By Lee Cary ——Bio and Archives--April 11, 2019
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If Senator Bernie Sanders is the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in 2020, his party will need a new name—the Socialist Democratic Party.
"The American Socialist Movement 1897-1912," by Ira Kipnis, recounts the history of socialism in America during those years. But Kipnis begins the story earlier."Marxian Socialism came to America with the German immigrants of the 1850s. Among these immigrants were men who had worked and corresponded with Marx in the European socialist movement. Once in America they became active in the German-American labor movement, and Americans familiar with socialism only as a colonial withdrawal from a wicked society began to be bombarded with calls to end capitalism through organized activity within that economy."So, before the American Civil War, socialism started down a long meandering road, with frequent stops-and-starts, and multiple agreements and splits among morphing factions, throughout the second half of the 19th Century. Meanwhile, at the end of the 1800s, the nation's most popular book of the century had been "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The second most popular book is largely unknown today: "Looking Backward 2000-1887" by Edward Bellamy, ©1888. It's a fictional story of a rich man, Julian West, who agonizes over all the inequality he sees around him. Unable to sleep, he hires someone to hypnotize him, knowing that he might have difficulty awakening. One day he awakens to find he's been asleep for 113 years, from 1887 until 2000. A new friend shows him how his city has dramatically changed. Julian finds a new world without poverty; one where government supplies everyone's needs. All citizens are educated by the state until age twenty-one. Everyone works at a job that reflects their skills and abilities. Those unable to work receive the same as those who do. And entertainment is free to all. As the wonders of Julian's new-found utopia expand, he discovers a society where one can retire at age thirty-three at half-pay. At the end of the book he has a nightmare dream that he's back in 1887, only to be relieved when he re-awakens at the dawn of the 21st Century. The second most popular book of 19th Century America is a tale of utopian socialism. One as fanciful then as the tales told today by politicians, like Bernie Sanders, who extol the virtues of socialism.
"Let me say at the very threshold of this discussion that the workers have but the one issue in this campaign, the overthrow of the capitalist system and the emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery." "The call of the Socialist party is to the exploited class, the workers in all useful trades and professions, all honest occupations, from the most menial service to the highest skill, to rally beneath their own standard and put an end to the last of the barbarous class struggles by conquering the capitalist government, taking possession of the means of production and making them the common property of all, abolishing wage-slavery and establishing the co-operative commonwealth." "[T]he Socialist party is...a revolutionary working-class party, whose historic mission it is to conquer capitalism on the political battle-field, take control of government and through the public powers take possession of the means of wealth production, abolish wage-slavery and emancipate all workers and all humanity." "Every progressive Democrat must find his way in our direction and if he will but free himself from prejudice and study the principles of Socialism, he will soon be a sturdy supporter of our party."
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"2016 was a game changing year for leftists and progressives. We are finally re-emerging as a vital and powerful force after an extended period of stagnation and demoralizatin, and we face a political landscape more favorable than perhaps at any time since the 1960's."Much of the DSA optimism is driven by "...the phenomenal success of Bernie Sanders' ‘political revolution' during the 2016 United States presidential election...While DSA has expanded significantly since 2010, there is still tremendous room for growth, especially in the wake of Sanders' Political Revolution, which exposed countless young people to the idea of democratic socialism for the first time." Today's college campuses in America offer fertile ground for growing a new crop of socialists. Here's a short list of quotes from the DSA strategy document:
"These [recent] electoral successes have been paralleled by, and to a large degree made possible by, the rise of a new generation of progressive social movements committed both to thoroughgoing critiques of capitalism, racism, sexism, xenophobia and other forms of oppression, as well as to the creation of an ecologically sustainable, democratic and egalitarian future." "Under capitalism we are supposed to take for granted that a small, largely unaccountable group of corporate executives should make all fundamental decisions about the management of a company comprised of thousands of people...Under democratic socialism, this authoritarian system would be replaced with economic democracy. This simply means that democracy would be expanded beyond the election of political officials to include the democratic management of all businesses by the workers who comprise them and by the communities in which they operate." "Very large, strategically important sectors of the economy — such as housing, utilities and heavy industry — would be subject to democratic planning outside the market, while a market sector consisting of worker-owned and -operated firms would be developed for the production and distribution of many consumer goods. In this society, large-scale investments in new technologies and enterprises would be made on the basis of maximizing the public good, rather than shareholder value. Crucially, investments in renewable energy and efficient technologies would be prioritized to guarantee ecological sustainability and the future existence of life on Earth." "[A] wide range of programs to dismantle the privileges associated with whiteness, maleness and heteronormativity would have to be developed, and antidiscrimination policies in the workplace and in social organizations would have to be intensified." "...the only democratic socialist strategy capable of effective resistance to capitalism is one that links together antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, labor, anti-ableist, and anti-ageist (as well as other) movements by ‘connecting the dots' between them...Further, capitalists have consistently used appeals to white racism, and tensions at the intersection of gender and race, to maintain divisions among the working class." "Free public higher education is a key example of what we might call a ‘transformative' reform that helps to popularize the idea of socialism and to make further, more dramatic reforms possible in the future." "Participation in the climate justice movement also enables DSA to stress its internationalist politics, as this movement is part of a broader fight against corporate domination of social and economic life, and in favor of a democratic international order that enhances global labor, human rights and environmental standards."DSA's agenda blends the socialists' well-worn, anti-capitalist meme with the current victimology in the progressives' identity politic equation, and includes the ancillary issue of global warming. American Socialism today is a mixture of old and new tropes.
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