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I certainly didnt expect to spend the start of 2020 wading through nearly 700 pages about the 1892 Hamburg cholera epidemic, but Im glad I did. Death in Hamburg, British historian Richard J. Evans social history of the epidemic, is a page-turner, his passion for the topic nothing short of infectious.

At the time it was published in 1987, the contemporary parallel was the spread of HIV-AIDS. The parallels with our sorry times are, if anything, more direct. Its a tale of official indifference, denial, opportunism by the wealthy and callousness towards the masses.

It is also the story of how a disease brought about a profound political and economic upheaval, such that up until WWI, the history of the city was measured before and after the epidemic. Upended particularly was the relationship between social classes the old rulers being discredited and those previously sidelined decisively entering the stage. The epidemic, in other words, changed everything.

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Cholera is caused by bacteria that grow on marine animals which, when they get into the water supply and are consumed by humans, cause violent diarrhoea, which can lead to death in as little as 24 hours. It is a horrible fate, like a thousand devils ... pulling at ones innards or perhaps sawing ones body in half at the same time, as Evans elsewhere describes it.

The disease killed 10,000 of Hamburgs 800,000 inhabitants in just over six weeks during August and September 1892. Around half of those affected died, many before they could receive medical attention.

Several factors led to the bacteria entering the citys water supply. One was their arrival on a migrant train from Russia, and the unsanitary disposal of waste from overcrowded migrant accommodation. Another was the drought of 1892, which enabled the bacteria to travel further upstream in the river Elbe (from which Hamburgs water supply was sourced) than they would have otherwise. But the most important was the most scandalous: neglect on the part of the citys authorities to construct a water purification system in advance of the epidemic.

Following a 1873 cholera outbreak, the Hamburg Medical Board pressed for a filtration system for the citys water supply. Eight years later, the Citizens Assembly agreed in principle, but fears about possible incursions on the interests of the wealthy, especially within the Property Owners Association, which was well represented in the Citizens Assembly, derailed the project.

Ultimately, priority was given to projects that furthered the citys prestige rather than helped its residents, such as, the building of the new Town Hall , a grandiose Renaissance edifice designed ... to provide a symbolic reaffirmation of the waning power of the City Fathers.

This reflected the politics of the city: economics ruled. The largest European seaport and the fourth richest in the world at the time, Hamburg was controlled by an oligarchy of wealthy merchants, who dominated the citys administration and appointed all its senior officials including medical and public health officers. It was a bastion of laissez-faire liberalism, where trade was paramount.

This largely explained the authorities disastrous response. When the first cholera-like cases were noted, the official reaction was denial. When the outbreak could no longer be denied, they dragged their feet implementing measures to stop contagion, prioritising their commercial interests over lives.

Robert Koch, a prominent microbiologist and advocate of the (now accepted) contagionist theory of disease, was sent to Hamburg by the German central government to take control of the outbreak. But he first had to wage a political battle against the Hamburg establishment, which favoured the prevailing miasma theory. This posited that disease was the product of a cloud-like miasma that rose up from the ground, particularly where conditions were dirty, an explanation preferred in Hamburg, not for its scientific merit, but because it meant blame could be laid at the feet of lazy, unclean and irresponsible poor people rather than the city authorities.

Koch insisted on a variety of measures including the imposition of quarantine, disinfection and cleaning of public places and homes, the distribution of free, uncontaminated water and a public information campaign about how to stop the spread which Hamburgs officials only begrudgingly agreed to implement.

Even then, health was far from their first priority. Mass dissemination of disease control information, for example, was not implemented until a whole week after it was agreed to. In addition to being deadly, this delay was political. Not possessing the popular support needed to carry out the task itself, the Senate was forced to swallow its pride and call on the only force that did: the local branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

But days were allowed to pass before the party was contacted, as Evans argues likely so that the distribution would take place on the next available Sunday (28 August) and so avoid any disruption of work, with its consequent loss of profit to the employers. Had the distribution taken place on the 26th or 27th, thousands of Social Democratic party workers overwhelmingly manual labourers would have had to take time off work and because at the request of the authorities, their bosses wouldnt have been able to penalise them for it. This would have saved lives, but at the cost of all-important profits.

