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Last Tuesday, as news coverage focused on New York Citys mayoral race, an upset occurred in New Yorks second-largest city. India Walton, a nurse and union activist endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Working Families Party, defeated incumbent mayor Byron Brown in Buffalos Democratic primary.

Walton proudly called herself a democratic socialist throughout the campaign, and on election night, she refused to back away from that label. Responding to a reporters question about whether she considers herself a socialist, Walton was adamant: Oh, absolutely. The entire intent of this campaign is to draw power and resources to the ground level and into the hands of the people.

At a victory party the same night, she laid out her political vision: All that we are doing in this moment is claiming what is rightfully ours. We are the workers. We do the work. And we deserve a government that works with and for us.

Having won the primary in Democrat-heavy Buffalo, Walton will almost certainly become the citys first female mayor and the first socialist mayor of a major US city in years. Her upset is another milestone in the rise of DSA, which put considerable energy into Waltons campaign. But her victory also points to an important, if often overlooked, tradition of US politics: municipal and state-level socialism.

During the early twentieth century, the Socialist Party of America (SPA) fielded formidable candidates across the country. The most prominent was Eugene Debs, who ran for president five times, including from a federal prison in 1920. (He was serving time for opposing World War I.) New Yorks Meyer London and Wisconsins Victor Berger both won election to the US Congress as Socialists in the 1910s and 20s.

The real action, however, was down-ballot, where Socialists secured spots on city councils, state legislatures, county boards, and an array of other governing bodies. The SPA elected over 150 state legislators during the early twentieth century. They also won mayoral races. There was Jasper McLevy in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Louis Duncan in Butte, Montana; J. Henry Stump in Reading, Pennsylvania, and John Gibbons in Lackawanna, New York, just south of Buffalo. In Buffalo itself, Socialist Frank Perkins won a city council seat in 1920. All told, Socialists won office in at least 353 cities, the vast majority in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The longest socialist administration was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where from 1910 to 1960 the city had three socialist mayors. Emil Seidel, Daniel Hoan, and Frank Zeidlers administrations promoted sewer socialism, a moderate form of socialism aimed at delivering workers immediate material improvements and de-commodifying society through a democratic process. While they de-emphasized strikes and labor struggles, the sewer socialists were able to build an incredibly well-organized machine and a rich working-class culture.

Emil Seidel was elected in 1910, becoming the countrys first Socialist mayor of a major city. During his brief tenure, he created the citys first public works department and started the city parks system. After losing reelection, Seidel served as Eugene Debss running mate in 1912.

Milwaukee Socialists regained power with Daniel Hoans victory in 1916. Hoans twenty-four-year tenure remains the longest continuous Socialist administration in US history. Milwaukee set up the countrys first public housing project, Garden Homes, in 1923, and the Hoan administration pushed for municipal ownership of street lighting, city sanitation, and water purification. It also financed public marketplaces, raised funds to improve Milwaukees harbors, and purged the corruption that had plagued past administrations.

Hoans tenure ended in 1940, but socialist governance returned under Frank Zeidler starting in 1948. Zeidler continued the sewer socialism tradition while overseeing Milwaukees territorial expansion and population rise. He stood out as a strong supporter of civil rights as Milwaukees black population increased following World War II (an especially laudable stance given the bigotry of earlier sewer socialists like Victor Berger).

The Wisconsin Socialist Partys success wasnt limited to Milwaukee. From 1905 to 1945, Socialists sent seventy-four legislators to the state capital, where they passed over five hundred pieces of legislation, often aimed at supporting the municipal administrations back in Milwaukee. A 1919 socialist bill, for instance, gave the city permission to create public housing.

Like their city-level comrades, Socialist state legislators worked to deliver tangible changes to workers lives. Socialists authored Wisconsins first workmens compensation bill, which passed in 1911, and pushed legislation that allowed women to receive their paychecks instead of having it sent to their husbands. They updated housing codes, reduced working hours for women, and funded public county hospitals. They exempted union property from taxation and made it illegal for company investigators to infiltrate unions.

Socialist state legislators in Wisconsin didnt accomplish what they did alone. They aligned with progressive Republicans when possible and, as a result, much of the legislation that came out of the legislature looked like a mixture of socialist and progressive positions.

Still, Socialists were more than happy to call out progressives for not going far enough to help the working class. In 1931, the legislature debated a state unemployment system to combat the effects of the Great Depression. The socialist version of the bill called for $12 a week in benefits and included a provision to create an eight-hour working day across all industries. Progressives rallied around a bill that called for $10 a week in benefits and no cap on working hours. Socialist representative George Tews summarized the caucuss sentiment when he declared on the House floor that a progressive was a socialist with their brains knocked out.

