It's finally happening: The Rise Of Socialism In America
I've been waiting for this my whole life, and it might finally be happening.
"Has anybody been angry before about capitalism?" Hannah Allison, a 29-year-old organizer with the Democratic Socialists of America, asks from the stage of a recent meeting in Los Angeles...
The group, which officially formed in 1982 but has roots in the early-20th-century socialist movement, has experienced a renaissance of late. The LA gathering is one of the group's largest in 25 years. And since last March, the DSA's membership has nearly tripled, to more than 15,000 members, with 90 local groups in 37 states.
...
Credit Bernie Sanders for DSA's explosion in growth. The Independent Vermont senator ran for president last year as a Democrat but has long identified as a democratic socialist – or, as he defined it in a 2006 interview, someone who believes in a democracy that's not influenced by Wall Street. At the time, he described democratic socialism as a system in which the government plays a strong role in ensuring all of its citizens have access to health care, childcare and a college education, regardless of income. "It means we do not allow large corporations and moneyed interests to destroy our environment, that we create a government … not dominated by big-money interests," he said. "I mean, to me, it means democracy, frankly."
Bernie did the DSA a huge favor, but it wasn't Bernie that caused it's surge in membership. It's Trump that gets credit for that.
DSA National Director Maria Svart says of new sign-ups, “You could literally see the moment when Trump was declared the winner.”
...For now, DSA is proving an on-ramp for those frustrated with Trump and the Democratic establishment alike...DSA’s tiny national staff, funded entirely by dues and small donations, has been overwhelmed by requests to create new chapters around the country and is looking for ways to expand accordingly.
The DSA is the most obvious political party for this new awakening (more than 2,000 new members have registered in the last two weeks alone), but it isn't the only one.
The Socialist Alternative, a Trotskyist party, said its membership has grown by more than 30 percent since Trump's election.
The Socialist Party USA's national secretary office said by email that they had also encountered "a solid spike from right after the elections", although they declined to provide further details.
Obviously the numbers are still tiny, but no movement starts out big (In the 2012 presidential election, fewer than 18,000 people voted for socialist candidates).
What is unmistakable is the potential for massive growth.
The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent said they support it...
Although the results are startling, Harvard's questions accord with other recent research on how Americans think about capitalism and socialism. In 2011, for example, the Pew Research Center found that people ages 18 to 29 were frustrated with the free-market system.
In that survey, 46 percent had positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent had negative views — a broader question than what Harvard's pollsters asked, which was whether the respondent supported the system. With regard to socialism, by contrast, 49 percent of the young people in Pew's poll had positive views, and just 43 percent had negative views.
The Trump Administration is so captured by Wall Street that they are beginning to worry how obvious it looks.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have conceded the field of economics.
The GOP are free-market fundamentalist fanatics who will destroy the government.
The Democrats are hopelessly corrupt and more interested in courting Romney voters than the working class.
The only real alternative is socialism. The time is right.
Gallup shows that since the election, a remarkable 14 million Democrats have become independents. So many people have left the Democratic Party that Republicans now outnumber Democrats in a progressive country.
Comments
Sorry Bernie, but people have spoken out about the DP
isn't what they are going to join because Pelosi and schumer and most of the people who are running to head the DNC are saying that they aren't going to change anything.
Bernie you opened people's eyes up to how corrupt the DP is and they did everything that they could to sabotage your campaign. That's what people are seeing about them and don't want anything to do with their neoliberalism which is more wars and more kissing their donor's buttocks.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.
@Unabashed Liberal
But what was on that link didn't seem that definite, just more like Bernie typically focusing on and refusing to be drawn off his current issues.
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-02-12-17-n719951
The moment he says 'yes' or 'maybe' to something like that, starting a party to challenge and take out the Dems and Repubs, that's all that will be discussed on the corporate media and the issues will be obscured, while Bernie's ability to alert the people and to maintain a position to fight for them in government will be - to say the least - nobbled. If nothing else, he's showing up the corporate Dems by contrast, which is important in itself as almost the only example of legitimate democratic thought being displayed within the American 'democratic government'.
We need to consider context, and that also includes Bernie's character, record and strategy, even if he has spewed soul-chilling propaganda about the 'Roosian hackers', among other things.
And that also includes Resistance tactics employed among the bravest, during the last global fascist take-over attempt, even though they were forced to mouth the vilest spew.
