Bernie Sanders Is Right: The US Is Already a Socialist Country [Rev 13]

Sanders is wrong about the New Deal "putting people to work" since their government-funded activity did nothing to create wealth or end the depression. The Depression lasted until 1945. And the New Deal certainly isn't "the foundation of the middle class" which grew and thrived in the second half of the 19th century. However, when he classifies the New Deal programs that dominate US policy today as "socialist," Sanders is absolutely correct. In fact, if a democratic socialist of the 19th century were to get into a time machine and travel to the modern United States, he'd be forced to exclaim "mission accomplished!"

FDR was careful to not call his programs socialist, since Americans were sure to oppose anything called "socialism." But, the voters of the 1930s were at least as easily tricked as they are today, so FDR took what was orthodox 19th-century democratic socialism, and imposed it on the United States while calling it "fair play" or some other folksy-sounding label that would appeal to the sort of people Mencken often described as "the booboisie."

To get a sense of what has constituted socialism, historically speaking, it is a mistake to rely on Marxism as the benchmark. Marxism was just one type of socialism in the 19th century, and it failed to gain traction in western Europe. Part of this is because, by the mid-19th century, it was already becoming clear that the predictions of Marxism were wrong. The ownership of capital was not becoming more concentrated. It was becoming more diffuse. The working classes were not descending into a wretched proletariat in western Europe. They were experiencing gains in their standard of living...

The state is inherently socialist, because it monopolizes and nationalizes the means of production of justice and security. By claiming the authority to tax--and by actually doing so--it proves that the state is the actual owner of the property being taxed, and of the labor of those taxed, and of the "means of production" used to earn the income that's taxed. Only ownership would confer any right to exact rent or dividends.

The purpose of the state isn't to defend the rights of individuals against either the rich and powerful or against the majority. It's purpose, in fact, is to enable the majority and/or the rich and powerful to violate the rights of the minority, and of individuals.

"When they saw the situation of the monopolizers of security, the producers of other commodities could not help but notice that nothing in the world is more advantageous than monopoly. They, in turn, were consequently tempted to add to the gains from their own industry by the same process. But what did they require in order to monopolize, to the detriment of the consumers, the commodity they produced? They required force. However, they did not possess the force necessary to constrain the consumers in question. What did they do? They borrowed it, for a consideration, from those who had it. They petitioned and obtained, at the price of an agreed upon fee, the exclusive privilege of carrying on their industry within certain determined boundaries. Since the fees for these privileges brought the producers of security a goodly sum of money, the world was soon covered with monopolies. Labor and trade were everywhere shackled, enchained, and the condition of the masses remained as miserable as possible." ~ Gustave de Molinari

statist. n. 1. Someone who believes that, in order to prevent the rich and powerful from stealing from and oppressing the poor and the weak, it is necessary to give the rich and the powerful a monopoly on making law, enforcing the law, stealing from whomever they choose, and judging whether or not they've followed the laws that they themselves make.

The rich and powerful will *always* end up in control of the state:

"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating." ~ Frédéric Bastiat

Iron law of oligarchy: "sociological thesis according to which all organizations, including those committed to democratic ideals and practices, will inevitably succumb to rule by an elite few (an oligarchy). The iron law of oligarchy contends that organizational democracy is an oxymoron. Although elite control makes internal democracy unsustainable, it is also said to shape the long-term development of all organizations—including the rhetorically most radical—in a conservative direction.

Robert Michels spelled out the iron law of oligarchy in the first decade of the 20th century in Political Parties, a brilliant comparative study of European socialist parties that drew extensively on his own experiences in the German Socialist Party. Influenced by Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy as well as by Vilfredo Pareto’s and Gaetano Mosca’s theories of elite rule, Michels argued that organizational oligarchy resulted, most fundamentally, from the imperatives of modern organization: competent leadership, centralized authority, and the division of tasks within a professional bureaucracy. These organizational imperatives necessarily gave rise to a caste of leaders whose superior knowledge, skills, and status, when combined with their hierarchical control of key organizational resources such as internal communication and training, would allow them to dominate the broader membership and to domesticate dissenting groups. Michels supplemented this institutional analysis of internal power consolidation with psychological arguments drawn from Gustave Le Bon’s crowd theory. From this perspective, Michels particularly emphasized the idea that elite domination also flowed from the way rank-and-file members craved guidance by and worshipped their leaders. Michels insisted that the chasm separating elite leaders from rank-and-file members would also steer organizations toward strategic moderation, as key organizational decisions would ultimately be taken more in accordance with leaders’ self-serving priorities of organizational survival and stability than with members’ preferences and demands." ~ Encyclopedia Britannica

"Eventually the voters would put state governments in the hands of Socialists, who would send Socialist Senators to Washington. Rendering the 17th. Amendment moot."

With one major exception, there’s nothing in the Constitution stopping the states from being socialist governments even if the Constitution stops the feds from going socialist.

In fact, state sovereignty-respecting socialist Justice Louis Brandeis had noted that the states, not the federal government, are laboratories of democracy.

Laboratories of democracy

The exception to states going full socialist is that the states cannot make laws which effectively abridge rights which the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect. Doing so would violate Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.

14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Again, federal Social Security and Obamacare are examples of unconstitutional federal social spending programs which are based on 10th Amendment-protected state powers, and state revenues uniquely associated with those powers, that the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification federal government stole from the states. This is evidenced by the following excerpts from Supreme Court case opinions.

”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. [emphases added]” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

For example, when Obama was an Illinois state senator he should have led state government leaders to establish Obamacare for Illinois. And if Illinois Obamacare had proved successful, then he should have pushed for a healthcare amendment to the Constitution to establish Obamacare nationally, although the states could have chosen not to ratify the amendment.

Instead, low-information voters supported Democrats in 2008 who wrongly established national Obamacare without the required consent of the Constitution’s Article V state majority.

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