RED SCARE 2.0
FLORIDA

DeSantis signs education bills that target communism, socialists

By RICHARD TRIBOU
ORLANDO SENTINEL 
JUN 22, 2021

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed three education bills championed by the Republican Legislature and governor that they say aim to increase civics understanding among Florida students.

Appearing at a press conference at a Fort Myers middle school on Tuesday, he signed House Bill 5 that directs the state Department of Education to come up with a curriculum that educates students on the evils of communism and totalitarian regimes like Venezuela and Nicaragua.

DeSantis decried how some educators will praise people like Mao Zedong, who helped create communist China and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

“This guy was a total communist thug,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to be pushing back on a lot of the whitewashing that’s been done.”

Also signed were Senate Bill 1108 that aims bridge civics education between high school and secondary schools, and House Bill 233, which aims to require colleges and universities to conduct annual assessments on intellectual freedom.

DeSantis complained current higher education institutions in the United States have become repressive environments in which “other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed.”

DeSantis also pointed out how he had led a movement recently by the State Board of Education to ban the teaching of critical race theory, which DeSantis has said is too critical of American history because of the ways it address racism. Among things banned by the board would be using The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which puts slavery at the center of the story of how the country was founded. The project faced fierce criticism from former President Donald Trump and some historians.

“We do not want false history like you see in the 1619 project,” DeSantis said.

THE NEW MCARTHYISM

Florida governor signs anti-socialist education bills, requiring students and professors to register political views

Alex Johnson
25 June 2021

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law this week several reactionary education bills aimed at vilifying socialism within schools. The legislation targets civics education courses in K-12 schools and penalizes state universities that do not bolster right-wing conversative ideology on campuses.

Ron Desantis speaking at the 2018 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

At a signing event for the three bills, held at a middle school in Fort Myers, the governor invoked fascistic and anti-communist rhetoric. He amalgamated communist and left-wing movements with “totalitarian governments” while smearing them as “evil” ideologies.

DeSantis’ denounced governments in countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua. “Why would somebody flee across shark infested waters, say leaving from Cuba, to come to southern Florida?” DeSantis asked. “Why would somebody leave a place like Vietnam...and risk their life to be able to come here?”

DeSantis complained of some educators praising figures such as the Chinese Stalinist Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. He denounced Guevara as a “total communist thug” before proclaiming that he was going to push back against the “whitewashing that’s been done.”

Two of the bills are directed towards restructuring “civics education” in K-12 curriculums with the purpose of promulgating nationalism and militarism. The laws will require schools to develop “portraits in patriotism” within civic courses, which are meant to tell stories and “first-person accounts” of victims of ostensibly communist governments which are then compared with the more supposedly democratic US.

The laws will mandate that state universities teach similar chauvinistic and anti-communist courses, with college students now required to pass a “civic literacy” assessment exam and take a course on civic literacy to graduate. High school students will also have to take a new civic literacy assessment exam. If high school students pass that exam, the university civics requirements will be waived.

The final bill is fraudulently presented as a measure to protect “free speech” rights at state universities. In justifying this bill, DeSantis declared that schools will not be able to prevent students from encountering political and ideological views they find “uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.” He claimed that right-wing ideas are being “shunned” and “suppressed” on campuses that have turned into “intellectually repressive environments.”

Hidden in this bill is a requirement that college students and professors register political views with the state, an unprecedented and provocative encroachment on political expression.

Public universities will be required to survey both faculty and students on their political beliefs, and they will risk losing their funding if the responses do not satisfy the fascistic orientation of the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.

An article in Salon notes, “Based on the bill's language, survey responses will not necessarily be anonymous — sparking worries among many professors and other university staff that they may be targeted, held back in their careers or even fired for their beliefs.”

At a meeting of the state university system’s Board of Governors Tuesday, Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson called the public universities “socialism factories.” Neither DeSantis, Simpson, or any of the other fascistic Republicans provided any evidence or details on what specifically about schools caused them to be disproportionately left-wing.

The Miami Herald released an interview it conducted with Barney Bishop, one of the top lobbyists pushing the bill in Florida’s legislature, pointing to the real motivations behind the raft of fascistic laws, saying that they are aimed less at promoting “intellectual diversity” and more about boosting conservative Christian orthodoxy and other right-wing ideology.

Bishop complained of students “being indoctrinated from an early age,” and that the education system unfairly leans “toward liberal ideology and also secularism,” which were “not the values our country was founded upon.”

The Republicans are likewise seeking to preempt any growth of opposition against the status quo, under conditions where the capitalist system is being massively discredited due the ruling-class’ murderous pandemic policies, which have led to more than 610,000 deaths in the US, and the growth of staggering levels of social inequality which have left many college students and younger workers impoverished.

The campaign to condemn and demonize socialist, communist, or otherwise left-wing perspectives is a massive anti-democratic assault on public education. The laws in Florida are part of a far broader move of the far-right nationwide that sees schools as a battleground for waging attacks against any ideology that may pose a political challenge to social inequality, political repression, and war.

These education laws have been passed following the efforts of several Republican-led states, including Florida, to implement legislation that bans the teaching of “divisive concepts” relating to race, sex and class in public schools. Florida was one of the first states in early June that banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory. In giving right-wing cover for this blatant act of censorship, DeSantis said the banning of CRT was necessary to prevent children from thinking that “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”

While the media and Democrats have focused on the Republicans’ attack on CRT, the bills are in fact a sweeping assault on democratic rights. Their aim is to ban any left-wing critique of capitalist society, under conditions of a growing political radicalization of workers and particularly young people.

WSWS.ORG

Right-wing think tank walks back absurd critical race theory advisory

Fernando Ramirez

July 1, 2021

The werewolves at the Texas Public Policy Foundation got a good look at the moon Wednesday and revealed a little too much about themselves. 

In a since-deleted tweet, the conservative think tank shared a guide for how to spot critical race theory in the classroom. They warn parents that their children may be victims of critical race theory if buzzworthy terms such as “equity” or “anti-racism” are tossed around at school:

Critical race theory is a four-decade movement in academia that examines how racism affects legal, social, and political institutions. 

Today, the phrase has become a boogeyman for all things that might make a rightwing person uncomfortable — power structures, prejudice, Black lives matter, and many of the other things listed above in the encyclopedia of wrong-thought, brought to you by the folks that worship individual liberty (liberation, by the way, is one of the no-no words too). 

One of the dangerous terms is “colonialism.” Another is “racial hierarchies.” Good luck teaching Texas history without them. 

The Texas Public Policy Foundation deleted the tweet after facing sharp criticism throughout much of the day. 

