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In these final days of the 2010s, things are looking rather sunny for the right. Donald Trumps white nationalist crusade and plutocratic cash grab are chugging along steadilyand theres a decent chance itll continue for another half-decade. The Democratic presidential primary is a toxic mess, recently muddied further by the entry of clueless billionaires trying to buy themselves a ticket to the White House. And if a Dem even makes it to the Oval Office, odds are their legislative ambitions will be filibustered into oblivion by a GOP-controlled Senate.

So it might seem odd to argue that one of the defining political stories of the decade has been the rise of robust left-wing politics. But indeed, it has been. And a good way to understand that is to remember what happened in a small park in Manhattan in the early 2010s.

In September 2011, hundreds of radical leftists, inspired in part by the Arab Spring, decided to set up a small encampment in New York Citys financial district with the intention of building a new hyper-democratic society from scratch. Within weeks, Occupy Wall Street encampments sprung up across the nation and inspired protests in hundreds of cities around the world. Occupy sparked a debate about the ways that capitalism undermines and sabotages democracy, and forced elites to think of economic inequity as a moral predicamentall at a time when Barack Obama had won plaudits from economists for shepherding the U.S. out of a dire recession.

But after only a few months, the promise of Occupys voice faded. The leaderless movement lacked a clear purpose and structure, making higher-level organizing difficult. And most major encampments were swept away by winter cold and a coordinated crackdown by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, local police and even some banks. As the camps vanished, so did Occupys power as anything more than a vague objection to the status quo.

Yet today, as we enter the 2020s, many of the ideas that underpinned Occupys call for re-envisioning our political-economic system are taken far more seriously than they were at the beginning of this decade. And thats in no small part because the far left has succeeded by trying a different tack. Serious left-wing players who punch above their weight have emerged in presidential politics, Congress, social movement advocacy, the think tank world, and media offer an increasingly persuasive alternative to neoliberal and center-left thinking, while pulling off electoral upsets and building institutional power.

As the far left has moved from the streets into office buildings, so have its ambitions. The focus has shifted from disruption and changing the conversation from the outside toward an agenda to reshape the world through strategic organizing and an insider approach.

The best starting point for thinking about how left-wing politics have changed over the course of this decade is in fact through an event that took place almost exactly two decades ago when protesters shut down a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization on November 30, 1999. The secretive WTO was a natural target for protest: it had become the most notorious symbol of corporate power run amok among quarters of the left who were skeptical of the belief that there was no alternative to an increasingly merciless model of global capitalism.

The massive protests and civil disobedience, deemed the Battle of Seattle, were organized by people from many quarters of the left, including anarchist activists, NGOs, labor unions, student groups, teachers, and countless other movements. When the disruptions caused the WTO talks to collapse entirely, it was widely hailed as a defining victory for the emerging global justice movement. At a time when socialism was considered profane and many Democrats were effectively compassionate conservatives, the Battle of Seattle represented the potential clout of the far left.

What made the event iconic was the style of protest, which was heavily influenced by anarchist philosophy and tactics. While plans to mobilize in Seattle had happened for months in advance, there was no central coordinator, the disruptions unfolded in an ad hoc manner, groups and individuals maneuvered spontaneously, and communication on the ground was handled democratically. For years afterward, left-wing activists attempted to replicate Seattles organizational modelwhich in many ways mimicked the way people talk and gather on the Internetat meetings of groups like the World Bank, NATO, and the G7.

Occupys brief and brilliant explosion of energy in 2011 was the most powerful iteration of this model of protestand also demonstrated its limits. Occupy teemed with compelling ideas, but its anarchist principles dictated that the movement remain leaderless and take shape through free-forming local assemblies and direct action. Its resistance to institutionalization and ideological clarity made it astonishingly fragileespecially since it required holding public space in the face of attacks from the state.

But many of Occupys ideas about political economy resurfaced in 2015 when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders decided to run in the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton. His campaign, which included staff and supporters who had collaborated during Occupy, was a shocking success: despite unabashedly identifying as a democratic socialist, he gave Clinton, the most dominant non-incumbent candidate in modern history, a serious run for her money during the nomination battle, besting her in 23 states. Bob Master, a founder of the New York Working Families Party, said in 2016 that the Sanders campaign was Occupy Wall Street translated into electoral politics. This is the revolt of the 99 percent.

The success of Sanders campaign proved that a quarter-century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seemed not only possible to talk about socialism againbut that it could be pursued within the two-party system.

Sanderss run pushed the party platform to the left on issues like minimum wage, the war on drugs, and environmental regulation. And his run inspired a host of new left-wing institutions like the Justice Democrats, a political action committee founded by former Sanders staffers whose platform includes Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. In 2018 they helped coordinate democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs stunning defeat of 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley, who was the no. 4 Democrat in the House. Ocasio-Cortezs super-progressive squad in the House (representatives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley) are also all Justice Democrats.

The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a left-wing institution interested in both working as an outside agitator and engaging with the electoral and legislative process, may end up being one of the most consequential developments of the decade. DSA has been around since the 1980s, but only after Sanders run and Trumps victory has it become more than a completely fringe playersince November 2016, DSAs membership has gone from 5,000 to at least 50,000 members and has seen an explosion in chapters across the nation. It does lots of different things, from lobbying for more progressive housing laws to organizing protests to canvassing democratic socialist candidates; in 2018, more than a dozen DSA-backed candidates won their Democratic primaries. DSA is still small, but it shows promise in how deeply organized it is its commitment to democratic decision-making and its devotion to thinking strategically and pragmatically about how to bring to life a utopian society.

