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China has released new guidelines on generative AI services, limiting their public use while encouraging industrial development.

Reuters reported the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) softened its stance compared to draft rules in April. These new interim regulations will take effect on August 15th. The guidelines only affect organizations offering generative AI services to the public. Other entities developing the same technology but not for mass-market use do not fall under the measures.

The rules (translated via Google Translate) retain some wording from the April proposal. They continue to mandate generative AI services must adhere to core values of socialism and not attempt to overthrow state power or the socialist system.CNN reported the new rules removed potential fines of up to 100,000 yuan ($13,999) for violations.

China has been looking for ways to strengthen its generative AI offerings and hopes to become the leading provider, toppling the USs current dominance.

But this has not come easy for China, a country that famously controls internet access and the spread of information within its borders. The government had told its tech giants not to access ChatGPT for fear of the chatbot giving uncensored replies, even though the tool is not available in China. Authorities also cracked down on citizens using ChatGPT, arresting a man who allegedly used the chatbot to write fake articles.

Chinas generative AI rules also consider the importance of intellectual property rights of training data and prohibit the use of algorithms, data, platforms, and other advantages to implement monopoly and unfair competition. All training data must come from sources the government deems legitimate. Service providers must accept requests by individuals to review or correct information gathered for AI models.

The Chinese government said it would encourage the development of generative AI, including supporting infrastructure and public training.

More here:
China mandates that AI must follow core values of socialism - The Verge

For Dashie Prasad, a 25-year-old union organiser, activism literally started at home.

Prasad left Fiji with their extended family at the age of four, under an immigration program that offered their father mining work. They settled in Australia only to find that work was gone.

That job was taken off the table and given to a younger person. And so it was a bit of a shock moment for us.

Prasads parents navigated a labyrinthine visa system with various factory jobs, until their father was injured. Their mother, who was raising three children and caring for her disabled mother-in-law, requalified as a teacher. Prasads father now has a business as a driving instructor.

Prasad says their values were shaped by their familys struggle to start a new life in Sydneys western suburbs. And their later conflict, when Prasad came out as queer, reinforced that the personal is political. Through a bunch of that struggle, we were able to have very honest and very serious conversations about the political state of the world.

Prasad learnt the best way to build connection with community was through solidarity and understanding of personal struggles. One of the biggest issues is not being patronising, like meeting people where they are and then theyll meet you where youre at, they say.

The marriage equality plebiscite and #MeToo were the formative experiences of Prasads generation, which is harnessing gender rights, racial equality and sexuality as part of a reimagined socialism. Its rooted in an acute awareness that young people today are in a far more precarious economic position than generations before them. They see the evidence everywhere: unaffordable housing, student debt soaring with inflation, systemic poverty and discrimination against First Nations people, and the recurring floods, bushfires and mass extinctions of the climate crisis, while the Labor government contemplates as many as 116 proposals for fossil-fuel projects.

Young voters are responding by shifting further to the left. The popularity of Greens leader Adam Bandt among 18- to 34-year-olds recently surpassed that of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll. And a study this year commissioned by the Institute of Public Affairs and Canadas Fraser Institute showed half of that demographic in Australia now supported socialism as the ideal economic system.

The fact that everything produced in society is in the hands of a tiny minority that makes decisions about everything whats produced, how its produced, whether its sustainable or not, how much to charge for it that has never been more apparent than now, in a cost-of-living crisis where wages are going backwards while corporate profits have massively increased, says Cherish Kuehlmann, 23, education officer for the student representative council at UNSW Sydney and an activist with the Get a Room campaign.

Welfare, rent caps, expanding public housing, cancelling or freezing student debt these are things people really need, right now. You say theres no money for it, yet youre injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into weapons nobody asked for, says Kuehlmann, who describes herself as a revolutionary socialist and has been organising protests in Sydney in support of rent caps and higher taxes on corporations to fund public housing.

