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A plenary session crowd at Socialism 2017 (John Snowden)

SOME 2,000 people packed into a convention center on Chicago's Near South Side last weekend for the four days of Socialism 2017, an annual gathering for political discussion, debate and entertainment.

This was by far the biggest Socialism conference ever, one-third larger than last year, and one of the biggest national gatherings of the radical left in the new Trump era.

As usual, there were a dozen sessions or more to choose from in each time slot--around 160 in all--covering a dizzying range of topics: from building emergency response networks for defending immigrant workers, to the latest developments in struggles in Europe, to the history of the Marxist tradition, to celebrations of artistic and cultural figures.

It was a super-sized version of past conferences, but that wasn't the only difference. This year, there was a greater sense of urgency and purpose than ever before.

Damian Smith of Washington, D.C., said he had missed the previous two or three Socialism conferences. "But then something happened on November 8 at around 11:45 at night," he said, "and I realized that I had to go this year. It matters a lot what happens here."

How to take the ideas discussed at Socialism and make them relevant back home in the local resistance struggles of the Trump era--that was on the minds of people throughout the four days.

"This was my first time being here, and it was absolutely incredible," said Lindsay Cesar of Greensboro, North Carolina. "I feel like I came in full of ideas I couldn't quite articulate, and now I feel way better equipped. I feel inspired to talk to other people and groups in the area and convey our politics to them, so we can come together more."

Socialism 2017 was host to some truly special events. Comedian Hari Kondabolu brought down the house late Friday night with a set that went on three times longer than expected. Nation columnist Dave Zirin moderated a generations-spanning discussion on athletes and activism. Author and actor Wallace Shawn introduced his new book Night Thoughts in a conversation with Haymarket Books' Anthony Arnove.

But there were special ideas and insights coming out of all the discussions. "I was watching someone talk about a political question that they had been working through over a period of years, about their understanding of postmodernism," Damian Smith remembered. "And right there, they were able to come to a conclusion about it in this discussion. I realized I was seeing someone's whole political trajectory in a few minutes--that's something that happens at this conference."

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AT A packed plenary session on the first night of the conference, author and Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor spoke on racism and the resistance to Trump. It was a speech she was supposed to give Seattle a month before, but had to cancel after receiving dozens of death threats after a Fox News slander campaign.

"We will not win just because we believe that our side is right," Taylor told the rapt crowd. "We have to know what it is we are fighting for, and we have to openly debate and strategize our way forward. And most of all, we have to be involved in protests and demonstrations and building social movements to win concessions from the political and economic establishment."

Taylor was a participant in another highlight for many Socialism attendees--two sessions honoring the 40th anniversary of the Combahee River Collective, an organization of Black women that broke new ground in the struggle against oppression.

Two members of the collective, Barbara Smith and Demita Frazier, gave their own accounts of the experience, and authors such as Sharon Smith and Barbara Ransby, who have been inspired by the Combahee collective, joined them onstage.

Of course, there was one revolutionary anniversary that was at the forefront of everyone's minds--this is the centennial year of the Russian Revolution of 1917. There were close to a dozen sessions specifically devoted to the revolution, though its history ran through many more.

That's a fitting tribute to the continuing relevance of the revolution, as Elizabeth Terzakis explained in an inspiring presentation at the final plenary session of the conference.

"The Russian Revolution is crucial for us to study because it shows us the working class in movement," Terzakis said, "so that we can see what it is, what it is capable of and why it is the only force with both the desire and the positioning to not only achieve self-emancipation but to liberate all of humanity in the process."

Socialism couldn't forget another lesser-known anniversary: This year, the International Socialist Organization (ISO), a co-sponsor of Socialism, turned 40 years young. Paul D'Amato, editor of the International Socialist Review, packed his session on the history and politics of the ISO full of insights on how socialists organize.

