Over 680,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s machinery of mass slaughter since the start of October 2023. According to UN Raconteur Francesca Albanese, 380,000 of those murdered in Gaza have been infants under the age of five. 

Nearly thirty years ago, Edward Said said that the situation between Israel and Palestine had reached a “bloody impasse”, and called for a dissolution of Zionist Israel into one unified secular Palestinian state. In his New York Times essay, entitled “One-State Solution”, Said stated, “I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen.”

Palestinians have long called for the ending of the settler colonial regime of Israel, having already endured several decades of Israel’s war on their sense of dignity and livelihoods and the constant stealing of more and more land. “Israeli and Zionist militias have been massacring Palestinians for approximately a hundred years now,” said the scholar Refaat Alareer, adding, “Israel is not satisfied with anything but total victory for its colonial rule (146).  Alareer was murdered along with members of his family by Israeli drones in late 2023.

There can be no freedom and dignity or even equality for Palestinians unless Israel as it is politically and materially constituted is no more. Until then, the core of Israeli life, which is the same core that has driven much of European colonialism, shall carry on, destroying the land and its indigenous cultures for decades onwards. This is a pivotal moment in world history. The U.S. left, including our left-leaning electeds, indeed all socialists, must move beyond repeated calls for ceasefires and peace talks. Instead we must forthrightly call for the end of Israel as a political entity, and for a free and liberated Palestine in its stead. Otherwise, the Palestinian people will be exterminated and in a few decades time, the liberals among us will lead chants of “honoring” the land at the very same spots where actual Palestinians had once lived. 

Concurrently, the expansion of a Greater Israel and its plans for eliminating an independent Palestine that could challenge its social and political order does put our own attempts at developing a truly socialist project in America at grave risk. We’ve already seen the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (AIPAC) pouring tens of millions of U.S.dollars into our own national and local elections, propping up far-right candidates like a Steve Scalise, whose main claim to infamy was having attended a white supremacist conference that was co-founded by the Klansman and former gubernatorial candidate David Duke. Clearly, what matters to AIPAC is maintaining a coalition of anti-socialist anti-progressive elements that shall promise an endless supply of guns to the Zionist state.  Conversely, those elected like Scalise want an American empire to thrive forever, a regime that relies so heavily on easy access to oil and raw minerals abroad, especially in the same Western Asian region that Israel hopes to conquer. 

In this article, we will be arguing for a complete end of the political entity known as Israel. No more two states. No more meaningless ceasefires that only serve the Israeli state in buying time to kill ever more innocent Palestinians or to encroach on more Palestinian land. 

We believe that the continued existence of Israel will mean a rabid and powerful co-partner in sustaining a global American empire, the destruction of Palestine and its thousands of years of culture and civilization. Moreover, it helps ensure the elevation of anti-socialist and pro-regressive domestic politics within the formal bounds of the U.S. That, in turn,  would sink any attempts at bringing forth critical and humane policies for the U.S. working class, including those of Arab and Palestinian descent. Our fates are tied. 

Legal scholar Noura Erakat put the situation well in her statement to the U.N. on the matter of Israel’s genocide and how it serves the U.S. empire, and thereby threatens world peace, “Do not sit in the seat of power and do nothing. The United States is an empire but the United States is not the world. You are the world- each and every one of you has the capacity to halt this charade and to fulfill the minimal mandate of protecting a people’s right to exist.”

Attaining a free and unified Palestine in place of settler colonial Israel, against the tide of reaction, must remain a primary issue, not secondary, for our movements, and for those claiming to represent us in the halls of Congress. Otherwise, its defeat shall haunt us in the Western left for centuries to come. 

there is no american hegemony without israel

Israel has always been a colonialist entity, and a critical node in European, and later, American imperial designs globally. Its Zionist forefather, the Austrian Theodore Herzl, openly claimed the movement as being deeply intertwined with so-called expansionism of “Western” civilization, going so far as penning letters of allegiance to the British Empire during its brutal repression and takeover of Africa in the mid-to-late 1800s. The Nakba wasn’t just a continuation of European colonization and genocide of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Israeli state also collaborated with various Western interests, inspired by Herzl’s lessons and insights, on how to achieve statehood through mass killing and obscuring of history. 

It was Israel, after all, that swiftly colluded militarily with British and French forces in the occupation of the Suez Canal  against the sovereign interests of the Nasser-led Egyptian government. After the ‘67 war, Israel had proven itself to the U.S. political establishment, thus becoming a closer ally and a critical node for U.S. proxy wars throughout the region and even beyond. 

In 1976, Israel’s government, under what would be described now, at least in comparison to Bibi, as “moderate” leadership, welcomed John Vorster, the Prime Minister of apartheid South Africa. That same year, the explicitly white supremacist government in South Africa had massacred nearly 700 Africans, nearly all of them students protesting against white rule (some victims were less than 12 years old).. Vorster too, like much of the South African white Dutch leadership, either were Nazis during WWII or were deeply sympathetic. 