“Thank you to the party of free speech for this list of words I’m not allowed to say,” wrote one Twitter user. 

Another user amusingly converted the list into a menu at the Cheesecake Factory.

The incident is part of a larger effort by rightwing conversatives to convince Americans that their children are being indoctrinated or brainwashed at school. 

In June, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law codifying the moral panic behind critical race theory. The legislation came about after Republicans lawmakers raised concerns about a Dallas area elementary school recommending a picture book about racism and white privilege.  

So far, Texas is among 26 states in the nation that have seen lawmakers introduce legislation to restrict the teaching of critical race theory.

 

Op-Ed: Socialism isn’t scaring away Latinos, it’s uniting us.

Benjamin Salinas

June 7, 2021

Another election has passed with another Republican victory in South Texas. Political pundits and the media are convinced that the once Democratic stronghold of South Texas is turning more and more Republican because of socialism. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

As a native South Texan, I grew up around these people. They were my neighbors, classmates, and community members you’d always see at the Friday night football games. They love their families, God, and this country, but that doesn’t make them Republicans.

Many pundits will point to these values as to why Texas Latinos are becoming more “conservative,” but we’ve always had these values! From as young as I can remember, my grandma would always explain to me which values were important to her. Among them were family, community, and honesty. These values don’t inherently mean that Latinos are more likely to vote Republican, because Latinos, like other working class people, also care about economic issues.

Growing up in South Texas, I was no stranger to poverty or homeslessness. According to the 2010 Census, the counties that border Mexico are among the poorest in the state and country. This lack of economic opportunity is a prime motivator for election turnout.

The growing wealth gap is even more extreme among Latinos, meaning that we’re often paid less for work than our white colleagues, in an era where we are already experiencing record-breaking wealth inequality. What Democrats need at this moment is an economic message that resonates with these people. So far, Democrats haven’t had a coherent message and that’s what has driven more Latino voters to the Republicans, because at least Republicans can pretend to be economically populist.

The 2020 Democratic Primary proves that a strong economic populist message can resonate with Latinos, not just in Texas but across the country. Look at Bernie’s early performance before the other candidates dropped out. Bernie blew all the other candidates out of the water with his Nevada performance, which has a large Latino population. Then look at the Texas primary results, Joe Biden may have won after the rest of the field dropped out and endorsed him, but despite that, Bernie dominated with Latinos in South Texas.

Furthermore, Latinos have a strong history and relationship with socialism. Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a member of Socialist International, ruled the country for over 70 years. Right now in Mexico, the ruling party is a big-tent left-wing party known as MORENA. Not to mention the many historic and current socialist governments elsewhere in Latin America.

What more proof do you need that this type of economic populism is a winning campaign strategy? Whether you’re a Latino in South Texas or a Latino in Los Angeles, economic populism resonates with them. Bernie wasn’t crazy, he was right. The people are demanding action to improve their material conditions; it’s about time Democrats returned to their FDR roots and took a more left-wing approach to economic issues. You’d be surprised at the things we could accomplish with an economic message that resonates across ethnic, racial, religious, and geographic barriers.

Socialism was never the problem, but it could be our solution and path to political dominance.

Benjamin Salinas is Texas Signal’s social media manager, former Campus Leader for the Bernie 2020 campaign, and a native of Alice, Texas.

Why America’s most high profile socialist lawmaker is fighting for her political life

Capitalists will be ‘emboldened’ if she loses recall battle, Seattle’s Kshama Sawant tells Andrew Buncombe

Thursday 24 June 2021

The former software engineer was first elected to Seattle City Council in 2013
(Getty)

Put in her own words, what is happening amounts to one of the “worst attacks on America’s left in decades”. It is perhaps not quite as high profile or significant as the 2016 undertaking by the Democratic establishment to undermine the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. But it is similar, “a full frontal assault on the idea that the working class can fight back”.

Furthermore, warns Kshama Sawant, if her opponents are successful, then “the right wing and the ruling class and the capitalists will be even more emboldened to carry out further attacks on the left”.


We are sitting outside a coffee shop in Seattle’s Central District, and the warm afternoon air is suddenly peppered with the language of Marxist rebellion – of elites and workers, of unions and rights, of people coming together and fighting for a revolution

Sawant, 47, represents ward three on Seattle City Council and, as a member of the Socialist Alternative party, is by many assessments the most long-serving and highest-profile socialist politician in the country.

Buffalo is on the cusp of electing its first socialist, female mayor

While Sanders, 79, and the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 31, may support some socialist policies, both campaigned for the Democratic Party, which despite the wild-eyed claims of Donald Trump and some other Republicans, is not a socialist organisation. (Sanders remains an independent, though he invariably votes with the Democrats.)

By contrast, Sawant’s Socialist Alternative describes itself as Marxist, and seeks to create a mass workers movement that would support free health care and education and lead an “international struggle against the failed system” of capitalism.

Yet, Sawant’s time may be up. The threat she has been talking about is an an attempt to oust her from the council by means of a so-called recall election.


In essence, if her opponents manage to collect the signatures of a little more than 10,000 residents of ward three, an election will be held in which her constituents will be asked if they want to hold onto her as their council member, or have her replaced.

Sawant and her supporters claim the recall is an undemocratic undertaking, backed and supported by “millionaires and billionaires” angered by her pro-working class agenda. Those behind the recall allege Sawant broke the law last summer, during the protests for racial justice that swept the country after the murder of George Floyd.

In particular they allege she improperly opened the buildings of the council chamber to host 1,000 protesters during a Covid lockdown, and led demonstrators to the home of the city’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, where she had called for her impeachment.

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Signs for and against the recall are popping up in Seattle’s ward three
(Andrew Buncombe)

Durkan had for several years demanded to keep her address confidential, and out of the public record, citing safety issues because of her previous work as a senior federal prosecutor. “We demand action now,” Sawant had said outside Durkan’s home.

In the days that followed, Durkan accused Sawant of putting people’s safety at risk, and called for her to be to be kicked from the council.

Sawant defended her actions, saying: “This is an attack on working people’s movements, and everything we are fighting for, by a corporate politician desperately looking to distract from her failures of leadership and politically bankrupt administration.”

When Sawant was first elected in 2013, she was the first socialist on the Seattle city council since Anna Louise Strong, a celebrated journalist and activist, won a seat on the school board in 1916. At the time she was the only elected socialist in the nation.

What’s more, the policies she was pushing, in particular for a $15-per hour minimum wage, were out of touch with much of the country.