In fact, Socialism 2017 was the latest in a series of summer educational events that the ISO has been sponsoring since the very first of those 40 years, as Bill Roberts, a founding member of the ISO, remembered:

In the early days, our summer schools were at church camps. For the first one in 1977--in Germantown, Ohio, at a Methodist camp--we had maybe 100 or 150 people. From then on, through the 1980s, we might get up to 300 people.

But when you get 2,000 people this year, it's a different feeling. In the earlier days, we were hanging onto the ideas with small groups of people. We had great events, and they kept people going. But I think this gives you an idea that there's something else bigger than us.

More than a few attendees this year were coming back to the annual conference for the first time in some years.

Keith Danner, from Southern California, had the same reaction as pretty much everyone who attended a previous Socialism: "It's so much bigger."

But Danner also reflected on some of the qualitative differences--for example, the participation of more people of color and an intense focus on the anti-racist struggle. "And," he said, "you can see the reflection of the struggle for trans rights in a way that was never here before."

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ONE REASON for the larger size of the Socialism conference was expanding participation from around the U.S. left. Jacobin magazine was a co-sponsor this year, coordinating a series of meetings. A number of Democratic Socialists of America members made the trip to Chicago for the four days.

As always, there was an impressive array of international speakers to bring a global perspective to the discussions. Author Neil Davidson communicated the excitement of left-wing Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn's triumphant showing in the June election in the UK. Two members of Greece's Internationalist Workers Left provided updates on the struggle that rattled Europe's bosses a few years ago.

Meanwhile, Haymarket Books--a project of Socialism sponsor, the Center for Economic Research and Social Change--brought a semi trailer's worth of books for conference participants to covet and take home. The top seller this year was Haymarket's first title to crack the New York Times best-seller list: Naomi Klein's No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.

Every aspect of the project of building a bigger, broader and better left was on display at Socialism. The socialist left in the U.S. has made advances in the past year and a half, but we need to make more, and we need more people to do it. "You say you're not a joiner?" said ISR associate editor Ahmed Shawki at one plenary session. "Too bad--become one."

That session on "Build the Left, Fight the Right: Why We Need a Socialist Alternative"--with a huge audience packed into a room the size of a football field--set out the high stakes of the struggle in the Trump era, but also the hope for an alternative. Jen Roesch of the ISO brought the electrifying meeting to a close with a call to take action:

Let's be clear: We need a real alternative. We need fights over any number of pressing issues...We need to fight anywhere and everywhere that our side faces attacks. But Naomi Klein is right: No is not enough...

Such an alternative is not measured in election cycles, and neither is the social devastation, the economic immiseration, the attempt to strip ordinary people of their basic dignity. This long pre-dates Trump--it even predates the latest round of crisis that began in 2008. These are built into the system of capitalism itself and any alternative has to address itself to that fact.

More:
Why Socialism was a big deal - Socialist Worker Online

Collins declaration of conscience

Since January, a group of us from Greater Bangor has been going every week to the offices of our federal legislators. We have shared our concerns with staffers on a number of issues, from education to immigration.

Most recently, we have focused on health care and Congress efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act. We were even able to meet directly with Sen. Susan Collins this spring to tell her how upset we were with Congresss actions to reduce Medicaid funding and take affordable health care away from Maine residents.

We are very grateful that Collins has come out against the Senates health care bill, which would end insurance coverage for almost 118,000 Mainers. Collins is so opposed to the bill that she has said she would vote against a motion to proceed with the measure and doubts it can be fixed. We applaud her strong opposition to the bill and her willingness to work in a bipartisan manner to fix the Affordable Care Act. We hope other Republican senators will see the wisdom of her position. Her action truly has been a Declaration of Conscience, like that of her hero, the late Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine.

Collins has acted in a thoughtful and courageous way to protect all of us in Maine. She has placed the needs of Maine people above partisan politics and has acted as the stateswoman we need during these difficult times. We are grateful for her listening to voters. We also especially appreciate the courtesy with which we have been treated by her staff when we visit her Bangor office.