On top of all this, theres been a notable rise of the savvy left-wing press and think tanks that have helped mainstream ideas that wouldve seemed outlandish to anyone outside of radical politics until recently. While theres always been an alternative, ultra-progressive press, whats notable about these outfits is how they deliberately seek wide readership and aim to shift the parameters of popular debate. For example, socialist magazines like Jacobin and Current Affairs have garnered a bigger readership during this socialist resurgence in part because they have an interest in making Marxist thinking as accessible as possible to a mass audience through stylish design, jargon-light analysis, and direct engagement with the daily news cycle. Think tanks like Data for Progress and the Peoples Policy Project have quickly established reputations as respectable and rigorous operations for data analysis, polling, and policy papers in a space typically dominated by right-wing or center-left researchers.

Socialists still have very, very minor power in the scheme of national politics, and there are huge limitations to a socialist movement without a strong organized labor movement backing it. But as we enter 2020, the American left has some tangible answers to the perennial question of what is to be done to achieve their worldview.

This is not to say that protest movements, direct action, and civil disobedience are not valuable or that theyve become outdated in some sensefar from it: todays left would be further strengthened by more militant street mobilizations. But they arent sufficient for building a bid for power that can last.

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In the 2010s, America Forgot It Was Terrified of Socialism - VICE

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are two prominent US politicians who describe themselves as democratic socialists. They love to tout the wonders of their ideology, but when pressured with evidence of how abhorrent the living conditions in socialist countries like Venezuela is, they point to countries like Sweden as 'real' socialist countries.

So are Scandinavian countries truly socialist? Evidence points to no. Media specialist Billy Aouste discusses the latest publication by The Heartland Institute, "Debunking the Scandinavian Socialism Myth: An Evaluation of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden." Author and Heartland editor Chris Talgo discusses the history of how the countries evolved their socialist programs from the end of World War II into a free market one near the turn of the century. Instead of wandering down the dark path these countries pulled themselves out of, the US should continue the course and not fall to the siren call of socialism.

See the original post:
Podcasts - Debunking the Scandinavian Socialism Myth - The Heartland Institute

Image:Ramona Bluescu

December 22 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of the Romanian socialist state ofNicolae Ceauescu. In a work of memoir, Nachescu recalls growing up under communism and wonders about the world Romanians hoped would follow its fall.

Arad, Romania, June 1982

At the edge of the river the sand turns into mud, seeping between my toes, cooler than the lukewarm water. Its not an unpleasant feeling, its just that who knows what creatures might be living under the greenish fluid. And its slippery. I can fall if Im not careful.

Dont go too far.

My grandmother has taken refuge under a tree.

I want to recreate that world just as I remember it. Werent we already living on the highest peaks of progress? In the Golden Age?

By now the opaque water is up to my knees. I comb it with my fingers, which look like white fish swimming close to the surface. I dont like that thought. But the water is warm, and my feet are sinking deeper into the mud now. Two older kids are playing with a ball. One of them pretends to hit the other, who catches the ball at the last moment. They might lose it in the river if theyre not careful. Last year an older boy who was in seventh grade drowned. I can see people crossing the drawbridge and the rusty pontoons that were once painted red and blue.

I want to swim a little, but my grandmother wont let me.

Dont go any farther!

Theres panic in her voice. Im now up to my hips, and instead of swimming, I just crouch in the water, letting it cool my hot shoulders and neck. I move my arms, faking swimming moves, then splash water toward nobody. I wish someone else was here, but I dont know who. Lately Ive been feeling like this, an unfocused yearning, an emptiness in my arms and chest, as if Im trying to embrace wisps of smoke.

Thats it, please come out now.

One last dip, then I stand up and walk toward the shore. Buni is pleased, I can tell.

Here, let me help you.

The bra that I have to wear this yeartwo triangles of polyester hanging from strings tied around my neck and flat chesthas shifted, and my grandmother puts it back into place. She touches my shoulders with her rough fingers, and I wince. On the back of my neck and arms, my skin feels tight. Her fingertips are rough, blackened by small cuts and nicks from a lifetime of peeling and cutting vegetables, as well as small pin pricks from all the needlework shes done.

Lets go get langoi, she says.

The line in front of the kiosk is short. Two women work inside, stretching the dough and then dropping it into the boiling oil. It must be very hot in there.

Nothing but the thinnest piece of paper separates the piping hot fried dough from my fingertips.

Let me hold it for you.

Maybe it doesnt burn her old skin as much. She blows air over the lango before giving it to me, still hot, but now I can start eating it if Im careful. In the middle, it has air bubbles caught in the golden crisp dough.

My grandmother wants to buy some for my parents so we get back in line. It is longer now, and I can feel the sun burning on my shoulders as the string tying my swimsuit bra rubs against the back of my neck.

But the line isnt moving. One of the women sticks her head out of the kiosk.

Weve run out of fuel, she says. We might get more later.

Some people seem to grumble, but most just walk away.

