Socialism. Apparently the mention of the word is enough to enrage conservatives. It implies some kind of unfair redistribution of wealth from their pockets to the lazy poor. What the right wing seems to forget is how Socialism came to be, and why it’s essential not only for the poor, but also for themselves.

When Europe started to cast off the ideas of the middle ages, starting with the British civil war, and extending to the American Revolution, the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the idea that regular guys (yes, guys, not girls) could rule a nation without being born to it and anointed by God for the job was a kick in the pants for the average joe. Prior to this, rising above the station in life that you were born to was impossible. It was done, certainly, but you always “knew your place” and bowed to those above you accordingly.

After Napoleon was defeated, Europeans sat up, rubbed their eyes and wondered how they could better their situations. The Industrial Revolution really started swinging in London, and country folk who were formerly content (or rather, allowed) to work the land flocked to the cities and got jobs in the new mechanized and steam powered industries. The merchant class rose, the GDP of Britain changed for the first time ever –and lo, capitalism was born.

The concentration of poor folk working in textile mills and machine shops and coal mines meant that all the infrastructure which was neglected by the government was amplified. The safety net of the time was the workhouse, sewage ran in the streets, and children worked long hours. The first labor laws were passed in England in the 1840s – children between the ages of 9 and 18 were prohibited from working more than 12 hours a day. The merchant class was definitely looking out for themselves, and themselves alone.

These appalling conditions created discontent. But it was not discontent that spurred on legislative change to better the conditions of the working man. Only the merchant class, gentry and nobility had the vote in England. They were not going to listen to the gripes of a bunch of poor rabble rousers. The parliament did expand the vote in 1832 after much pressure, but even then not all men could vote. Something had happened in 1831 which I believe gave birth to socialism, and which makes it not only relevant, but necessary to this day.

Cholera.

The Second Cholera Epidemic hit London in October of 1831, and initially it was thought to be a disease of the “lazy poor” – the drunkards, criminals and prostitutes. The clergy blamed sin, and sinful living. Little did they know that a horrible death from cholera was waiting for them at the next drinking fountain. The disease raged throughout the 19th century and killed millions worldwide including the last king of France and the daughter of a US President. Poor, they were not.

The idea “If you don’t take care of the poor, they’ll kill you” really blossomed during this time. There were revolutions throughout Europe in 1848 at the height of the epidemic, and Karl Marx released “The Communist Manifesto” to a populace that was starting to realize their problems could be solved with some necessary public works and a few good labor laws. Suddenly the merchant class, gentry and nobility were sitting up and taking notice – cholera was killing everyone, and if they wanted a society to rule over, then they had to provide some basic necessities for the unlucky poor who were in their districts. Those who survived the epidemic started organizing, the first general strike in Britain was organized by the Chartists in 1842 who demanded voting rights for all men (yes, men).

Now if you give voting rights to the poor, they are going to want things like sewers and clean drinking water, weekends off and schools. If the rich want to have disease and crime free lives, it’s in their best interest to fund these demands for public works and free education. If the only safety net is the slavery of a workhouse, then the wealthy had better figure out how to take care of those who are unlucky, ill or old so they don’t get robbed or contract a contagious disease. The age of cholera gave rise to the idea of a “Societal Body” – the health of the society as a whole should concern everyone because what affects the lazy poor will soon come knocking on your door.

The hilarious modern example of this was the notably hypocritical governor of Texas who was threatening secession one week because of his knee jerk reaction at the concept of socialism, and the following week begging for millions of tax dollars for public health projects to fight the swine flu. A similar incident visited the governor of Louisiana after he criticized the use of tax payer dollars for monitoring volcanoes, and a month later Alaskans were properly warned that Mount Redoubt was going to blow through the benefits of volcano monitoring. Socialism can’t be back dated, you have to build the sewer system and water treatment plants before the cholera comes. If you want a crime free society, you have to start educating good citizens in pre-school.

This is easily the most forgettable fact in our current political discourse. Conservatives don’t want to be taxed, but they want all the benefits of civil society. Blaming the poor for their situation has been popular for centuries, but then when swine flu or bird flu is evolves from people living with livestock, or cholera is spread from lack of sanitation, then who do we blame? The poor? Or is it the lazy rich who are to blame for the latest pandemic?

The poor exist not because they are lazy, but because they are unlucky. Some are born to it, some fell into it, some will claw their way out of poverty with hard work and intelligence, some will dig themselves in deeper with addiction and immorality. Regardless, they are part of the fabric of our society, and how livable our society is largely depends on the conditions of the working class. If conditions are good - there is public healthcare, a safety net and support beyond the private sector, then the working class will be healthy, families will raise well behaved children and the community as a whole will be happy. If the poor are forced to live in slums with few public services, their children go uneducated, and they have to beg, borrow and steal for their basic needs to be met – you can be sure that the wealthy are one car jacking or pandemic away from wishing they had funded a little socialism.

Virus hunter, Nathan Wolfe, gave a brilliant talk at the TED conference on searching for the newest pandemics evolving in Africa www.ted.com/talks/view/id/499 . Viruses evolve through contact between animals and humans, and the poorer the people, the more contact they have. The most poignant moment comes when he asks the audience to look at a photo of a bushmeat hunter, obviously deeply impoverished. He asks why we think that the responsibility to stop the next pandemic rests with someone so poor. He points out that our children and grandchildren will ask us why we allowed such poverty to continue when we knew that AIDS developed from these desperately poor communities who must hunt wild animals to survive.

The green jobs activist, Van Jones, talks about “a tide that floats all boats”. If we float the boat of a pig farmer in Mexico, a farmer in China, or a hunter in Africa – perhaps they will float ours in the form of a healthy “societal body”. If the industrial revolution had floated the boats of it’s workers, perhaps Karl Marx wouldn’t have written his book. When the nobility and monarchies gave way to democracies, the concept of Nobless Oblige fell by the wayside, so Socialism had to follow Capitalism to take up the slack for the poor. Capitalism and Socialism grew up together, you can’t have one without the other. Unbridled capitalism is selfish and greedy, and absolute Socialism is seriously boring.