Samantha Le

Jeanne Curran

Bangor

I sometimes wonder what percentage of Donald Trump advocates, the same who scorn legislation to provide a livable minimum wage and Medicare health care coverage for every citizen, ever supported themselves and their families on $8 per hour without benefits or health insurance. What portion of these libertarian Republicans rely on Medicare, government and military disability payments, Social Security and pensions, or an array of other tax-funded benefits and breaks? Creeping socialism is just fine if it benefits the proverbial me, free-market capitalists and the wealthiest 1 percent.

James L. McDonald

Bangor

While summer ozone season is in full swing, the House of Representatives is considering the Smoggy Skies Act, a harmful bill that would delay life-saving ozone standards.

Ground zone-level pollution, or smog, is dangerous and widespread. Millions of Americans are especially vulnerable, such as Maines children and adults with asthma.

HR 806 deserves the name Smoggy Skies Act. It would delay protections for years and permanently weaken one of the nations strongest public health laws, the Clean Air Act. This bill would make it harder to protect people from asthma attacks, emergency room visits and premature deaths from ozone pollution.

Thanks to the Clean Air Act, our nation has made great progress in cleaning up ozone and other harmful pollutants. Still, millions of Americans live where the air is unhealthy to breathe and, literally, can threaten their lives. Weakening their protection is simply wrong. The bill would put lives at risk by permanently delaying updates to limits on not just ozone, but every criteria of air pollutant. These can include carbon monoxide, lead, ozone and sulfur dioxide. The pollutants cause problems for many at-risk Americans every day, especially during the heat of summer.

Members of Congress, including Rep. Bruce Poliquin, need to save our lungs and vote no on HR 806, the Smoggy Skies Act.

Diane Haskell

Palermo

Read more from the original source:
Thursday, July 13. 2017: Sen. Collins' 'declaration of conscience,' creeping socialism, weakening clean air protections - Bangor Daily News

US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) addresses a rally in support of the Affordable Care Act in Covington, Kentucky on July 9, 2017.JAY LAPRETE AFP/Getty Images

Bernie Sanders was traveling through Trump country (West Virginia and Kentucky) last weekend in an effort to rally opposition to Republican attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare. These efforts notwithstanding, Sanders still refuses to embrace Obamacare. As soon as we defeat this disastrous bill, I will be introducing a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program, he said during the rally. He hasnt even embraced the Democratic Party, despite his bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee. When asked if he was a Democrat, he responded , Not even remotely anymore. The Democratic Party now is a disaster, an absolute mess. I dont see a party now that represents me.

Sanders still describes himself as a democratic socialist, rejecting the moderate left progressivism of the Clintons, as he emphasized in his presidential campaign. According to Sanders, the Clintons embraced Wall Street, where Hillary Clinton had made hundreds of thousands of dollars giving speeches, following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, who during his presidency had deregulated banks by signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, repealing the Glass-Steagall cornerstone of New Deal banking reform. The Clintons had accommodated consolidations and mergers in the world of banking, they had encouraged the growth of too-big-to-fail big banks, and Sanders was the only candidate willing to take on Wall Street and break up the big banks.

Putting aside the question of the practicality of a break-up-the-big-banks reform agenda, we should pose a simpler, conceptual question first: Why would a socialist want to break up big banks? Socialists want to nationalize banks, not break them up. If anything, socialists prefer bank consolidation to simplify the administrative task of running a nationalized banking system. Nationalization is the only path to provide the collective ownership of the means of production (in this case, the production of financial products). Socialism entails the abolition of private property in business life, but breaking up banks would leave banks as privately owned enterprises still seeking to make profits through the marketplace. Socialists argue that profit-making in a competitive market leads inevitably to exploitation and alienation.