Barely a decade later, even centrists such as Joe Biden back the “fight for $15”, while younger generation of politicians, including not only Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, but Cori Bush and Janeese Lewis George, have embraced the term “socialism” without fear of an electoral backlash.

This week, India Walton, a socialist and activist, won the Democratic primary to be mayor of Buffalo, and will likely become the first socialist mayor of a major city since 1960.

Police attack protesters with pepper spray in Seattle

All have joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a political organisation rather than a party, even if they are still members of the Democratic Party.

Sawant welcomes no longer being a lone torchbearer.

“[The fact] a lot of elected officials refer to themselves as socialists, I see as an extremely positive development. We showed in 2013, you can be a self-described socialist and that won't be a barrier to you being elected,” she says

“The fact so many socialists have been elected in the United States shows we are in a completely new period – we’re not in the Cold War era anymore. The younger generation has no negative baggage related to socialism. In fact, it's a very positive connotation.”

Sawant pays much credit to Bernie Sanders for never shying away from the word socialist. Yet, she claims the revolution Sanders says the nation needs cannot be secured from working inside the Democratic Party.

“Because at the end of the day, the Democratic Party, while it may have differences with the Republican Party, still represents the interests of Wall Street, of the capitalists,” she says.

Seattle was the first major US city to pass a $15-per hour minimum wage, doing so by a unanimous vote in 2014, a year after Sawant’s election. She won ward three, which includes the Capitol Hill neighbourhood, part of which last summer was ceded to protesters who for a month established a theoretically autonomous zone, known as the Chop (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest), until it was cleared by police.

John Nichols, national affairs correspondent of The Nation, a progressive magazine, credits Sawant with helping ensure such issues as the minimum wage received national attention.

“She broke through in the doldrums of American socialism, before Bernie had run for president, before the DSA had its explosive growth,” says Nichols, author of The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition – Socialism. “Her victory was a shock, it was a wake up call.”

Nichols says Sawant’s victory had much to do with what was happening in Seattle, a city that was rapidly undergoing the gentrification and economic transformation that has impacted other cities. Her win particularly excited progressives, he says, because of the unabashed nature of her positions, and because she had such “clear politics, [and a] clear set of policies”

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Henry Bridger II says politicians must be held accountable
(Andrew Buncombe)

In addition to her push for a $15-per hour minimum wage, as a member of the city council Sawant backed a move, known as the head tax, that would have levied a charge on big employers such as Amazon, to fund services for the homeless. The measure was passed, before being repealed after opposition from the business community. (A subsequent version, known as the “JumpStart tax” was later passed.)

In 2019, Amazon controversially threw itself into Seattle city politics, spending $1.5m in support of a number of candidates for the city council it considered “pro-business”, including a challenger to Sawant. Despite its efforts, she was re-elected for a third term.

Sawant, who has been vocal in her opposition to the US’s support of Israel as well as supportive of measures such as rent control and protection against eviction, claims the region’s “corporate elite” is now backing the recall petition in an effort to get rid of her. Among the donors to the recall effort are Doug Herrington, a senior vice president at Amazon, David Stephenson, the chief financial officer at Airbnb, and Jeannie Nordstrom, a member of a department store empire, though the maximum any business or person can contribute by law is $1,000. (The Airbnb official donated just $150, records suggest, while Herrington and Nordstrom gave $1,000.)

Sawant claims her donors, by contrast, are baristas, teachers, and healthcare workers, the “whole gamut of the working class”.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” she adds. “But I will tell you exactly what is going to happen if the recall succeeds – there will be a stunning attempt to roll back many of the victories we have won. But more than that, it will be a chilling effect on social movements.”

Airbnb had no comment about its CFO’s contribution, a Nordstrom spokesperson also declined to comment, while an Amazon spokesperson, Glenn Kuper, asked about Herrington’s donation, said: “As engaged residents and voters, our employees are welcome to support or oppose any issue or candidate they wish to in their personal capacity.”

Henry Bridger II is chair of the Recall Sawant campaign. A longtime Seattle resident, he says he voted for Sawant in 2013, though has not done so since.]
Sawant joined protesters outside a Seattle police station during last year’s racial justice demonstrations
(Getty)

He claims, however, the effort to recall Sawant is not driven by any political differences he and others may have with her, but that she broke the law. The recall campaign alleges that in addition to leading a march to the mayor’s house and hosting a protest inside city hall, in early 2020 she misused city council resources to push a ballot initiative.

(Sawant has claimed she did nothing wrong in regard to any of the allegations. However, in May she admitted misusing official resources for a ballot measure before a city ethics commission. At the time she said she “did not wilfully disregard any ethics rules”.)

Bridger insists the allegations levelled at Sawant are serious issues, and says the campaign is supported by a broad swathe of voters. He rejects assertions it is being backed by millionaires and billionaires.

“I care about any politician who breaks the law. I really do, because they impact us,” he says. “She broke the law, and we’ve already seen what happened with Trump, and how nothing sticks … It has to be done. Somebody has to step up.”

Does he equate Sawant’s alleged actions with Trump’s actions ahead of the 6 January storming of the US Capitol by his supporters?

“Absolutely. It’s the same thing,” he says. “At city hall, she endangered employees who were there by bringing in hundreds of people in the middle of a pandemic. You don’t do that, you don’t break the law, just because you feel doing it is going to get you what you want.”

Bridger, 55, who is currently unemployed, says the campaign is already more than halfway to reaching the 10,739 signatures it needs, a figure that represents 25 per cent of the total votes votes for the seat in 2019. If it gets to that figure, a recall election would proceed later this year, and people would decide whether to keep Sawant or oust her. If she loses her seat, the council will appoint a replacement.

In April, Washington state’s highest court dismissed an appeal by Sawant and ruled the petition process could move forward. It set campaigners a 180-day deadline to get the required signatures.

In the weeks since then, the fight on both sides has taken on a fresh intensity, with volunteers taking to the streets, to collect names, both for the recall, and in support of Sawant.

As spring arrived in the city, lighting up ward three in fruit and flower blossoms, posters for both sides – red, white and blue for the recall, and red and white for her solidarity campaign – have filled people’s windows, lawns or gardens, sometimes mingling with the roses and azaleas.

A middle-aged woman, tending to her garden on the east of the Capitol Hill district, says she supports the recall. “I would like her to represent the neighbourhood better, rather than seeking media attention,” she says.

The woman, who asks not to be named, admits the neighbourhood has changed, but says that Sawant is not interested in representing the tax-paying middle classes.

“She acts as if it is 30 years ago,” she says.

A short walk away, another woman, Lola Rogers, 56, says she is against the recall and has voted for Sawant. She says her opponents are most likely angry because of her staunch support of policies such as the $15-per hour minimum wage.