The same logic applied in the treatment of the many migrants in Hamburg, at the time an entry point for western Europe; thousands were temporarily housed in the city. Concerned not to be held financially responsible for them in the event of quarantine measures being imposed, the citys authorities rushed to give clean bills of health to the migrant ships waiting to leave, despite being aware that cholera had infected the city. This not only killed many passengers, it also spread the infection to other parts of Europe and the US.

As the traditional rulers of Hamburg were increasingly discredited through repeated episodes like this, the previously shunned and ostracised Social Democrats were able to gain a greater following. The Hamburg branch of the party was conservative even by the reformist Social Democratic Partys standards, but it was nevertheless able to connect with the popular anger created by the epidemic.

On 4 November, the party held nine simultaneous mass meetings, which attracted a combined attendance of 30,000 according to the bourgeois press at the time. All had a common theme, wrote Evans, that the epidemic had been caused by the incompetence and greed of the Hamburg Senate. Speakers agitated for greater health care, public sanitation and an extension of suffrage to undermine the power of the merchants.

The Social Democrats were pushing on an open door the poor were affected by cholera more acutely than the wealthy. In part this was because of the crowded and filthy conditions workers and the poor were compelled to live in. But, more importantly, wealth provided protection from the disease. The wealthy had the ability to read and therefore take note of public notices, the means to flee the city and access to servants with time to boil water and sanitise their houses for them. For Hamburgs poor, most of the necessary sanitary measures were simply not practical, even if they were made aware of them.

Workers and the poor were also the most hard hit by the economic effects of the epidemic, especially unemployment. Thousands were suddenly without work, and remained so months later. In January 1893, 18,000 workers were registered as looking for work on the docks; fewer than 5,000 were successful. In the same month, 70 workers occupied the city engineers department demanding jobs, and the mounted police were called to quell a riot outside a labour exchange.

While on the one hand dismissing the unemployment problem as Social Democratic bluster, the wealthy also self-servingly invoked it as a reason to roll back health measures and get the economy back to normal. Supposed concern on the part of the Chamber of Commerce for the very many groups affected by redundancies and dismissals featured prominently in its campaign to remove quarantine regulations and restore manufacturing and trade.

In the epidemics aftermath, the level of popular anger meant the ruling class had no choice but to offer reforms of various sorts, particularly in housing, planning and public sanitation. A further motivation was concern that the city might be taken over by the German central government and lose its self-governing status, so calamitous was the perception (and reality) of the Hamburg authorities mishandling of the epidemic.

But as 1892 gradually receded into history and the threat of absorption into greater Germany subsided, these reform efforts quickly petered out. Unfortunately, the Social Democrats the only force in Hamburg that could have forced the authorities hand and successfully pushed for real gains for workers were unwilling to lead the necessary social rebellion.

Their organising efforts later in the epidemic, honourable though they were, were largely in response to the radicalism of the bourgeois press in the face of official incompetence. Left to its own devices, the party had tended more to embrace the spirit of social unity and cooperation, and in so doing prove its loyalty to the state it claimed to oppose.

Indeed, the editors of the partys Hamburg publication, the Hamburger Echo, not only refused to publish correspondence critical of the authorities in relation to the epidemic; they voluntarily passed it on to the police. They also warned the police about actions by unemployed workers that they suspected, partly because they were organised by competing syndicalists, might become unruly.

The whole episode was largely seen as a dress rehearsal for 1914, when the party leadership more dramatically proved its loyalty to the state by betraying its principles and supporting the war effort at the outbreak of world war.

It took a major strike by dock workers in 1896 to renew the drive to action and win real reforms. The strike involved more than 16,000 port workers and lasted for nearly three months. Despite Social Democratic efforts to bring it to an end and its eventual defeat, the strike aroused enormous sympathy and led to real improvements in the living conditions of Hamburgs poorest workers. The actions of mostly unorganised casual labourers had achieved what none of the organised political forces had been able to.

Nevertheless, as Evans points out, the transformation that the epidemic brought in the citys official politics was reflected in the fact that all the citys Reichstag seats were won by the Social Democrats in the 1893 national elections, and they made such gains in local elections that in 1906 the citys ruling Senate changed the voting qualifications to reduce the chances of a Social Democratic takeover. Prior to this the party had enjoyed no official representation at all.