The Milwaukee socialists became mainstays of the state legislature, managing to survive the First Red Scare following World War I. Elsewhere, state repression (and deep splits within the party) proved more devastating. In New York, for instance, state officials operating under the anti-radical Lusk Committee targeted Buffalo, where Frank Perkins had been elected city councilor in 1920, and the nearby steel town of Lackawanna, where socialist John Gibbons won the mayors office. Under the cloud of federal repression, neither Perkins nor Gibbons won reelection.

The Wisconsin Socialists numbers and electoral victories evaporated following World War II, and for decades, socialists largely found themselves outside the halls of power (some exceptions: Oakland, California mayor Ron Dellums; St Paul, Minnesota mayor Jim Scheibel; Berkeley, California mayor Gus Newport; Santa Cruz, California mayor Mike Rokin, and Irving, California mayor Larry Agran all DSA members).

But DSA victories in congressional, state, and local races have again placed socialism on the map. The key now will be to fight for concrete improvements in workers lives, raising their expectations about what is politically possible.

In her victory speech last Tuesday, India Walton laid out an optimistic view of socialist successes to come. This victory is ours. It is the first of many. If you are in an elected office right now, you are being put on notice. We are coming.

That kind of optimism was warranted at the state and local level during the early twentieth century. There is no reason it cannot be so again.

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India Walton Is Reviving the American Tradition of Municipal Socialism - Jacobin magazine

Fox News anchor Bret Baierexplores the history ofsocialism amid Chinas celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Thursday, in which the CCP is reveling in what it views as the bedrock of the nations global success.

Baier hosts "The Unauthorized History of Socialism" on Fox Nation, where he traces the history ofsocialism from its first failed experiment in America to the collapse of the Soviet Union to its apparent revival today.

Meantime, CNN is once againbeing dubbed by the "China News Network"by critics after publishing a glowing report on the upcoming 100-year anniversary of Chinas Communist Partythat set Twitter ablaze on Wednesday.

"The Chinese Communist Party is about to turn 100 but Xi will be the real star," CNN International tweeted to accompany a link to a story about an upcoming celebration that will feature fireworks and a speech by Chinas leader Xi Jinping.

While lavish festivities marked the anniversary, they failed to mention that tens of millions of people who have been killed at the hands of the CCP.

The Party was founded in 1921 on the principles ofMarxism-Leninism, but it wasnt until 1949 that it was able to gain complete control of the country.

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The CCP challenged the nationalist Kuomintang government and prompted an intermittent 12-year long civil war.

In an attempt to propel Chinas economy forward on a global scale, CCP chief Mao Zedong, who became China's leader in 1949, launched a campaign known as the "Great Leap Forward" in 1958 a disastrous program that forced millions of rural Chinese villagers from their farms to join mass communes.

CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY CONDEMNED BY BIPARTISAN RESOLUTION FOR 100 YEARS OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

Livelihoods, homes, and possessions were removed and instead, people were forced to receive their food from public canteens where provisions were doled out based on merit, Frank Diktter explained in his literary work, "Maos Great Famine."

Mao at this point made himself one of the worlds greatest mass murders, killing up to 45 million Chinese civilians between 1958 and 1962 largely through starvation.

Extreme discipline became commonplace and an estimated two to three million people were tortured to death or executed.

After Mao's death in 1976,Deng Xiaoping rose to power and expressed a new openness to reformingtheir failing socialist system and by 1982 "every single commune was decollectivized," said Merle Goldman, author of "Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China."

"Deng Xiaoping said his reforms were creating socialism with Chinese characteristics,"Fox News anchor Bret Baier narrates in thenew six-part Fox Nation series, "The Unauthorized History of Socialism," speaking of the Chinese communist leader.

"Many observers thought it looked more like capitalism," Baier continued. "Whatever it was, it was changing the face of China."

CHINA, RUSSIA EXPLOITING UNITED NATIONS TO PUSH BACK AGAINST US INTERESTS, REPORT SAYS

The idea of capitalist enterprise unleashed pent-upenergy in China that started a process that would propelthe country out of widespread poverty and into modernity.

Baier noted, citing the World Bank, that by 1984, China's economic growth had "reached 10 percent per year" and "would remain there for more than a decade."

"But China was still ruled by communists," Baier continued. "Beneath the rising tide of economic and personal freedom, the political system remained largely unchanged."