I should have gotten more the first time around, my grandmother says. Oh well, maybe theyll bring more fuel later.

We walk down crowded alleys paved with yellow granite toward the swimming pools, where my parents are. The rectangular bricks, arranged in a basket weave pattern, are hot, but theres thin grass growing between them thats cool enough to walk on.

My father is lying on his back reading a novel, while my mother is chatting with someone two blankets down. I dont want to talk to anybody. My mother says goodbye, then turns toward me and pulls the strings of my bra.

Ouch!

Her fingernails are short, with a pointy tip that she has recently filed. They scratch my shoulders right where it aches the most.

You just got sunburn.

Shes not impressed that it hurts.

We had some langoi and we wanted to bring some back, but they ran out of fuel.

My father puts the book down on his belly, then looks at us, shielding his eyes.

The restaurant should be open by now. Maybe we should go get lunch?

My father lifts himself heavily off the blanket, his belly hanging over his swimsuit, which has a fake belt and golden buckle.

My brother, Teo, comes back from the small kids swimming pool. My mom is trying to offer him a sandwich and grapes from her beach bag, but hes not interested.

Lets go to the big kids pool, he says. Hes really excited.

Hes not allowed in that pool unless Im with him. I can swim in the adult pool if my father is there to watch me. But Ill go with Teo. Id like to run into classmates or friends, somebody my age, like Emilia or Laura, even though I know they go to the thermal baths in Vlaicu, where they live. Not Emilia though, she told us she cant go anywhere this weekend because she has her period. I wonder what thats like, though it cant be fun if you cant go to the swimming pool. It would be very nice to run into Radu, who was in my class until fourth grade, but whom I rarely see, despite living in the same neighborhood.

I spend the next two hours diving and jumping into the crowded pool, challenging Teo and one of his friends to all sorts of competitions that involve swimming around other kids and even one parent whos frowning at us. This pool is for kids, I want to tell him, but I dont. In the end he leaves.

We had some langoi and we wanted to bring some back, but they ran out of fuel.

In the evening, the straps of my summer dress feel scratchy but I can finally take off the swimsuit bra.

Youre all red, youll get a good tan, my mother says.

Ill put some yogurt on your skin when we get home, it should make you feel better, says my grandmother.

Like always after swimming, the memory of water lingers in my body, which feels heavier and lighter at the same time, my muscles sore, my joints loose. Toes and knees and elbows feel like one fluid whole. I can fall asleep any minute, melt into a puddle by the side of the road.

The pontoon bridge sways as throngs of people cross it at the same time. I hang on to the ropes on the side, watching the bend in the river in the distance.

On the other side, people are watching sculptors working in the park on blocks of white stone. Despite being tired and hungry, we walk around the parks newly paved paths.

Is that marble? I ask my father.

Limestone. Its a summer school organized by City Hall, and the statues will stay here in the park.

My father always speaks as if there are many people listening.

A young man in an undershirt, a red kerchief on his forehead, is chiseling away at a square block. Theres dust all around him, on his bare arms and his face, which is too wide, with blue eyes almost sunken under a wide forehead. When he lifts his right arm, I can see his shoulder musclethe poster in the biology lab flashes in front of my eyes, was that the deltoid? then the bone when he lowers it again. He stops to light up a cigarette; he smokes filterless Carpaithe stuff that stinksunlike my father, who smokes Kent. I want the man to keep working, so I can keep watching his shoulder.

My parents and Teo are walking away.

And what does this statue represent?

My voice comes out whiny, high pitched, pretentious. I want to sound older.

He turns around and takes a good look at me before answering, and is it just me or does his gaze linger on my chest and shoulders, where the straps of my purposeless bra have left pale lines?

Nothing, he answers in the end, in a voice that sounds sad and gentle.

I try to return his gaze, and I succeed for a moment, then I lower my eyes. My parents have walked away.

Great! I scream. This statue represents nothing!

I run toward my mother.

Ileana! my mother exclaims, louder than necessary, so that the young man can hear her disapproval.

I take my brothers hand and walk behind my parents.

At night, I dream of laying my cheek against a mans shoulder, protective, vulnerable. The next day, during the ten oclock break, blowing bubbles with the pink Balonka bubble gum Emilia shared with me, I tell her and Laura that I spoke with an Older Guy.

Arad, Romania, November 1988

We took too long to get ready, or maybe it was too cold and we didnt really want to leave home. Probably my mother insisted that we still go. She believed that once people decided to do something, they had to go through with it. My father suffered from heart disease and the doctor recommended that he lose some weight. I too felt like I needed some exercise. The previous summer I had jogged, swam, TV exercised, and dieted away twenty-five pounds, which were slowly creeping back. I was my fathers daughter. Not only did I look like him (I frowned often, hoping that people would notice the resemblance), but I shared my fathers love for desserts, midnight treats, and afternoons spent lying comfortably on the couch, reading a novel.

I imagined Florin in a foreign city, walking clean sidewalks under abundant lights, and a pang of envy and painthis would never be my future, I could never go thereshot through my whole body, bringing tears to my eyes.