The great cities of the industrial age, Evans notes in his conclusion, are so advanced in the complexity and fragility of their existence that even relatively small-scale disasters can plunge them into a state of chaos and helplessness. Indeed, Hamburg was an advanced city that took pride in its independence and was widely considered modern and civilised. It was run by upstanding captains of industry who considered themselves superior to most. Yet thousands died when cholera arrived in 1892, not because the disease could not be prevented, but because the commercial interests that dominated the city administration resisted the disruption to business and trade that was required to prevent it.

This tragedy is playing out again, 130 years later. In societies much better placed to avoid such human suffering, hundreds of thousands are needlessly suffering and dying. In 1892, those responsible paid a high political price. Lets hope they do again.

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Socialism, capitalism, and cholera in 19th-century Hamburg - Red Flag

First Minister Mark Drakeford. Picture from a Welsh Government video.

The First Minister has said that Welsh nationalism is an inherently right-wing creed and that people must choose between it and socialism.

Speaking to Nick Robinson on Radio 4, Mark Drakeford was quizzed on whether independence for Wales would be worthwhile in order to avoid Conservative UK Governments.

Have you never thought, over the years, the decades since, been tempted to think maybe we have a real chance of achieving the socialism we want in Wales by being nationalist? Nick Robinson asked.

Margaret Thatcher was in power for all that time as heavy industry was being run down if not destroyed, even now is there not a bit of you that thinks we could have avoided dominance by an English Tory party?

Mark Drakeford replied that hes never been attracted by nationalism.

In the end, I think its an inherently right-wing creed that operates by persuading people that they are because they are against what somebody else is, he said. And I think in the end that is a deeply unattractive creed.

Rhodri [Morgan, the former First Minister] used to say that Margaret was the greatest recruiting sergeant for devolution. But if you try and work out why people in Wales rejected devolution so strongly in 1979 and were willing by a small margin to endorse it in 1997 it was the experience of those long years of Thatcherism.

And for me, devolution is the best of both worlds. It allows us to remain part of the United Kingdom and draw on the strength of being part of that collective whole. But it puts decisions about what happens in Wales in the hands of people who live in Wales.

Im a fierce supporter of devolution. But I also want Wales to be part of the wider collective in which we have that big insurance policy which the United Kingdom provides in which we pool our resources and we redistribute them out to where the need is greatest.

Accident

Mark Drakeford said that he had grown up in the 60s in the Carmarthen area during the time of Plaid Cymru leader Gwynfor Evans victory and had chosen very early to be a socialist instead of a nationalist.

The start of almost every day of my school life was people bring in roadsigns that they had collected overnight, and depositing them in different rooms in the school, he said.

But it meant that I had to face very early on really the choice between whether you were a nationalist or you were a socialist. And by the time I was about 14 I had already decided that I was a socialist.

That the accident of geography, the chance of birth that youre born in ones particular spot on the planet, is less important much as being Welsh matters to me, and it matters to me deeply in terms of the language and the history and the culture and so on.

But in the end, the interests of working people in Carmarthen are the same as the interests of working people in Canterbury, or other parts of the United Kingdom, and thats a more important bond.

Rules

Nick Robinson asked the First Minister about his decision to move out of lockstep with the UK Government on how the lockdown was enforced in Wales, including different rules on travel away from home.

I agree that that is at the more vivid end of the differences between us, he said. We have made a very firm decision here that we ask people to stay home and if they leave home, if theyre able to, they stay local.

And local is very important to us because we think its a very important tool in the armoury to stop the spread of the virus. The people who come across our border may not have heard, because they arent focussed on what is happening in Wales, that things are different here.

So using our motorway signs to make sure that people understand the rules and that theyre in a part of the United Kingdom where that rule happens to be different was I thought just a sensible way of making sure that people understood the position that they would be in.

Our police are regularly having to stop cars that are travelling to second homes and explain to them that thats not an essential journey, under our regulations, and persuade people to go home. And once youve explained to people what the rules in Wales are, theyre very happy to very willing to follow the rules.

