Socialist Leader: "Obama's No Socialist. I Should Know."

Hello all, haven't seen any socialists on here actually post something on here like this ... i'm neutral ... just thought some people would find this article interesting like myself ...

The funny thing is, of course, that socialists know that Barack Obama is not one of us. Not only is he not a socialist, he may in fact not even be a liberal. Socialists understand him more as a hedge-fund Democrat -- one of a generation of neoliberal politicians firmly committed to free-market policies.

The first clear indication that Obama is not, in fact, a socialist, is the way his administration is avoiding structural changes to the financial system. Nationalization is simply not in the playbook of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his team. They favor costly, temporary measures that can easily be dismantled should the economy stabilize. Socialists support nationalization and see it as a means of creating a banking system that acts like a highly regulated public utility. The banks would then cease to be sinkholes for public funds or financial versions of casinos and would become essential to re energizing productive sectors of the economy.

The same holds true for health care. A national health insurance system as embodied in the single-payer health plan reintroduced in legislation this year by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), makes perfect sense to us. That bill would provide comprehensive coverage, offer a full range of choice of doctors and services and eliminate the primary cause of personal bankruptcy -- health-care bills. Obama's plan would do the opposite. By mandating that every person be insured, ObamaCare would give private health insurance companies license to systematically underinsure policyholders while cashing in on the moral currency of universal coverage. If Obama is a socialist, then on health care, he's doing a fairly good job of concealing it.

Issues of war and peace further weaken the commander in chief's socialist credentials. Obama announced that all U.S. combat brigades will be removed from Iraq by August 2010, but he still intends to leave as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq and wishes to expand the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A socialist foreign policy would call for the immediate removal of all troops. It would seek to follow the proposal made recently by an Afghan parliamentarian, which called for the United States to send 30,000 scholars or engineers instead of more fighting forces.

Yet the president remains "the world's best salesman of socialism," according to Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. DeMint encouraged supporters "to take to the streets to stop America's slide into socialism." Despite the fact that billions of dollars of public wealth are being transferred to private corporations, Huckabee still felt confident in proposing that "Lenin and Stalin would love" Obama's bank bailout plan.

Huckabee is clearly no socialist scholar, and I doubt that any of Obama's policies will someday appear in the annals of socialist history. The president has, however, been assigned the unenviable task of salvaging a capitalist system intent on devouring itself. The question is whether he can do so without addressing the deep inequalities that have become fundamental features of American society. So, President Obama, what I want to know is this: Can you lend legitimacy to a society in which 5 percent of the population controls 85 percent of the wealth? Can you sell a health-care reform package that will only end up enriching a private health insurance industry? Will you continue to favor military spending over infrastructure development and social services?

Full Article Here

I think it brings up some interesting points ... i've never heard it from the socialist's point of view ... what are your thoughts?

[edit on 16-3-2009 by baseball101]

No offence, but on practically all the big 'ZOMG! Obama is a socialist' type threads, you've got people who have claimed to be socialists or who sympathise with some facets of socialism posting as to why Obama isn't a socialist.

People have been trying to direct others to more accurate definitions and models of socialism rather than 'They're going to take your property away! Bailing out the bankers is commie socialism! They'll brainwash your children! They hate Jesus! The lazy bums don't want to work' definitions that seem to appear so often in American media.

I really can't believe you haven't seen these kinds of posts here.

reply to post by Merriman Weir


oh i have, believe me, just none with this much detail

and actual explanations behind their reasoning


*most are just like "yay socialism, lets do it!"

[edit on 16-3-2009 by baseball101]

Originally posted by baseball101
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

oh i have, believe me, just none with this much detail

and actual explanations behind their reasoning

*most are just like "yay socialism, lets do it!"

[edit on 16-3-2009 by baseball101]

"yay socialism, lets do it!" Really? That's all you've seen?

I've posted on this in the past myself trying to explain things like ownership of the means of production when the first 'OMG!!!!1 Bailouts = socialism!!1' started appearing. I've tried explaining that propping up the existing system by forcing the proletariat into a yoke in order to prop-up and continue the lifestyles of the bourgeoisie - as is what's happening at the moment - isn't socialism. People seem to think 'ZOMG! Wealth redistribution! as if any proponent of socialism sees feathering the nests of the exploiting rich as any kind of 'socialism' they'd want to see.

I'm not the only one by any means. Read ANNOK's posts, for example, on any of the recent 'ZOMG! Socialisms!' threads and he goes into more detail than I've personally got the patience for on a forum where a red tie somehow means that the President is a secret communist.

Plenty of people have posted links to definitions of socialism (as in not American mainstream scaremongering) and asked 'how is what's happening in America genuinely comparable to models of socialism expounded by socialist themselves'?

I think he is a socialist at best and at worse a fascist. Just because some leader that is socialist comes out and says, "oh he isn't one of us". I call BS he knows just as much as we do about the man which is very little.

Even though I call him a socialist it is still just speculation. It is all BS I can care less what this dude thinks. Obama hasn't rolled out his full agenda and policy and he still wants to get elected to a second term.

reply to post by Merriman Weir


ya, that's all i've seen i don't go to those threads very often because they're mostly full of bs, and trolls

[edit on 16-3-2009 by baseball101]

Of course he's not a Socialist

People who say that don't even know what the term means, generally, it's simply an epithet they can throw around for FUD purposes.

Obama, by global political standards, is center-right like most US politicians.

In most of Europe his policies would put him too far right to qualify as a "Social Democrat", let alone a "socialist".