The proposal to break up the banks sounds more like the trust-busting Progressive Era agenda one would associate with Woodrow Wilson than anything socialist. Eugene Debs, not Woodrow Wilson, was the socialist of the Progressive Era, and Debs had been sufficiently schooled in Marxist theory to realize that socialism required the abolition or private ownership of the means of production. Sanders admires Debs (he had a picture of Debs displayed in City Hall when he was mayor of Burlington, Vt., but it isnt clear he understood the radical agenda Debs had embraced. Is it possible that the only prominent national politician who describes himself as a socialist today is clueless regarding the meaning to the term socialism?

Prepared remarks by Sanders on democratic socialism suggest as much. He begins his commentary on democratic socialism by focusing on Franklin Roosevelts 1937 inaugural address, where Roosevelt famously stated that one-third of the nation was "ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. Sanders identifies with FDR and his campaign against the economic royalists, praising New Deal policies for succeeding in putting millions back to work and taking them out of poverty and restoring their faith in government. Democrats would almost universally share these laudatory views of Franklin Roosevelt, but Sanders proceeds to note that almost everything FDR proposed was called "socialist. Does this make FDR a socialist? The implication of Sanders logic, given that he embraces both FDR and democratic socialism, is that because FDRs enemies labeled his agenda socialist, he was a socialist. FDRs political enemies also called him a dictator, especially after he introduced his court-packing bill. Did that make FDR a dictator?

Later in his speech, Sanders finally defines what democratic socialism means to him. Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy, he said. Adam Smith, the author of the The Wealth of Nations in 1776 and the father of capitalism, would have said that capitalism intends to "create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy" (Sanders definition of democratic socialism).

Finally, Sanders concedes, I dont believe government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth deserve a fair deal.

Sanders isnt a socialist. He is an American progressive. Given the dismal history of socialism in the 20th century, which is inextricably intertwined with the history of totalitarianism, Sanders would do well to start using words with their conventional meaning. The only cause that Sanders idiosyncratic usage of words promotes is his own political ambition.

Donald Brand is a professor of political science at the College of the Holy Cross.

See the article here:
Why Bernie Sanders Isn't Actually a Socialist - Fortune

Even as Venezuelas collapse accelerates, some are dismissing the implications of that collapse with the predictable, thats not real socialism. But Venezuelas people cant argue the finer points of socialist theory - theyre too busy trying to survive.

Venezuelas intensifying economic and political crisis has brought thousands of anti-government protesters into the streets over the past three months, and at least 75 people have died in the unrest, the Washington Post reports. A large number of Venezuelans are spending everything they earn to avoid starving.

With inflation at an estimated 700 percent (and thats a low estimate - the country could slip into hyperinflation at any moment), minimum wage is enough to buy one-quarter of the food needed by a family of five, economists say.

Since 2014, the proportion of Venezuelan families in poverty has soared from 48 percent to 82 percent, according to a study published this year by the countrys leading universities, the Post explains. Fifty-two percent of families live in extreme poverty, according to the survey, and about 31 percent survive on two meals per day at most.

So what happened to this country, which once had the worlds largest oil reserves and South Americas strongest economy? In a word, socialism.

Lets start with the centrally controlled economy. Venezuelans welcomed price controls, at first. In 2002, the late Hugo Chavez instituted a program of price controls and even seizures of entire industries.

But the results were predictable. If farmers cant produce eggs at a profit, for example, then theyre not going to produce eggs.

Those price controls have led to shortages in every sector, including toilet paper.

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short, USA Today reported last year. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities - toilet paper.

As Johns Hopkins University economist Steve Hanke explained, State-controlled prices - prices that are set below market-clearing price - always result in shortages. The shortage problem will only get worse, as it did over the years in the Soviet Union.

Of course, many on the left will defend socialism by declaring that Venezuela isnt real socialism. But thats a classic fallacy.

That this is an evasion, a form of willful denial, can be seen in the fact that countries tend to slide pretty quickly from being real socialism to suddenly not being real socialism the moment they do something that is embarrassing to the cause, writes Robert Tracinski in The Federalist. A few years ago, a lot of people, from (Sen. Bernie) Sanders on down, were hailing Venezuela as a great example of the achievements of socialism. Now that the Maduro regime is shooting protesters, suddenly its not real socialism.