We hadnt made it even half a mile on the promenade along the river before we contemplated turning back. It was already getting dark, and rumors had it that the park was dangerous at night, that there were thieves and gangs and that someone had been killed the previous year. The park was less than five minutes away from the better neighborhoods of our town, yet the lights didnt work, or kids had thrown rocks at them, or there was another blackout, as so often happened in those days. I was lucky I was with my father, who was six foot three and big. By myself I would have made a dash toward the end of the park, near the apartment buildings where people could hear me in case of need. I mostly avoided being out at night, especially by myself, especially in winter. Winter evenings were cold and dark pretty much everywhere in the late eighties, but at least you were safer if you were at home.

We passed the modernist sculptures made out of white limestonea stylized ancient heros head, a woman in a long dress, a cube balanced on its side. I recalled the earlier summer when we had watched the young artists carving them. I remembered looking forward to our dinner of roasted eggplants, tomatoes, and telemea cheese, the usual summer fare. Now the limestone gleamed in the fading winter light. The river, to our left, exuded its familiar muddy smell, now subdued by the cold.

We walked in silence. I always thought I had a lot of things to talk about with my father, but when we spent time together, which wasnt often, I rarely knew what to tell him, or worried that I might say something he wouldnt like.

This time he was the one who broke the silence.

Are you and Florin Popa good friends?

I tried to remember what my father could have known. In sixth grade I had had a crush on himbut then, in sixth grade Id had crushes on almost every guy who spoke to me. Florin was now in Munich, and according to my classmate Eli, who knew him from the polo team, hed called his parentsour neighbors from the first floorto tell them he was alright and had managed to cross from Hungary into Austria, then West Germany. He wanted to go to Paris, that was his dream. He hadnt told anybody about his plans, not even his parents (Especially not his parents! Can you imagine? Eli had said during the ten oclock break, rounding her eyes and mouth in amazement) so that when they would inevitably be interrogated by the police, they could honestly say that they didnt know anything about their sons plans. For me and Eli, Florin, whom we had watched at the swimming pool, had now become a romantic hero. In the past few days Id imagined him in a foreign city, walking clean sidewalks under abundant lights, among smartly dressed crowds, and a pang of envy and painthis would never be my future, I could never go there, never be or belong thereshot through my whole body, bringing tears to my eyes.

We didnt talk very much. You know, just saying Hi. Hes older, I said to my father.

You have to be careful. Some people spend too much time gossiping. Its never a good idea.

Did that mean that we would be interrogated too? It didnt make any sense. Florin had left by himself. I hadnt even talked to him in years.

I hated it when my father spoke to me like that, moralizing, as if I were a child. He was a great storyteller, who could make the ordinary meaningful. He could walk into a room and fill it with his voice, his energy. At house parties, he enjoyed singing with his coworkers and college friends. While my mother and grandmother gathered dirty dishes and brought out coffee and desserts over which they had labored for daysincluding waiting in line for hours for rationed sugar and buttermy father would tell his stories ending in a punch line, a comment, or a moral that I would sometimes think about for days. Yet when he talked to me, all I got was dull advice in a slow, ponderous voice.

Once he came home from a late meeting and told us about how the secretary of the county Party organization had concluded an hour-long speech: Comrade Ceauescus thinking is solid, its so solid, its like concrete. My father repeated that a few times, shaking his head.

Thats what he said: its like concrete.

And you didnt laugh? I asked.

Of course he didnt laugh, nobody ever did.

Once my father told us about how the secretary of the county Party organization had concluded a speech, Comrade Ceauescus thinking is so solid, its like concrete. Of course he didnt laugh, nobody ever did.

It was dark now. We had a choice, to continue walking on the alle by the river and go past the sports complex where Id played tennis a few summers before, or turn right, walk up the marble steps, and walk back home on the promenade. It was too cold to sit and rest on a bench, not that wed overexerted ourselves.

Are we going any farther?

Maybe we should just go home, he said.

On the other side of the promenade, the buildings were dark. Maybe he anticipated that I would complain about the blackout.

You know, your mother told me that you havent been helping lately. Whats going on with your room?

Its just my desk. I have a lot of homework, because of the math tutors.

While other kids like Eli could have posters in their rooms, I had my grandmothers needlepoint in a golden frame on the wall, and my mothers knickknacks, including a set for serving mulled plum brandy (yes, plum brandy!), on the bookshelves. And I had better grades than Eli.

You know, when I was in high school, only the kids who failed had tutors, the ones who had to repeat a class.

He just liked saying that. He had of course been very good at math when he was in high school, although he didnt need that anymore. He was now technical manager of the factory where he had once gotten his first job as an engineer, right out of college.

I guess its for the entrance exam?

There would be seven to nine applicants for each spot at the engineering school my parents insisted I choose. That wasnt bad: there were usually more than twenty applicants per opening in the medical or law school. All my classmates went to multiple tutors, and some parents could afford college professors in Timisoara.

Then he added, almost as an afterthought: You should also join the Party while youre in college.

I didnt say anything, and it was understood that I agreed. I was going to study engineering in college because my parents thought it was a good idea. I didnt like math or physics, but that didnt matter. I liked reading novels. My parents kept repeating the factual statement that literature teachers were usually sent to teach in the countryside, while engineers could get decent jobs in cities. I could still read novels as much as I wanted in my free time, just like my father did.

Jokes and stories aside, I sense that my father had somehow shared that night what he really thought about socialism and the future and our place in both.