Different

He said that the only thing he and Boris Johnson had in common was that they had both learnt Latin, and he said he would have a go and see where it takes us.

I want a relationship of respect with any Prime Minister, he said. Were very, very different people. Its almost impossible to think of people who are more different.

The Prime Minister a very English figure, public school, all of those sorts of things, and Im a Welsh-speaking Welshman from west Wales.

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Nationalism 'inherently right-wing' and incompatible with socialism, First Minister says - Nation.Cymru

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TRENTON, NJ In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, which seems like 15 years ago, we were told to self-quarantine. The reason given was that our hospital system could not handle a massive influx of COVID-19 patients. We were all going to sacrifice a few weeks out of our lives in order to make sure everyone who gets sick can get the quality medical care they need. By all indications, and by Governor Phil Murphys own admission, the curve has been flattened. Hospitals beds are freeing up, less people are sick, less people are getting infected and less people are dying. Now, the message from Murphy and other socialist governors across the country is that flattening is the curve, but now that isnt good enough. We need to find a cure. We need to eradicate a disease that will probably not be eradicated by human intervention in the next few years. Thats the where Murphy moved the goalposts in the past two weeks after New Jersey flattened the curve like a champ.

Treatment options have improved. We have drugs like hydroxychloroquine when given at the onset has proven helpful in preventing serious cases. In mid-stage, we now have remdesivir, which is helping those patients and in critical stages, we are growing our supplies of convalescent plasma.

Murphy and other governors are tightening the screws of oppression. Murphy keeps moving the goal post and now, more than ever, we dont need more government, we need more people back at work, out of their homes and living their lives. COVID-19 will always be there. Just like many other incurable diseases, cancer, AIDS, HIV, hepatitis, herpes, leukemia, muscular dystrophy, parkinsons disease and the list goes on. Some have vaccinations, some dont. Most have a responsible treatment plan that can limit their effect and prolong lives. Theres no cure for the common cold. Its a fact of life, but now the government, if it really wants to do its job should focus on treatment and vaccines, not quarantine, that will eventually kill more people than the disease itself as mental health problems increase, suicide and financial ruin.

We dont want your stimulus. We dont want your checks. We want to get back to work to Keep America Great.

Governor Murphy has not laid out a clear plan and he needs to do it now. Not tomorrow. Not in 15 days. Not in 30 days. Hes going to have an all-out rebellion on his hands in the very near future, because we all know how the stories end for socialist dictators. Not well. Hes had his 60 days of socialism, hes been supreme commander. Now its time to come back down to reality Philly boy, because word on the street in New Jersey is that most people are losing their patience and would take the chance with the virus than be faced with personal financial ruin which is what you are now doing. Find planexecute the plan. Americans dont run and hide. It might be in the fabric of some in our country, but the majority of Americans are fighters. Well fight COVID-19. Well fight to defend the constitution of the United States. Socialist play hour is over. Youve had your fun.

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How Quickly Flattening The Curve Has Turned into Socialism in New Jersey - Shore News Magazine

Review of The Socialist Challenge Today by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin with Stephen Maher (Haymarket Books, 2020).

Its never easy being a socialist. But the Left has lost some particularly gut-wrenching battles recently. Though Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders succeeded in raising political expectations and reviving a socialist left, in their respective countries and beyond, their losses have left activists shell-shocked and searching for answers.

For those trying to understand how we got here, and where we need to go, The Socialist Challenge Today (Haymarket 2020) is an essential starting point. Rejecting false optimism of any kind, the book is helpful precisely because it explains why its so hard to be a socialist. By soberly identifying the obstacles to anti-capitalist transformation, it provides socialists a strategic road map to victory.

The book begins with a whirlwind history of the socialist movement. Our current crisis, the authors argue, reflects the limitations of the twentieth centurys two principal Left strategies: social democracy and Leninism.

Leninism had many commendable qualities, including (at its best) a focus on organized struggle against the capitalist class, a commitment to building working-class unity across national borders, and a recognition that socialist economic planning requires taking capital away from capital. Much of this was outweighed, however, by the horrors of Stalinism and a tendency to overgeneralize socialist strategy from the specifics of the Russian experience. Democratic socialism today should therefore encompass all that was positive about the communist vision, while rejecting its anti-democratic practices as well as the unjustified belief that an insurrection to smash the state is feasible in advanced capitalist democracies.