“Her goal is to spread socialist ideology,” says Rogers, who works as literary translator, specialising in Finnish.

Rogers says Sawant may not be everybody’s taste, but that she has worked hard in ward three.

“I might not want to hang out with her, or be her friend,” she says. “But I like her being on the council.”

This article was amended on 29 June 2021 to include the fact that in May this year Ms Sawant admitted having misused official resources for a ballot measure, but that at the time she said she had not wilfully disregarded any ethics rules.

From Eugene Debs to Bernie Sanders: America’s most famous socialists

Many may be surprised US history is dotted with socialists

Andrew Buncombe
Seattle@AndrewBuncombe
Thursday 24 June 2021

There was a time in the United States – especially at the height of the Cold War – when the label “socialist” or “communist” was so toxic it could get you ostracised or worse.

Yet, from the very early days of the nation, including the ideas of founding father Tom Paine, such ideas have flourished.

In the 1920s and 1930s, socialists running for office received huge numbers of votes, and many held elected offices.

Author John Nichols says that after Kshama Sawant was elected to Seattle City Council and he was asked by the media for his analysis, he often had to correct interviewers that she was in no way the first socialist voted in by electors.

But she was the first for many years, and the first on Seattle city’s council for a century.

“She's actually a sort of a renewal in many ways, of something that we saw a lot of a century ago,” Mr Nichols, author of The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition - Socialism, told The Independent. “You used to have a lot of elected socialists all over.”

He added: “She was a new iteration.”

And just this week, India Walton, a socialist and activist, who had never before held office, won the Democratic primary for the mayor of Buffalo, all but ensuring her of victory, given the New York city has not had a Republican mayor for decades.

Given the rich tradition of socialism in the country, a fact that may surprise some, there are a lot of individuals who would fit the label “socialist”, even if if some of them would require a caveat, or footnote. Here are some of the most well known:


Eugene V Debs

Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party of the USA made five bids for the US presidency
(Getty Images)

Debs, born in 1855, was an activist, orator, trade union member and politician. Initially, he was a member of the Democratic Party and was elected to the Indiana state legislature in 1884. After becoming more interested in the trades union movement, establishing the American Railway Union, his views shifted to the the left. He help found three socialist political parties, the Social Democracy of America, the Social Democratic Party of America, and the Socialist Party of America.

He made five bids for the presidency as a socialist, one of them from a jail cell, having been sentenced for his role in a strike. He had declared: “As a revolutionist I can have no respect for capitalist property laws, nor the least scruple about violating them.

“I hold all such laws to have been enacted through chicanery, fraud and corruption, with the sole end in view of dispossessing, robbing and enslaving the working class.”

His most successful bid was in 1912, when he received 6 per cent of the total vote. He died in 1926, at the age of 70.


Norman Thomas

Norman Thomas ran six times for president as a socialist
(Getty Images)

Thomas, a church minister and pacifist who was born in Ohio in 1884, made bids for governor, mayor and the US senate as candidate for the Socialist Party of America. More famously, he also made six bids for the presidency, his first following the death in 1926 of fellow socialist Eugene Debs.

His first bid was in 1932, which saw a massive landslide for Democratic challenger Franklin Delano Roosevelt over the Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover.

Thomas bagged 2.2 per cent of the popular vote. When he tried again in 1936, he only managed less than half-a-percentage point.

Thomas, who died in 1968 at the age of 84, once told Republican Barry Goldwater: “We are socialists because we believe this income which we all cooperate in making isn’t divided as it ought to be.”

Anna Louise Strong

Strong, who was born in Nebraska in 1885, packed in much to a life that broke down barriers, and pushed the envelope for women.

In 1916 she was elected as a member of the Seattle school board as a socialist, where she worked for the interests of poor children and their families. The daughter of Christian activists, she later became a journalist and wrote in support of the Seattle General Strike of 1919, saying: “We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead—NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!”

She spent much of time visiting the Soviet Union and China, where she interviewed Joseph Stalin, and founded the Moscow News, the city’s first English-language newspaper. She also interviewed many leading Chinese leaders, including Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong.

In 1949, she was expelled from the USSR amid allegations she was a spy. She returned to the US where she faced investigation from the CIA, and her passport was taken. When it was returned, in 1958, she returned to China where she befriended Mao, and where she would spend the rest of her life. She died in 1970 at the age of 84.

Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders has never shied away from word ‘socialism’
(Getty Images)

The former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, has always described himself a democratic socialist, rather than a Marxist or communist.

Yet, throughout his career, he has never shied away from the word socialism, and his policies have always put the needs of working people at their core. Elected to Congress and then the Senate as an independent, he has invariably caucused and voted with the Democrats.

In 2016 and 2020 he sought the party’s presidential nomination, exciting millions of progressives with his enthusiasm. He helped make a number of policies – such a higher minimum wage, free healthcare, higher taxes for the rich – more mainstream than they ever had been.

Sanders, 79, also inspired inspired a new generation of progressive and socialist politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Angela Davis


Angela Davis investigated US prison system in one of her ten books
(AFP via Getty Images)

Born in 1944, Davis is a writer, academic, and life-long communist.

Having been born in Birmingham, Alabama, she studied French, before moving to Germany where she studied philosophy and political science. When she returned to the US she became increasingly involved in socialist activism, and twice was the vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA, which was formed in 1919.

She once said: “The American judicial system is bankrupt. In so far as black people are concerned, it has proven itself to be one more arm of a system carrying out the systematic oppression of our people. We are the victims, not the recipients of justice.”

Davis has written more than 10 books, including an investigation into what she termed the US’s prison–industrial complex.

Now aged 77, Davis is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In 1991, she helped establish a new socialist party, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and has been a member ever since.

Kshama Sawant

Kshama Sawant was first elected to Seattle City Council in 2013
(AFP via Getty Images)

The 47-year-old former software engineer was elected to Seattle City Council in 2013, as a member of the Socialist Alternative, a Marxist party seeking worldwide revolution.

She immediately began pressing for policies such as a $15-per hour minimum wage, and a year after her election, Seattle became the first major city in the US to pass such legislation. She has been re-elected twice.

Sawant has frequently denounced the impact of major companies such as Amazon on Seattle, saying they have helped speed up the pace of gentrification and pushed up the cost of affordable housing. 
She is currently trying to defend herself against the prospect of a recall election, organised by critics who claim she broke the law when the let protesters into city hall last summer.

