PROVIDENCE — It was easy to spot Ken Nordstrom. He was wearing a green baseball cap adorned with a white peace symbol given to him by his wife on his 81st birthday several days before we met at a Point Street coffee shop.

Since his retirement in 2018, at the age of 73, and his subsequent move from Shrewsbury, Mass., to Providence, Nordstrom has thrown his time and energy into helping people and causes.

He volunteers thrice weekly at the Veazie Street Elementary School tutoring third-graders in math. He spends most Fridays from 9 a.m. to noon at Allens Pond in Dartmouth volunteering with Mass Audubon, blazing trails, removing invasives, and helping restore salt marsh. He’s also one of 600 members of the East Bay Citizens for Peace who, among other things, stand in front of the Rogers Free Library in Bristol every other Saturday advocating for peace. (A dozen or so are usually on hand, not all 600 — although that would be awesome.)

We recently got together to speak about something else, however. Resolution 58.

Late last year, during a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, the U.S. House passed the ridiculous resolution, which condemned socialism and cited it as historically linked to brutal dictatorship, economic collapse, and mass human suffering.

Sounds like MAGAism.

The resolution passed, unsurprisingly, with overwhelming Republican support, but 86 Democrats, including both Rhode Island congressmen — Gabe Amo and Seth Magaziner — joined them in the fearmongering production. (Massachusetts reps Jake Auchincloss, Katherine Clark, William Keating, Stephen Lynch, Seth Moulton, and Lori Trahan and Connecticut congressman James Himes also signed on to the resolution.)

The playbill notes the “greatest crimes in history were committed by socialist ideologues.” It then rattles off the names of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and current kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. (Stalin did help end another “greatest crimes in history” by assisting in the demise of Hitler and his far-right, fascist dictatorship.)

The 437-word resolution claims socialism has “repeatedly led to famine and mass murders, and the killing of over 100,000,000 people worldwide.” It goes on to list a handful of atrocities allegedly committed in the name of socialism.

It’s nothing more than a middling junior-high history report. A superficial summary of the horrors of capitalism could as easily have been cobbled together.

Nordstrom said it was disappointing to see both Amo and Magaziner join the fray.

“It should have been a layup and not sign it,” said the retired financial planner who long worked for John Hancock Financial. “It was a chance for them to stand up, but they didn’t. They just piled on. The Democratic machine is corporate captured too.”

The East Side resident said he sent a letter to Amo, his U.S. rep., and received a form letter in response.

The resolution’s first line reads: “Denouncing the horrors of socialism.” It ends with: “Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States.”

Juvenile governance is alive and kicking.

At least we now know why the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority is consistently underfunded. We’re also going to have to privatize police and fire departments and the U.S. Postal Service.

Nordstrom said both Amo and Magaziner, whom he noted profess to be social justice advocates, should view socialism as an ally, not a hated enemy. He noted socialism is simply one choice among several economic systems that are compatible with the political system of democracy.

“Socialism isn’t an evil, wicked force,” Nordstrom said.

Like anything else, it’s about the character of the people wielding the power.

In fact, the United States is rich in socialism. Some of the country’s most popular programs would be defined as socialism: Social Security and Medicare, to name just two. Socialism is also public schools and libraries; roads and bridges; drinking water and wastewater infrastructure; bailing out banks, car companies, and farmers; funding new sports stadiums for billionaires; and possibly subsidizing Big Oil’s theft of Venezuelan crude.

As Nordstrom noted, the United States has long operated under a hybrid capitalist-socialist economic system. Capitalism gets all the credit; socialism all the crap.

He asked why would Amo and Magaziner cast a vote that essentially undermines the constituencies they otherwise represent? He said their condemnation of socialism displayed a lapse of judgment and betrayed the social progress many have worked so hard to build.

Amen.

Socialism, like capitalism, is both an economic system and an ideology. A socialist economy features social rather than private ownership of the means of production. It typically organizes economic activity through planning rather than market forces. It gears production toward needs satisfaction rather than profit accumulation.

Socialists typically argue that capitalism undermines democracy, facilitates exploitation of both humans and nature, distributes opportunities and resources unfairly, and degrades communities and the environment. Nearly 250 years of U.S. history have shown that wealthy capitalists take far more than they give.

