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Over the weekend of June 16, 80 democratic socialist elected officials and their aides from across the country came together for the first U.S. socialist policy conference since the 1980s. The event, titled How We Win: The Democratic Socialist Policy Agenda in Office, was held at the Gallaudet University in Washington, DC and was hosted by Jacobin, The Nation and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Fund, an educational sister 5013 nonprofit of national DSA that is focused on pushing progressive policy, preserving socialist history and supporting left-wingactivism.

The gathering was an in-person continuation of DSA Fund-led How We Win series which explores how democratic socialist lawmakers, DSA chapters and their allies enact public policy to advance the lives of working people. Previous topics have included victories (and some failures) that have come through legislation and referendums such as right-to-counsel in housing, minimum wage increases, paid sick leave and much more. The audience for that educational series was largely made up of progressive activists, whereas this conference was hosted solely for the socialist lawmakers and theirstaff.

As chair of the DSA Fund, Iwas involved in organizing this in-person socialist policy gathering that was partly inspired by the Democratic Agenda conferences hosted by one of DSA predecessorsthe Democratic Socialist Organizing Committeein the early 1980s to build resistance to then-President Ronald Reagansagenda.

Democratic socialists came from nearly 20 states plus the District of Columbia. They were state legislators from New England and the Midwest, county and school board officeholders in the mid-Atlantic, and mayors and city councilors from California to Massachusetts. While DSA hosted ameet-up for elected officials before the organizations national convention in 2019, this was astandalone gathering for elected officials and their staff to focus on public policy around topics such as labor, housing and theenvironment.

The conference also included panels on Socialist in Office formations (formal groupings that coordinate between the DSA chapters and elected officials) and messaging to working-class constituents. The event, which myself and others had first proposed for 2021, was delayed for two years by the Covid-19 pandemic. The inability to meet in-person meant most attendees had only known each other through online interactions. Yet the bond of shared governing experiences fostered areunion-like atmosphere, even if many of the elected officials started outstrangers.

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In addition to Jacobin, The Nation and the DSA Fund, the event was also supported by Local Progressa progressive network of municipal lawmakers including socialistsand the Center for Working Class Politics, aleft-wing think tank whose members gave apresentation on their new report Trumps Kryptonite. That report documented the appeal of working-class elected representatives and found that prioritizing messaging on economic justice, as well as differences with the political establishment, is highly popular withconstituents.

New York Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest reflected on the practical communication advocated by the study, saying dont sleep on turkeys, areference to the tradition of elected officials handing out free food to residents around Thanksgiving. She added: It is critical we provide good constituent services as well as push bigchange.

On opening night, Friday June 16, guests heard remarks from Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and adialogue with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hosted by The Nation contributor John Nichols. Bush thanked the organizers for creating a progressive, democratic socialist and anti-racist community. She also provided guidance for her fellow socialist officeholders about their approach to service: Voters have told me they do not care if you love me or not, just serve me. And Ill say, Actually, thats what youre used to. Youre used to someone doing something for you then moving you out of the way. Next. But thats not who you get when you have folks that actually love humanity. We do not care if you voted for us or not as acondition to whether we helpyou.

The Missouri congresswoman went on to discuss unacceptable aspects of the political status quo such as police killing civilians with impunity while working-class communities receive insufficient funding, the United States supporting the oppression of Palestinians, low worker wages in the face of greedflation, anti-transgender legislation, and the fact that unhoused people are treated as astain when the current system does not allow them access to housing. Reflecting on the Juneteenth weekend, Bush said I refuse to accept the status quo where Juneteenth is afederally celebrated holiday but reparations are anon-starter for the elected officials who will gladly go and attend those Juneteenthparades.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) speaks to conference attendees. (Polina Godz / Jacobin)

Sanders followed and gave some good news, saying that the current U.S. Congress includes far more strong progressives than have existed in the modern history of this country, adding that there was nothing like it when he started his congressional career in 1991. He also discussed the current landscape of the U.S. labor movement, saying we are seeing asignificant growth in the trade union movement It is Starbucks, people at Amazon, [adjuncts] on college campuses, and just today, 97% of UPS [Teamsters], gave the to signal to leadership that they are prepared to strike if they do not get adecent contract. (Many DSA elected officials already have signed onto aStrike Ready pledge initiated by the organization in support of UPS Teamsters.) Sanders then noted the new United Auto Workers rank-and-file leadership was prepared to take on corporate greed in the autoindustry.

