Socialist Party Derides Rick Perry 'Fairy Tale' Of Obama As Socialist

From the Huffington Post:

The Socialist Party USA is more than a little skeptical of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's claim Sunday that President Barack Obama belongs in their ranks.

"The notion that Barack Obama is a socialist ranks among the greatest fairy tales in American society -- right up there with the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the idea that if you work hard enough your children will live a better life than you," Socialist Party spokeswoman Lynn Lomibao said in an email. "Socialists know what Obama is: another corporate funded politician placed in the White House to protect the wealth and status of the 1 percent."

More here.

Ahem. From Wikipedia:

Socialism /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/ is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises, common ownership, direct public ownership or autonomous State enterprises. There are many variations of socialism that differ in the degree of social ownership they champion and in their mechanisms for economic coordination.

A socialist economic system would be based on production for use: the direct allocation of economic inputs to meet economic demands and human needs (use value), with accounting based on physical quantities of resources, a common physical magnitude, or a direct measure of labour-time.

As a political movement, socialism includes a diverse array of political philosophies, ranging from reformism to revolutionary socialism. Proponents of state socialism advocate for the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange as a strategy for implementing socialism. Social democrats advocate redistributive taxation and government regulation of capital within the framework of a market economy. In contrast, anarchism and libertarian socialism advocate direct worker's control of the means of production without relying on state power to achieve such an arrangement, while also opposing parliamentary politics and state ownership over the means of production.

Probably the furthest one could go with the "Obama socialist" meme is to call him a social democrat. And that's about it. He's not very good at it, either. The whole point to socialism is to make life better for average ordinary citizens who work for a living. That's what wealth redistribution is about; there is an assumption that capitalists take much more than their fair share simply because they run the show, and only government intervention allows workers to get fair compensation for the wealth they create with their labor.

Obama's "redistribution" however, doesn't even come close. Consider the Affordable Care Act which is, in essence, a law that forces all citizens to hand over lots of money to massive corporations for health insurance that may or may not actually cover their health care expenses. Or consider the bank bailout, which is currently at around twenty nine trillion dollars, twice the national debt, a massive reward to financial corporations for plunging the world into the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Yeah, that's redistribution, but it takes away from workers and gives to the capitalists. Kind of the opposite of socialism. No, Obama is no socialist, and not even really a social democrat, and, for that matter, Republicans do exactly the same kind of social democracy, steal from the poor and give to the rich. This is all absurd.

It is no wonder that actual socialists are bewildered and a bit pissed off. If Obama's a socialist, then the Socialist Party is pro-corporate, pro-poverty, and anti-worker. What a fucking insult.

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