She has denied any wrong doing and told The Independent: “I don't have a crystal ball. But I will tell you exactly what is going to happen if the recall succeeds – there will be a stunning attempt to roll back many of the victories we have won. But more than that, it will be a chilling effect on social movements.”

India Walton

(The Buffalo News via AP)

India Walton, a nurse and activist, had never held office before. But she recently won the Democratic primary for the mayor of Buffalo, New York, running as a socialist.

If she wins in the general election later this year, as she is expected to do, she would be the first socialist mayor of a major US city since Frank Zeidler, who was mayor of Milwaukee until 1960.

Backed by both the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, the 38-year-old told the New York Times she was keen to avoid labels.

“I don’t think reality has completely sunk in yet,” she told the newspaper. “I’m India from down the way, little poor Black girl who, statistically speaking, shouldn’t have amounted to much, yet here I am. This is proof that Black women and women belong everywhere in positions of power and positions of leadership, and I’m just super-excited.”

Socialism Is Gaining Popularity, Poll Shows

A person wears a protective face mask outside New York's City Hall on July 4, 2020.NOAM GALAI / GETTY IMAGES

BY Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams

PUBLISHED June 26, 2021


While a majority of U.S. adults still have more positive than negative perceptions of capitalism, less than half of the country’s 18 to 34-year-olds view the profit-maximizing market system favorably, and the attractiveness of socialism continues to increase among people over 35, according to a new poll released Friday.

The online survey, conducted June 11-25 by Momentive on behalf of Axios, found that 57% of U.S. adults view capitalism in a positive light, down from 61% in January 2019, when the news outlet first polled on these questions. Then and now, 36% are critical of the exploitation of the working class and the environment by the owning class.

Perceptions of capitalism have remained consistent among adults ages 35 and older, meaning that the system’s dwindling popularity is driven by the nation’s young adults. According to the poll, 18 to 34-year-olds today are almost equally likely to hold a negative opinion of capitalism as a positive one (46% vs. 49%). Just two years ago, that margin was 38% vs. 58%.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the severity of the climate emergency, capitalism is particularly unpopular among 18 to 24-year-olds, with negative views outweighing positive views by a margin of 54% to 42%.

Even young Republicans appear to be changing their views. Whereas 81% of Republicans and GOP-leaners between the ages of 18 and 34 perceived capitalism positively in 2019, that figure has plummeted to 66% in 2021.

Between the January 2019 poll and the latest survey, the world has been rocked by severe public health and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Jon Cohen, the chief research officer for Momentive, predicted that “the pandemic is sure to have lasting impact for decades to come.”

As a result of the deadly catastrophe that has unfolded over the past year and a half, Axios argued, millions of Americans have been forced “to re-evaluate their political and economic worldview.”

The news outlet attributed shifting views to two factors. First, the coronavirus crisis exposed profound injustices in the U.S. and globally. And second, government responses to the calamity demonstrated the extent to which state intervention has the potential to mitigate or exacerbate hardship.

Although 52% of Americans still take issue with socialism, the percentage of U.S. adults with favorable views of socialism increased from 39% in 2019 to 41% in 2021. While positive perceptions of socialism dipped slightly among young adults — from 55% two years ago to 51% now — that decline was offset by an increase in the number of adults over the age of 35 who view socialism in a positive light.

Socialism is especially appealing to Black Americans (60% now vs. 53% in 2019) and women (45% now vs. 41% in 2019), two groups that would benefit disproportionately from the downward redistribution of resources and power. Less than half of women in the U.S. (48%) view capitalism in a positive light, down from 51% two years ago. It is worth noting that working-class mothers have been hit particularly hard by the ongoing economic crisis, in large part due to a lack of affordable child care.

Deciphering the meanings of “capitalism” and “socialism” can be difficult, given that both are abstractions being interpreted by Americans through the highly distorted lens of more than a century of pro-capitalist and anti-socialist propaganda.

Looking beyond those terms, the survey found that 66% of U.S. adults want the federal government to implement policies to reduce the worsening gap between rich and poor. That’s up from 62% in 2019, which is before the nation’s 660 billionaires saw their combined fortunes surge by more than $1.1 trillion amid a devastating pandemic.

Two years ago, just 40% of Republicans under 35 said the government should pursue policies that close widening gulfs in income and wealth. Today, 56% of people in that group want lawmakers to curb inequality.

“Politicians looking to attack opponents to their left can no longer use the word ‘socialist’ as an all-purpose pejorative,” noted Axios. “Increasingly, it’s worn as a badge of pride.”

CANADIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
C. B. Macpherson Wanted a Socialism That Didn’t Lose Sight of the Individual

Canadian thinker C. B. Macpherson insisted that capitalism’s “possessive individualism” constrained human flourishing. In its place, he wanted a democratic socialist society where people could build meaningful relationships and express the kaleidoscope of human individuality.

BYMATT MCMANUS

JSCOBIN

06.26.2021
THEORY
LIBERALISM

Review of The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson by Frank Cunningham (Palgrave, 2019).

C.B. Macpherson was a legend in Canadian political theory circles, known for his close reading of dense theoretical texts. He managed to bring to light hidden assumptions and tensions with a rare combination of scholarly acumen and bite. But as the author of books with dry titles like Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval and Democracy in Alberta: Social Credit and the Party System, Macpherson’s reputation mostly stopped at the university gates.

Fortunately, Frank Cunningham’s excellent recent book, The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson, gives us a more complete and interesting view of both the man and the democratic socialist core of his writing. In Cunningham’s able hands, Macpherson is revitalized as a figure who can not only teach us about the limitations and strengths of the classical liberal tradition but offer us an inspiring vision for a democratic socialist future.

What is Possessive Individualism?

The work that made Macpherson’s name was 1962’s The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Nominally a history of early modern English political theory, the book had much grander ambitions.

Macpherson’s aim was to analyze the roots of what he called “possessive individualism” — the idea that in the state of nature each of us is an atomic individual, separate from all others, defined by a relentless pursuit of desire that requires us to develop our skills and labor to acquire what we want. Natural human beings owe nothing to society or others, neither when developing their capacities nor enjoying their property.

Far from natural, possessive individualism came into being through a contingent combination of historical events and changing ideological notions, Macpherson shows. In particular, the epic clashes between aristocratic absolutism and capitalist parliamentarianism in seventeenth-century Britain provided fertile soil for philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, James Harrington, and John Locke to reconceive the nature of society along market lines.

According to these theorists, property emerges through the mixing of one’s labor with matter, which creates an entitlement to whatever is produced. A farmer who puts up a fence around a plot of land and then tills the soil is mixing his labor with the soil, which consequently becomes his property, along with the carrots and potatoes that sprout from it

.

