February 27, 2020
Democratic
socialists are in the middle of a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. Led
by the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and the “squad” of newly elected
congresswomen, the hard-left coalition has laid out an ambitious agenda to
transform the United States into a democratic socialist nation. While many
commentators have dismissed the rhetoric around the Green New Deal, Housing for
All, and End Cash Bail as pie-in-the-sky abstraction, in Seattle, the socialist
coalition is quickly translating this agenda into a political reality.
After
the socialist Left’s stunning victory over business-backed moderates in last
year’s municipal elections, Seattle has effectively become the nation’s
laboratory for socialist policies. Since the beginning of the year, the
socialist faction on the Seattle City Council has proposed a range of policies
on taxes, housing, homelessness, and criminal justice that put into practice
the national democratic-socialist agenda. In the most recent session, socialist
councilwoman Kshama Sawant and her allies have proposed massive new taxes on corporations, unprecedented regulations
on landlords (including rent control and a ban on “winter evictions”), the mandated construction of homeless encampments, and the gradual
dismantling of the criminal justice system, beginning with the end of cash bail.
Seattle’s
socialists have established a narrative that provides the rhetorical basis for
their policies. They argue that the corporate-technological elite, led by
companies such as Amazon, has hoarded the rewards of the digital economy and
created widespread misery for workers, renters, and people of color. As
Seattle-based commentator and Marxist theoretician Charles Mudede has written:
“We are in the 21st century. We are in one of the richest cities on earth. And
yet, the old war between those who employ labor and those who sell their labor
is still very much with us.”
In
the socialist vision, the “new class war” is now entering a more direct phase
of conflict. They have launched a political campaign to dramatically curtail
the power of corporations, landlords, and traditional neighborhood interests,
and to build a coalition of socialists, progressives, unions, and the
dispossessed that is capable of achieving power. In short, the solution to the
class war is to win the class war.
While conservatives and moderates have
typically dismissed the socialist movement as a “big-city problem,” the new
socialist agenda is no longer confined to the municipal boundaries of places
such as Seattle, San Francisco, and New York. Increasingly, the hard-left
coalition has turned these cities into “laboratories for socialism,” with the
goal of eventually commercializing their policies through the national
Democratic Party. Already, Bernie Sanders, the current front-runner in the
Democratic primary, has proposed a nationalized version of the Seattle agenda:
Tax Amazon, enact national rent control, construct public housing, and end cash
bail.
But Seattle’s socialists have gone one step
further. In order to consolidate their newfound power, the
progressive-socialists have begun to manipulate the democratic process in their
own favor: first, by providing all Seattle voters with $100 in taxpayer-funded
“democracy vouchers,” which are easily
collected by unions, activists, and socialist groups; and second, by
implementing a ban on corporate spending
in local elections by companies like Amazon. At the same time, black-bloc
activists and Antifa militants intimidate any potential opposition by
disrupting events, vandalizing homes, and even orchestrating death threats against
political adversaries.
What can opponents of socialism do? First,
recognize that it must be fought on all fronts. While the socialists form a
small minority of the national electorate, they have demonstrated the
capability of seizing power in America’s major cities, which are home to much
of the digital “means of production” in tech, media, advertising,
entertainment, and research. The business sector in cities such as Seattle must
recognize that the progressive-socialists are no longer interested in gaining
reasonable concessions; they intend to overthrow capitalism itself.
Over the past decade, the dominant corporate
strategy has been to quietly advocate for neoliberal economic policies, while
pandering to the cultural mandates of “diversity and inclusion.” That era is
now over. As the experience in Seattle reveals, the socialist Left cannot be
appeased on cultural issues — they are fighting a war against capital and they
intend to win it.
If the business sector wants to protect its
own interests, it must rapidly adapt to this new reality. It’s no longer enough
for local Chambers of Commerce to drop leaflets before local elections; they
must build a permanent counterbalance to the progressive-socialists. They must
begin by commissioning original policy research, funding local neighborhood
groups, and building a political alliance of conservatives, moderates, and
old-line liberals. In other words, they must reestablish a balance of power in
America’s cities.
If nothing is done, the laboratories of
socialism in America’s cities will become a national problem. It’s time to shut
them down.
Yet, the idiots supporting Bernie are clueless to what socialism is. They are under the illusion they will get a ton of free stuff and it will not cost them anything. If they would just take time out and review what has happen in Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and how it has affected Honduras over the years, they would realize they are giving up all their freedom for false and lying rhetoric. Just ask Cuban and Venezuela refugees. Naturally, Bernie's response always is, his idea is better. Same thing Cuban and Venezuelan people were told. Socialism, Marxism and communism are all the same and they destroy human life and produce only misery.
