Flirting With Socialism
Plublished in Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 13, 2016
Maybe it came from watching (and
helping) my father as he struggled to produce crops for “the other man.” Maybe it was from reading so much Southern
fiction that described the harsh realities of sharecropping and poverty. Or perhaps it was the perplexing attitude of
my father who seemed to respect all the men for whom he labored, always loving
the labor.
Whatever it was, my youthful years
produced a deep interest in “economic justice,” a term I now eschew.
Because of excellent teachers in a
small southern town high school, I was introduced to Karl Marx in the 10th
grade. Cotton was king then, and
although my father had stopped raising cotton, he and I still “chopped” and
picked cotton for neighboring landowners.
Securing and reading a copy of Marx’s “Das Kapital,” I found myself
conflicted. I knew what capitalism was
and how it had built America; however, Marx began to get inside my 15-year-old
head. He made me feel sorry for my
father.
Secretively I began to feel a measure
of disdain for the wealthy men for whom my father worked, even though they were
good men. How could they expect my
father to work so hard in their fields, woods, pastures, and sawmills? Yes, my father’s problem and society’s
problem was capitalism and the tenant farmer system.
Had not Marx asserted that
“exploitation belongs to the nature of capitalism which in turn creates
inequality”? Did he not argue that only
government intervention would improve the life of the poor? And just why in 1959, a full century after
“Das Kapital,” were we still living under such exploitation? In the preface to his treatise, Marx wrote,
“I do not draw the figure of the capitalist or the landowner in a rosy light.” This Marx guy was winning me over.
Please remember I was only 15. Most 15-year-olds were and are
malleable. What they read, whom they
listen to, and whom they trust shapes their world view.
It’s scary to think about it now,
but the writings of Marx and other socialists were shaping me. The landowners my father worked for were the
oppressors; my father and I were the oppressed.
Those landowners should have shared their wealth, and the government
should have come to the aid of us, the working poor.
Several counter influences rescued
me from becoming a doctrinaire socialist. While I brooded over socialist
writings, the following influences, thankfully, perched on my shoulder,
tweeting ideas contrary to Marx’s: a teacher, an atheist, a columnist, my
brothers and sisters, and my father also, whose lot it was that drove me to
entertain socialism in the first place.
The teacher, Margaret Richardson,
laid out clearly in Government/Economics the distinction between capitalism and
socialism and the path’s end of each.
The atheist, Ayn Rand, who had escaped socialist Russia for America,
wrote fiction and nonfiction that laid socialism bare. She had lived under it. (Most anti-statists are not atheists, but at
least Rand rejected government as God, unlike many socialists.) The columnist, William F. Buckley, with his
acerbic yet humorous pen, made me wonder how I could ever have been swayed by
socialism. My brothers and sisters, all
16 of them, were living joyous lives.
Blessed with few material things, they smiled, laughed, and worked hard,
“waiting for the light.” (They all found
it. They all have plenty of food, clothes, a roof, nice vehicles, and are still
smiling and laughing.)
The counter influence that most
affected my philosophical conflict was my father himself. A reader of newspapers and magazines, he
understood history and politics. In
retrospect, I see that he accepted his station in life nobly and heroically.
Rather than embrace an outlook that others in his situation were embracing and
with which I was flirting, he chose to be grateful for the “oppressors” for
whom he worked. If he did not (because
he could not?) teach his children to dream, he could and did teach them to work
hard, to be responsible, and to “finish up before heading to the house.”
Don’t think that there were no
socialist-leaning professors at the University of Southern Mississippi during
the sixties. There were and there
are. But those I sat under found me
already inoculated and cured.
In today’s America, the free market
and free enterprise itself are still “forever on the scaffold,” as the poet
puts it. If my father were alive he
would shake his head at the regulatory, nanny state tentacles of government that
now reach into businesses, schools, and homes.
He would also applaud the election
of a city boy billionaire who seemingly understands “poor man economics” better
than the experienced politicians.
Roger
Hines
11/9/16
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