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John McDonnell: 2019 manifesto not radical enough for today

The Labour Party is currently embroiled in an identity crisis following its drubbing at England's local elections. Hartlepool was the party's biggest blow, one of the last remaining parts of its once unbreakable Red Wall. Many noted it had already been lost in the 2019 general election, however, with the Brexit Party having split the Conservative Party vote.

Regardless of this, those who rose through the ranks of Labour before Sir Keir Starmer claimed that the loss in Hartlepool - as well as councils across England - proved that the electorate wanted the radical policies of former leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Most notably, John McDonnell, former Shadow Chancellor, in the aftermath of the election results demanded Sir Keir reevaluate his centrist position.

He and Richard Burgon, the Leeds MP, along with Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Ian Mearns and Pauline Bryan - all Corbynites - set out a radical "alternative Queen's Speech" on Labour List, outlining their plans to implement a socialist agenda in Westminster and the country at large.

They spoke of how the coronavirus had exposed "inequality and insecurity" and that a "socialist government will build a fairer, healthier, and greener Britain, and a more just and peaceful world" was needed in order to counter this.

Their declaration went on to promise NHS workers a 15 percent pay rise, as well as "ensuring all public service workers get an increase well-above inflation, after a decade of pay freezes and pay caps".

A "real living wage bill" would be brought in to "end the indignity of poverty pay in all sectors of the economy" because "for too long there has been abundance for those in the boardroom, but only scraps for the rest".

Mr McDonnell and Mr Burgon's plans, they claim, would also eradicate poverty by 2030.

Most controversially given Sir Keir's opposition to the Government's corporation tax hike in its March Budget, the group says they will introduce a "finance bill [that] will ensure that those companies that profited during the pandemic pay a windfall tax on any excess profits".

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They will also take aim at Britain's highest earners with increases in income tax, as well as working with the US President Joe Biden to push a "global minimum rate of corporation tax and clamp down on tax havens and avoidance more widely".

Interestingly, they say they will secure reductions in the working week over time and consult on four new bank holidays.

Many other bills concerning society and the economy are floated.

It is unclear how Mr McDonnell and his allies plan on paying for it other than tax hikes.

Emblematic of Mr Corbyn's years, the group's vision comes to a close on plans to reinvigorate and empower Britain's trade unions.

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While Mr McDonnell said Sir Keir should be given a chance, he condemned his move to sack Angela Rayner as party chair.

On this, Diane Abbott, former Shadow Home Secretary, accused the leader of trying to make Ms Rayner "carry for the can" for the results.

Paul Embery, a trade unionist and Labour member, told Express.co.uk that the actions of Labour's Corbynite left amounted to "betrayal".

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown, the former Labour Prime Minister, recently told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the party could not return to Mr Corbyn's policies if it wanted to deal with the "seismic changes" facing society, including widening social inequalities and nationalism.

He said: "Keir Starmer and his leadership have got to deal with all these changes.

"So, the Labour Party has got to change, we can never have the same policies as 1997 they cant be the same policies as 2019.

"He has got to be given the space and the power and the leaders working with him to change the Labour Party, so that it can deal with these fundamental challenges that have been aggravated by Covid."

Yet after this, Mr McDonnell suggested Mr Burgon and the sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey should be promoted to Sir Keir's frontbench, telling LBC radio: "Becky Long-Bailey was in my team and she was one of the sharpest I'd ever met."

On Mr Burgon, he added: "If you look at what he did on the justice brief he was excellent.

"I think he was one of the sharpest Shadow Cabinet ministers that we had and he was good on his feet on the floor of the house.

"I know there's been denigration in the media but they're not necessarily our best friends.

"People underestimate him - a good, young lawyer, knows his stuff. I think held the Government to account."

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John McDonnell and Corbynite allies outline plan to force socialism on UK - Express

Peel away the rubble of Labours Hartlepool by-election defeat and crushing local election losses. Tune out the leaderships kneejerk, factional-driven meltdown. Beyond the dismay and disunity, a series of Labour success stories are emerging as beacons of hope and possibility.