I have family members that sleep in tin shacks, on bloody mattresses on dirt floors, says 26-year old Ruby Wharton, who is a proud Gomeroi Kooma woman, and daughter and granddaughter of First Nations activists. But the term sits uneasily with her. Activism is a word that I feel really funny about, purely because its just such a personal experience, I guess. The things that I do in terms of community organising, its a matter of importance, of survival.

She says she is fighting for health and quality of life for all impoverished communities, and a share in the countrys wealth, with a portion of GDP allocated to reparations: Its not something that can be exclusively applied to First Nations people. Its something that can be accessible to everybody.

Dr Ariadne Vromen, a professor of public administration at the Australian National University, says todays young adults are sophisticated political thinkers, more educated than any previous generation of young people. More of them attend university, they consume more media and can spread their message further, driving philosophical shifts. Vromen says social platforms such as TikTok are a means of engaging and educating while creating support networks that can transcend online spaces.

Dashie Prasad found common cause with a socially conservative former schoolmate via their posts about Palestine. We had a really great chat, a really honest conversation about her struggles as a young Palestinian woman in Australia, having to worry about her family back home, and me as a queer person in Australia, worrying about my community here, and also queer people across the world, facing violence.

They eventually worked together on a car convoy to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, as part of a localised community campaign pushing to close detention centres and free refugees.

In an economy increasingly driven by piecemeal gigs, these activists are drawn to the socialist foundations of workers rights. And not only because theyve watched progressive policies by previous Labor governments stagnate under their successors and be unwound by the Coalition they also see flaws in the neoliberal framework in which those policies were conceived.

Four decades after the Prices and Incomes Accord the signature achievement of the HawkeKeating government these activists are calling for a new grand bargain. The seven accords signed with unions between 1983 and 1991 helped pave the way for Medicare and compulsory superannuation, as well as improvements in education, training, childcare and social security the social wage. But they also curbed workplace-level industrial campaigning, says Xavier Dup, 26, the National Union of Students education officer and a student at La Trobe University. He says the accord era marked a historic defeat for the Australian working class. The ALP co-opted one of the most powerful union movements in the world ending free education, selling off public assets, generally undermining the welfare state creating the obscene inequality we see today.

The Howard governments industrial relations reforms many of which were perpetuated by the RuddGillard Labor governments made action even more difficult, and Melbourne University professor of Australian history Sean Scalmer says unions have struggled to respond to the changing economy and changing society, in the context of that highly difficult legal environment. A union cant enter a workplace without giving written notice to the employer, industrial action is illegal outside a defined bargaining period, and they cant pursue agreements spanning more than one enterprise, unlike the industry-wide deals that are routine in countries such as Germany, Scalmer says. Moreover, the Fair Work Commission can suspend an industrial action that might cause significant economic harm to employers or employees, endanger someones life or safety, or cause significant damage to a part of the Australian economy.

We need a union movement that pushes to advance workers interests and social justice, regardless of the impact on the Labor Party or corporate profits, Dup says.

Cherish Kuehlmann sees an opportunity to rebuild a fighting union movement, citing the New South Wales nurses strike in March last year in which thousands of nurses flouted a ban to demand pay rises and improved staffing ratios. The state government subsequently approved bonuses, raised a salary cap and committed to more recruitment.

But civil disobedience comes at a high price. Nurses in Western Australia took similar action in the past year the state branch of the Nursing Federation was threatened with deregistration by the WA Labor government and now faces a $350,000 fine. South Australia, NSW, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland have all passed anti-protest legislation imposing severe penalties on even those engaging in peaceful action, including anywhere from three months to two years in prison and fines ranging from $6000 to $50,000.

Kuehlmann herself was the subject of a midnight arrest and detention by NSW Police Force in February for her involvement in a protest at the Reserve Bank of Australia. She was charged with a single count of unlawful entry to enclosed land during the protest at Martin Place. Her bail conditions initially prevented her from being within two kilometres of Sydney Town Hall but were thrown out by a magistrate who recognised her democratic right to attend future protests.

Far from discouraging her from participating in further action, Kuehlmann says the experience only made me more determined to keep up the fight.