The Vermont senator assured attendees youre not the radical, jokingly adding, I dont want to hurt your feelings. He continued: The views that you are expressing about economic justice, social justice, and racial justice, those are the views shared by the majority of the American people. The real radicals out there are the ones who say we need more tax breaks for billionaires, more military spending and that we should ignore climatechange.

Sanders contended that while labels do not matter as much as doing the work of politics and organizing, democratic socialists are special in understanding the long sweep of social change. He told the audience: When we talk about being democratic socialists, we have avision. Its avision that says that every man, woman, and child can have adecent standard of living. That instead of pushing wars, we can use that money to improve life for our people and people all over the world. That human solidarity, bringing people together for common goals to improve life for all, is what we areabout.

The all-day Saturday programming was led by the municipal and state-level legislators. When John Nichols asked during an ice breaker how many panel attendees had joined DSA and the socialist movement since 2016, nearly everyone raised their hands. Two of those in attendance had been delegates at the 2017 DSA convention in Chicago, including Dylan Parker, an elected official in the small Illinois city of Rock Island who joined DSA in 2015. He said: Like many others, Iwas broken hearted after Bernies loss in 2016. However, Ilistened to him and ran for local office in 2017, where Ive served as an Alderperson in Rock Island since. Parker added, reflecting on Sanders legacy: This weekend was apleasant reminder that people just like me, from all across the country, similarly listened to Bernie and are running for local office and winning. Watching the number of socialist elected officials growing in this country is enormously rewarding and empowering. Parker, amember of DSAs National Labor Commission, is one of the socialist officeholders heavily focused on workerpower.

One of the panels focussed on the U.S. labor movement and brought together three city councilorsCarlos Ramirez-Rosa of Chicago, Robin Wonsley of Minneapolis and Ross Grooters of Pleasant Hills, Iowaalong with Chris Townsend, aretired union staffer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Ramirez-Rosa explained how his deep relationships with progressive labor unions in the city, especially the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), helped create the political conditions for awave of left-wing alderpeople to win office earlier this year, and for CTU alum Brandon Johnson to win the mayors race. After starting out as alonely left-wing voice on the Chicago City Council in 2015, Ramirez-Rosa is now considered one of its most powerful members. Wonsley said that her movement experience included organizing workers through the Fight for 15, and she highlighted the importance of socialists being abridge between organized labor and non-union workers. Along with serving as an Iowa councilor, Grooters is also an active rank-and-file union railroad worker, which he said allows him to provide real world labor perspective and knowledge while governingand highlights the importance of having actual workers, not just allies, in elected office. Townsend brought decades of experience dealing with recalcitrant union leaders. He advised the officeholders to hold labor leaderships feet to the fire and to meet with rank-and-file workers directly by visiting work sites to learn about their issues and advocate for them through their positions of power. The panel concluded with agroup discussion including practical ideas such as sharing template resolutions in solidarity with unionized Starbucks workers.

When we talk about being democratic socialists, we have a vision." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

While conference attendees discussed the challenges of legislating and how to build better governing practicesas the labor panel illustratedthe event also served as aspace to collaborate and build relationships with fellow elected socialists. Many did not have Socialist in Office formations in their home districts, much less other socialist colleagues. Justin Farmer, amember of Town Council in Hamden, CT, reflected: This conference was restorative, Ive been elected for 6years and this was the first time Ifelt like Iam really part of abigger movement.

Since 2020, the U.S. Left has faced aparadox. As its success at the ballot box and in other areas grows, the victories are becoming less surprising. Whereas the election of local socialists made national news in the late 2010s, those wins have now become more of the norm. And as socialist power incrementally increases, the backlash has strengthened. In June, Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott issued atravel warning for socialists to avoid the Sunshine State. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, recently proposed to keep Marxists out of the United States. These types of edicts, while currently not enforceable, are the kind of precursors to red scares that the broad Left is increasingly taking seriously. This tense political landscape formed the backdrop of the conference, but attendees appearedundeterred.