First, the mayoral victories, 11 of the 13 posts contested. In the Welsh Senedd, Labour first minister Mark Drakeford piled 10,000 votes onto his own majority with the party holding power against expectations. And across the country, Labour councils have bucked the downward national trend: holding seats, even increasing vote shares. Each win has its own story. But one clear pattern is that Labour gained when it pitched left and championed people-driven, community wealth-building policies.

This style of politics has many labels: guerrilla localism, municipal socialism or economic democracy. Matthew Brown, Prestons Labour city council leader who helmed this pioneering grassroots model in the region (and held all 10 council seats last week), calls it extreme common sense. Paul Dennett, Labour city mayor of Salford where the party gained seats last week, describes such a policy path assensible socialism.

Whatever you call it, the approach has meant that, in the face of severe government-imposed austerity cuts piled upon decades of regional neglect, local politicians can pull on power levers they do still control like procurement budgets or property assets to redirect wealth back into local communities, secure jobs and services and build financial resilience. And it works.

In Preston, the council engaged the hospital, university and colleges, and the city council itself, to shift procurement funding to local suppliers, which has redirected 700m back into the local economy since 2013. Contracts cover anything from lunches to legal services and construction projects. Add to that the flourishing worker co-operatives and push for real living wages and Preston was by 2017 the most improved city in a Demos survey, and in 2020 had its highest employment rate in 15 years.

In Salford, left-led Labour has gone strong on social and council housing as a foil to rip-off rents and unattainable private ownership. Welsh Labour is pushing a radical policy platform anchored in real living wages for care workers and thousands of jobs in low-carbon housebuilding. Across Preston, Liverpool and the Wirral, plans for a joint regional community bank have popular support. And metro-mayor Andy Burnham, having promised to re-regulate Manchesters decimated bus service, is now posting about plans for aregion-wide living wageand an NHS-stylesocial care service.

Those engaged in community wealth-building projects will tell you its a long, slow process. But as one Labour organiser in Salford told me: Weve taken the time to explain ourselves with intellectual honesty and vigour. It is hard work, but it pays off because people can tell when its real.

This style of politics runs in contrast to what several Labour organisers across the country described as the phoney, robotic, patronising flag-waving vibes coming off the current Labour leadership. Where Labour is making local electoral gains, local leaders focus on building an inclusive sense of community anchored in shared values, tackling shared hardships and reviving places in a way that makes people feel proud to live in them.

This style of left politics is currently picking up steam. The Democracy Collaborative think tank, which developed the community wealth-building concept, is fielding calls from Labour councillors and party members nationwide. Prestons Mathew Brown has just co-authored Paint Your Town Red with writer and historian Rhian E Jones, explaining how the Preston model works and providing a toolkit for towns that want to reproduce its successes.

With its genesis in Cleveland, Ohio, the model is gaining international traction: proposals pop up in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US where New York City deputy mayor, J Phillip Thompson, speaks of community wealth building asessential to tackling the economic anxietiesthat fuelled the rise of Donald Trump. The model is finding salience in a pandemic that awakened an appetite for collectivism and community purpose, while the Covid relief efforts of local authorities fostered human relationships where there had previously been a faceless town hall.

All of which makes it perplexing that the Labour leadership is so silent on the subject. There is scant curiosity in the mechanisms of community wealth building or its successes. The message coming from Labours helm is that the party wants to listen and learn, but it displays little interest in hearing this language.

As Prestons Matthew Brown notes in Paint Your Town Red: Imagine if every Labour city were setting up its own banks, supporting worker-owned businesses and credit unions? Imagine it. That would be our way of taking back control. What a shame the Labour leadership lacks the imagination to grasp the significance of this story, or make it a cornerstone of its politics.