It is important for progressives to engage with government in a sign of good faith, says Prasad, who has lobbied and petitioned extensively on issues related to the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as higher education reform, climate change and carceral justice, among others. But Prasad concedes their efforts are strategic, too to show their base that engagement has been attempted, without success. Movements arent won on lobbying or by meeting with government, they say. Governments make change because theyre pushed from the outside.

Weve always been of the position, fuck around and find out, Ruby Wharton says. She points out the law didnt stop the Black Lives Matter protests from going ahead during Covid, and while the anti-protest laws are frightening, she shares the philosophy of her father, Wayne Coco Wharton: we have an obligation to be subject to one another in solidarity.

We have to dare to stand on the shoulders of those who did the exact same thing in their day, in their movements We have to be brave and have a legacy. If your legacy is listening to the government and then wondering how you can advocate, youre already doing yourself a disservice, she says.

At the end of the day, youve got support and youve got community who will be there to back you up. Thats what our movements are about.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 15, 2023 as "Left field".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australias leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

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A new era of socialist activism - The Saturday Paper

Duringthe Spanish Civil War (1936-1939),the working class showed all the determination, self-sacrifice, and organisational ability to carry out not one, but ten revolutions, as Trotsky stated. And yet they were ultimately frustrated betrayed as they were by all their leaders.

Of these leaders, the Stalinists played the most counter-revolutionary role.

Joseph Stalin had usurped powerfrom the working class in the Soviet Union and crushed its active vanguard. He represented the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy a parasitic caste of privileged state administrators. This caste developed amidst the poverty, backwardness, and imperialist intervention that beset Russia after the revolution.

Not only did Stalinism play a reactionary role within the Soviet Union, but also abroad, including during the Spanish Civil War. This was owing to its influence over the international communist movement.

The Stalinist bureaucracy was inherently nationalistic. It identified its privileges with its control over the Soviet state. Revolutionary internationalism, it feared, might jeopardise the stability of the Soviet state and deteriorate relations with its neighbours.

Most importantly, the victory of revolution elsewhere would enthuse the Soviet working class, which in turn could threaten the Stalinists position at home and abroad. Therefore, rather than extend the revolution internationally, the Stalinists sought accommodation with capitalist powers such as Britain and France.

The Communist International,created in 1919 as the party of the world proletarian revolution, became a diplomatic lever in the hands of the Stalinist clique once they had taken over.

The bureaucracys narrow nationalism found ideological justification in Stalins theory of socialism in one country. This treacherous policy represented a renunciation of Marxist internationalism, and led workers to defeat in countries such asBritain(1926),China(1927), andGermany(1933).

But, undoubtedly, the most gruesome Stalinist betrayal of a proletarian revolution took place during the Spanish Civil War in 1936-39. Here, Stalinism behaved not simply as a brake on the working class, but as a consciously and expressly counter-revolutionary force.

On 14 April 1931, King Alfonso XIII fled Spain, and the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed after a resounding victory of republican parties in local elections. Thus began the Spanish Revolution the most sweeping revolutionary process in Europe since the Russian Revolution of 1917.

At this point, the official Spanish Communist Party (PCE) was a minuscule force, with some 800 members. The dominant forces of the Spanish workers movement were the anarcho-syndicalist National Confederation of Labour (CNT) and the social-democratic Socialist Workers Party (PSOE).

Created as a unified organisationin November 1921, the PCE never acquired much traction. It languished throughout the 1920s, undermined by repression and infighting. As with other sections of the Communist International, it came under the iron control of Moscow and, consequently, of the Stalinists.

There were talented figures in the PCEs ranks men such as Andreu Nin, Maurn, Juan Andrade. But frequent purges and Moscows political zigzagging drew them away.

In 1931, pliable characters staffed the party figures such as Mije, Ibrruri, and Daz who were incapable of thinking independently, and who were always ready to regurgitate the Kremlins latest phrase.

At this time, the Communist International was going through its so-called third period: an ultra-leftist phase that predicated irreconcilable war against the social democrats, who were termed social-fascists. In Germany, this sectarianism facilitatedHitlers rise to power.

