Forum Post: Our Demands Must be Huge. In Tahrir Sqare They Ended a Regime. Part 1

We are not so much anti-capitalist, as we are pro-socialist. What is needed in this country is a system that can blend the best of capitalism and the best of socialism, and the best of both can be summed up in a single word -- Freedom. That great American obsession. Capitalism is great because it affords us freedom. A woman who starts a shoe company or a software company because she loves to make shoes or software is free, infinitely more free than someone who works for a giant, government controlled factory that decides how many shoes or software programs will be made, and how. Obviously we do not believe in a Soviet style, top-down, bureaucratic, government controlled system.

So what do we mean when we say that we also want the best of Socialism? We mean that we believe that our old, our infirm, our weak, and our poor should be taken care of. This, too, is Freedom. Freedom from fear, hunger, suffering, and the loneliness of struggling against such disadvantage in a cold, uncaring, capitalist system. Allowing a man or woman to found his or her own business and grow it unimpeded is freedom, yes, but allowing a business to grow so large, powerful, and uncaring that it forces Americans, who have struggled, and bled, and died, for the standards that until recently were taken for granted, to compete with a poor woman in China who is paid four dollars an hour is not. Someone who is not guaranteed health care, but can not afford its astronomical costs is not free. Someone with a cancer diagnosis who has no money and no insurance is not free. They are dying. And that is a crime in a nation as wealthy as ours. Our country is full of people who can only find jobs that do not offer a living wage, so that stockholders in that company (those fortunate enough to have "capital," that is, money they don't need to live) can be promised a "return" on their "investment." What about the people who give their backs, their lungs, their hearts, their time on this Earth, we ask. What about them? What is their "return" on "investment?" Without real social ideals, no one in this country can be free.

What we need is a new Social Democratic Party, whose interest is the wealth and well-being of the great mass of the American people.

Therefore our list of demands is long and daunting, but we are undeterred and unafraid. We understand that the road ahead is long, and we are ready for that march, even if we must pass the baton to generations as yet unborn.

We demand, and will not budge from our places of protest until we receive, for all Americans:

1) Comprehensive health care, as a right for all citizens, to be provided through a single-payer, non-corporate system. No one is free who must worry about disease and accident in a world where almost no one can possibly afford the cost of such care. Healing the sick and maimed should never be a for-profit enterprise. Our doctors and other health professionals should be paid well of course, better than most, but if they find that their wage under such a system is too low, then perhaps they are not so well-suited for work as healers. Perhaps they should become lawyers or stockbrokers instead. We reject, as an alternative to this demand, Obamacare. We do not believe in corporate give-aways, and we know that a guarantee of subsidized health care without cost controls is a fool's game, whose only end is endlessly ballooning deficits.

2) We demand a living wage. Anyone with a full-time job should be able to afford the housing, food, and education that they need to live a good, healthy and worthwhile life. They should feel that they are able to better their children's futures. They should be able to look forward to their retirements with hope and happiness, and never dread.

3) In order create the national wealth that will be necessary to make this new way of life possible, we demand that corporations take responsibility for their fortunate status, as entities afforded the protection and wealth of being in the United States, and give back a portion of that which their place in this great nation has afforded them. They have often spoken to the poor and unfortunate of the responsibilities that come with privilege, now we turn back toward them and ask if that rhetoric does not equally apply to them? In particular, we demand that any corporation that is called American, be based in America, make its products in America, provide its services through American labor, and pay ALL of its taxes in America. If it does not do these things, then what about it makes it American? If a country employs Mexicans and Chinese, pays it taxes in Bermuda, and keeps its money in Switzerland, in what way is it an American company? If it is not a true, taxpaying, American-hiring company then why does it deserves unimpeded access to the American market, the greatest market on the Earth, and the source of all its wealth?