But with the legacy of 1917 on its last legs, the central challenge for socialists today is how to avoid a different pitfall that leftists have also fallen into over the last century: social democratization.

From the early twentieth century onwards, the labor movements successful fight for the vote and other democratic rights produced a paradoxical tendency for mass workers organizations and particularly their leaderships to become incorporated into the capitalist status quo. This became clear in 1914, when socialist leaders throughout Europe lined up behind their countries rulers when world war was declared.

Over the following decades, collaboration with the powers-that-be continued to crowd out class struggle. Inside trade unions and socialist parties across the world, efforts to build up the capacities of rank-and-file workers and organize the broader working class fell by the wayside.

Faced with the impasse of social democracy and communism, political currents emerged in the 1970s that sought to find a new way, one that avoided the weaknesses of both. For these leftists within social-democratic parties, and thinkers such as Andr Gorz, Tony Benn, Ralph Miliband, and Nicolas Poulantzas, it was necessary and possible to fight against capitalists not only in the streets and workplaces, but also within the state.

Unfortunately, these democratic-socialist challengers did not sufficiently overcome prevailing leaders and traditions in time to effectively confront the international neoliberal offensive begun in the 1980s. The results are well known: unions were busted, the welfare state was rolled back, work became more precarious, and working-class communities became more atomized and demoralized.

Over the past four decades of retreat, social movements have periodically erupted against war, racial and gender oppression, globalization, and environmental degradation. Yet without the power of strong unions or the cohering force of socialist parties, most of these protests have come and gone without either winning their demands or significantly changing the balance of forces between us and the billionaires.

Adapting itself to this movement cycle, much of a marginalized and anarchist-tinged left dropped electoral politics all together. The new mantra was change the world without taking power. Ignoring the capitalist state, unfortunately, proved to be an ineffective way to overcome it. With this kind of movementism at an impasse, the stage was set for a new approach.

Following the Great Recession and the subsequent worldwide eruption of anti-austerity street protests, occupations, and upheavals in 2011, radicals finally began to turn from protest to politics. The Socialist Challenge Today argues that left politics since 2014 has been defined by the shift in opposition to capitalist globalization from the streets to the state. Over this remarkably short period, the Left has broken out of decades of social marginalization and in-the-streets-only politics, to become a serious contender for governmental power.

Class politics has returned to the political mainstream a major historic development likely to pay dividends in the years and decades to come. But as British union leader Andrew Murray notes, this new politics is generally more class-focused than class-rooted, since it has not emerged from the organic institutions of the class-in-itself. In other words, although todays Left seeks to polarize workers against capitalists, it still lacks deep links to working-class organizations and community networks.

Building such roots has been particularly difficult because of organized labors retreat over the past decades. With union density and strike rates at historic lows in the anglophone world, the democratic-socialist insurgency has been forced to fight the billionaires with one hand tied behind its back.

Faced with this contradictory context, The Socialist Challenge Today focuses on the strengths and limitations of three case studies: Syriza in Greece, Corbyn in the United Kingdom, and Sanders in the United States. The authors central thesis is simple: reversing neoliberalism and moving towards socialism requires expanding and transforming working-class organization as well as democratizing the state by encouraging meaningful popular involvement. Without these changes, we cant win.

The experience of Greece is case in point. A wave of explosive strikes, occupations, and protests from 2010 onwards set the stage for Syrizas victory at the polls. Elected in January 2015 with a popular mandate to stop the devastating austerity imposed by the Troika (the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and International Monetary Fund), the party dramatically raised the expectations of Greek workers and the international left. Yet by July of that year, Syrizas top leaders were signing a third memorandum entrenching the very same policies that they had been elected to reverse.