In the midst of this political landscape of brutality and Dutch colonization, fittingly, the Israeli PM, Yitzhak Rabin, praised Vorster and his regime as a “force for freedom” and Israel became a stalwart ally of South Africa – one of the few nations to adopt that position.  Israel’s government, after all, was willing to sell the white minority government nuclear weapons. Israel forged a strategic military and political relationship with the Afrikaner-led government, violating international rules and sanctions.

An investigation by Open Secrets in 2017 revealed more details about the long-standing, close relationship between Tel Aviv and Pretoria—an alliance that strengthened in the 1970s when the two countries clandestinely traded weapons. These activities amounted to sanctions-busting in a period where the United Nations (UN) had placed a compulsory arms embargo on apartheid South Africa. Declassified South African Department of Defence documents revealed that by 1975 South African state-owned weapons company Armscor officials set up a permanent office in Tel Aviv, allowing the South Africans to bust sanctions under the cover of diplomacy.

Such alliances allowed the white supremacist regime in South Africa to lengthen the country’s lifespan  by providing weaponry and support that emboldened South Africa to routinely invade neighboring African nations, including several years of South African white occupation of what would become the nation of Namibia. 

The Israeli-Afrikaner relationship also exemplifies how willing and capable Israel has been, even under moderate leadership, to strengthen other elements of American global dominance. Through South Africa, the U.S. had its own anti-communist anti-African independence weapon that it sought to aim and direct at Namibia, Angola, and the ANC. Israel played its role in this mission, risking the sanctity of African soil and true nationalism. 

Today, Israel plays that same role, helping to support American-backed regimes in as far away as Latin America. Itay Mack at +972 Magazine summarizes, 

At a recent meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, representatives of Israel’s Foreign Ministry complained of the hardships they face in democratic countries in Latin America, and the success of “Palestinian diplomatic terrorism” in those states. In comparison, the Israeli diplomats pointed with great pride to the close relations with the regime in Honduras, a country that had a military coup in 2009, which is undergoing a process of militarization, and whose security forces are known to assassinate human rights activists, workers’ rights activists, and those fighting for indigenous rights.

Modi’s India, which has been promoted as an antidote to alleged Chinese dominance in Asia, has also been a direct beneficiary of Israeli military and surveillance support. Kashmir, yet another Muslim-majority region, remains occupied  by Indian forces thanks in large part to the selling and distribution of Israeli drones and other kinds of military equipment. With now the world’s fourth largest weapons manufacturing and war manufacturing industry, Israel does its part in feeding weapons between U.S.-aligned nations, sometimes at the behest of American global interests. 

Indeed, Israel’s government, first under the Labour Party, and now under Likud, has routinely collaborated with major industries that are pro-Western and pro-U.S.; the best example is oil. Prior to 1979 and the birth of the Iranian Revolution, Iran was dominated by the Shah Pahlavi dynasty that was put in place through a C.I.A coup. A significant portion of its oil wealth was subsequently funneled into the coffers of private Western companies such as BP. While this was happening, Israel aided the Shah regime in its repression of the Iranian people. The oil sector strengthened America’s position as a worldwide force for capitalist expansion and power. 

The recent U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is similar. The intention is to weaken the existing Iranian government and take over Iran’s oil reserves through Western-backed companies. Trump literally said the quiet part out loud about this joint venture when attacking Iran, stating that the U.S. goal was “to take the oil” from Iran. Israel is assisting in that process. 

As we’ve seen with Venezuela after the capture of Maduro and his wife, Flores, once socialist or nationalist regimes fall, and their resources are up for grabs, they flow directly into pro-Western industries, thereby strengthening their economic and political positions inside the U.S. as well as broad. 

Until the recent genocide, Saudi Arabia, an epicenter of oil and Western interests, had begun to normalize relations with Israel and Israel, in turn, has worked covertly to assist its regime. Even though elements of the Saudi regime have stood firm on wanting an independent Palestine state, its ruler, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has expressed a far more ruthless, and more honest, appraisal of the Palestinian cause for statehood. Journalist Karen Elliot writes, “‘He [MBS] has this vision of Israel and Saudi Arabia as the two big powers [in the region] working hand in hand. It won’t be easy until there’s some resolution in Gaza, but Saudis who know him well will tell you he can’t allow Saudi interests to be forever retarded by the Palestinians.’”

Finally, one cannot forget the immense amount of real estate and private developer power that would sweep through Gaza and the rest of the West Bank if Isreel is allowed to persist in its campaign of genocide and disposession. Once again, oil, retail and real estate form a global bloc pact that often stands against even the most moderate of social democratic reforms. 

As Israel morphs into Greater Israel, consuming large swaths of Lebanon and Syria, the U.S. system sees its own array of colonial and capitalistic interests expand in power and influence. As U.S. real estate plows through the beaches of Gaza City, Palestinians are forced to either comply or be extinguished. Global real estate and oil markets cheer, as they too gain an upper hand in influencing and shaping politics across the globe including within the U.S., pouring money into politicians and agendas that can only be described as fascist.

The U.S.-Israeli influence at the domestic level

While Israel strengthens facism internationally, it also reinforces America’s position as a global hegemon and directly impacts U.S. politics in a highly corrosive manner. 