Nor did it matter that I didnt believe in the Romanian Communist Party anymore. I had of course joined all of the Party-run organizations for school children: the Fatherland Hawks (preschool and first grade), the Pioneers (second through eighth grade), the Union of Communist Youth (in high school). Schools organized the initiation ceremonies, and everyone played along. But joining the Party was different. You had to apply, get character references, and if accepted it was an honor and a smart career move. But if the Party was so great, why did we have all the blackouts? No heat in winter? Why was food rationed? Why were all the television shows, newspapers, and radio broadcasts about Ceauescu, the genius of the Carpathians? And why did everybody lie all the time and pretend everything was normal? I could foresee an added layer of boredom and lies caked on the already existing, rather thick ones covering everything I did: that I actually wanted to be an engineer, that I cared about math, that I was my parents dutiful daughter. There was a meager joy in all this, knowing what my father wanted and that I could please him. I could make a career as an engineer and a Party member, I thought. The Party and the lies were never going to end. They would go on in perpetuity, dulling every moment of joy for the rest of my life.

Within a year, though, and before I even graduated high school, the Romanian Communist Party didnt exist anymore. Six years later, when I was about to graduate college (I ended up studying languages after all), my fathers heart finally gave up. Now, after almost three decades, on a different continent where I went to make a new life, I dont know why I remember that particular evening. It could be that, after all, I didnt spend that much time with my father during those years. Or possibly, jokes and stories aside, I sense that he had somehow shared that night what he really thought about socialism and the future and our place in both. At that moment, as the limestone statues reflected the dying light of the day, it seemed like my father, whom I trusted to make decisions for meand Romanian socialism itself, which I associated with blackouts, cold, and lieswould last forever, unchanged.

Arad, Romania, July 2016

Its a windy day, and the blue paint theyre spraying in the street blows in all directions.

Theyre wasting the paint, Sean, my husband, says.

Continued here:
Walks in the Park: On the Foreignness of the Socialist Past - Boston Review

Sen. Cory Booker is down in the 2020 polls and yet has long seemed poised for a breakout moment. He is more qualified than some frontrunners, quite popular among Democratic activists, and the last black candidate with a decent shot after Sen. Kamala Harriss withdrawal. Hes an acceptable choice to many people across the partys big ideological divide.

Hes also been somewhat difficult to peg on the ideological spectrum. Slates Jordan Weissman, who plans to vote for either Sens. Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, recently called him the best moderate in the field. But is calling him a moderate right? Its true that Booker has a record of centrism on some economic issues, particularly relating to education and finance, but he also co-sponsored the Green New Deal resolution. Hes the most progressive candidate in the field on criminal justice, and a vegan who recently proposed legislation aimed at shuttering factory farms.

I decided to call up Booker and find out what he really believes. But instead of talking about policy specifics, I engaged Booker on his big-picture view of the world. Does he think liberal democracy is under threat in America? What does he make of the rise of socialism on the American left? Are critics right that Democrats are focusing on identity politics too much? How does his veganism fit into his broader worldview?

Booker described a vision centered on the political value of justice, drawing on both Jesse Jacksons 1988 presidential run and Obamas 2008 victory as models. Booker emphasized what he terms the intersectionality of all life: the idea that humans of all backgrounds, as well as non-human animals, are bound up in webs of mutual interdependence.

We share a common destiny, Booker says. You cannot have one sector of our country held down without the whole country being lowered as a result.

What follows is a transcript of our conversation, which ranges from problems of short-termism in American capitalism to W.E.B. DuBoiss psychological wage to philosopher Peter Singers theory of the expanding moral circle. Its been edited for length and clarity.

I want to start with a question thats been bothering me for a while: Can we talk about the GOP as a party thats committed to core basic values like democracy, individual rights, and the rule of law?

I have been very confused by the modern Republican Party, especially now in the time of Donald Trump, where a lot of the values that they speak to seem to be being butchered by the policies that are coming out, and even the rhetoric now thats coming out. It is very difficult for me to even think of the Republican Party as having any kind of governing philosophy that is informing policy and decisions, when in the time of Trump, it just seems to be more transactional and corrupted by the interests of large concentrations of wealth.

The problem is that this kind of thing tends toward some kind of autocratization, right? Look at a country like Hungary, where you have institutionalized corruption as a means of propping up a ruling elite. How should we think about similar threats to American democracy?

I have deep, deep concerns about the shifting toward oligarchic power, especially after decisions like Citizens United that are allowing even more exertion of power and corruption within our political system. We see that these corrupting forces are already having a pretty significant effect on our democracy.

The powerful corporate interests now are actually undermining the very ideals of capitalism and entrepreneurship. New business starts are going down in our country; short-termism within our [economy] is allowing forces of greed to even undermine the interests of capital allocation.

We have now seen an economy where someone who is being born now has less of a chance to make it. Ninety percent of baby boomers did better economically than their parents. Now its down to 50-50 for a millennial.

So can you see why a lot of people in my generation are starting to become more sympathetic to socialism?

Gosh, I know that and we could discuss the word socialism if you want.

As a guy that lives in a black and brown community, the framing from my culture and my community is just one of justice.