If anyone does not yet understand that this is what faces us - a pathologically greed/power-blinded group now willing to destroy the world of life in its taking of the Earth, quite possibly within this year or decade and certainly within decades - a closer look might be of benefit while this is still possible to do.
Edit to add:
Also, please bear this in mind, regarding any prospect of electoral change.
The corporate state coup over elections is specified within the litany of unconstitutional anti-democracy measures taken:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN-cYCjAAXI
(Edit: still not awake, despite coffee - added forgotten block-quotes to the following, which was first posted by gustogirl and re-edited because I'd misplaced the end of said block-quotes to cover my following comment, lol. And re-edited because I went wrong-name after the 'g'. There is no such thing as too much coffee and sometimes there's just never enough...)
(Emphasis mine)
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/this-is-a-coup-the-homelan...
This sort of now-typical unconstitutional extreme override of the principles of democracy which must be upheld as sworn by those holding public office in order to gain/retain the delegated powers, belonging in perpetuity to The People, of that public-serving office only works as being presented as being 'legal' as long as The People can be conned into accepting it as such.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@Unabashed Liberal Yeah. Good luck with
Yeah. Good luck with that, Bernie.
BTW, how are you going to "reform" a bunch of frauds when you're scared to point out their fraudulent behavior?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Hi, SD! Symone Sanders also denied that they were cheated--
see below, from Mother Jones.
If I've already post this piece, please disregard--I've seen you ask this before, and meant to reply.
Mollie
“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit and therefore– to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)
Vote Chris Hedges 2020
The SOSD Fantastic Four
Available For Adoption, Save Our Street Dogs, SOSD
Taro
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
I guess that she didn't see what happened during the
convention when his supporters were kicked out of their seats, weren't allowed in or when they shut down the lights on their sections and the other shenanigans they did.
Sorry Symone but the DNC admitted it during the court case.
I'm also asking what people think about this article
http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/indict-clinton-for-the-russian-dnc-a...
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.
@snoopydawg The 126,000 people
The 126,000 people kicked off the rolls in Brooklyn might disagree. Entire city blocks eliminated, by an elections official who had recently sold a tenement she owned to a Hillary Clinton superdelegate for millions above market value.
It's nice to see that 21st-century gangsters still appreciate the classics.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@Unabashed Liberal I think I'll believe my
I think I'll believe my own lying eyes, thanks. Also this 100-page report. https://www.facebook.com/notes/election-justice-usa/democracy-lost-a-rep...
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Do the supporters of socialism --
actually know what it is?
"Israel is in the process of destroying itself" -- Miko Peled
what is socialism?
Yes, I do.
Socialism is the socio-economic doctrine which holds that the natural resources of a society should be used for the benefit of everyone in that society rather than the benefit of a tiny minority of that society. This is not to be confused with the ownership of all business enterprise by the State, which isn't necessarily Socialist in nature. The USSR was an example of the latter; the State owned everything, but the benefits accrued to a tiny minority indeed.
It is perfectly possible to have a Socialist society with considerable private enterprise in the economic mix. I refer my readers again to the Scandinavian nations of today for examples of this; also the United States of America itself between the years 1940 - 1980. In these places and times, ordinary working men and women benefited from strong unions, regulated major capital, and a robust public sector whose assets were used for the common good of everyone.
In the United States, the lives of ordinary working class adults were far better under the Socialist "New Deal" rule than at any time since it was dismantled starting with the Nixon Administration. At 58, I'm just old enough to remember it as a child, but not old enough to have actually participated in it as a free-standing adult.
So I know the difference -- and I advocate Socialism (and very much the New Deal-style manifestation of it) because it is better for people like me, ordinary working-class folks.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
There's already a term for that type of "socialism."
We call it "social democracy."
Here's where I run into trouble, though. If we just call social democracy "socialism" (even though there's a term for it already), then we run into the question of what do we call a regime (hypothetical to be sure) in which the public directly controls the means of production rather than through some sort of tax or regulation imposed upon private capital. "Communism"? The problem with the term "Communism" (even if it's just small-c "communism") is that it still denotes the state-capitalist regime imposed by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, in which the state acted as the only corporation and the Communist Party its shareholders.