John Locke, by John Greenhill (died 1676). (UK National Portrait Gallery)

This workmanship ideal — we should get to keep what we labor for — has remained ideologically powerful. American conservatives like Ben Shapiro still use it to justify stark inequalities.

But as Macpherson points out, the workmanship ideal is unworkable even as the moral basis for capitalist society. If it’s true that we are entitled to the fruits of our labor, how is it that laborers make something but capitalists are then entitled to it as their property? After all, it wasn’t Ray Kroc who flipped a million burgers or Donald Trump who built the Trump Tower. If we really believe that people are entitled to what they labored to create, then it’s impossible to defend the capitalist system.

Locke’s solution was to extend the notion of a contract to the relationship between capitalist employers and laborers. He argued that workers are not entitled to keep what they make if they have contractually agreed to labor for their employers.


Of course, workers could eventually refuse to hand over what they created and instead decide to enjoy it for themselves. Or they could decide to band together and democratically demand changes to society. Possessive individualists therefore came to recognize the need for a powerful state that could guarantee the rights of employers to live off whatever their employees’ labor produced.

The irony here was that possessive individualism moved from conceiving of people as atoms owing nothing to anyone else, to requiring a leviathan that would safeguard the interests of the privileged few. As Macpherson put it near the end of Possessive Individualism: “It is not a question of the more individualism, the less collectivism; rather the more thoroughgoing the individualism, the more complete the collectivism.”
Rethinking Liberal Individualism and Socialism

Macpherson’s critical history of possessive individualism forms the cornerstone of his legacy. But Cunningham reminds us that in addition to being a sharp reader of classical liberal thought, Macpherson was also a democratic socialist who spent much time theorizing about the problems of contemporary capitalism and what might replace it.Macpherson insisted that liberalism was right to emphasize the value of individualism, but wrong to assume the only kind of individuality was possessive.

Macpherson’s socialism sprung from his belief that capitalism prevented human beings from fully developing their “productive powers” and “capacities.” Capitalist markets generate stratification: a select few have the material luxury of developing their capacities while everyone else is confined to improving the narrow range of abilities necessary to perform their jobs. On top of that, possessive individualist societies cultivate an atomistic, alienating sense of self that encourages individuals to compete for scarce goods and honors. Greed is both good and inevitable. The state’s job, meanwhile, is to encourage capitalist competition up to the point where individuals begin physically harming one another — and even that line can be crossed if capital demands, say, an imperialist intervention or the suppression of radical movements.

Macpherson insisted that liberalism was right to emphasize the value of individualism — chastising authoritarian socialist states for trampling on individual liberty — but that it was wrong to assume the only kind of individuality was possessive. Better, in Macpherson’s eyes, was a “normative individualism” where we cooperate with each other to form meaningful and democratic communities that mutually empower members to express their individuality. This position resembles what I’ve called the “expressive” rather than “possessive” individualism of John Stuart Mill. But Macpherson gives it a much more democratic tint.

There is a lot to like in this argument. Atomistic, possessive individualism is both theoretically implausible and empirically unsound. People construct their sense of self not simply through laboring and acquiring but by forming meaningful relationships and developing and exercising their diverse capacities. Possessive individualist society is undesirable precisely because its competitive mania erodes human relationships, and, worse, because its inequalities mean that many will never be able to develop more than a fraction of their capacities.

At the same time, Macpherson is right that we shouldn’t run in the opposite direction, subordinating individualism to either cultural traditionalism (as social conservative critics of liberalism would insist) or political movements (as with some socialist experiments). Instead, our aim should be to create a more sincerely individualistic society that recognizes how being able to form deep connections with others and mutually empower one another in the pursuit of the good life is what enables us to become truly self-determining and free.

Democratization is a necessary complement, since it enables us to deliberate about what kind of shared world we want to construct. Not coincidentally, this is one of the reasons why hyper-possessive individualists like neoliberals are so wary of democracy.
Macpherson and Neoliberalism

Cunningham spends much of his book applying Macpherson’s thinking to contemporary issues, from neoliberalism to feminist and racial justice struggles. He rightly chides Macpherson for endorsing the aims of the civil rights and feminist movements without taking up the issues they raised — an unfortunate omission since both would have leavened Macpherson’s analysis of possessive individualism.

For instance, Domenic Losurdo points out that Locke’s arguments for possessive individualism weren’t just central to justifying capitalist coercion at home (the argument is well summarized by my late friend Connor O’Callaghan); they animated his denigration of Indigenous people’s labor as inefficient and his argument that they had no claim to the land they’d inhabited for centuries. Far better for them to be replaced by hardworking, industrious white settlers who would actually make good use of it.



One of the most interesting sections of Cunningham’s book is where he extends Macpherson’s analysis to the topic of neoliberalism. Plenty of classical and egalitarian liberals still held to humanistic ideals of fairness and moral equality that made them skeptical of extending the logic of possessive individualism to all areas of life. Some liberal thinkers like Mill even reached the conclusion that liberalism and capitalism were fundamentally incompatible. Neoliberal thinkers had no such misgivings: they crafted a “pure market” theory, Cunningham argues, that reduced the liberal ideal to what was required by capital. Macpherson died in 1987, during the glory days of the Reagan and Thatcherite counterrevolutions. He was deeply anxious about their assaults on the welfare state and democratic rule, arguing strenuously against figures like Milton Friedman that neoliberalism wasn’t in keeping with either justice or human nature.

Here I think we should part ways with both Macpherson and Cunningham. Neoliberalism is intriguing precisely because it is the historical moment that capitalism’s defenders realized possessive individualism didn’t reflect human nature. Most of us don’t think of ourselves (and don’t want to think of ourselves) as disconnected, sybaritic machines jostling with each other, eager to transform our very personalities into social capital.

Recognizing this reality, and wanting to turbocharge the market’s colonization of all spheres of life, neoliberals tried to both insulate capitalism from democratic pressures and build institutions that could remold people in the image of possessive individualism. Simultaneously, they sought to graft their ideas onto the institutions of the US-led international order, forever banishing the specter of social democracy, much less socialism.

Their project was magnificently successful for a time, and only recently have we seen widespread revolt against the effort to cram the square peg of humanity into the round hole of hyper-possessive individualism. Whether this will end with a revived left-wing politics or an even worse reactionary explosion remains an open question. But Macpherson’s democratic socialist vision can inspire us to think more comprehensively about the ideological zigzags of capitalism’s defenders — and the positive elements of liberalism that can be extracted from its contradictory legacy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt McManus is a visiting professor of politics at Whitman College. He is the author of The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism and Myth and the coauthor of Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson.