A panel at the How to Win conference. (Polina Godz / Jacobin)

The closing plenary, entitled How We Win Tomorrow: Next Steps for Building Together, was moderated by Nichols and featured DSA Fund Executive Director Maria Svart, Maryland Delegate Gabirel Acevero, New York State Senator Julia Salazar and Wisconsin Representative to the Assembly Ryan Clancy. The panelists stressed that while this was adomestic gathering, attendees could take inspiration from the successes of socialists abroad, with an understanding that they are part of an international movement. Salazar explained that last year she and her fellow New York socialist legislators toured social housing complexes in Vienna, Austria that were built by Social Democrats in the 1920s and 30sexamples of municipal socialism that remain in operation today. The varieties of social housing we see in Vienna demonstrate what is possible when agovernment and society have the political will to create high-quality housing for people instead of for profit, she said. Acevero noted, we are building afoundation for ademocratic socialist future. We cannot have democratic socialism, however, without political power. Clancy found the weekends conversations moved quickly into policy, and into sharing our own struggles and victories to make those premises like housing should be ahuman right and people should have food areality.

This long-term vision echoed Sanders remark that when you have the courage to say youre ademocratic socialist what youre saying is incremental change is not enough and that we need transformational change. The conference served as evidence that such transformational change can only happen democratically if socialist officeholders work closely with the membership of their socialist organization and other mass organizations. Sanders advised the elected officials that the banner of democratic socialism should be taken on proudly and when they do their work well we will have tens of millions of people marching withus.

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U.S. Elected Socialists Just Held Their Largest Gathering in Nearly 40 Years - In These Times

A new film premiered in Warsaw last Saturday: Poland. From Socialism to Prosperity. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBIhsZ9GNHc&t=85s

The film tells the story of how, under socialism in Poland, standing in queues (or lines) developed into a fully-fledged science.

With queues everywhere and people often having to wait for hours and hours or even several days in the case of furniture or household products some clever systems emerged.

One of them was called the line list, which was used when people had to wait for days, not hours. In that case a list was made of all the people waiting in line so that they didnt need to physically be there all the time. Every few hours the list was read aloud and people needed to register their presence if they were no longer in the queue, they would be crossed off the list. The schedule for taking the register was announced ahead of time.

When the waiting period was days not hours, people needed to report three to four times a day. Some people took a leave of absence from work, some just asked supervisors to let them go and come back quickly, and some paid others to register on their behalf (it was called hiring a stander). Custody over the line list was taken care of by a self-proclaimed line committee.

You had to know the salesperson in a shoe shop, who could sell you a pair of shoes, that you would then present as a bribe to a guy that could sell you a bicycle, that you would then give to the baker to pay for the wedding cake for your electricians daughter.

According to Karl Marx, socialism was nothing more than a transitional stage to communism. Under communism, so his line of reasoning went, all people would be able to live according to their needs. The Poles who stood in line for hours to get the bare necessities of life, however, faced the reality of Marxs vision with derision.

One popular joke in Poland went like this: How will the problem of queues outside shops be solved when we reach full Communism? The punchline was: There will be nothing left to stand in line for.

None of this was all that long ago. The above reports all describe the situation in Poland in the 1980s, which was a world away from todays Poland. Since 1989, Polands gross domestic product per capita has increased threefold. Poland has recorded average real economic growth of 3.5 percent per year. The countrys economy grew to become the sixth largest in the European Community in the decades following the launch of market-economy reforms. Poland has had the fastest growing economy in Europe since the reforms that began in 1989 and is widely regarded as Europes Growth Champion.

The Heritage Foundation has been publishing the Index of Economic Freedom every year since 1995. Poland ranks 39th with a score of 68.7, which does not seem particularly remarkable at first and is certainly not among the highest scores. Nevertheless, it does mean that Poland is more economically free than Spain, Israel, France or Italy, for example. But of far greater importance than the absolute rank is a countrys relative change since 1995, and on this measure Poland does come out on top.