Socialism is always an empty promise, he says.

Socialism declares that its goals are freedom, prosperity, and total equality. If, in practice, it actually results in oppression, poverty, and special privileges for the party elites, then it must not be real socialism, Tracinski writes. By that standard, socialism can never fail, because if it fails, it is by definition not really socialism.

Lets ask the Venezuelans.

Read the original post:
Editorial: Venezuela is what real socialism looks like - Tyler Morning Telegraph

In light of the horrific Grenfell Tower fire in London, leader of the UK Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn made an astonishing statement:

The ward where this fire took place is, I think, the poorest ward in the whole country and properties must be found requisitioned if necessary to make sure those residents do get re-housed locally.

In effect, Corbyns solution to the temporary re-homing problem was the requisition of properties of other citizens to house those made homeless by the fire. In a sense, this is of little surprise. Corbyn is a long-time opponent of economic freedom. He has praised Hugo Chavezs role in Venezuela, for example. Likewise, his closest ally, John McDonnell, is a self-identified Marxist who brought Maos Little Red Book into Parliament. An equally close ally, Diane Abbott, has argued in defense of Mao (in spite of the Chinese leader being responsible for more deaths than any other person in the history of the world). Given this, it is unsurprising that Corbyn would support such an authoritarian measure. However, what is astonishing is the willingness of the public to embrace such a measure.

When Corbyn announced this idea, I had expected it to be greeted with horror. Sure, scores of people backed his proposals to ban people from making certain consensual contracts (through a sharp minimum wage hike and the banning of zero-hour contracts), but surely they wouldnt go for this? The forcibly seizing of private property by government is evidently a step too far to the left to be palatable to the British public, is it not? Apparently not. Within minutes, social media was alight with people approvingly citing Pierre-Joseph Proudhons slogan later stolen by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels of Property is theft, and endorsing Corbyns plan as a great act of justice. Apparently oblivious to the fact that if property cannot be legitimately owned, then the government ought not own property, which creates a real tension in their belief system since Corbyn advocates widespread government ownership.

I sympathize with the victims of the fire, but in my view authoritarian measures arent the solution. Especially since the Prime Minister, Theresa May, has made emergency funds available and countless charitable organizations are involved. We, as individuals, must help those affected by the fire, but I have to wonder if the support for Corbyns proposal highlights a more authoritarian socialist future for Britain. If requisition of private property is now a mainstream idea, what will Britain become like if Corbyn and his allies ever gain power? How far will Corbyns socialism go? Of course, worries of authoritarianism are dismissed by many on the left. For many of them, such intrusive and liberty-infringing measures are justice, and Corbyn is ushering in that justice. Yet, as a libertarian, the worries are real and history shows that socialism has a natural tendency to become totalitarian. Yesterday, it was a proposal to nationalize industries and curtail freedom in relation to employment contracts. Today, it is a proposal to requisition private property. Tomorrow, it could be something far worse and, given the widespread willingness to accept many of Corbyns radical and unaffordable policies, that is not an unthinkable scenario.

Socialism is on the rise in Britain. As libertarians, we need to make the case for less state power, for more personal charity (charity, of course, often treated with scorn in the UK), and more freedom. We need to make the moral, as well as the intellectual case, because the left fights with moral platitudes. I didnt want to take a political angle on this tragedy, but Corbyn has repeatedly made it a political issue, and it would be wrong not to voice opposition to that perpetual occurrence: statists using tragedy to justify infringement upon freedom and, if we are not careful, we might find ourselves in a situation wherein the government is increasingly invasive.

For those who wish to support the victims, here is a donation page.

* Matthew James Norris is a British libertarian with a degree in history and philosophy. He volunteers at several organizations, and will undertake a masters degree from October.

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Read more from the original source:
Requisition? The Growing Danger of Corbyn's Socialism - Being Libertarian