‘Socialism’ Isn’t a Dirty Word Anymore

By Sarah Jones

POLITICS JUNE 25, 2021

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Most Americans still think positively of capitalism, but that’s beginning to change among young adults, a new poll suggests. According to an Axios/Momentive survey released on Friday, adults ages 18 to 34 “are almost evenly split between those who view capitalism positively and those who view it negatively.” Those numbers have changed significantly over the last two years, when 20 percentage points separated those who viewed capitalism positively from those who did not. Among adults aged 18 to 24, capitalism is in even deeper trouble: 42 percent say they have a positive view of it, and 54 percent do not.

If capitalism has begun to lose its shine, what solutions do people prefer? Socialism, for one. While positive views of socialism have slipped slightly among adults under 35 over the last two years, falling from 55 to 51 percent, it’s picked up some support from older adults and especially people of color. Axios reports that 60 percent of Black Americans view socialism positively, as do 45 percent of women, and even 33 percent of non-white Republicans. “Those numbers have grown over the past two years from 53 percent, 41 percent, and 27 percent respectively,” Felix Salmon writes. Capitalism is still more popular than socialism nationally, but there’s not much evidence that Americans categorically despise the anti-capitalist ideology any more.

The Axios/Momentive poll didn’t measure attitudes toward common socialist ideas though. Asking the public about the wealth gap is not quite the same as asking them if they support redistribution of wealth to close it. Nevertheless, the poll did indicate some broad support for a form of social democracy. 66 percent said the federal government “should pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between the wealthy and the less well-off in America,” which tracks with earlier, similar polls. In January 2020, the Pew Research Center found that most Americans believed there was too much economic inequality in the U.S., though only 42 percent said it should be a top priority for the federal government. The same poll, however, did show high rates of support for another form of government intervention: 72 percent said its top priority should be making health care more affordable for the public.

Support for other, broadly progressive policy solutions remain high. In an April Hill-HarrisX poll, 56 percent of registered voters “said billionaires paying a wealth tax is part of the solution to wealth inequality,” a figure consistent with previous poll results. Another March Morning Consult/Politico poll found that around seven in ten voters support a public health insurance option, and 55 percent support Medicare for All. Considered together, these numbers tell a political story. As the pandemic reordered American life and the economy along with it, Americans have become more critical of the dominant economic order. That creates an opening for Democrats — if they’re savvy enough to take advantage of it.

Most Democratic electeds remain eager to differentiate themselves from their socialist colleagues, who are themselves a small faction of the party’s presence in Congress. Should public opinion hold, however, that faction is likely to grow with time. That doesn’t spell doom for the party’s overall electoral chances, either. Democrats should ask themselves which is the more damaging possibility: A failure to condemn socialism, or a failure to critique capitalism? Given the numbers, the answer is clearly the latter, at least among the demographic groups Democrats need to inspire in order to keep winning elections.

Of course, Republicans will conflate milquetoast versions of liberalism with socialism as they successfully did during the last election in Florida among Latino voters. As a result, Democrats should have learned there’s no effective way to dodge a smear campaign except to counter it with a more effective message. Perhaps they could even make inroads with non-white Republicans. Party moderates may dislike it, but socialism has a growing constituency: In Buffalo, voters just elected socialist nurse India Walton in an upset over the Democratic incumbent, Byron Brown.

Should Democrats mount a cohesive critique of capitalism, they’ll meet many Americans where they are. That’s sensible politics, the key to a winning strategy. For the last year, Americans have lost jobs, stability, and in many cases, hope. A crisis as dramatic as COVID-19 should expand the party’s definition of what’s possible. Voters are eager for something new. Someone will provide it. That person could be a socialist or social democrat, or they could be a Republican cunning enough to wrap conservative politics in a populist-sounding message. Democrats will have to conquer their hostility to the former in order to prepare for the latter. There is a vanishing constituency for the status quo.

Americans Are More Open to Socialism Than Ever

BY LUKE SAVAGE

Socialism is now a real part of the political landscape — while “capitalism” has never been more unpopular.
Democratic socialists on the march. (Photo: Alice Bacon / DSA)

“If you’re not a liberal when you’re twenty-five, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re thirty-five, you have no brain.” Winston Churchill never actually said these words. But, if they continue to live on as a popular slogan, it’s probably because they capture a common attitude about the correlation between political idealism and age. The young, or so this story goes, are invariably drawn to the novelty and transgression of progressive or even radical ideas — a disposition that usually dissipates with age. There’s a decidedly unsubtle, patronizing implication here, the idea being that conservatism is arrived at through experience and is thus synonymous with maturity.

Anecdotally, at least, there are real reasons for people to assume politicization works this way — among them the trajectory of the generation that began to come of age in the 1960s. The actual empirical evidence, however, suggests a lot more variation in the political values (and voting habits) of the young, old, and middle-aged alike. In 1980, Ronald Reagan basically drew even with Jimmy Carter when it came to voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine — winning the same demographic in a landslide upon reflection four years later. Margaret Thatcher actually got more support in her 1983 electoral rout from those between thirty-five and forty-four than from people over sixty-five and also won more than 40 percent of first-time voters.

The formation of political identity is ultimately a lot more complicated than what’s implied by the oft-assumed trajectory from youthful idealism to hardheaded maturity. The collective experiences of particular generations and groups of people can make them more or less radical or conservative depending on the circumstances. In this respect, the findings of a new Axios/Momentive survey are striking but in many ways unsurprising.


Conducted in mid-June among more than two thousand adults over the age of eighteen, the poll’s topline finding is that just half of Americans (49 percent) ages eighteen to thirty-four now hold a positive view of capitalism — a precipitous drop from only two years ago, when the figure was some 20 points higher. Among those eighteen to twenty-four, only 42 percent now have a positive view of capitalism, while 54 percent hold a negative view. Even Republicans in the same age bracket exhibited a similar trend: the share who currently view capitalism in a favorable light is now 66 percent (down from 81 percent in January 2019).

Overall, there has been a small uptick in the percentage of Americans with a favorable view of socialism — one powered, according to Axios’s survey, primarily by black Americans and women. Here, the picture is a bit more textured and ambiguous:


While perceptions of capitalism have changed rapidly among young adults, perceptions of socialism have changed more incrementally among all age groups. Slightly fewer young adults now than in 2019 say they have a positive view of socialism (51% now vs. 55% in 2019). But that dip is offset by slight increases in the number of adults ages 35-64 and 65+ who say they have a favorable view of socialism.