But economic freedom in Poland today is under threat. In particular since 2015, when the PiS (Law and Justice) party took power, spending on social welfare programmes has surged, privatisations have largely been halted, and even some banks and businesses that had already been privatised have been transferred back into the hands of the state. In short, Poland is in the process of abandoning the market economy path that made the country so successful. Nevertheless, this does not detract from the success story of Poland in the 25 years from 1990 to 2015.

According to data from the World Bank, GDP per capita in 1989 was 30percent of the corresponding figure in the U.S. and had risen to 48percent of the U.S. level by 2016. Such gains made themselves felt in peoples lives. The income of Poles grew from about $10,300 in 1990, adjusted for purchasing power, to almost $27,000 in 2017. In comparison with the EU-15, the income of Poles was less than one-third in 1989 and had risen to almost two-thirds in 2015.

The film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBIhsZ9GNHc&t=85s

Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist. His latest book is In Defence Of Capitalism.

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Socialism, capitalism and queues: the case of Poland - TheArticle

As capitalism emerged and grew, so too did citiesthe great centres in which the productive life of human societies has become increasingly concentrated. In Australia, 72 percent of people live in major cities. Around the world, its 56 percent, a figure the United Nations forecasts will increase to 68 percent by 2050.

In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx highlightedthatconstant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. Cities are where capitalisms uninterrupted disturbance and everlasting uncertainty and agitation are concentrated. In them are contained all the intensities and deep contradictions of this chaotic, crisis-ridden system.

They are, on the one hand, fulcrums of creativity and innovation, melting pots of different cultures and lifestyles, and cradles of new ideas and social practices. On the other hand, they are the sites of capitalisms most barbaric extremesof state repression and surveillance, of homelessness and destitution, of air, land and water poisoned by pollution, of exploitation and alienation.

They are also centres of class struggle, where bosses and workers wage their uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight. When revolutions break out, they break out in cities. When reaction comes, its in the seats of power in the big cities that it makes its home. For better or worse, the destiny of all humanity on our fragile planet is bound with the fate of our cities.

From the perspective of the capitalist class, cities are primarily giant machines for the squeezing of surplus value from the labour of workers. In the early days of the system, the owners of the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution lived far enough from the factory districts to ensure their home lives werent tainted by the poverty and pollution the operations of their businesses contributed to.

Today, these geographical divisions are less stark, but they remain. You wont find many industrial facilities near suburbs like Toorak in Melbourne or Sydneys Point Piper. In cities around the world, its the same: the wealthier residents live in the best serviced, most visually appealing and greenest areas, while workers and those least well off are consigned to more polluted areas with fewer services.

Politicians and business owners may engage, from time to time, in rhetoric about the importance of livability. In practice, though, this generally extends only to issues that directly affect a citys wealthiest residents. As long as the rest of us remain sufficiently healthy and motivated to keep showing up for work, they care little about whatever conditions we might have to contend with when we head home from the offices, warehouses, factories and other sites of exploitation.

For many sections of the capitalist class, in fact, the afflictions suffered by the mass of ordinary people living in cities are a direct source of profit. Think, for example, of the car culture and associated issues of urban sprawl and traffic congestion that are ubiquitous in many cities. From the first days of the auto industry in the US in the early twentieth century, capitalists saw an opportunity in limiting access to alternative forms of transport such as trains and trams, and in constructing new residential areas in such a way as to make car ownership a necessity.

The endless sprawl and traffic jams are health hazards for those forced to endure them. But for the capitalist class, they are highly profitable. Think of all the landholders and developers who make money every time new parcels of land on the city fringe are made available for housing. Think of the car companies, the global oil giants and toll road operators that benefit from having people spend hours a day in ever longer commutes.

Housing is another example. The equation here is simple: the harder it is for people to find a place to live, and the lower the quality of the housing that government regulations allow for, the more potential for profit there is for developers, builders, banks and property investors.

None of the major players in the housing industry are interested in providing people with a secure roof over their head. What theyre interested in is making money. If they can do more of that by artificially withholding supply, by constructing new apartment buildings that pack in a maximum number of barely habitable dog-boxes, or by any number of other means more or less directly counter to human wellbeing, they will.