Panitch, Gindin, and Maher argue that framing this simply as a capitulation and betrayal by Alexis Tsipras leadership misses the defeats deeper political roots. Nor was the problem only that Syriza leaders failed to seriously consider a Plan B in which they would reject all austerity measures, leave the eurozone, and adopt an alternate currency. Well before coming to power, the leadership had in practice abandoned its formal commitment to building up working-class capacities:

Little attention was paid to who would be left in the party to act as an organizing cadre in society. The increase in party membership was not at all proportionate to the extent of the electoral breakthrough. Even when new radical activists did join, the leadership generally did very little to support those in the party apparatus who wanted to develop these activists capacities to turn party branches into centers of working-class life and strategically engage with them, preferably in conjunction with the solidarity networks, in planning for alternative forms of production and consumption. All this spoke to how far Syriza still was from having discovered how to escape the limits of social democracy.

Missed opportunities for stimulating and leaning on working-class organizing became particularly acute once Syriza took office. The authors quote Syriza militant Andreas Karitzis, who argued that neither the partys leadership nor, just as importantly, its radical critics delivered concrete plans to mobilize popular energies for the implementation of progressive policies.

Overcoming anti-democratic institutional obstacles required transforming the state by linking it up with, and bolstering, popular initiatives: the dozens of committees that had been formed reproduced vague political confrontations instead of outlining specific implementation plans by sector to overcome obstacles and restructure state functions and institutions with a democratic orientation. Of many such possibilities, the Ministry of Education for instance could have turned schools into community hubs to bolster local activist efforts and provide education or technical training for neighbors as well as parents.

With Greeces mass movements and workers organizations relatively demobilized and with the government isolated internationally due to a significantly weaker relationship of forces abroad it is not surprising that Tsipras eventually bowed to the Troika. Noting this context does not excuse the Syriza leaderships decisions. But it does point us toward a relevant strategic lesson. Winning elections is not enough: to implement its agenda, a Left government has to lean on and encourage mass workers movements. And it has to fight to democratize the state.

There is only so far that socialists can go without militant labor organizations capable of inspiring millions of workers and building a new political common sense on the ground. As The Socialist Challenge Today illustrates, socialists in the United Kingdom were arguing this well before Corbyns 2019 defeat made it abundantly clear.

Though radicals won the top Labour Party leadership in 2015, much of Labours parliamentary wing, local officials, and trade union base remained untransformed. In fact, a recently leaked 850-page report documents how right-wing Labour leaders spent much of the last five years actively seeking to undermine Corbyn from within.

An influx of young members, organized principally around Momentum, admirably pushed in new directions. But the task was a formidable one for relatively inexperienced and unrooted activists. As Salford party member Tom Blackburn argued in 2017, the challenge was to actively cultivate popular support for a radical political alternative, rather than assuming that there is sufficient support already latent, just waiting to be tapped into. Since the commitment to Corbynism was so uneven by generation and region, it would take a lot of patient organizing work to win over the working-class majority.

Initiatives from below and from the Corbyn leadership above were needed to advance this daunting project, likely resulting in a collision with entrenched party officials and moderate Labour MPs. Highlighting the need for clarity and honesty about the scale of the task facing Labours new left, and the nature of that task as well, Blackburn called for reestablishing the Labour Party as a campaigning force in working-class communities, to democratise its policymaking structures, and to bring through the next generation of Labour left cadres, candidates, and activists.

Of the various overlapping reasons why Corbyn lost in late 2019, the absence of a robust workers movement perhaps looms largest. Particularly in the post-industrial regions, decades of defeats and the disappearance of robust Labour Party or union structures left working people too resigned and atomized for Corbyns ambitious message to sufficiently resonate. When knocking on voters doors, volunteers were met with an understandable skepticism that Labour could deliver on its promises. A few short years of internal and external campaigning had proven insufficient to demonstrate a viable alternative:

Labours defeat in 2019 underlined the limits of what could be done without fundamental changes in the party itself, very little of which had been accomplished during the Corbyn years, especially in terms of engaging directly in struggles and activities at the level of the community as well as the workplace, and fostering the social as well as political networks to create links across diverse working class communities and workplaces. Most of the vast increase in membership during the Corbyn years occurred through affiliations at the national level rather than through a local constituency party. And very few of them, including Momentum activists, attended regular local party meetings.

Even had Corbyn won the election, the labor movements weakness and the internal opposition of moderate Labour MPs would have remained daunting hurdles to overcome while battling an immensely powerful capitalist class. As the Greek experience demonstrated, one thing worse than losing an election is winning and being pushed to implement the policies of your opponents.

