Sanders, Not Stalin

By KYLE PRATT
Staff Writer

There seems to be a misconception among many right-leaning voters when it comes to Bernie Sanders and his claim that he is a “Democratic Socialist.” Based on the policies he has proposed and the nations, such as Sweden and Denmark, whose economic policies he would like to emulate in the United States, Sanders is not a socialist in the traditional sense of the term.
Socialism is the idea that the workers own and operate the means of production. In this economic system, the workers get the fruit of their labor rather than the business owners or the government. Socialism does not mean the government swoops in and owns everything. More importantly, socialism doesn’t mean the government systematically murders its citizens, which is what happened in some countries claiming the ideology.
Sanders is not a socialist. If elected, he will not institute Stalinist policies resulting in famine and genocide. In many ways, leaders like Stalin are the antithesis of what Bernie Sanders stands for. Sanders’ ideology is closer to that of a social democrat, someone who wants to take progressive, and in some ways socialistic policies, such as universal healthcare, free education and childcare, and higher minimum wages, and fit them into a capitalist system through higher taxes.
Although these policies may have socialistic leanings, countries that institute them are not socialist. If they were, than the United States, with its minimum wage, welfare, Medicare, and free high school would already be a socialist nation, which it obviously is not. Neither are Sweden and Denmark.
Put simply, Bernie Sanders is wrong. He identifies himself as a Democratic Socialist, but is a social democrat. The question is why.
The likely answer is that the United States, as a result of the Cold War, has an notoriously anti-leftist reputation. Americans call the Affordable Care Act, which makes is easier for people to get health insurance through private entities, a socialist law, and call President Obama a socialist.
In reality, socialism, even democratic socialism, cannot exist within capitalist systems, and the entire western world is capitalist. To Americans, any institution of socialist-like or social-democratic policies makes a country socialist, and this simply isn’t true. Sanders seems to have fallen victim to this American misconception. As much as he would hate to hear it, he is a capitalist. He doesn’t want to shut down private industry, and he doesn’t want the working class to overthrow the business class.
This simple fact means that comparing him to people like Stalin, Chavez, and Castro is like comparing apples to oranges. Sanders isn’t anti-American. He doesn’t want to bring the United States down to the level of Soviet Russia and North Korea; he wants to raise it up to the level of Canada and Scandinavia, countries with some of the highest standards of living, and with the happiest citizens. Sure, these people pay higher taxes, but they pay nothing for health insurance, education, or childcare, and they make much more than the average American.
Bernie Sanders should embrace is actual political ideology and explain what it means rather than using a term that many Americans still associate with the Gulag and the KGB. He is a social democrat and his goal is to bring prosperity to the average American rather than the one percent.
The sad truth about traditional American capitalism is that it doesn’t benefit everyone. It disproportionately provides advantage to the rich and marginalizes the poor, and the gap between these classes is getting larger. Sanders aims to curb this trend in the same way Western Europe has.
The truth is that the United States lags behind the rest of the developed world, and Bernie Sanders may be the beginning of the shift towards modernization. If he were to run for office in some of these European nations, he would be far from a “left-wing fringe candidate.” He would be the standard, and its people like him that have allowed for the Swiss, the Icelanders, the Danish and the Norwegians to be the happiest people in the world.
Sanders’ policies are definitely not destructive to the American dream. If anything, they are constructive. He doesn’t seek to take the American dream away from us; he aims to expand it to include everybody rather than just those fortunate enough to be born into money or to run a corporation. The American dream consists of equality, peace, and prosperity, three things that are extremely prevalent in the European countries Sanders strives for us to be like.
Bernie Sanders is not the next Stalin or the next Castro. He does, however, have the potential to be the next Franklin D. Roosevelt, who actually did make America great again. The reality of where the United States stands in the world today is perfectly expressed by Jeff Daniels in an episode of HBO’s “The Newsroom.”
“The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one,” Daniels said. “America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.” But it can be.