Even the kind of atomisation and social isolation associated with suburban life can be seen as part of a citys mechanism for profit-making. Public facilities and gathering places are left to decayin their place rise shopping malls and other centres of commercial activity. In outer-suburban areas in particular, these are some of the only spaces where large numbers of people can gather.

People do forge social connections despite the lack of public spaces. Groups of young people make the malls, train stations and other suburban cracks and fissures a home away from home. This, however, is commonly regarded as a threatas anti-social behaviour rather than an against-the-odds act of community building. Various measures are used to discourage it, from devices that emit unpleasant high-pitched sounds, to scare campaigns about street gangs and the deployment of security guards or police to harass people.

As long as our cities are shaped by the insatiable appetite for profit of those at the top, rather than being planned and run for human need, the deep-seated problems of city life are likely to get worse. Theres simply too much money being made from the existing set-up, and too little on offer, from a capitalist perspective, from things that would improve the lives of workers.

It can be hard to see a way out. Its easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, Fredric Jameson wroteand this is particularly the case, arguably, in the shadow of the immense edifices of capitalist economic and political power that dominate our cities today.

We know, though, that concentrations of capitalist power are always also concentrations of potential working-class power. With the development of industry, Marx wrote, the working class not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. Today, the organisation of the working class in Australia is at a low ebb, thanks largely to the do-nothing attitude of the Labor Party-aligned trade union bureaucracy. This period of stifled resistance, however, wont go on forever.

Every forward step capitalism takes is accompanied by the growth of the systems instabilities and afflictions. Its in cities that this dynamic is most clearly visible. The more effective a city becomes as a profit-making machine for its wealthiest residents, the more everyone else is squeezed. The exploitation of workers is central to this, but the problems discussed abovelike urban sprawl, the scarcity and poor quality of housing, pollution and so onare part of it too.

This is in times when the system is functioning smoothly. When a crisis hits, the miseries suffered by the working class increase even more.

In Australia, were already seeing signs of the anger bubbling away under the surface: people working harder than ever but seeing the value of their wages eroded by inflation; people stretched to breaking point by steep increases in rents and mortgage payments and people struggling just to keep a roof over their head at all; people who can also see how well those on the other side of the class divide are doing: the big banks making windfall profits, the property investors, developers and landlords awash with cash, the booming market for luxury goods. Theres only so much people can take before they fight back.

Now imagine how radically different things would be if a genuine workers revolution were to take place. Its the great mass of the working class that make our cities run, not the politicians and corporate board members. If only we realise that power, and organise ourselves to seize it, we could run the city in a much better way. Instead of the small minority at the top calling the shotspeople interested only in amassing wealth for themselveseconomic life could be governed collectively and democratically by the people who actually do all the work.

Under a socialist system like that, we could use societys resources and energy to fix the many problems facing workers and the poor in our cities today. Its not like theres a shortage of ideas on this front. Weve got centuries worth of them to draw on, and many practical examples too.

Planners know what kinds of urban environments are conducive to human health and wellbeing. Architects and builders know how to construct durable, livable and beautiful housing. Gardeners, landscapers, hydrologists and others with skills related to the human and natural worlds know how to create environments in which both sides of that interface can flourish. Under capitalism, where the drive to profit rules, this expertise is generally only drawn on in the context of projects catering to the super-rich. In a socialist society, it could be used to benefit everyone.

There are several obvious things we could start with. A big expansion of the public transport system would be oneextending train, tram and bus lines and increasing frequencies across every corner of the city. Another would be bringing a halt to the endless sprawl by identifying unused or under-utilised land in existing urban areas where significant amounts of new, high-quality medium density housing could be built. In the context of a rapidly warming world, increasing the amount of green space and tree coverage in urban areas would be important too.

In the longer term, we could consider transforming things even more radicallyfor instance by shifting to a more decentred model of the city in which economic activity was distributed more evenly, rather than being concentrated in just a few areas. Over time, improvements in public transport could make many roads redundant. The space freed up by this could then be used for more housing, as parkland, or as a mixture of both. Where the imperative was to plan and build in accordance with basic human needs, rather than whats profitable, the possibilities would be endless!