"The Unauthorized History of Socialism" is available exclusively on Fox Nation. To watch the entire six-partseries go to Fox Nation and sign up today.

Fox Nationprograms are viewable on-demand and from your mobile device app, but only for Fox Nation subscribers.Go to Fox Nationto start a free trial and watch the extensive library from your favorite Fox News personalities.

Fox News Caitlin McFall, Brian Flood and Matt London contributed to this report.

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100 years of Chinese Communism: Bret Baier tells the true story the mainstream media ignores - Fox News

Review of The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson by Frank Cunningham (Palgrave, 2019).

C. B. Macpherson was a legend in Canadian political theory circles, known for his close reading of dense theoretical texts. He managed to bring to light hidden assumptions and tensions with a rare combination of scholarly acumen and bite. But as the author of books with dry titles like Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval and Democracy in Alberta: Social Credit and the Party System, Macphersons reputation mostly stopped at the university gates.

Fortunately, Frank Cunninghams excellent recent book, The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson, gives us a more complete and interesting view of both the man and the democratic socialist core of his writing. In Cunninghams able hands, Macpherson is revitalized as a figure who can not only teach us about the limitations and strengths of the classical liberal tradition but offer us an inspiring vision for a democratic socialist future.

The work that made Macphersons name was 1962s The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Nominally a history of early modern English political theory, the book had much grander ambitions.

Macphersons aim was to analyze the roots of what he called possessive individualism the idea that in the state of nature each of us is an atomic individual, separate from all others, defined by a relentless pursuit of desire that requires us to develop our skills and labor to acquire what we want. Natural human beings owe nothing to society or others, neither when developing their capacities nor enjoying their property.

Far from natural, possessive individualism came into being through a contingent combination of historical events and changing ideological notions, Macpherson shows. In particular, the epic clashes between aristocratic absolutism and capitalist parliamentarianism in seventeenth-century Britain provided fertile soil for philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, James Harrington, and John Locke to reconceive the nature of society along market lines.

According to these theorists, property emerges through the mixing of ones labor with matter, which creates an entitlement to whatever is produced. A farmer who puts up a fence around a plot of land and then tills the soil is mixing his labor with the soil, which consequently becomes his property, along with the carrots and potatoes that sprout from it.

This workmanship ideal we should get to keep what we labor for has remained ideologically powerful. American conservatives like Ben Shapiro still use it to justify stark inequalities.

But as Macpherson points out, the workmanship ideal is unworkable even as the moral basis for capitalist society. If its true that we are entitled to the fruits of our labor, how is it that laborers make something but capitalists are then entitled to it as their property? After all, it wasnt Ray Kroc who flipped a million burgers or Donald Trump who built the Trump Tower. If we really believe that people are entitled to what they labored to create, then its impossible to defend the capitalist system.

Lockes solution was to extend the notion of a contract to the relationship between capitalist employers and laborers. He argued that workers are not entitled to keep what they make if they have contractually agreed to labor for their employers.

Of course, workers could eventually refuse to hand over what they created and instead decide to enjoy it for themselves. Or they could decide to band together and democratically demand changes to society. Possessive individualists therefore came to recognize the need for a powerful state that could guarantee the rights of employers to live off whatever their employees labor produced.

The irony here was that possessive individualism moved from conceiving of people as atoms owing nothing to anyone else, to requiring a leviathan that would safeguard the interests of the privileged few. As Macpherson put it near the end of Possessive Individualism: It is not a question of the more individualism, the less collectivism; rather the more thoroughgoing the individualism, the more complete the collectivism.

Macphersons critical history of possessive individualism forms the cornerstone of his legacy. But Cunningham reminds us that in addition to being a sharp reader of classical liberal thought, Macpherson was also a democratic socialist who spent much time theorizing about the problems of contemporary capitalism and what might replace it.

Macphersons socialism sprung from his belief that capitalism prevented human beings from fully developing their productive powers and capacities. Capitalist markets generate stratification: a select few have the material luxury of developing their capacities while everyone else is confined to improving the narrow range of abilities necessary to perform their jobs. On top of that, possessive individualist societies cultivate an atomistic, alienating sense of self that encourages individuals to compete for scarce goods and honors. Greed is both good and inevitable. The states job, meanwhile, is to encourage capitalist competition up to the point where individuals begin physically harming one another and even that line can be crossed if capital demands, say, an imperialist intervention or the suppression of radical movements.

Macpherson insisted that liberalism was right to emphasize the value of individualism chastising authoritarian socialist states for trampling on individual liberty but that it was wrong to assume the only kind of individuality was possessive. Better, in Macphersons eyes, was a normative individualism where we cooperate with each other to form meaningful and democratic communities that mutually empower members to express their individuality. This position resembles what Ive called the expressive rather than possessive individualism of John Stuart Mill. But Macpherson gives it a much more democratic tint.

There is a lot to like in this argument. Atomistic, possessive individualism is both theoretically implausible and empirically unsound. People construct their sense of self not simply through laboring and acquiring but by forming meaningful relationships and developing and exercising their diverse capacities. Possessive individualist society is undesirable precisely because its competitive mania erodes human relationships, and, worse, because its inequalities mean that many will never be able to develop more than a fraction of their capacities.

At the same time, Macpherson is right that we shouldnt run in the opposite direction, subordinating individualism to either cultural traditionalism (as social conservative critics of liberalism would insist) or political movements (as with some socialist experiments). Instead, our aim should be to create a more sincerely individualistic society that recognizes how being able to form deep connections with others and mutually empower one another in the pursuit of the good life is what enables us to become truly self-determining and free.

Democratization is a necessary complement, since it enables us to deliberate about what kind of shared world we want to construct. Not coincidentally, this is one of the reasons why hyper-possessive individualists like neoliberals are so wary of democracy.

Cunningham spends much of his book applying Macphersons thinking to contemporary issues, from neoliberalism to feminist and racial justice struggles. He rightly chides Macpherson for endorsing the aims of the civil rights and feminist movements without taking up the issues they raised an unfortunate omission since both would have leavened Macphersons analysis of possessive individualism.

For instance, Domenic Losurdo points out that Lockes arguments for possessive individualism werent just central to justifying capitalist coercion at home (the argument is well summarized by my late friend Connor OCallaghan); they animated his denigration of Indigenous peoples labor as inefficient and his argument that they had no claim to the land theyd inhabited for centuries. Far better for them to be replaced by hardworking, industrious white settlers who would actually make good use of it.

One of the most interesting sections of Cunninghams book is where he extends Macphersons analysis to the topic of neoliberalism. Plenty of classical and egalitarian liberals still held to humanistic ideals of fairness and moral equality that made them skeptical of extending the logic of possessive individualism to all areas of life. Some liberal thinkers like Mill even reached the conclusion that liberalism and capitalism were fundamentally incompatible. Neoliberal thinkers had no such misgivings: they crafted a pure market theory, Cunningham argues, that reduced the liberal ideal to what was required by capital. Macpherson died in 1987, during the glory days of the Reagan and Thatcherite counterrevolutions. He was deeply anxious about their assaults on the welfare state and democratic rule, arguing strenuously against figures like Milton Friedman that neoliberalism wasnt in keeping with either justice or human nature.

Here I think we should part ways with both Macpherson and Cunningham. Neoliberalism is intriguing precisely because it is the historical moment that capitalisms defenders realized possessive individualism didnt reflect human nature. Most of us dont think of ourselves (and dont want to think of ourselves) as disconnected, sybaritic machines jostling with each other, eager to transform our very personalities into social capital.

Recognizing this reality, and wanting to turbocharge the markets colonization of all spheres of life, neoliberals tried to both insulate capitalism from democratic pressures and build institutions that could remold people in the image of possessive individualism. Simultaneously, they sought to graft their ideas onto the institutions of the US-led international order, forever banishing the specter of social democracy, much less socialism.

Their project was magnificently successful for a time, and only recently have we seen widespread revolt against the effort to cram the square peg of humanity into the round hole of hyper-possessive individualism. Whether this will end with a revived left-wing politics or an even worse reactionary explosion remains an open question. But Macphersons democratic socialist visioncan inspire us to think more comprehensively about the ideologicalzigzags of capitalismsdefenders and the positive elements of liberalism that can be extracted from its contradictory legacy.

Continued here:
CB Macpherson Wanted a Socialism That Didn't Lose Sight of the Individual - Jacobin magazine

There is an old saying that tells an eternal truth: History repeats itself and those who dont understand that are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

This piece of wisdom really rings true in our present political arena. Some in the Democratic Party have taken a sharp turn to the left, endorsing their new brand of democratic socialism and railing against the capitalism that has made our country the strongest, most successful nation in the history of the world.

Support for this political doctrine has been especially strong amongst our young people. They seem clearly drawn to the promises of free stuff, and have little or no understanding of the fact that nothing is free; someone must pay for it all. Also, they have lived in a time of relative peace and prosperity. Few have had any firsthand experience with the horrors that socialism/communism have brought to our world.

Are they being taught about these things in school?

