In an important new book Keynes Against Capitalism: His Economic Case for Liberal Socialism (Routledge, 2019) James Crotty argues that Keynes was a socialist who advocated a much more radical economic agenda than most mainstream economists and political analysts realize. Based on a very close reading of Keynes’ work, Crotty argues that core Keynesian economic ideas should inform democratic socialism today....Progressive Economics Forum
The left, right, and center disagree on the merits of socialism. But these disagreements are often impenetrable, as they rarely even agree which countries are socialist. Socialist skeptics point to Venezuela as an example of socialism run amok, while socialists point to the Nordics as evidence of its virtues. To counter the obvious success of the Nordics, some will define them as actually capitalist. The capitalism-or-socialism binary gets further complicated as debaters introduce terms like “welfare state capitalism”, “social democracy”, “democratic socialism”, “state capitalism”, “state socialism”, and more. This debate doesn’t get any clearer among self-identified socialists, as many have their own pet definitions. With such barriers in the discourse, how can we possibly measure how people experience socialism?
Instead of cramming countries into discrete buckets of “socialism” or “capitalism”, it’s better to view countries as bundles of institutions. Those institutions can operate along a socialist-capitalist spectrum, and exist with other institutions that fall elsewhere. This approach forces us to consider which institutions are most relevant and how they can best be measured to capture the differences between socialism and capitalism. Once we have a pliable measurement, we can then see whether people in socialist societies can be happy – or destined to a life of misery....As I have argued previously, for socialism a state doesn't need to own the means of production as the strict definition of "socialism" requires, but rather only to control the commanding heights. Nick Warino proposes a method for measuring this distribution between public and private sectors that is more nunanced than the current approaches.
We need to challenge the logic of capital. Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act only further entrenches it....Jacobin
Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist message is not an incidental part of a larger demographic story. And her socialism shouldn’t be treated as a virus opportunistically riding the vector of her Latina form. Socialism is inextricable from Ocasio-Cortez’s success because it’s the secret behind her ability to do what the Democratic party has long failed to do — articulate a holistic progressive vision for America.
Socialism is a framework that supports a belief that a country in which everyone can live with dignity is not the stuff of fantasies, of “ponies” — nor is it the selfish dream of a “privileged” populous who want something for nothing. It’s a socialist conception of the world which emboldens Ocasio-Cortez to aver, on a popular late night show, that “in a modern, moral and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live.”
Socialism reveals that capitalism — a system which privileges markets over community — is not a natural truth, but a political choice to which there are alternatives. It shows that Jeff Bezos’s wealth cannot be understood as unrelated to the plight of Amazon’s workers, but is a consequence of their hardships. It reveals one man’s merit to be another woman’s wage theft, and challenges society to value humans outside of our ability to toil. It’s what sets up Ocasio-Cortez to talk about human dignity as non-negotiable. Where Nancy Pelosi quips, “we’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is,” socialism says that’s not good enough....
Ocasio-Cortez put it best: “At the end of the day, I’m a candidate that doesn’t take corporate money, that champions Medicare for all, a federal jobs guarantee, the abolishment of ICE, and a green New Deal. But I approach those issues with the lenses of the community that I live in. And that is not as easy to say as ‘identity politics.'”
If democratic socialists see social democracy as one of the key stepping stones towards a truly egalitarian society, the issue of how we can sustainably finance such programs is of the utmost importance.
An economic doctrine named Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is surging in popularity and offering answers. MMT is debunking popular narratives about the harsh necessity of austerity and belt-tightening. It is showing that money is not a finite abstraction, but a limitless public utility that can be used to meet human needs. More than this, however, MMT and its heterodox economic cousins offer a framework to build directly democratic, egalitarian political structures, and thus reimagine and recalibrate the viability of democratic socialism....Lays out a Democratic Socialist program based on MMT understanding of government finance and heterodox economics.
So, I’ve changed the description of this blog’s perspective to socialist. I haven’t however, adopted the formulation “democratic socialist” which was used, in the 20th century, to emphasise a rejection of the Stalinist claim to have produced “actually existing socialism” in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. That’s no longer necessary.
As has been true for most of the history of the modern world, the only serious threat to democracy is now coming from the right. So, it’s important to defend democracy as well as advancing the case for socialism.John Quiggin's Blog
An economic doctrine named Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is surging in popularity and offering answers. MMT is debunking popular narratives about the harsh necessity of austerity and belt-tightening. It is showing that money is not a finite abstraction, but a limitless public utility that can be used to meet human needs. More than this, however, MMT and its heterodox economic cousins offer a framework to build directly democratic, egalitarian political structures, and thus reimagine and recalibrate the viability of democratic socialism....