Originally posted here:
Municipal socialism is winning what a shame the Labour leadership isnt shouting about these success stories - The Independent

In a fundraiser letter, Second-District Republican Marianette Miller-Meeks repeatedly referred to Democrats as Socialists. Miller-Meeks is either very confused or is giving her constituents a bum steer.

Historically, Republicans have used the scary word Socialism, referring to programs that benefit people, dating back to Jim Crow days. They said laws that helped black people vote would cost the taxpayers money because black people would then vote for their own economic interests and they called this a transfer of wealth and Socialism. They also said it about Medicare, Social Security, unemployment compensation programs and the Affordable Care Act, calling the ACA socialized medicine and government takeover of health care.

In the modern era, Republicans use focus groups and professional propagandists to arrive at just the right degrading phrase to make people think programs that will benefit them are scary and will ruin the country.

Other examples of publicly funded programs and institutions that benefit people include the U.S. Post Office, public schools, the G.I. Bill, our military, roads and bridges, and yes, our elected government officials including Ms. Miller-Meeks, whose salary is paid by our taxes. Ms. Miller-Meeks, do you believe you are the recipient of a Socialist system?

All of us no doubt are benefiting from one or more people-oriented programs put in place over the course of our history. We need those programs to improve our lives.

Miller-Meeks is using scare tactics to raise money and spread disinformation. That is unacceptable for a representative of the second district of Iowa.

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Letter to the editor: Miller-Meeks is using scare tactics to raise money - Little Village

As expected, the House Republicans elected Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trumps choice for conference chair, to replace Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY). This means that the four top House Republican leaders Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), Stefanik, and Policy Committee Chair Gary Palmer (R-AL) all voted to overturn Bidens 2020 victory after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Stefanik thanked President Trump for his support, saying he is a critical part of our Republican team. She went on to say that House Republicans are united in our fight to save our country from the radical Socialist Democrat agenda of President Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

The May 14 vote confirmed that the leaders of the current Republican Party are willing to abandon democracy in order to save the country from what they call socialism.

But what Republicans mean when they say socialism is not the political system most countries recognize when they use that word: one in which the people, through their government, own the means of production. What Republicans mean comes from Americas peculiar history after the Civil War, when new national taxation coincided with the expansion of voting to include Black men.

In the years just after the firing stopped, White southerners who hated the idea that Black men could use the vote to protect themselves terrorized their Black neighbors. Pretending to be the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers, they dressed in white robes with hoods to cover their faces and warned formerly enslaved people not to show up at the polls. But in 1870, Congress created the Department of Justice, and President U.S. Grants attorney general set out to destroy the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1871, southern leaders changed their tactics. The same men who had vowed that Black people would never be equal to Whites began to say that their objection to Black voting was not based on race. No, they said, their objection was that Black people were poor and uneducated and would elect lawmakers who promised to give them thingshospitals, and roads, and schoolsthat could be paid for only through tax levies on people with property: White men. In this formulation, voting was not a means to ensuring equality; it was a redistribution of wealth from hardworking White men to African Americans who wanted a handout. Black voting meant socialism, and it would destroy America.

With this argument, northerners who had fought alongside Black colleagues and insisted they must be equal before the law on racial grounds were willing to see Black men kept from the polls. Black voting, which northerners had recognized as key to African Americans being able to protect their interestsand, for that matter, to defend the national government from the former Confederates who still wanted to destroy itslowed. And then it stopped.

The South became a one-party state ruled by a small elite class, defined by White Supremacy, and mired in poverty. For its part, the North also turned on workers, undermining the labor movement and focusing on protecting the new industrial factories whose owners claimed they were the ones driving the economy.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression changed this equation. When the bottom fell out of the economy, Democrats under Franklin Delano Roosevelt transformed the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure. As early as 1937, Republican businessmen and southern Democrats began to talk of coming together to stop what they considered socialism. But most Americans liked this New Deal, and its opponents had little hope of attracting enough voters to stop its expansion.

