The Republican Party is lashing out again. This time at itself. Several media sources recently reported that at an upcoming Republican National Convention meeting a resolution has been submitted that accuses George W. Bush of promoting socialism through the Wall Street bailout.

This move is remarkably ironic given that Republicans unabashedly supported Bush until just weeks ago. Many had accused his critics of anti-Americanism and of supporting terrorism. A host of Republican ideologues and right-wing media outlets even took to calling Barack Obama a communist for a variety of reasons, but especially for his plan to give 95 percent of Americans a tax cut.

Here is what the resolution reportedly said, in part: 'WHEREAS, the Bank Bailout Bill effectively nationalized the Nation's banking system, giving the United States non-voting warrants from participating financial institutions, and moving our free market based economy another dangerous step closer toward socialism.'

Now it is tempting to laugh at this nonsense and let it go. But the chance offered by these circumstances to explain a socialistic response to the economic crisis is too tempting to do so.

In a recent article, we here at recently on a new campaign to halt the bailout because of the lack of oversight in the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP. Almost $350 billion in taxpayer money has been given to the world's richest banks without the least bit of curiosity on the part of the Bush administration about what they have done with the cash.

According to some accounts the application for taxpayer money is a surprisingly uninquisitive two-page document that can be submitted online. Also, a recent media survey of several major banks who have taken the money revealed that they are flat out refusing to explain what they have done with the cash.

A little deeper digging found, however, that many banks have hoarded the money rather trying to stimulate economic activity by loosening credit. Others have used the cash to buy smaller banks or expand their holdings in others. And the most corrupt have simply used the money to pad their profit margins or to pay outrageous executive bonuses, stockholder dividends, and for corporate jets and getaways. It is what Political Affairs contributing editor Norman Markowitz, in a recent article, called 'vulture capitalism.'

This isn't socialism. Those are the fundamentals of the Republican ideology of the free market – with direct government assistance. Far from being a 'dangerous step toward socialism,' that's how Republican free market concept works. Privatize benefits and profits; socialize costs and pain. No government oversight.

Some actual socialist thinkers have called this type of economic activity the state monopoly stage of capitalism. It is the worst, most exploitative stage. Smaller businesses are gobbled up or eliminated; workers' rights are squashed. Rules and laws designed to reign in the worst excesses are discarded. Monopolies grow increasingly large and powerful.

It is also this stage of capitalism that is most vulnerable to change, a stage in which socialist solutions to crises seem most feasible and even necessary.

A socialist program for resolving the crisis in the banking industry would possibly have begun by using the TARP funds to gain public ownership and oversight of the banks. It would not have been a handout.

Further, the socialist approach would have originated with the interest of working families. If indeed the TARP project had been a socialist one, it would have been embedded in, controlled by, and enacted with working people's interests at its center. The guiding principle would be the socialization of benefits and profit.

For example, if TARP were handled in a socialistic way, homeowners who now face the loss of their homes would be a top priority. Mortgages would have been renegotiated with greater urgency than that which the Bush administration rushed to give payouts to the JP Morgans, Citigroups, and Bank of Americas. Credit with good terms for small farmers and small businesses would have been prioritized above the bottom lines of Wall Street.

Capitalism is based on a couple of basic building blocks. Wealth is socially created and privately accumulated. Simply put, workers, for example, make all of the value accumulated by the auto companies, but the Ford family (and stockholders who rarely add an significant value to the end product) get the profit. Profit, then, is the difference between the total value created by the workers and what they are paid (minus taxes).

Finance capitalism, while it exploits labor in the process of its accumulation of wealth, mainly thrives on speculation, monopolization and wealth accumulated elsewhere. Think about the high prices of oil driven by speculation, which had nothing to do with the actual extraction of petroleum or the production and distribution of gasoline, over this past summer as an example of the central dynamic of finance capitalism.

Today's crisis of capitalism was driven primarily by speculation in the housing industry. Rules overseeing this industry were eliminated or ignored. Homeowners were allowed to refinance or purchase new homes with so-called subprime loans that inflated after a short period. Banks became predatory lenders. Many banks specifically targeted African American and Latino families for these predatory practices.

Bankers then began to sell investment securities backed by these faulty loans to other banks and investment firms. Capitalist ideologues, like they always do, legitimized these stupid practices by insisting the housing boom would never end. Economists who warned about looming problems were ridiculed and scoffed at.

Then the bubble burst, and the rest is history. The economic situation worsened due to a stagnating economy that had been ignored by the Bush administration for several years.

Public ownership of the banks would quite probably have prevented predatory lending. Planning for adequate liquidity in credit markets (and sectors like housing, auto, and small businesses) organized by experts with an eye on the common good not private profits would have prevented the actions of Wall Street, not just over the past few months but over the course of the recent economic cycle.

A socialistic economic policy would also likely have lessened the impact of the bursting housing bubble (if there would have been one in the first place), because working families and their needs would have been prioritized all along. The growing unemployment problem, which really began in early 2007, would have been addressed sooner. Stagnating wages, which had been hurting working families since the previous recession in 2001, would also have been addressed sooner. Worker protections, such as the right to join or organize unions, would have promoted a stronger standard of living among working families that would have created a basic safety net for working families against the changes in and unpredictability of the markets.

Capitalist ideologues rationalized the necessity of the Wall Street bailout by saying that the major banks in the financial services industry were simply too big to let them fail. A socialist viewpoint would argue that there are some industry just too important to allow into the hands of people seeking private profit: basic industries, finance, health care, defense, energy, environment, and education probably top such a list.

Some who read this are going to scream, 'to hell with socialism' and 'what about my freedom?' Fact is, freedom without equality is simply freedom to exploit. Freedom without equality means that big insurance companies can force you to pay higher insurance premiums for fewer health care services whenever they feel like it. Freedom without equality means that JPMorgan can use its TARP funds to fly its CEO around on fancy vacations and make dividend payments to stockholders with taxpayer money and not have to give an accounting for it. Freedom without equality means that predatory lenders get billions in tax dollars while shoplifters go to jail. There must be a proper balance struck between freedom and equality; and capitalism simply isn't the system under which such a balance can be struck.