In US rapper Jay-Zs 2009 hit Empire State of Mind, Alicia Keys sings of New York as the concrete jungle where dreams are made of, a city whose big lights will inspire you. Socialists share this sentiment, but probably not in the way the song intended.

Capitalist cities are where, for most people, whatever dreams we may have of a better future for society go to slowly die. Reviving them, and finding inspiration once again in the big lights of city life, requires tapping into the largely subterranean city of resistance: of people fighting against the myriad horrors and injustices of capitalism and building the collective power and organisation necessary to topple the system for good. Its in this fertile soil that our dreams of the socialist city of the future can take root and grow.

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Socialism and the city - Red Flag

The United States absurdly long presidential campaign cycle has begun. Although the election is 17 months away, several politicians have already announced theyre challenging incumbent Joe Biden for the presidency. A familiar figure was the first Democrat to throw her hat in the ring: Marianne Williamson.

Since announcing her candidacy in late February, Williamsons popularity has grown among young people in particular. Marianne Mania hit TikTok, with the best-selling author racking up millions of views on her videos and spurring fan accounts, and an early poll suggested that shes the preferred candidate of 20 percent of voters under 30.

Its not hard to understand Williamsons appeal. Amid historic inflation, high living costs, and dim economic prospects, Bidens approval rating is at a record low. Young people in particular feel betrayed by his administrations broken promises around student debt cancellation, climate change mitigation, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, Williamson rails against poverty, climate change, corruption, and the way our fundamentally unjust system fails working people.

Far more perplexing than Williamsons popularity among Generation Z is her embrace by parts of the Left. In an article in Jacobin, Liza Featherstone argued that we should take Marianne Williamson and her politics seriously. Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson wrote the same, urging voters to keep an open mind and calling her vision for the U.S. inspiring.

But this approach is wrong: its a mistake to see Marianne Williamson as a leftist candidate, and socialists cannot support yet another lesser evil Democrat. Mobilizing to support Marianne Williamson actively undermines the work we need to do to build a truly independent, working-class alternative to both parties of capital.

Leftists like Featherstone and Robinson argue that Marianne Williamson deserves our support due to her progressive policy proposals. After all, her platform calls for single payer healthcare, strengthening labor rights, halting new fossil fuel projects, and tuition-free public college. She has opportunistically embraced these positions to try to occupy the Bernie Sanders lane in 2024 and distance herself from past controversies, like promoting anti-vaccine theories, and making statements minimizing AIDS and depression.

But her policies are far from socialist. In her interview with Featherstone, Williamson claims that Nordic-style capitalism would be a huge improvement on our current situation. She views pro-labor policies as a way to save capitalism and advocates public-private partnerships for issues like housing and healthcare. According to Williamson, there are benefits to capitalism.

On some proposals, like a mere $15 minimum wage by 2025, Williamson is even behind the curve of what many progressives are demanding in light of inflation and a high cost of living. And completely absent from her platform are other key issues that leftists have fought for in recent years, such as police and prison abolition and free abortion on demand.

While she may call contemporary U.S. capitalism fundamentally unjust and sociopathic, Marianne Williamsons goal is ultimately to save and reform the system not to dismantle it.

Just as they did when supporting Sanders, leftists who support Williamson are also turning a blind eye to imperialism and the international working class. Williamson calls for robust and equal support for both Israel and Palestine (in other words, equal support for the occupier and the occupied), and supports Bidens policies in Ukraine, including sending weapons, which we have previously written, leads only to further death and destruction in the region while bolstering U.S. and NATO interests.

And although Williamson calls for the establishment of a Department of Peace, shes unequivocally pro-military, arguing:

We have the finest military force in the world, however, we can no longer rely on force alone to rid ourselves of international enemies. The planet has become too small for that, and in so doing, we overburden our military by asking them to compensate for the other work that we choose not to do. We are less effective, and less secure, because of that.

Any crumbs that Democratic presidents throw U.S. workers are off the backs of the international working class and the profits generated from the imperialist machine, whether through militarily or financially subjugating imperialized nations. Far from being a secondary issue that we can ignore, imperialism is inextricably tied to capitalism. Socialists must steadfastly and uncompromisingly oppose it, whether it comes from the Right or from ostensibly progressive figures like Williamson.

Leftists supporting Marianne Williamson are following the logic of lesser evilism: she may not be the ideal candidate, nevermind a socialist candidate, but shes better than Biden. However, not only does this argument ignore the ways that her policies fall far short of leftist demands it completely ignores the class content of the Democratic party line. Democrats are a party of, by, and for capitalists. Despite its lip service to progressive causes,the partys purpose is to uphold the racist, imperialist, capitalist system that hyper-exploits the working class here and abroad.

We only need to look at the dismal record of the progressive Squad in the House of Representatives to see where support for Democrats leads leftists. These politicians, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), billed themselves as being part of a new era of politics, garnering the support of leftist groups and young people in particular who were understandably disillusioned with establishment Democrats. But in the years since the Squad members were elected, they have fallen in line behind politicians like Biden, voting in favor of military budget increases, weapons for the apartheid state of Israel, and crushing the rail workers strike.

Far from fighting for workers, politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have, time and time again, rubber stamped the regimes racist, imperialist, anti-worker politics. This is the inevitable result of working within a capitalist party like the Democratic Party. As Kim Moody outlines in Breaking the Impasse:

what is required of AOC and other dissidents is not a surrender of ideas or left identity, but conformity to the norms, protocol, and discipline of the Democratic Caucus which have long been sufficient to incorporate dissidents and preclude radical legislation.

This is why, for all of Marianne Williamsons compelling denunciations of Biden, establishment Democrats, and neoliberalism, she would ultimately fall in line behind these very forces. In this sense, Williamson is no lesser evil she will, like Sanders and the Squad before her, funnel leftists into a party that is the enemy of the working class. She is promoting the illusion that a kinder, gentler capitalism is possible by voting the right Democrats into office. In the context of increased geopolitical tensions and the threat of greater economic crisis and climate change, this illusion is not only wrong-headed, but dangerous for leftists to buy into.

To be clear, Marianne Williamson has virtually no chance of winning the Democratic nomination, regardless of whether socialists back her campaign. There are no plans to even hold debates between the Democratic candidates, and U.S. elections are highly undemocratic at both the state and federal levels, quashing opposition and corrupted by vast sums of money. The Democratic Party will go to great lengths to prevent any serious contender;it will clear the field for Biden in 2024, just as it did in 2020, and just as it did for Hilary Clinton in 2016.

Nonetheless some leftists might reason Williamsons candidacy, if taken seriously, will push Biden left. Just as Sanderss campaigns in 2016 and 2020 to the left of Clinton and Joe Biden did, to some extent, force these two politicians to take up progressive issues like student debt cancellation, giving Williamson a national platform could, the logic goes, force Biden to adopt progressive policies.

But over two years into the Biden administration, we see that his record does not align with even the mildest progressive measures that his 2020 campaign promised, let alone any policies proposed by Sanders. Instead, Biden made progressive promises to attract voters to his left and de-fang movements critical of the Democrats, all before breaking them, time and time again. Even if Williamsons candidacy forces Biden to make certain overtures to the Left, we should be under no illusions that he would take up these policies, and under no illusions that the Democratic Party would stop acting alongside Republicans in the interest of capital.

In fact, for all the browbeating to vote blue that leftists endured in 2020, neither the Biden presidency nor two years of a Democratic-controlled congress have stopped the Right or put Trumpism to rest. This is because Democratic Party does not present an alternative: as the U.S. working class faces rising living costs and crumbling infrastructure, the Democrats promise business as usual, and Bidens presidency has largely focused on restoring faith in the countrys decaying institutions while implementing austerity and maintaining many of President Trumps policies. For this reason, its not the case that a better Democrat, whether Marianne Williamson or Bernie Sanders, could halt the rise of reactionary forces. Its this capitalist, imperialist party itself that paves the way for the Far Right.