Now, to be sure, there are advocates out there for the revival of the term "communism." Jodi Dean is probably the most interesting among them (though I suppose there's also Peter Hudis). In her support, Jodi Dean has Karl Marx in her corner; Marx used "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably, to refer to such a world. At any rate, if "socialism" merely means social democracy, and if "communism" means the Soviet Union, we will lack a term for the Marx utopia. Should we call it "Marx's utopia"? Or perhaps we could use another Marx term for it: the "realm of freedom"? My vote would be that we call it "socialism" and deny the social democrats their appropriation of that term.
At any rate, the intermediate regime, the one occurring between capitalism and the "realm of freedom," is not social democracy but rather the worker-owned cooperative. Worker-owned cooperatives participate in capitalism, but are run socialistically. Socialism is when the worker-owned cooperative model is extended to the whole of society and when people's lives are no longer ruled by the law of value, in which your existence is only worth what you can get on the market for it.
"Israel is in the process of destroying itself" -- Miko Peled
@Cassiodorus I think the problem
I think the problem here is a confusion of tactics and results. Both social democracy and socialism have as a goal similar results in terms of people's lived experience, but social democracy relies on the same old representative democratic political structure to achieve the policies which will then result in a better life for people. Socialism basically says: and what the hell are you going to do when they buy up that representative democratic political structure? You've got a New Deal--great. What happens when they break it?
What are you going to do when they stop playing nice?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
This is a great comment.
It's an especially great comment because it doesn't rely on the nonsense about "social democracy is a mixture of socialism and capitalism," social democracy being capitalism with a few welfare systems to keep the working class happy with its collective status.
Indeed the "what if they break it?" question opens up the historical can of worms -- social democracy being a class compromise of the post-World War II period which has attained a degree of profit for the owning class in a few boutique economies, most prominently in Scandinavia. How long will social democracy last? Hard to say.
"Israel is in the process of destroying itself" -- Miko Peled
@Cassiodorus Right now
Right now (unfortunately) it's all about power. And maybe it always was.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
It seems to me that the most effective,
immediate strategy for the Left would be to break the 2-Party strangle hold, rather than trying to form a doctrinaire, or even an ideologically consistent third Party. The discontent of America's 99% arises from a broad spectrum of political opinion, much of it rooted in conservative communities with a traditionalist outlook.
I would be willing to sacrifice some of the culturally progressive agenda which has been the hallmark of the Left, in the interests of unifying a cross-party, economically progressive platform. In other words to set aside, or to de-emphasize the culturally divisive issues that separate rural middle-America from urban coastal America, in order to form a tactical alliance opposing the bi-partisan elites that now rule everyone.
I would say, let us avoid getting all ideological about this, and try to be practical instead. If we could make common cause with everyone in the country who is fed up with both the R and D parties, the we might actually have something approaching a 99% caucus. First, break the power of the Duopoly -- then worry about what direction to take.
native
@native Well, we could have an
Well, we could have an anti-corruption movement. But we're too busy protesting Trump.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
And we're still busy
gripping about and yet captured by the endless duo-political partisan shenanigans. How about expanding the horizons and consider possibilities other then the inevitable red vs. blue duopoly? The mass exodus of Dems. and the non partisan populist backlash at both the odious parties that are owned and run by the global oligarchical collectivists. Calling Trump names, arguing about the Demorat's internecine power struggles or feeding the addiction Americans seem to have for fear do nothing but keep people from even thinking about solidarity or resistance outside the lines drawn by captured corporate government
All of these so called protest's lead right back to the 1% veal pens constructed by the global disaster cappie's puppet pols. I don't care about the freaking academic terminology of socialist's vs capitalists. Just gimme some truth. I happen to agree with Cassie and yet see no contrition with socialism to have a government that is democratic and that works for the common good and universal human and civil rights. People seem to be aware of how screwed they are by the unfettered 'free market' disaster capitalist's.
Count me in
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.. This...is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.--John Adams
Hi, CStS and SD! My only
point in posting Symone Sanders' words was to make the point that he and his staff were consistent in their denials--for whatever reason.
(BTW, she's now a fairly regular Dem shill on the Sunday political shows.)
Honestly, I didn't follow the primary electoral machinations closely enough to know the scope of voter irregularities; so, I wasn't attempting to dispute that they occurred.
Have a good one!
Mollie
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."--Will Rogers
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Pages