Following Moscows diktats, the PCE received the Republic with the slogan down with the bourgeois Republic, all power to the soviets!

This position was doubly wrong. Firstly, because the Republic initially enjoyed widespread support among the working class. Secondly, because there were naturally no soviets in Spain, nor could there be at this point.

The PCE was profoundly sectarian. This minuscule force denounced the PSOE as social-fascist and the CNT as anarcho-fascist. The Stalinists created their own ersatz trade unions. The ultra-left PCE was initially left out of the trend towards workers unity of 1933-34.

Right-wing parties won the general elections of November 1933, which took place at a moment of deep disenchantment towards the reformist left and towards the Republic as a whole. The victory of the right, however, galvanised the labour movement, which became acutely aware of the fascist danger after the Nazis had come to power in Germany.

A large segment of the PSOE veered sharply to the left. Left-wing organisations began to agitate for a united front, which crystallised in theAlianzas Obreras(Worker Alliances).

At first, the PCE turned its back on the Worker Alliances. However, Moscow suddenly demanded a change in tack. Hitlers victory called into question the criminal sectarianism of third period ultra-leftism.

Stalin was not only worried about the destruction of the German Communist Party, but most importantly about Hitlers aggressive foreign policy, which directly threatened the Soviet state. Stalin therefore revised his international strategy.

After a phase of tension with Britain and France in 1927-33, Moscow sought rapprochement with western democracies to stave off Germany.

The quest for an alliance with bourgeois democracies found an expression in the Communist International, which was instructed to collaborate with reformist and liberal forces, and to forgo revolutionary agitation in the name of anti-fascist unity.

In September 1934, the PCE was forced to revise its sectarianism. The yes-men in its leadership accepted this U-turn quite naturally.

The party therefore participated in the revolutionary general strike of October 1934, which took place after the far right was brought into the ruling coalition. However, as the Stalinists were very small, their entry made little difference.

More consequential was the rejection of the Worker Alliances by the anarchist CNT, which largely accounts for the failure of the uprising in most of Spain.

The events of October 1934 led to important realignments within the Spanish left. Above all, they raised the importance of unity.

The PCE now peddled an anti-fascist front and embraced a moderate line. It joined the socialist trade unions. It intervened in the Socialist Youth, which had swung far to the left in 1933-34.

The Stalinists came to dominate the entire organisation, gaining them a mass base for the first time.

This was possible thanks to the regrettable sectarianism of the Spanish Trotskyists, who the Socialist Youth leadership had invited to join and help Bolshevise the movement. Instead, however, they chose to fuse with other small groups in order to form the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) a decision Trotsky criticised harshly.

In Catalonia, the Stalinists joined various left-wing groups to form the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia. The PCE vigorously agitated for the Spanish Popular Front: a broad alliance of leftist and liberal parties with a tame reformist programme, which won the elections of February 1936.

The Popular Front government stood for bourgeois law and order. Upon its victory, however, social agitation attained unprecedented intensity. This convinced the ruling class that bourgeois democracy could not hold back the workers. Dictatorship was necessary.

It was in this context that General Franco staged his coup dtat in July 1936. His putsch met the ferocious resistance of the masses. The defeat of the coup in key regionsunleashed the social revolution:workers formed armed militias; took over factories and estates; set up barricade committees, etc.

Working-class organisations took charge of social and economic life, and administered it in the interests of the majority. They led the first military pushback against Franco. The revolutionary workers rallied behind them the poor peasantry and sectors of the middle class.

Consequently, the republican state was suspended mid-air. Whilst threatened by Franco, it was more fundamentally opposed to the power of the working class, which threatened capitalism as a whole. But thanks to the uprising of the workers, it was disorganised and deprived of its repressive apparatus.

Workers power was implicit in the situation. The task was to dismantle the remnants of the Republic, and to centralise local working-class organs into a new authority that would wage a revolutionary war against Franco.

The formation of a unified proletarian army became a burning mission of the revolution. To win, it needed to be organised on the principles of class consciousness and iron revolutionary discipline, rather than the hierarchies of bourgeois armies. And if based on a programme for social transformation, it could enthuse the masses and exploit the class contradictions of Francos army.