Despite an overall increase, favorable perceptions of socialism remain in the minority (41 percent positive versus 52 percent negative). However, the picture again gets more complicated when broken down into specific questions. This should come as no surprise, given the stigma successfully attached to the word during the Cold War. For example, 66 percent of Americans agree that the federal government should legislate policies that aim to reduce the gap between the poor and the wealthy (once again, there’s been a startling shift among younger Republicans here: two years ago, only 40 percent favored such policies. Today, the figure is 56 percent.) This is consistent with other polls showing majority levels of support for policies like Medicare for All and various new taxes on the rich — even those not inclined toward “socialism” as a broad signifier are perfectly amenable to many of the things socialists these days advocate.

Across every age group, but especially among the young, it’s easy to see why Americans’ general views of capitalism have been deteriorating amid a renewed interest in both social democratic policies and socialism as a broad alternative. The coronavirus pandemic, much like the 2008–9 financial crisis, has underscored yet again how hierarchical, unfair, and often brutal the current political and economic consensus really is. Millions are drowning in student debt while facing bleak job prospects. Rents are soaring. As millions more face a brutal and precarious job market, billionaire wealth has spiked dramatically.

When the system around them is so obviously dysfunctional, people intuitively look for alternatives. The bottom line, according to Axios’s Felix Salmon: “Politicians looking to attack opponents to their left can no longer use the word ‘socialist’ as an all-purpose pejorative. Increasingly, it’s worn as a badge of pride.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Luke Savage is a staff writer at Jacobin.

Socialism is a trigger word on social media – but real discussion is going on amid the screaming

‘Tug-of-words’ posts debating the merits of socialism versus capitalism are all over social media platforms. pxfuel

The word “socialism” has become a trigger word in U.S. politics, with both positive and negative perceptions of it split along party lines.

But what does socialism actually mean to Americans? Although surveys can ask individuals for responses to questions, they don’t reveal what people are saying when they talk among themselves.

As a social media scholar, I study conversations “in the wild” in order to find out what people are actually saying to one another. The method I developed is called netnography and it treats online posts as discourse – a continuing dialogue between real people – rather than as quantifiable data.

As part of an ongoing study on technology and utopia, I read through more than 14,000 social media comments posted on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube in 2018 and 2019. They came from 9,155 uniquely named posters.

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What I found was both shocking and heartening.

Loyalty and fear

Both support for socialism and attacks on it appear to be on the rise.

Socialism can mean different things to people. Some see it as a system that institutionalizes fairness and citizen rights, bringing higher levels of social solidarity; others focus on heavy-handed government control of free markets that work more effectively when left alone. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, emphasized the right to quality health care, education, a good job with a living wage, affordable housing and a clean environment in a 2019 speech.

A 2019 Gallup Poll found that 39% of Americans have a favorable opinion of socialism – up from about 20% in 2010; 57% view it negatively.

Prominent elected “democratic socialist” officials include six Chicago City Council members, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

These and other advocates point to a version of socialism called the “Nordic model,” seen in countries like Denmark, which provide high-quality social services such as health care and education while fostering a strong economy.

Critics call socialism anti-American and charge that it undermines free enterprise and leads to disaster, often using the unrealistically extreme example of Venezuela.

President Trump has portrayed socialists as radical, lazy, America-hating communists. His son, Donald Trump Jr., has posted tweets ridiculing socialism.

During the 2020 election season, Republican Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell advised that his party could win by being a firewall against socialism. He was on point: Fear of socialism may have been a reason why the Republicans gained seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020.
A ‘tug of words’

Although I wasn’t initially looking for posts on socialism or capitalism, I found plenty of them in my online investigation. Many were what I call a “tug of words” in which people asserted which system was better. People from opposite ends of the political spectrum made pithy observations, posted one-liners or launched strong, emotionally worded broadsides. There was often little dialogue – those who posted were shouting at each other as if using a megaphone.

A YouTube commenter uses a megaphone-like approach to preach about the perils of socialism. Screen shot by Robert Kozinets

I also found a large number of short, nonconversational, megaphone-like posts on visual social media like Instagram and Pinterest.
Some commentary on socialism on Pinterest. Screen shot by Robert Kozinets

But some people were more circumspect. While they were often reactive or one-sided, they raised questions. For example, people questioned whether business bailouts, grants, lobbying or special tax treatment showed that capitalism’s “free markets” weren’t actually all that free.

Making a historical economic argument against socialism and its slippery slope to totalitarianism. Robert Kozinets' data collection

And some considered what “socialism” actually means to people, linking that meaning to race, nationality and class.
The meaning of socialism discussed on Twitter. Screen shot by Robert Kozinets

Overcoming primitive ‘isms’

Amid all the sound and fury of people shouting from their virtual soapboxes, there were also the calmer voices of those engaging in deeper discussions. These people debated socialism, capitalism and free markets in relation to health care, child care, minimum wage and other issues that affected their lives.

One YouTube discussion explored the notion that we should stop viewing everything “through the primitive lens of the nonsensical ‘isms’ – capitalism, socialism, communism – which have no relevance in a sustainable or socially just and peaceful world.”

Other discussions united both left and right by asserting that the real problem was corruption in the system, not the system itself. Some used social media to try to overcome the ideological blinders of partisan politics. For example, they argued that raising the minimum wage or improving education might be sensible management strategies that could help the economy and working Americans at the same time.

This Reddit post explores the benefits of changes that some might label as socialist. Screen shot by Robert Kozinets.

New forum for discussions

As America’s divisions fester, my work gives me reason for hope. It shows that some Americans – still a small minority, mind you – are thoughtfully using popular social media platforms to have meaningful discussions. What I have provided here is just a small sample of the many thoughtful conversations I encountered.

My analysis of social media doesn’t deny that many people are angry and polarized over social systems. But it has revealed that a significant number of people recognize that labels like socialism, free markets and capitalism have become emotional triggers, used by some journalists and politicians to manipulate, incite and divide.

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To unify and move forward together, we may need to better understand the sites and discussion formats that facilitate this kind of thoughtful discourse. If partisans retreat to echo chamber platforms like Parler and Rumble, will these kinds of intelligent conversations between people with diverse viewpoints cease?

As Americans confront the financial challenges of a pandemic, automation, precarious employment and globalization, providing forums where we can discuss divergent ideas in an open-minded rather than an ideological way may make a critical difference to the solutions we choose. Many Americans are already using digital platforms to discuss options, rather than being frightened away by – or attacking – the tired old socialist bogeyman.

December 1, 2020 

Author

Robert Kozinets
Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair in Strategic Public Relations and Business Communication, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism