How did this U.S. election come to be about socialism? I thought it was going to be about racism. Or war. But then the economic crisis erupted and …

Let’s start with this. Socialism is not defined by state intervention in an economy. All states intervene in the economy, the United States more than most. It busts open foreign markets, fights for global resources (such as oil), controls labour militancy, develops new products (such as the Internet), which it then hands off to business. Above all, its military spending fuels its economy, and has for generations. Bank bailouts fit like a hand in a glove.

Okay, what about "spreading the wealth"? Not socialism either, within clear limits. Larry King asked John McCain this week whether a graduated income tax isn’t (a sort of socialist) redistribution. The McCain reply was: Yes it is and no it’s not.

But whatever it is, socialism is in the air. A Florida news anchor quotes Karl Marx and asks Joe Biden whether Barack Obama is a Marxist. McCain-Palin call Obama-Biden "socialist." The Washington Post wants to know if capitalism is dead. Isn’t it socialism that was supposed to be defunct? When did you last hear the "S-word"?

Probably circa 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. For a century and a half before that, the capitalist world was "haunted" by a spectre – the spectre of socialism, or communism, as Marx and Engels called it in The Communist Manifesto of 1848. That spectre was embraced by radical unions, movements and parties, then by the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union, followed by socialist regimes in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Africa etc. Then, poof, they’re all gone – yet the spectre is baaaack. How did it happen?

I’d say it’s because it was never those socialists who kept the spectre of socialism alive. It was capitalism itself! Karl Marx wrote relatively little on socialism, just a few evocative hints in his callow (or not so callow) youth. But he exhausted himself analyzing capitalism. His argued that capitalism leads inevitably to crisis – a terse term for massive human wreckage – that leads inevitably to a search for better ways to organize economies, which will be, in some form, socialist. It’s all dialectical as hell (Marx said), and if there’s not a socialist in sight, capitalism will still continue to produce the spectre of socialism along with its nightmarish crises.

Since the spectre arises, yet there are now few regimes, leaders or theorists to give it voice, it’s as if it seeks to channel itself, inhabiting any presence it can – like a dybbuk, the spirit of one person migrated into the body of another. So it speaks from the throats of John McCain, Sarah Palin, a Florida TV anchor, The Washington Post or Alan Greenspan, confessing he was mistaken about capitalism all his life.

And what is socialism? Well, Mr. Obama said this week that he expects to be called socialist because he shared his toys in kindergarten. It was a clever deflection of the charge but it’s also a good start. Maybe the dybbuk speaks through him, too. Socialism is essentially social. It’s based on a belief that we’re responsible for and indebted to each other – including past generations. So sharing isn’t a choice, it’s our nature. Therefore, roughly speaking, everyone is equally entitled to basics such as jobs, homes, health and education – especially kids. State intervention in the service of that vision would count as socialism. There might be non-governmental forms, too. Eventually, the state might "wither away," as Marx said, but that mutual responsibility never would.

An Obama victory would be a stunning event, like Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and election as South African president. I never expected to see either. On the other hand, I felt I had seen socialism and would see more of it – in Canada, for example. This has led to some disappointment, I admit, but it’s also nice to have got it wrong, and know that future surprises still await us.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.