Data show rising dissatisfaction with economic status quo.The millennial generation is the largest demographically, and it is poised to begin taking over power as the boomers start fading.
To obtain this information, the research and data firm YouGov surveyed 23,000 people aged 16 and over. Two of the survey’s findings included that 59 percent of total Americans would rather live in a capitalist country, with 34 percent preferring a socialist nation.
When focusing on millennials, the survey revealed 44 percent of those surveyed would rather live in a socialist nation, compared to 42 percent who would prefer a capitalist country. The socialist movement saw an increase in youth following during Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, as he advertised a platform of “Democratic Socialism.”
On June 3, 1951, the Socialist International association was formed in London. It is still going. It is “a worldwide association of political parties, most of which seek to establish democratic socialism”. Its roots date back to the C19th (to the First International formed in 1864) when it was considered beneficial to unite national working class movements into a global force to overthrow Capitalism. Internal bickering among various factions led to various dissolutions and reformations over the last 150 odd years. In 2013, the membership split when the German SPD decided to set up an competing group, the Progressive Alliance, which saw a host of so-called social democratic parties (including the Australian Labor Party) join and desert the SI. Both bodies are dogged by internecine conflict and members who have fallen for the neo-liberal macroeconomic myths. More recently, DIEM25 has emerged to pursue a Pan-European vision of Left-wing politics. The more recent dynamics of these movements deny power of the nation state in a globalised economy and global financial flows. They are all failing because of this denial.
There was an interesting article in the Financial Times (July 4, 2017) – Sovereignty still makes sense, even in a globalised world – by Robert Tombs, who is a British academic specialising in French history, which bears on this topic.
The claim that the nation state is dead is also a major theme of my upcoming book (with Thomas Fazi) – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World – which will be released by Pluto Press (UK) on September 20, 2017.
We will be launching the book in London on September 26, 2017 and then doing a 10-day lecture and promotional tour throughout Europe following that. All the details of where and when events will occur will be published soon but at the end of this blog is an indicative guide.
As the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) convention wound to its close at the beginning of August, I was struck with the historical strangeness of what I witnessed. Decades after proclamations of the "end of history" and critiques of institutional hierarchies and vertical structures of power, here were nearly 1,000 mostly young activists gathered in a giant lecture hall doing the work of building a radical political party: taking votes, making motions, electing a national leadership, making speeches for and against, observing the strange Anglo-Saxon strictures of Robert's Rules of Order.Truthout | Op-Ed
The convention in Chicago has rightly garnered an enormous amount of attention, both for the unprecedented size of the organization, as well as for its increasingly red hue. The surge in membership makes DSA the largest socialist organization in the US since World War II, and its growth in strength and popularity is equally marked by its radical turn to the left: delegates voted to endorse the boycott, sanction and divest (BDS) movement against Israeli violations of human rights; they voted to embrace the creation of an Afro-Socialism Caucus that includes a platform for abolishing prisons and police; and they reaffirmed their distance from the Democratic Party and their role in creating an independent socialist movement. They did all this while strengthening the centralization and structure of the DSA by introducing monthly dues payments for members....
After Trump announced the existence of the alt-left on live TV, media outlets scurried to tell the world exactly where the term emerged from. CBS explains that it “came out of the conservative media.” CNN, quoting a director at the Anti-Defamation League, describes it as a “made-up term used by people on the right.” Heavy.com writes that “the term ‘alt-left’ began being used by the online conservative media in 2016 before it slowly migrated to more mainstream conservative voices, like Fox News’ Sean Hannity.” (Hannity, who repeatedly uses the term on his TV show, seems to be getting widespread credit.) The British Telegraph newspaper, meanwhile, flatters the president with a power of logodaedaly he definitely doesn’t have, claiming the phrase was “coined by Mr Trump” himself.
None of these explanations is really true. The term “alt-left” was probably simultaneously invented hundreds or thousands of times, always bearing a slightly different meaning depending on its inventor. But up until now, the people who most forcefully pushed the idea of an alt-left weren’t Nazis or 4chan posters or anyone else in the orbit of Trump and pro-Trump Republicans trying to invent a mythical opposite to the alt-right. The alt-left is, first and foremost, a figment of centrist Democrats....