The resurgent democratic-socialist movement in the United States has reflected the same basic strengths and limitations as its counterparts abroad. Bernie Sanderss runs in 2016 and 2020 have been game-changers for the countrys political culture, marking a dramatic departure from the centrist, pro-corporate liberalism of figures like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Panitch, Gindin, and Maher note that by making class inequality the central theme of a political campaign in a manner designed to span and penetrate race and gender divisions to the end of building a more coherent class force, Bernie has performed a inestimable service to a beleaguered American left.

An elderly Vermont Senator has re-legitimized socialism and reintroduced class politics on a mass scale: Sanders has led the way in creating an opening for the new socialist discourse, as well as in working through his presidential campaign to not just win the election, but also to build a lasting working-class movement. One notable gain has been the explosive growth of Democratic Socialists of America. New DSAers have taken up the task of fighting to transform organized labor, notably by playing key leadership and support roles in many of the teachers strikes since 2018.

To be sure, Bernies campaigns have had significant limitations. The authors, for example, point to Bernies quixotic effort to take back the Democratic Party, which has absorbed energy and resources better used for building up a lasting independent political apparatus. Maintaining our independence from the Democratic establishment, and keeping volunteers organized beyond the electoral cycle, requires strong democratic membership organizations and eventually a party of our own.

Gone to press in January 2020, The Socialist Challenge Today does not directly analyze the reasons for Bernies recent defeat. But its analysis points clearly to the big lesson: absent a revitalized workers movement, it was exceedingly difficult for Bernie to win a national election let alone implement his program if elected. Like in the United Kingdom, too many regions and layers of the working class remain resigned to politics as usual.

Claims that Bernie would have won had he avoided this or that tactical mistake vastly underestimate the strength of our opponents and the need for our side to get much better organized to defeat them. The authors conclude that there is no quick fix for overcoming the sociological unevenness of the current radicalization or for rebuilding a powerful workers movement:

Escaping this crisis of the working class is not primarily a matter of better policies or better tactics. It is primarily an organizational challenge to facilitate new processes of class formation rooted in the multiple dimensions of workers lives that encompass so many identities and communities.

What could this look like going forward? Imagine transforming our unions so that they can lead strikes across the country, successfully organize millions of Amazon, Walmart, and Whole Foods workers, and anchor battles around racial justice, climate change, and housing rights. A revitalized workers movement would be able to actively support, and lean on, hundreds of new elected democratic socialists in local, state, and national offices committed to making tangible improvements in the lives of the working class. Not only would we raise our collective expectations we would finally have the organizational capacity to start turning our dreams into reality.

The Left is caught in an unfortunate catch-22 right now. Though were back in the political mainstream, we arent strong enough yet to win national elections in the United States or the United Kingdom. And as the Greek experience demonstrates, even when sufficiently powerful to get elected, we havent had the capacity to reverse neoliberalism.

These electoral defeats and dashed hopes, in turn, rebound back upon us by demoralizing volunteers, undercutting our momentum, and hindering the project of building a strong left rooted in a revitalized workers movement. Theres a real danger that the limitations of the turn from protest to politics will lead activists to give up hope or look for strategic shortcuts.

Fortunately, theres a way out of this vicious cycle. Adopting the long-view strategy articulated in The Socialist Challenge Today would enable our movement to weather its inevitable ups and downs. Instead of succumbing to despair or throwing the baby out with the bath water after every setback, democratic socialists can continue to build up power by combining class-struggle electoral work and struggles to democratize the state with efforts to expand and transform the labor movement. Its our only viable path to power.

This approach, what the authors call a long war of position in the twenty-first century, is a necessary condition for victory but its certainly not sufficient. Reversing neoliberalism and eventually eliminating capitalism requires more than good ideas and willpower. All sorts of factors outside our control include economic crises, spontaneous strike waves, mass upheavals, and inspiring examples from abroad. Making the most of these openings when they arise, however, requires a clear strategic horizon and a sufficiently strong left to shape the course of events.