This is precisely what the Bolsheviks did upon the outbreak of civil war in Russia in 1918, when they created the Red Army.

In Spain, however, no organisation was up to the task. The anarchists refused to take power, and chose to cooperate with the bourgeois Republican authorities, joining the government in November. The PSOE leftists also chose collaboration, taking over the government in September. Even the dissident communists of the POUM entered the Catalan cabinet.

Thus began the slow reconstruction of the bourgeois state machine. Civil war demands centralised authority. The refusal of the anarchists and socialists to build such an authority on a revolutionary basis left a vacuum that had to be filled. It was filled by the old bourgeois state, with the support of the Stalinists.

Yet this process came up against the scattered workers power that had crystallised during the fighting in July. It could only be imposed through civil war within the civil war.

Historian Hugh Thomas rightly labelled the Spanish Civil War the war of two counterrevolutions: the Francoist and the democratic-republican.

The Stalinists owing to their ruthlessness, single-mindedness, and Soviet backing emerged as the main battering ram of the republican counter-revolution.

Moscow saw the Iberian Peninsula not as the setting of a sweeping proletarian revolution, but as part of a diplomatic chessboard.

Stalins main priority in 1936 was to woo British and French imperialism into an alliance against Germany. For this, the Soviet Union had to present itself as a respectable ally that would not jeopardise British and French capitalist interests.

Events in Spain upset his plans. Therefore, Stalin sought to throttle the Spanish Revolution as a sacrificial lamb, sending a clear message to London and Paris about Soviet trustworthiness.

On March 20, 1937, Stalinstated: The Spanish people are in no condition now to bring about a proletarian revolution the internal and especially the international situation do not favour it.

Soviet efforts to draw Britain and France into an alliance and to convince them to support the Spanish Republic, however, came to naught.

Fernando Claudn, a PCE leader who later on came to criticise the partys wartime strategy, rightlycommented:

The Western governments, unlike the Communist International, saw the question in class terms, and realised the most reliable representative of Spanish capitalism was not [Social Democratic Prime Minister] Negrn, but Franco.

Paris and London preferred to reach a deal with Hitler in Munich in October 1938. Thereafter,Stalin struck his own alliance with Hitlerin August 1939.

Diplomatic combinations struck with the imperialists on the ashes of the Spanish Revolution could not have averted the rise of fascism and the barbarism of world war. But a victorious revolution in Spain would have delivered a devastating blow to world fascism.

Stalin used Soviet aid to the Republic as a political bargaining chip, in order to push the republican government rightwards. The isolation of Spains anti-fascists facilitated this task, as only the Soviet Union and Mexico sold weapons to the Republic.

The Moscow-controlled International Brigades mobilised tens of thousands of volunteers, who fought courageously in Spain. But these were also used by the Stalinists as a tool to enhance Soviet leverage.

At the same time, the International Brigades revealed that the only friend of the Spanish fighters was international working-class solidarity, not the British and French imperialists.

The PCE and their puppeteers in Moscow adopted an openly Menshevik policy in Spain. Jos Daz, following Soviet instructions,explainedthat: There can be no question at present of a dictatorship of the proletariat or of Socialism, but only of the struggle of democracy against Fascism.

Stalinists claimed that the Spanish revolution was a struggle against feudalism and German-Italian intervention; a bourgeois revolution for democracy and national independence. Yet most Spanish bourgeois had fled to Francos side in July, or had been shot!

For the Stalinists, socialism was a distant goal, possible only after a prolonged phase of bourgeois-democratic evolution.

This was a word-for-word repetition of the Russian Menshevik programme. The Spanish Communist Party was communist only in name. It became a furious enemy of anything that smacked of Bolshevism which it labelled, rightly or wrongly, as Trotskyism.

In their public propaganda in the early months of the war, however, the Stalinists used a slightly different argument: win the war first, then do the revolution. Yet this mechanistic formula missed the entire point. As anarchist Camilo Bernerirightly put it: The only dilemma is as follows either victory over Franco through revolutionary war, or defeat.