That equation changed after World War II, when Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower began to use the government to advance racial equality. Trumans 1948 desegregation of the military prompted southern Democrats to form their own short-lived segregationist party. The Supreme Courts 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional enabled opponents of the new government system to tie racism to their cause. They warned that the expanded government meant the expensive protection of Black rights, which cost tax dollars. They argued it was simply a redistribution of wealth, just as their counterparts had done in the Reconstruction South.

With the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, that argument increasingly fed the idea that Black and Brown people were lazy and wanted to receive government handouts rather than work. Businessmen and social traditionalists eager to get rid of the popular New Deal government told voters that government programs to help ordinary Americans were socialism, redistributing money from hardworking White people to lazy people of color. They talked of makers and takers.

To purge the nation of socialism, then, and return it to the preNew Deal government, they set out to limit voting. In 1980, Paul Weyrich, the co-founder of the Heritage Foundation that has designed much of the legislation currently being passed in Republican-dominated states, said I dont want everybody to vote.our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

By 1986, Republicans were talking about cutting down on Black voters through ballot integrity drives. As Democrats sought to expand voting, most notably with the 1993 Motor Voter Act, Republicans began to charge that they were losing elections only because of voter fraud, although experts agree that voter fraud is exceedingly rare and does not change election outcomes. Since then, arguing that they are simply protecting the vote, Republicans have become dependent on ID laws and other voter suppression measures.

But by 2020, it was clear that the Republicans drive to slash the government back to its 1920 form, along with the racism and sexism that had become central to the party to pull voters to their standard, had become so unpopular that it was unlikely they could continue to win elections. And so, Republicans began to say that the United States is not a democracy, as Utah Senator Mike Lee tweeted in October. Democracy isnt the objective, he continued, liberty, peace, and prospe[r]ity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

With the election of Democrat Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with a Democratic Congress, the leadership of the Republican Party has taken the next step. They are rejecting the legitimacy of the election, doubling down on Trumps Big Lie that he won. Claiming to want to combat voter fraud, they are backing bills across the country to suppress Democratic voting, making sure that no one but a Republican can win an election.

Just as White southerners argued after the Civil War, Republican leaders claim to be acting in the best interests of the nation. They are standing firm against the radical Socialist Democrat agenda, making sure that no wealthy persons tax dollars go to schools or roads or social programs.

They are saving America, just as White Supremacists saved the Jim Crow South.

Excerpt from:
Today's Jim Crow America: When a political party abandons democracy to "save" the nation - Milwaukee Independent

The leftist Democratic Socialists of America, which helped congressional star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get elected in 2018, looks to be a big political player again in New York Citys 2021 municipal elections.

The group has not yet endorsed anyone for mayor the top prize in New Yorks June 22 Democratic primaries. But all 51 city council seats are up for grabs this year, and the DSA has members running for six of them including Queens public defender Tiffany Cabn and Brooklyn tenant activist Michael Hollingsworth.

With two state senators and five representatives out of 213 lawmakers, the New York State Legislature already has the countrys largest DSA legislative caucus. These Democrats share a leftist platform that includes guaranteeing housing as a human right and ending mass incarceration

The DSA has upended local politics in this Democratic stronghold, and its wins extend well beyond New York into Virginia, Nevada and beyond. How did socialism jump from the fringes of American politics into its very center?

The DSAs roots trace back to the Socialist Party of America, which was formed in New York in 1901 to promote such issues as establishing an eight-hour workday and public ownership of utilities like water and electricity.

Writer Upton Sinclair, Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger were prominent early members. But many early American socialists were Jews and Eastern European immigrants groups that were considered well outside mainstream white society at the time.

My research as a historian of American socialists finds that early 20th-century socialists found electoral success by running candidates who represented the economic and racial diversity of their communities and championed the issues that mattered to working-class, immigrant constituencies.

In 1918 the heyday of New Yorks socialist caucus, when socialists held 10 of 121 seats in the State House socialist politicians were teachers, settlement house lawyers and union leaders. They proposed New Yorks first birth control bill, allowing advocates to give women educational pamphlets about contraception, and put forward programs to create old-age insurance and rent control.