Marianne Williamson isnt going to be the Democratic nominee, and her program is nowhere near enough for the working class and oppressed. Putting energy into her campaign isnt just misguided its an obstacle to building an international socialist movement, and to the important work that we need to do toward creating an independent, working-class party.

Instead of scouring the field of Democratic candidates every two to four years to find the lesser evil and chaining ourselves to a party of the bosses, we need to build a party that fights capitalism, imperialism, and oppression in all its forms. Left Voice is putting forward a network to try to build a political alternative: a party that fights for socialism and for the rights of all exploited and oppressed. The millions of young people who have mobilized as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, who are unionizing their workplaces at companies like Starbucks, who are organizing against climate destruction, and who are fighting for reproductive and queer rights show that people across the U.S. are coming to the conclusion that the Democrats arent on our side. Lets harness this energy to build a movement for socialism instead.

Link:
The Socialist Case against Marianne Williamson - Left Voice

Three thoughts to share with you this week.

The headline in Fridays edition of The Sun Chronicle was, Tragedy for Titan. The front page story detailed the implosion that instantly killed five people on their way to see the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Earlier stories I read in various newspapers compared the inside of the submersible to the size of a minivan. As tragic as the implosion was, it was better than being stuffed into a soon-to-be coffin with four other people as the hours counted down until the vessel ran out of oxygen.

The lead story in newscasts on television and radio throughout the nation last week was the search for the missing submarine. Stories about the search were all placed above the fold on the front pages of newspapers, including this one.

The five people aboard the submersible included a British billionaire, the heir to one of Pakistans family fortunes and his son, a Titanic expert, and the CEO of the company running the expedition. The cost to visit the famous shipwreck was $250,000 per person. Assuming the latter two did not pay, thats a total of $750,000 the ultra-rich paid to gawk at the site where more than a thousand people perished.

While I was certainly hoping the five people aboard would be rescued, I couldnt help but think about the number of men, women and children especially those in developing countries who are themselves hours away from dying of hunger, or drown (in the Mediterranean, the English Channel or the Rio Grande) trying to get to a better life. Their survival deserves the same type of coverage, doesnt it? Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

I also thought about how much the $750,000 and the hundreds of thousands (it might be in the millions) spent on the rescue effort might have helped those children.

Pattie and I were huddled under a big golf umbrella a week ago Saturday night to take in the Providence Pride parade. The pouring rain did little to dampen the enthusiasm of the thousands of spectators lining the parade route and the equal of number of marchers in the hour-long parade.

I was happy to see that the boycotts of Bud Light and Target didnt deter other companies from participating in the annual celebration. Amazon, Bank of America, Bud Light, Fidelity Investments, Frito Lay, Kohls, Titos Vodka and T-Mobile were among the groups sponsoring floats.

While realizing any variation from a heterosexual relationship is offensive to some, I looked around at one point and wondered what harm the evening and entire celebration of Pride Month was doing to those who object to alternative lifestyles. Other than fearing and hating those who are different, I couldnt think of a reason.

Perhaps, if the people who strongly object to the LGBTQIA2+ community attended the Providence parade, theyd realize that the people they look down on make up a larger segment of the population than they realize. I believe theyd also understand that living an alternative lifestyle is not simply a matter of choice, as many claim.

I received a text from the owner of the truck mentioned in this space last week. The truck I saw in the Mullaney Twin parking lot in downtown Attleboro had a bumper sticker in the back window that read, Socialism Sucks. I questioned whether the individual would reject the benefits of Medicare and Social Security.

It turns out the owner of the truck is an 86-year-old reader of this newspaper. He contacted me this week and told me he has paid into Social Security for 75 years and Medicare for the last 26. He still pays into the governments retirement system and the income tax on the amount he receives.

He told me he is upset with Barack Obama, claiming the former president took $100 from his monthly check and gave it to someone who didnt pay into the Social Security.

The topic came up with another reader on Friday night.

I will admit that Medicare may not be an exact form of socialism, but Im standing by my comment that Social Security is. Not only is social in its name, all Americans are forced to pay into it. Sounds like socialism to me.

Link:
Peter Gay: The Titan, Pride and Socialism | Columns ... - The Sun Chronicle