Alternative Visions:

Abraham Lincoln said that "The purpose of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities." We know that every society includes people who cannot support themselves "in their separate and individual capacities." They are too young, too old, too ill, or otherwise recognized as being dependent. Over the past hundred or so years, most industrial societies have come to recognize that, in addition to these individual reasons for dependency, there are also social reasons why people cannot support themselves. They acknowledge that, under capitalism, there will always be people who are willing and able to work but, for reasons that have to do with how the society is structured, cannot support themselves. That's exactly why we have Social Security. It's called Social Security because it recognizes that there are social factors that threaten the security of individuals and that therefore demand a social response. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that every person has "the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his [sic] control." The success of the Social Security system in a given society can therefore be measured by the extent to which it guarantees the security of its citizens against, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt, "the hazards and vicissitudes of life." It should be no surprise that most people born and raised in the United States think about Social Security in very narrow and limited terms. This is because the American system of Social Security is narrow and limited. A look at a few other wealthy countries confirms this. Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom all have national systems of universal health care and maternity leave; the U.S. does not. Each of these countries has a national program of income assistance for families with children; the U.S. does not. Our country alone lacks a national system of insurance against unemployment and workplace injury (our state-run systems provide widely varying degrees of protection from state to state). It is particularly illuminating to contrast the Social Security system in New Zealand with ours in the United States. Despite the fact that New Zealand's system was put into place in 1938, only three years after our own, and was responding to similar problems, the New Zealand system that was enacted is far superior. For example, while the U.S. system is funded entirely by regressive payroll taxes on workers and employers, with income above (roughly) $70,000 being exempt from taxes, the system in New Zealand is funded entirely by progressive income taxes. And while coverage is restricted in the United States, New Zealand's program is universal. Health care, maternity care, and family allowances are likewise universally available in New Zealand, while the U.S. will not make a national guarantee for any of these important benefits, despite our great wealth. The Social Security program that we currently have in the United States came about as an alternative to several more progressive proposals being debated in the 1930s. Unlike the current corporate-led debate about Social Security, the original campaign for social insurance was led by poor people and workers. As early as 1931, the National Hunger March on Washington climaxed with the presentation to Congress of a Workers' Unemployment and Social Insurance Bill. Kenneth Casebeer summarizes that "bill" as a series of five demands: Immediate adoption of a federal system of unemployment insurance, guaranteeing full wages for full or part involuntary unemployment; This to be available to all categories of wage labor without discrimination by race, sex, age, origin, or political opinion; no person to be deprived of benefits for refusing to take the place of a striker or to work for less than union rates; Full funding from war preparation appropriations combined with sharply progressive taxation on all incomes above $5,000 [$60,000 in 1998 dollars] with no levies on workers; Administration by elected worker committees; and Social insurance for loss of wages through sickness, accident, old age, or maternity. The demands of the Hunger Marchers in the 1930s were not simply "cries in the wilderness." On February 2, 1934, legislation including their five demands was introduced into the House of Representatives by Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party Congressman Ernest Lundeen. The official "Workers' Unemployment and Social Insurance Bill"( H.R. 7598 and subsequent versions) was the most popular, and came the closest to becoming law, among several progressive predecessors to Roosevelt's Social Security. Over its Congressional lifetime from 1934 through 1937, more than 70 municipal governments around the country endorsed the Workers' Bill, as did innumerable ethnic and mutual aid societies and organizations of the unemployed. Many African-Americans and women supported it, as it was the only bill that treated all citizens equally. The Workers' Bill gave an official voice and organizing focus to activists organizing within the labor and poor people's movements. As F. Elmer Brown of the Typographers union put it, "It is the only bill which places the responsibility for unemployment where it belongs upon the federal government and the owners of the tools and natural resources of the country." In his excellent book "Closing the Door to Destitution : The Shaping of the Social Security Acts of the United States and New Zealand," author Raymond Richards makes it clear that the needs and aspirations of the citizens of 1930s New Zealand and America were quite similar. Yet, despite much popular pressure for a comprehensive system of social insurance here in the United States, the Roosevelt proposal fell far short of that goal. As to why this was so, one reviewer of Mr. Richards' book speculates that "New Zealand regarded aging workers as having earned [pension] benefits by virtue of their contribution to the general well-being of the society as a whole, while American politicians... limited the scope of the American act as a result of political pressures." What sort of political pressures is he talking about? For one thing, there was the intense opposition of the private insurance industry (in which Roosevelt had worked before becoming President) and the American Medical Association. In addition, a powerful group of Southern Democrats in Congress in the 1930s was opposed to any federal mandate that would require that benefits be paid to African-American tenant farmers and domestic workers; these workers were thus excluded from the system until the 1950s. Similar racist desires to keep state-based "separate and unequal" systems in place resulted in the failure to establish national systems of unemployment insurance benefits and workers compensation as part of the New Deal; that legacy survives to this day in our inequitable state-based programs. Despite its ultimate defeat, the existence of a radical alternative like the Workers' Bill shaped the discussion of Social Security and forced President Roosevelt to put forth his limited but still essential Social Security Act of 1935. Despite its limitations, the current system does in fact provide some very real protection from market forces, and thus has remained Roosevelt's, and the nation's, most popular social program. At the moment, the debate about the future of Social Security has only two sides. To the average American, one side is saying, "The ship is sinking! However, we do have enough lifeboats to save twenty percent of us, so let's line up for boarding. Rich people first!" The "liberal alternative" sounds like this: "That's not true! We have personal flotation devices for the other 80% of us. Those who can swim and aren't eaten by sharks might survive, too!" Needless to say, there is a noticeable lack of excitement among the general population around this discussion. As liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith recently wrote, "In sum: privatization is a bad idea. Raising the retirement age is a bad idea. Means tests are a bad idea. Raising taxes is a bad idea. Cutting benefits is a bad idea. If that's the agenda for Social Security ‘reform', I don't wanna talk about it, and you shouldn't either." And most people don't want to talk about it, because they understand that they lose either way. Americans are sophisticated enough to decline to help choose their own poison. But if we can propose a genuinely humane alternative, perhaps we can get working people engaged in possibly the most important domestic policy debate since the 1960s. And, since the promise of real Social Security extends beyond workers to every American household, we may be looking at the best opportunity in many years to reach beyond the "usual suspects" and organize a whole new generation of people.

top

top