Does Socialism Breed Corruption and Authoritarianism? Or is that Capitalism?

To perhaps an unprecedented degree in the United States, we are witnessing an increasingly serious debate playing out about the relative merits of capitalism and socialism.

This development is healthy, allowing the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the way we organize our economy to meet human need through honest comparison with the ways other nations do, as we search for the best solutions and possibilities for serving people’s needs.

Despite the general consensus that during the Red Scare days Senator Joe McCarthy was in fact conducting an extremist witch hunt, an anti-communist ideology has abided in American culture, disarming our ability to engage in clear-eyed reflection of other possibilities for organizing our economy, healthcare system, and more. Once anyone said, “Well that’s socialism” or “that’s communism,” the conversation ended.

Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, regardless of its shortcomings, catapulted “socialism” into the nation’s political vocabulary, eroding in some measure its pejorative presumptions, arguably sparking more curiosity than castigation. The juggernaut intellect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has furthered the term’s currency, endowing it with a vibrancy, substance, and maybe even a sustainability, although it still holds the status of being a shiny new object in political conversation, its history notwithstanding.