From my perspective, one of the biggest economic instruments of suppression in our country has been the criminal justice system that Michelle Alexander rightfully calls the new Jim Crow. Blacks are stunningly disempowered in the electoral system. And voting rights and criminal justice issues, all of these things are also wound into economic rights. Villanova researchers did a study about America having 20 percent less poverty [had mass incarceration not occurred].

These are justice issues [more] than the issues that often are bandied about by political elites.

These are issues of economic justice, of environmental injustice, of criminal injustice, of equal access to health care, to education, disparate treatment in everything from school discipline to hiring practices in this country.

This justice framing is really interesting to me, especially as a counterpoint to language like socialism. It seems to sidestep or play into depending on who youre talking to a style of politics thats been derisively referred to as identity politics by critics on both the left and the right.

What do you make of the discourse surrounding identity politics and its role in the current Democratic coalition?

My talking about justice is not in any way a politics of identity. Its a politics of trying to create again this understanding that were all in this together that you cannot have a nation thats [divided] along racial lines and think that you are going to have a nation of strength economically, morally, and competitively on a global context. Were a nation that does best when we tear down walls of division or inequity and build larger coalitions.

The Democratic Party is a party that does best when it revives what Jesse Jackson called the Rainbow Coalition, what many people now call the Obama Coalition.

So you reject the argument that focusing on and highlighting the marginalization of minority groups is divisive in any way? Because a lot of the critics say, Well, you cant have the shared politics of national unity that youre describing so long as you continue to talk about specific groups through the lens of their particular, non-universal experiences.

Well, I think that the capacity of our country to understand that addressing injustice and inequity in certain racial groups is a national cause. I just think we underestimate that, and our history speaks to a different understanding. You had the abolitionist movement based upon this ideal that the dignity and humanity of black Americans who were slaves cannot be denied without it somehow affecting the humanity of white Americans. You had incredible sacrifices by Quakers who were willing to put their very lives at risk to help build coalitions with black slaves and escaped slaves to build the Underground Railroad.

Were not defined by the wretchedness and bigotry and hate that weve seen in every chapter of our politics. We are always defined, I think, by the willingness and ability of our country to create coalitions to overcome that. I think that you do not make this a better America when you try to sweep injustices, whether they be racial or religious injustices or gender-based injustice, under the rug. I think you actually weaken America when you dont speak to that truth.

I think a lot about W.E.B. Du Boiss concept of the psychological wage of whiteness. You know, the theory that people derive psychological satisfaction and benefits from being members of the dominant group. How do you deal with that as a problem out there among the electorate? Or do you think thats the wrong way to think about things?

I think its just too simplistic of a description of our society as a whole. It seals people within permanent boxes of judgment, as opposed to understanding that we are all people in evolution.

You and I, right now, are two men having this conversation. [One could] say the totality of our being is binary, either we are sexist or we are not. Thats opposed to recognizing that you and I must wrestle with the sexism that is within the larger society consistently, or we are contributing to it, or complacent in the face of it.

People are not binary. People are all always in development, always in struggle. We are a nation always struggling to manifest the best of our ideals.

[House representative and civil rights icon] John Lewis once told me the story of a man who actually beat him up during the civil rights movement coming to his office with his child and asking him for forgiveness. Lewis told me that he did so, and how important it is to extend to people forgiveness in a recognition of their humanity and their ability when they are willing to own up to their injustice, their ability to grow and how, in many ways, his humanity and that mans humanity were interwoven and interdependent.

This is why I caution the Democratic Party, who wants to put every Trump voter in some kind of binary box and cast a condemnation upon them, as opposed to recognizing not just their dignity and humanity, but how our well-being as a country is interdependent, and how we need each other. As we descend as a culture into deeper and deeper tribalism, where we hate each other just because we vote differently, that in itself could be our demise unless we start finding ways to reignite in our culture those ideals of grace and forgiveness and truth telling. That is ultimately the pathway for our salvation.

When you talk about that, I actually think of a concept developed by one of your constituents, the Princeton philosopher Peter Singer and his idea of the expanding moral circle, that over the course of time we can open and broaden our minds through moral improvement as not just individuals, but as a collective, to giving status and standing to different groups.

Now, youre a vegan. Do you think, as Singer does, that the next frontier in our fight for equality is the moral status of animals and improving them on a social level?

Your animal question is so ... God, I would love to do a whole [interview] on this.

I dont think people understand how destructive corporate multinational animal agriculture is to our environment. Its the main reason for rainforest destruction and the poisoning of our water systems. The way we are doing it is so divorced from our heritage of animal agriculture in this country.

Its not just these massive CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations, a.k.a. factory farms] and the treatment of animals, which would shock the [conscience] of anybody in our country. But its also our own survival as a species being deeply compromised by the way that animal agriculture has now evolved into corporate culture, affecting everything from fast fashion all the way to the corporate monopolies that are driving down relative wages in this country.

I believe that our food systems can be made more robust, that farmers can be the pathway out of climate crisis that theres so many ways to do this right that can elevate human well-being with a consciousness toward our treatment of animals and our treatment of the environment as a whole.

There are two issues here that are sort of connected because theyre about the moral frontiers of our politics. One is about the way that we treat each other and the way that hostile partisanship has taken hold over our minds, and the other about how we can expand our circle of moral concern to nonhuman animals.