The Stalinists became entrenched in the reorganised Republican army and police. Utilising their growing institutional power, the PCE cracked down on the militias; dissolved farming and factory collectives, handing their property back to former owners; and replaced the workers committees with Republican institutions.

The Stalinists defence of bourgeois legality won them a large following among the petty bourgeoisie that had been spooked by the events of July 1936. In Madrid, out of over 60,000 PCE members,only 10,000belonged to trade unions, which gives an idea of its social composition.

Initially, this counter-revolution took the form of isolated skirmishes. However, in May 1937 this camouflaged civil war took the form of an open showdown.

On 3 May 1937, a Stalinist-controlled detachment of the Republican police attempted to evict the CNT from Barcelonas telephone exchange. Its takeover by the workers in 1936 was an important conquest of the revolution symbolically but also practically, as they could listen in to government communications. This clash therefore had major repercussions.

The Barcelona working class reacted to this attack through a spontaneous uprising. The following day, nine-tenths of the city was in the hands of the rebels. But despite the overwhelming power of the insurrection, the workers lacked leadership. The CNT and POUM leaders called on the rebels to abandon the barricades. The insurrection fizzled out.

A wave of counter-revolutionary violence followed the May events. Under pressure from the PCE and Soviet diplomacy, the POUM was banned. Stalinist agents kidnapped, tortured, and shot its leader, Andreu Nin. Many others were killed, including the aforementioned Berneri.

The Stalinists created a climate of terror. The Republican army and police and Stalinist armed groups crushed whatever remained of workers power.

In Aragon, one of the strongholds of the Spanish revolution, the regional Defence Council, which operatedde factoas a workers government, was dissolved by a Stalinist army. The Councils leader, anarchist Joaqun Ascaso, was jailed on sham accusations. The Civil War now became a conventional war for the defence of republican legality.

The Stalinists emerged as a mass force, boasting a million members in June 1937. This owed to factors such as PCE identification with Soviet aid, the recruitment of frightened petty bourgeois, and repression.

The main factor for Stalinist supremacy, however, was the disorientation of their opponents. The CNT, the POUM, and the PSOE leftists failed to present a credible solution to the question of power.

Since no major organisation defended a serious plan for a revolutionary war based on a new workers regime, the entire logic of the Civil War tacked towards the defence of bourgeois-republican order.

The Stalinists were the most consequential supporters of this strategy, which, moreover, they covered with leftist glitter and the prestige of the Soviet state. They stood out as the best-organised and most committed fighters in the war. They thus attracted many honest workers.

After May 1937, the revolutionary energy that had beaten back Franco in July 1936 dissipated. A mood of apathy set in. Under these conditions, the fascists began to recover ground.

In March 1939, professional republican army officers around General Casado staged a coup. They cracked down on the Stalinists and opened up the remaining republican territory to the Francoists.

The coup was preceded by months of growing isolation of the PCE. Having accomplished the dirty work of destroying the revolution, the Stalinists were marginalised by their defeatist republican peers.

Fernando Claudnsummed upthe sad history of the Stalinists in 1936-39:

In the first phase, the republicans, the socialists, the reformists, and the communists managed to beat back the revolution, hemming it within bourgeois-democratic bounds, and restored, on this basis, the republican state []. In the second phase, the front of reformist socialists and republicans methodically strove to drive the communists out of the state apparatus [] and prepared the final capitulation.

Francos victory was the tragic denouement of a war that had begun as a proletarian revolution that galvanised the masses, but, due to the Stalinist-reformist counterrevolution, ended as a conventional war for the defence of a discredited bourgeois regime.

As a rank-and-file PCE combatant, peasant Timoteo Ruiz,later reflected:

Fighting and dying, we sometimes thought: All this and for what? Was it to return to what we had known before? If that was the case then it was hardly worth fighting for. The shamefaced way of making the revolution demoralised people; they didnt understand.

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The Spanish Civil War and the crimes of Stalinism - Socialist Appeal

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