The Socialist Party began losing members to the growing Communist Party in the 1930s. By the mid-20th century, it had responded to Americans growing anticommunism with a rightward turn. In 1972, party leaders actually renamed the party the Social Democrats, USA because so many people associated the word socialist with Americas great antagonist, the Soviet Union.

Disillusioned, the activist and Marxist professor Michael Harrington left the organization and in 1973 formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which later merged with another leftist group, the New American Movement, to form the Democratic Socialists of America.

Unlike the Socialist Party of America, which was a registered political party and ran candidates on its own ticket, the DSA is a political group. Harrington wanted to create the left wing of the possible within the Democratic Party.

For four decades, DSA members have mostly run in Democratic primaries, attempting to push the party leftward on the Iraq War and NAFTA, for example while endorsing Democratic presidential nominees from Walter Mondale to Barack Obama.

It had some early local successes. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, DSA members were elected to city councils nationwide and won mayoral races in liberal college towns like Berkeley, California; Ithaca, New York; and Burlington, Vermont, where the openly socialist politician Bernie Sanders was mayor from 1981 to 1989.

In 2016, Sanders ran for president. His campaign, coupled with Donald Trumps subsequent victory, created a surge in DSA membership among young voters. The groups median age dropped from 68 in 2013 to 33 by 2017. The DSA now claims over 90,000 dues-paying members, up from 6,000 in 2015.

The DSAs electoral strategies also changed after 2016, partly due to the influx of new members and partly in frustration with mainstream Democratic candidates.

In Democratic primaries across the country, DSA candidates ran to replace older, centrist, white incumbents with young leftists who promised to fight for Medicare for all and to hold elected officials accountable.

It was a winning strategy for the Trump era. Since 2016, DSA-backed candidates have won district attorney races from Philadelphia to Travis County, Texas, and hold four seats in Congress. Forty DSA members sit in 21 state legislatures. DSA members hold five of Chicagos 50 city council seats.

The professional backgrounds of todays DSA legislators resemble those of their forebears. New York State Sen. Jabari Brisport, elected in 2020, was a teacher and tenant organizer. New York State Rep. Phara Souffrant Forrest was previously a tenant organizer and nurse.

The DSAs legislative proposals rent control, free college and reproductive rights are classic socialist issues, updated for the 21st century. The Democratic Party has now embraced many of these proposals, but moderates like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin have not.

As in the past, the DSA tends to back candidates from marginalized groups whether African American, Caribbean, South American or South Asian who reflect the racial makeup of the neighborhoods they represent.

The DSAs growing political profile has caused tensions within the Democratic Party.

Shortly after DSA-backed candidates in March 2021 swept all five leadership positions in the Nevada Democratic Party, many longtime party staffers quit rather than work under the new leftist leadership. But first, according to the Nevada Independent and other local newspapers, the Democratic staffers transferred US$450,000 from the DSA-controlled Nevada Democratic Party coffers into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is controlled by the National Democratic Party.

Some DSA policies that diverge sharply from the Democratic party line such as its support for the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel for its militarized occupation of the Palestinian territories draw fierce criticism from other Democrats.

The DSA has also been accused of having a race problem. Despite running primarily candidates of color, the organizations leadership is largely white and male. Some DSA members say the group silences the concerns and voices of people of color.

After new groups arose within the DSA to recruit more Black leaders, the DSAs national committee announced in February 2021 that it would start an initiative to better attract, mentor and retain people of color.

In the 20th century, American socialism cracked under the weight of infighting and social change. Can the modern DSA survive its 21st-century challenges?

Its next test is in New York City on June 22.

This story has been corrected to accurately reflect Bernie Sanders political identification. Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist and is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, but is not a member of the group.

Original post:
How 'socialism' stopped being a dirty word for some voters and started winning elections across America - The Conversation US