Being a socialist is not going to stop being hard anytime soon. Our opponents are too powerful for there to be any surefire recipes for short-term success. But victory is possible if we arm ourselves with the lessons of the past plus a healthy dose of patience and determination.

In the meantime, learn to love the struggle itself. Faced with so much unnecessary suffering and injustice, theres no more meaningful way to spend your time than organizing for radical social transformation. As a young Karl Marx wrote in 1835,

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.

Excerpt from:
Why the Left Keeps Losing and How We Can Win - Jacobin magazine

Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) members drive buses, sell groceries, counsel families, and advocate for tenants. They are students, teachers, plumbers, mechanics, doctors, retirees, and more. A number are considered essential and must stay in dangerous jobs, part of the frontline labor force that is chiefly women, people of color and immigrants. Together with co-workers and comrades, these FSPers are raising necessary demands and fighting for working-class safety and economic security.

In New York City, the virus has killed over 100 transit workers. FSP there produced an online interview about the dangers to healthcare workers who lack adequate protective equipment and work long hours in stressful conditions with little backup.

The party branch followed this by initiating an online petition demanding that elected city leaders provide full emergency protection for all essential workers, regardless of immigration status. The petition also calls for reducing individual work hours with no cut in pay (30 for 40) to reduce stress and potential exposure to the virus while employing more people. And it addressed the need for free healthcare for all and for workers councils with the power to determine how job sites can be run safely.

Battles also erupted over safety at Seattle grocery stores and King County Metro Transit. Transit workers including FSP members circulated an open letter calling for safety gear, physical barriers to protect drivers, and hazard pay. Now with thousands of signers, the letter demands no more management cover-ups of positive Covid-19 tests; 30 for 40; and an end to the race and sex discrimination that make jobs even more dangerous.

Jumping into the fray was Organized Workers for Labor Solidarity (OWLS), a multiracial, cross-union caucus that FSP worked with others to found. OWLS held an online press conference at which workers blasted management for endangering public safety, and then turned up the heat with a May 9 Emergency Motorcade for Workers Rights through downtown Seattle.

The colorful caravan of 60 cars delivered petitions to Metro Transit offices and circled dispute sites like Harborview Medical Center and a QFC grocery, where clerks came outside to cheer. Thumbs up and honks along the route greeted signs declaring No Safety, No Work and defending the right to strike and immigrant rights. A rally with hotel employees concluded the action.

At the San Francisco water utility, plumbing is an area that brings in revenue for the city, and the plumbers are forced to work full-time, unlike other department employees. But they lack safety gear in a job where physical distancing is impossible. The city also classifies plumbers who are in fact permanent as temporary, and they have no safeguards against being fired. Plumber and FSP leader Amy Gray collaborated with co-workers to circulate a petition demanding equal treatment for department workers, a shorter work week, safety gear, and the reclassification of temporary workers as permanent.

In Los Angeles, the End Homelessness Now campaign co-founded by FSP participated with hundreds of tenants rights supporters in a honk-in circling the mayors mansion in a protest of his broken promises to the unhoused.

In Melbourne, Australia, organizers with FSP and its sister organization, Radical Women (RW), cooperated with the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union to mobilize 800 workers to demand job safety at an electronic retailer where an RW member works.

At the University of Sussex in England, lecturer Sam Solomon is organizing with other union members to fight the administrations attempt to use the crisis to permanently lay off low-paid staff and reduce aid for students.

At the same time that FSP tackles hazards and needs on the job, the party is making the case for the socialist feminist change that ultimately is the only solution for workers and the oppressed. Statements and videos have addressed the economics of the pandemic, the unequal effect of the crisis on people of color, and the need to nationalize healthcare and all key industries and services with workers in the drivers seat making the decisions.

In addition to releasing its own position papers and videos, FSP is collaborating with Latin American comrades in the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment to issue statements addressing conditions globally and drawing out the connections among workers of different countries. (RW is also collaborating across borders; see the related editorial Shout out to intrepid women warriors.)

More and more working and oppressed people realize that the only choice now is to step up and push back. Interested readers can find FSPs statements, petitions and videos, plus more information about the party, at socialism.com.

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Educate, agitate and organize: FSP in action during lockdown - Freedom Socialist Party