Also, contrary to what the news media and some people say, our country, our form of government and capitalism is superior to any other system in the world. Thats why everyone wants to come here. And we are not a bad country. We are a good country, a country that has made mistakes, but we always try to do whats right in the end.

When I was young and searching for my political identity, I studied and compared different forms of government and partisan ideologies. I made a point of reading our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, our Bill of Rights and the Communist Manifesto. What I learned from them forever shaped my thinking.

The documents read like point and then counterpoint. The Communist Manifesto would decree something. And the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights would prohibit that same thing.

Our Constitution was written in 1787 and the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848, only about 60 years apart. The same ideas and methods for enslaving people have been around for centuries. Technology changes but government and human nature dont. Our Founding Fathers and their parents and grandparents lived under these forms of oppression. They understood how they worked and what their end results were. So they wrote our founding documents to protect the newly founded republic and their descendants from its tyranny.

Socialism has been around since the beginning of government and has been reinvented an untold number of times, but always with the same results: oppression, misery, death and destruction. Venezuela is the most recent and visible example. It went from the third richest country in the world to an economic and social basket case in 20 years.

In 1921 Adolf Hitler was elected chairman of the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany. Under his guidance, it eventually morphed into the Nazi Party that started World War II and killed 73 million people.

More than 100 million people have died in the last century in China, the old Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the name of socialism/communism. And hundreds of millions more people have suffered from starvation and torture. These countries are now considered Communist.

Communism is just a different form of socialism and socialism almost always turns into communism.

Now we are facing another new brand of socialism fueled by the unproven and exaggerated fear of man-caused climate change and environmental disaster. Operating under the United Nations, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is making rules and laws that affect the whole world. The UNFCCC is made up of almost 200 countries, most of which are dictatorships, communist- and socialist-led countries, and monarchies. Most are labeled as poor developing countries.

The United States and a small number of countries are categorized as developed countries. Under the rules of the organization, developed countries are called upon to provide new and additional financial resources to meet the costs that developing countries incur while trying to meet environmental standards set by the UNFCCC. What a scam. The countries that get the money help determine how much money they get and what they have to do to get it.

Also, its common knowledge that little of the money sent to third world countries ever makes it past the corrupt political leaders. U.S. taxpayers will be financing a huge part of this scheme, but will have very little say over the situation.

Winston Churchill, one of the most admired leaders in the 20th century, once said: Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. We must learn from history and reject any brand of socialism.

Dugger retired as a journeyman carpenter from Clearwater Paper. He lives in Lewiston.

Excerpt from:
History should teach each generation the horrors of socialism - Lewiston Morning Tribune

Those behind the recent coup in the National Clarion Cycling Club (Keir Hardies cycling club jettisons socialism, 14 June) have, like so many others nowadays, misunderstood the concept of inclusion, treating it like a mantra to be trotted out without actually thinking. Inclusion can only be invoked in order to remove irrelevant obstacles to joining an organisation.

For almost all organisations, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and many other attributes are irrelevant, so they should not be an obstacle. Not so when it comes to political leanings in the context of an overtly political cycling club. One might as well try to persuade the Spurs supporters club to admit a card-carrying Arsenal fan. Those who are so unaware of the current political situation as to think socialism irrelevant should do the decent thing, leave the Clarion and form their own club, to which they would then be free to invite whoever they wish.Jim GrozierBrighton & Hove Clarion Cycling Club

Many years ago, I joined the National Clarion Cycling Club because it was a socialist organisation. I didnt expect to talk about the theories of Marx and Engels while out on club runs, or have lengthy discussions on dialectical materialism at the weekly club night. What I did expect, and I was not disappointed, was a comradeship of cyclists who were interested in their fellow human beings and whose behaviour, based on the principles they held, would provide something far more meaningful than a mere love of cycling.

The Clarion Cycling Club and the wider Clarion movement helped to make history. In the days when the working classes were overworked and underpaid, Clarion men and women were in the forefront of those who expounded the theories for a new way of life and who helped to bring about the material benefits we enjoy today. They dared to dream of a new society, a socialist society.

I was secretary of the National Clarion Cycling Club for three years until 2006, when I helped to set up a new organisation, the National Clarion Cycling Club 1895, to protect the founders commitment to combine the pleasures of cycling with the propaganda of socialism. The Clarion ideal that socialism is the hope of the world has survived for more than 125 years and the link between cycling and socialism will, for some at least, remain unbroken.Charles JepsonSecretary, National Clarion CC 1895

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Clarion call from cyclists to carry on the fight for socialism on two wheels - The Guardian