What can we do concretely as a polity to deal with these kinds of issues of moral status and consideration for each other and other beings? Is it just a rhetorical thing? From our leaders, I mean, not just civic organizations. Or are there policies that can change the very way that we think about our moral world?

Its not either-or, its all of the above. Ive seen this on multiple occasions: The more we know, the better we do.

[Think of] the concept of bycatch in the world of fishing, these massive nets picking, killing, and casting back into the sea 50 percent of what they pick up. The CAFOs right now in places like Duplin County [in North Carolina], which are causing out-of-control respiratory diseases and cancers in low-income communities. I mean, the more we know, the more these practices are exposed, the better we will do. So yeah, leaders that can help to expand understanding are often the leaders that help better motivate change.

I just think that all of the things that you talked about really keep speaking towards not just the intersectionality of humans, but the intersectionality of every aspect of our planet. If we are going to sustain ourselves as a species and this is both our economic prosperity as well as our very lives and existence we have to start having policies that are far more conscious to that intersectionality of life itself.

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Cory Booker on socialism, identity politics, and animal rights - Vox.com

The fight against communal reaction in India is the fight for socialism 21 December 2019

India has been convulsed by a growing wave of mass protests after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Narendra Modi government rammed its Hindu supremacist-motivated Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA) into law on December 12.

The CAA makes religion a criterion in determining citizenship for the first time in the history of independent India. It is an important step toward realizing the avowed central aim of the BJP and its ideological mentor, the shadowy, fascistic RSSto transform India into a Hindu rashtra or state, in which the Muslim minority is tolerated, but only in so far as it accepts Hindu supremacy.

Muslim students and youth have been in the forefront of the anti-CAA protests. But the protests have cut across religious-sectarian, ethnic, and caste divides, and engulfed all parts of India.

The demonstrations against the citizenship law follow a wave of strikes in India and Sri Lanka that are part of a global upsurge of the class struggle, spanning from the Americas to Europe, Asia and Africa.

A shaken BJP government has responded to the anti-CAA protests with mass repression. At least six people were killed Friday in clashes with security forces in northern India. In large swathes of the country, including all of Uttar Pradesh (population 230 million) and Karnataka (65 million) and parts of the national capital Delhi, the government has invoked Section 144 of the Criminal Code, making all gatherings of more than four people illegal. Tens of millions have been deprived of internet and, in some cases, cell phone service.

Under the CAA, all peopleexcept Muslimswho migrated to India from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh before 2015 are effectively granted citizenship. This is preparatory to an even more sinister communal scheme: forcing all of Indias 1.3 billion people to prove to the authorities satisfaction that they are entitled to Indian citizenship.

Passage of the CAA makes clear that the sole purpose of the BJPs National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be to intimidate, harass and victimize Muslimsfor they, and they alone, will be under threat of being declared stateless, thereby losing all citizenship rights and subject to detention and expulsion.

The CAA and NRC are only the latest in a long series of communalist provocations mounted by the BJP government.

On August 5, it illegally abrogated the unique semi-autonomous status of Indias lone Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, and placed the region under permanent central government control. This constitutional coup has been enforced by the deployment of tens of thousands of additional security forces, the detention without charge of thousands, and a months-long suspension of cellphone and internet access.

Bowing to the demands of the Modi government and the RSS, the Supreme Court ruled last month that a Hindu temple must be built where the Babri Masjid (mosque) stood in Ayodhya, until Hindu fanatics demolished it in 1992, at the instigation of the BJP leadership.

Among masses of workers, students and professionals in IndiaMuslim and Hindu alikethere is anger and revulsion at what secular democratic India has become and a determination to resist.

But to prevail they must be armed with an internationalist and socialist strategy. The bourgeoisies turn to ultra-nationalism, fascism, and authoritarianism can only be successfully countered through the independent political mobilization of the working class against the capitalist elite and all its political representatives and in the struggle for workers power.

The Modi government and its communalist offensive are the Indian expression of a universal phenomenon.

Under conditions of ever deepening social inequality, growing global class struggle, and a frenzied inter-capitalist struggle for markets, resources and geostrategic advantage, the bourgeoisie everywhere is turning to authoritarian methods of rule and cultivating ultra-right and fascist forces.

This is true of the imperialist democracies, no less than countries of belated capitalist development like India, Turkey or Brazil.

In the US, Trump is mounting a sweeping assault on democratic rights and, with his appeals to the military and police and rabid denunciations of socialism, is seeking to develop a fascist movement.

French President Emmanuel Macron has moved to rehabilitate the Vichy Nazi collaborator Marshal Ptain and repeatedly ordered the violent repression of social opposition in order to impose massive social cuts and revive aggressive French militarism. In Germany, the intelligence agencies and ruling elite have promoted the neo-Nazi AfD, making it the official opposition in the Reichstag.

Modi was propelled to power by Indian big business in 2014 in order to more aggressively assert its predatory interests on the world stage and force through socially incendiary pro-investor policies.

During the first six months of the BJPs second term, it has simultaneously accelerated its drive to implement the supremacist agenda of the Hindu right and impose neo-liberal reform, including through a fresh wave of privatizations and massive tax cuts for big business.