For instance, the country’s biggest recipients of food stamps aren’t “welfare queens” driving Cadillacs, but corporations such as Amazon (net profit in 2024 of nearly $60 billion), Walmart (about $15 billion), McDonald’s ($8.2 billion), and Dollar General ($1.1 billion) that don’t pay their employees a livable wage or provide decent benefits. Their employees are among the top beneficiaries of federal aid programs such as food stamps and Medicaid, according to a 2020 study. The 91-page study also found that about 70% of the 21 million federal aid beneficiaries worked full time.

Capitalism is driven by private ownership, free markets, and profit. Capitalists typically argue this drives innovation.

Nordstrom believes innovation can be driven by many forces. In Sweden, where his parents emigrated from, he said citizens pay higher taxes but the social safety net is robust and health care provided.

“There is plenty of entrepreneurialism in Sweden,” said the first-generation Swedish-American. “It’s not a socialist society. Swedes don’t have to worry about health insurance if they want to be entrepreneurial.”

Sweden is essentially a capitalist economy with a comprehensive social welfare system. It is typically described as a social democracy.

Socialism is frequently and incorrectly conflated with communism, a political and economic ideology that aims for a classless society where the community owns the means of production and private property ownership is eliminated. It can lead to single-party rule, state control of the economy, repression of freedoms, and authoritarianism.

Nordstrom believes there are two main reasons why socialism is vilified here: it is ignorantly associated with communism and because Europe is perceived as being socialist.

“It goes against the American ethos of rugged individualism,” he said. “Saying you are against socialism is a good narrative to get people elected.”

Under the flag of capitalism, though, it’s righteous to bomb another brown country, kidnap its leader, and take control of its oil. The next war over renewable energy will be the first.

This unconstitutional act of war against Venezuela is justified because Maduro allegedly ran drugs and is a bad guy. But a month before this illegal territorial takeover of one criminal regime by another, our own bad guy pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had just started serving a 45-year federal prison sentence for helping to traffic 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.

The Mad King claimed, without evidence, that Hernández’s prosecution had been a “setup” by the Biden administration and that Hernández was targeted because he was president of a country where drug cartels operated. The Mad King alone decides who is guilty. It’s never those who pay tribute and/or bend the knee. How about a resolution condemning authoritarianism or fascism?

“If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life,” the Mad King said in explaining another corrupt pardon.

Our ignorance can never embrace too many bogeymen, nor swallow too many lies.

Note: The resolution’s simple act of labeling people as socialists is, unsurprisingly, much more complicated. Vladimir Lenin has also been labeled the “architect of Russian communism” and called the “driving force behind international communism and the world’s first totalitarian state.” For some, Leninism significantly contributed to the cruelty of the Russian Revolution, and that helped the Communist Party organization and Communist ideology to remain in place. Stalinism (Joseph Stalin) has been labeled a criminal betrayal of the revolution and of Marxist ideals. Stalin’s commitment to Marxism and even to socialism only served to camouflage the establishment of a new oriental despotism. Mao Zedong always claimed to be an ardent Marxist, but scholars have suggested he was more of a Marxist-Leninist. His works indicate that his thoughts aligned more with Lenin’s views than that of Marx. He ultimately drew both on Marx and on Lenin, but he owed more to Lenin and to his disciple Stalin, than to Marx. Fidel Castro has also been labeled the “last emblematic communist leader of our time” who left behind a mixed legacy of accomplishments and failures. Pol Pot led the communist Khmer Rouge to commit genocide against his own people in a bloodthirsty regime inspired by Stalin and Mao. The Khmer Rouge was the popular name given to the Communist Party of Kampuchea, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Kim Jong Il is typically referred to as a communist politician. Kim Jong Un has spent his time in power purging, demoting, and promoting regime officials to secure his power base. He also cracked down on illegal cross-border movement and the inflow of foreign media. Daniel Ortega was entrenched in power by the United States’ longtime meddling in Nicaragua’s government. For instance, the U.S. supported the Somoza dictatorship until it was overthrown in 1979 by a revolution that brought to power the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front. Hugo Chavez styled himself as the leader of the socialist Bolivarian Revolution, but Venezuela already had a strong socialist tradition before he rose to power. During his time in power (1999-2013), the percentage of “desperately poor” in Venezuela declined from 23% to 9% of the population. Nicolás Maduro weaponizes anti-imperialist rhetoric to silence legitimate left criticism. Interestingly, the MAGAs who authored the socialism for dummies resolution avoided naming Adolf Hitler, even though we was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, proving they understood labeling an individual or a regime as socialist is complicated.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.