.
My appreciation to Ohio Barbarian and Disgusted in Euclid.
The comments which this diary has evoke are precisely the discussion which this society needs, and may well be as ready for as it has been in many, many decades.
THIS is a part of the “conversation” which is being joined broadly, if not in as an informed manner as is occurring here.
Recommended to the front-page and to the attention and consideration of the entire FDL community.
DW
Thanks, OB. I’m a tad uncertain if Libraries, the USPO, etc, are exactly “socialism,” but they certainly embody a more socialistic principle. These days, of course, public libraries, including those in public schools, are under attack and either under-funded or closed outright.
Interesting side note: I lived for a while in a rather upscale community in Southern Ca. The public library branch there was THE most heavily used branch in the whole county, so that particular branch got some more staffing to keep it open longer hours than some other branches.
Who was using this branch? Well the community had large Asian and South Asian populations, and the children of these immigrants (many getting here via H1(b) visas) used the library heavily, esp after school. Those communities *heavily* supported the Library via donations and at least claimed to vote in support of local tax measures to increase library funding (said tax measures always failed).
People I knew who were of European descent (and mostly striving to be upper middle class), HATED & DETESTED the Library just because. I was told more than once that it was filled with “dirty people”!! And that they didn’t want their kids to use it.
They claimed that they were MUCH more satisfied using the big-box book seller that was close by… after all, cleaner! Of couse, the book seller has limited materials; really isn’t appropriate for home work purposes; and the workers are largely untrained and cannot really provide anything close to adequate reference question support. Plus no free computers, etc.
Crazy, though. Those dittoheads just felt that they were “better served” buying whatever books they needed… and not having to – gasp, shudder – rub shoulders with those “dirty people,” much less have to share (ICK ICK ICK) books & services with them.
Rush does a great job on the propoganda wurlitzer.
Yes, precisely.
Well-stated point on Bismarck.
Who was it who said:
Those who don’t understand history are condemned to a veal pen of their own making.
[:o)
Nice
recapbox score, however it is baldly misstated in spots (my “deference” to greed, as example) and certainly adhominem filled, as well.Now, if you wish to refute any of the discussion points I made vis a vis socialism vs. the capitalist welfare state and the dangers of confusing the two with a substantive response you might be getting somewhere. (you are certainly on solid ground disagreeing with my opinion of the future, however yours is also….an opinion)
Otherwise, Otto, here’s a quarter, call someone who cares.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
Seek and thou shall find.
Thank you. It is helpful to consider whether or not the free marketeers would be throwing tantrums if an old idea, in this case several thousand years old, had just been presented. In the case of libraries, they would clearly be throwing fits–the private sector can do it better!!! Don’t raise my taxes for yet a new Big Gumbint Socialist Welfare State program!!!
Well, that’s honestly ethnocentric. I suppose I am as well. In a true socialist system there would be no internet costs to the libraries because the public would own the Internet just as it should own the airwaves, IMO. So everyone, be they of indigenous Western Hemispheric descent or, like myself, descended from the Great European Migration, would be able to use them completely for free if they so chose.
You are missing the point. It does not matter who sets up a system that works in a socialist, or at least non-capitalist, manner, what matters is how it works, whom it serves, and what it produces or provides.
Classifying all social services as part of capitalism is the worst kind of illusion for doing so misrepresents reality and function. It’s just not a pragmatic or effective way of looking at such things.
OTOH it does help preserve one’s worldview if one is convinced that capitalism is the only economic system possible and that there can be and only will be two political parties from which to choose. Thanks for playing.
Thanks, HFC.
LOL. I will steal that one. Thanks.
Perhaps the difference between many others on this thread and I is that I do not believe Western society is a purely capitalist society. It’s not. In my view, that’s far too simplistic and has been promoted by capitalist and corporate propaganda for generations.
America is far more complex than that. Jaango’s people are, maybe unwillingly, a part of American society and their beliefs and ideas have some influence. The old European idea of a “social compact” is still alive and kicking. Religion, like it or not, also has its role to play.
Institutions such as the Post Office were set up to provide a social good, a means of communication across distances. Libraries were established to preserve and spread knowledge. Public schools were established by Jefferson to provide a basic education for everybody(well, for white people then, but that changed). Highway departments were established to maintain roads.
None of these things are capitalist in nature, therefore all represent ways of accomplishing things that benefit most people in ways that capitalism never can. That is why all of those institutions are now under attack from capitalism.
I know I missed some of you, but lunch time is short. My thanks to all of you for participating in this thread.
Note to Doremus:
the presence of the smiley face in a donkeytale comment indicates I am kidding.
I knew very well that it was Carlos Santana who made that comment.
[:o)
Our local electrical cooperative is socialistic, as Mr. wendydavis often points out.
It’s non-pofit, we elect board members, and if any profits are generated, we get them back on a ten-year rotating schedule. Generating issues are hot topics here, as we live in the Four Corners, home to some of the most toxic coal-fired power plants in the nation, I believe.
We finally elected a board member who caused a item to be on our yearly ballots that provided for 10 or 15% (I forget which) of our power to come from renewable sources. It passed, and Empire Electric is still healthy, and rates haven’t increased as the nay-sayers had predicted.
Our local rural water system operates pretty much the same: privately owned, funded by citizens who buy taps and elect board members (often rotten good old boys, but still). ;o)
Rec’d, though I’m still confused by some of the arguments about Medicare, etc. ;o)
Great thread, OB. Rec’d.
Our local public library has become our “town square”. We frequently hold organizing meetings there. For many years now, our library has hosted a very progressive documentary series where we discuss socialism, environmentalism, war and peace, gmo’s and many other issues.
Where else could large groups of residents meet to conduct our citizenship?
I just caught that one, CM. Thanks for the chuckle.
Welsh lives!!! There is great rejoicing!!!
Heh, heh, heh. Thanks, OB!!!
What a long strange trip it’s been…