Modi and his chief henchman, Home Minster Amit Shah, are acutely aware that the much vaunted rising capitalist India is a social powder keg with a lit fuse. They are whipping up anti-Muslim communalism with the aim of mobilizing their Hindu fascist base as shock troops against an increasingly restive and militant working class, and channeling the social tensions produced by rapacious social inequality and a rapidly deteriorating economy behind reaction and a bellicose foreign policy.

In India, as around the world, it is the working classglobally united by capitalist production and increasingly self-conscious of its international characterthat constitutes the social base for a counter-offensive against capitalist reaction, authoritarianism and war. But the immense social power of the working class can be mobilized only in so far as it organizes itself separately and in opposition to all the political representatives of the bourgeoisie.

The Congress Party, till relatively recently the bourgeoisies premier party of government, and a cavalcade of regional-chauvinist and caste-ist parties are seeking to both politically exploit and contain the mass opposition to the Modi government.

An especially reprehensible and dangerous role is being played by the twin Stalinist parliamentary parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI).

Today, as in 1992 after the razing of the Babri Masjid; in 2002 after Modi presided over the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom; and in 2014 when Modi came to power at the head of the first-ever majority BJP government, the Stalinists rail against Hindu fascism. But they do so only as part of their efforts to chain the working class to the parties and institutions of the Indian bourgeoisie and its state.

In the name of fighting the Hindu right, the Stalinists have systematically suppressed the class struggle and helped implement the Indian bourgeoisies neo-liberal agenda. This is epitomized by their role in bringing to power and sustaining in office a succession of rightwing, pro-US governments, most of them Congress-led, between 1989 and 2008. Moreover, in the states where they have held office, West Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura, the Stalinists have implemented what they themselves term pro-investor polices.

Just as the pro-war, pro-austerity measures of the establishment left parties in the advanced capitalist countries, helped pave the way for the growth of the far-right; so the Stalinists, by politically suppressing the working class, have fertilized the political soil for the growth of communal reaction.

Thus, after three decades in which the Stalinists claimed that defeating the Hindu right was their main objective and guiding principle, Modi and his BJP wield unprecedented power

Today, the CPM and CPI are once again calling for unity with the big business Congress Party to defend democracy and secularism. No matter that the Congress has a notorious record of aiding and abetting the Hindu right. Just last month, in an action supported by the CPM, it ensured the coming to power of a coalition government in Maharashtra, Indias second most populous state, led by the Shiv Sena, a Hindu supremacist and Mahratta-chauvinist party that until just weeks ago was the BJPs closest ally.

The Stalinists urge working people to look to the Supreme Court and other decrepit right-wing institutions of the capitalist state to oppose the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Modi regime. In reality, the Supreme Court has for decades greenlighted one communalist and authoritarian outrage after another.

The Stalinists justify their attempt to harness the working class to the Indian state with the claim that the Indian Republic and its institutions are the product of the mass anti-imperialist struggle that convulsed South Asia during the first half of the 20th century.

This is a lie. India was founded on the suppression of the revolutionary strivings of South Asias workers and toilers though a sordid deal between British imperialism and its local bourgeois clients. Betraying its own program for a united democratic secular India, the Indian National Congress joined hands with South Asias departing British colonial overlords and the Muslim League to implement the communal partition of South Asia, into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India.

The Stalinists did so because they and their Indian bourgeois masters were anxious to get their hands on the British colonial capitalist state machine under conditions of a growing upsurge of the working class. They were organically incapable and hostile to the only means of countering the divide-and-rule tactics of the British and their Hindu and Muslim communalist alliesthe mobilization of South Asias Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh workers and toilers based on an appeal to their common class interests in the struggle against imperialism, landlordism and capitalist exploitation.

The immediate impact of Partition was mass communal violence that left more than a million dead and uprooted close to 20 million from their homes. But more than that, it created a reactionary communal state system that has served imperialism as the means for continuing to dominate the region; given rise to reactionary inter-state rivalries that have led to numerous wars and today threaten the region with a conflict fought with nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan; and has been used by South Asias reactionary ruling elites to incite communalism and divide the masses.

Seventy-two years on, the final unraveling of the nominally secular and supposedly non-communal state that emerged with Indian independence is yet another demonstration, in the negative, of the urgency of Indias workers making the strategy of Permanent Revolution, which animated the 1917 October revolution in Russia, the axis of their struggle. In countries of belated capitalist development, not a single fundamental task of the democratic revolution can be secured without a socialist revolution led by the working class in alliance with the rural toilers.

The struggle against communal reaction must be animated by a socialist internationalist perspective. The fight to unite Indias workers and toilers across all sectarian and caste lines goes hand in hand with the fight to unite their struggles with those of workers around the world.

The defence of democratic rights is inseparable from the fight to mobilize the working class against social inequality, precarious employment, the Indian bourgeoisies military-strategic alliance with Washington, and its massive military build-up

It requires the intensification of class struggle. The working class must forge its political independence in opposition to the bourgeoisie and all its political representatives, and rally the rural poor and oppressed mases behind it in the struggle for a workers and peasants government, as part of the development of an international working-class offensive against world capitalism and imperialist war.

We urge all Indian workers, students and others who want to take up this fight to contact the World Socialist Web Site and International Committee of the Fourth International.

Keith Jones

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

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The fight against communal reaction in India is the fight for socialism - World Socialist Web Site