The invention of the alt-left allowed centrist liberals to pretend that something entirely different was going on: They were sandwiched between two sets of frothing fanatics who secretly had a lot in common with each other. It established their particular brand of liberalism, possibly encompassing a few “moderate Republicans,” as the only reasonable ground, besieged by alts....Politico
Though the 75-year old senator played an essential role in demystifying socialism to the public and instilling a radical spirit in the progressive movement, the current resurgence of class politics on the left has been in the works for many years, going back to the 2007-08 financial crisis.
It hasn’t been white-haired socialists who have provided the foundation for this resurgence, but young people who grew up in the era of neoliberalism. This was evident last week, when progressive millennials flocked to Chicago for the biannual Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) convention, where delegates came together to vote on various resolutions for the party. In the past year, the DSA has tripled its membership, and what is particularly telling about this growth is that the average age of DSA members has dropped by half virtually overnight, from 64 in 2015 to just 30 today....Salon
In today's global economy, neoliberalism reigns supreme, organized labor is in deep retreat and public debt has shot through the roof. In the face of these crises, is a global 21st century remaking of the 1930s-era New Deal what people on the left should be fighting for?The New Deal was a co-optation scheme to save capitalism rather than to reform or replace it. What's needed is a new economic model that empowers the people rather than privileging property owners under the bourgeois liberalism that arose as nascent capitalism replaced late-stage feudalism and which is now institutionalized through neoclassical economics as the foundation of neoliberalism.
Contemporary progressive parties, such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, have rallied around the idea of a "new New Deal," while the European Citizen's Initiative for a "New Deal 4 Europe" appears to have the backing of both Labor and Green party leaders in several European countries. In the US, Bernie Sanders has also been a strong advocate of this idea as the way out of our troubles.
However, a closer look at the history of the 1930s-era New Deal reveals that a new New Deal would do little to solve the underlying problems of capitalism and could even delay efforts to combat climate change through its emphasis on boosting growth via a new era of state capitalism.
Although New Deal-style programs have the potential to alleviate poverty in the short term, they are deeply limited by the core constraint that the raison d'être of active state intervention in a capitalist regime is none other than to save capitalism. Moreover, any program in the mold of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal would also be limited by its failure to give workers a greater say in decision-making.
For me, EU referendum raised a question which nobody has so far asked, namely: if there was a case for a referendum, isn’t there a far stronger case for worker democracy?
Many of us were appalled by the atrocious standard of debate in the referendum. Robert Harris called the episode “the most depressing, divisive, duplicitous political event of my lifetime.” Perhaps Thatcher and Attlee were right: referendums are a “device of dictators and demagogues.”
Which brings me to the question. If you think the referendum was a good idea, you must surely think worker democracy is a far better one. I say so for three reasons:Worker democracy would be either social democracy or democratic socialism, with government of, by and for the people.
Sanders' vision of democratic socialism is just capitalism with a safety net.And not even with the most important part of the safety net, a job guarantee.
The growing popularity of Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proves that Democrats, not Republicans, have been “radicalized” over the course of the 2016 presidential election, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said on Wednesday.
Speaking in front of an audience in South Carolina, the Republican presidential candidate pushed back against claims that Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have driven the Republican party toward the radical right. Those claims were sparked after Trump proposed policies like banning all Muslims from entering the United States and killing the families of terrorists, and Cruz proposed“carpet bombing” ISIS.But according to Rubio, it’s the Democrats who have gone too far.
“The Democratic Party has been taken over by radical left-wing elements,” Rubio said, adding he doesn’t understand why people have been calling out Republicans for moving right-ward during the election while Sanders — an avowed democratic socialist — won New Hampshire and is gaining in national polls. “The Democratic party has been radicalized,” he said.
Rubio also urged voters who supported Sanders’ agenda to move to another country.
“If you want to live in a socialist country, why not move to a socialist country?” He asked. “We want to be America.”…
On Wednesday, Rubio also said someone like Trump or Cruz would be a better choice for the presidency because “none of [them are] a socialist.”
Marco Rubio says socialism is distinct from the communism his parents fled in Cuba and he doesn't fault Bernie Sanders for promoting it -- but that doesn't mean he agrees with his Senate colleague.…
"What I appreciate about Bernie is he's not trying to shirk from it," Rubio said. "It's what he believes in. He's honest about it."
He also noted that the viewpoint obviously resonates with plenty of people who support Sanders' presidential campaign and have re-elected him in Vermont.
"I don't think it works for America," Rubio said. "My argument is, you want to live in a country like that -- there's like dozens of countries around the world that are socialist -- move there. We should continue to be America."
But the beauty of democracy, Rubio added, is that the debate can happen.
"I don't personally have a problem with Bernie because he's being honest about what he believes in. I'd love to have that debate," Rubio said.