During the  hotly contested 2024 congressional election that pitted left-leaning congress members against so-called centrists from within the Democratic party, AIPAC, Israel’s most powerful lobby, poured a whopping $8.5 million alone into the campaign coffers of Wesley Bell, the main center-right candidate seeking to unseat Cori Bush, a leading member of the progressive “Squad” inside Congress. This money allowed Bell, someone without any organic grassroots support, to hire support staff and to establish a presence in the district that Bush had already represented in the St. Louis area. This resulted in Bush’s defeat by Bell in 2024  who, to this day, routinely expresses ardent support for Zionism, despite Israel’s genocide. With the backing of AIPAC, Bell, a conservative figure who is against policies like Medicare-for-All and measures to make law enforcement accountable, which were core issues for Cori Bush’s short time in office, has managed to keep himself in power. 

From a recent NBC report covering the primary race between Bush and Bell: 

In total, Bell’s campaign and outside allies outspent Bush by a staggering 27-to-1 ratio, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking service. United Democracy Project — the super PAC linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel advocacy group known as AIPAC — spent $2 million to support Bell, largely through negative ads attacking Bush. One such ad slammed Bush for being critical of former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Bush herself was not a radical political figure, certainly not someone who’d be described as a Marxist. Yet she’d been targeted by Zionist-aligned forces, simply because she raised her voice on Palestine and for this, she’s been kept out of Congress, while medical bills for most Americans have continued to rise, and basic costs of living are sinking the rest of us. 

The prototypical AIPAC candidate is pro-war pro-genocide very much of the status quo when it comes to basic social democratic policies that would at least benefit a broader section of our own working class. This was on display in the Michigan primary race for U.S. senate between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens. El-Sayed is a strong proponent, himself a medical professional, of Medicare-for-All as a basic public policy. Stevens is not. She’s gone so far as to “walk back” from endorsing Medicare-for-All while she was serving as congressperson. 

Stevens received the backing of AIPAC in her race against El-Sayed, who otherwise is a fairly moderate candidate. But since El-Sayed criticizes the state of Israel and its unending list of crimes against the Palestinian people, he’s been targeted for defeat. 

Over the past several years alone, AIPAC has been a leading spender in local and national races throughout the country. Even the New York Times, not exactly known for their hard-hitting anti-imperialist news, stated, 

In less than five years, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has become one of the biggest spenders in American elections, flooding the airwaves in congressional races across the country. Since its first involvement in elections, the amount of money AIPAC-affiliated political action committees have spent on campaign advertising and outreach to voters has more than doubled, from $29.3 million to $67.2 million, with much of it spent in Democratic primaries.

Zionists are securely part of the grand antisocialist antiprogressive coalition inside the U.S., as it leans on sections of civil society that support them in return for their support for colonization and extraction of resources from the rest of West Asia. Thus, whatever the oil industry prefers or what healthcare executives want in terms of pushing the Democratic party and the Republicans further and further away from even social democratic, moderate reforms, AIPAC and its Zionist allies will pursue those same agendas broadly:  their interests are already intertwined as it relates to the exploitation of other peoples’ resources, including labor;  and Israel will not survive a truly revolutionary socialist state takeover, or even, for that matter, a moderate one in which  aid to Israel would be cut. Not to mention the coalitions they’ve made are the very same forces who otherwise do not desire a socialist world,  not even a social democratic one. As Sam Judy at the Dallas Weekly put it : “Likewise, oil companies and military defense corporations have a direct stake in both violence against and the displacement of Palestinians.” 

Our American industry of warmaking has benefited from Israel’s genocide and its insistence on being a fascist militarized state. Essentially, killing of Palestinians has been “good” business for the U.S. defense industry for the last several decades alone. Not  to mention the innumerable American corporations that operate within Israel, selling their goods and services to a people desperate to be seen as part of the “West”’s consumer market. 

From the Council of Foreign Relations,

Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding, receiving over $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance. While the United States has also provided large foreign aid packages to other Middle Eastern countries, particularly Egypt and Iraq, Israel stands apart.

Conversely, the U.S. capitalist and colonialist order, itself shaped by generations of Euro-settler genocide against Indigenous peoples, has sought to placate Zionist interests so that this alliance can thrive. This means having our immigration system seek out and target international students, many of them Arab or at least Muslim, who’ve spoken truth about Israel’s campaign of extermination. Freedom of speech is being actively curtailed for the sake of maintaining this sordid but perhaps unsurprising alliance between colonialists in the U.S., and those inside Israel. 

Mahmoud Khalil is one of the more well-known examples of this,  sought out and detained for his own moderate stances on Palestine and Israel. Although a legal permanent resident, Khalil had been kidnapped by immigration officials for his refusal to accept Israeli genocide. But there have been countless others who’ve been either detained or somehow punished for their stance against Palestinian extermination.  From the Intercept: “Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, academics in fields including politics, sociology, Japanese literature, public health, Latin American and Caribbean studies, Middle East and African studies, mathematics, education, and more have been fired, suspended, or removed from the classroom for pro-Palestine, anti-Israel speech.” 

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student at Tufts, was initially “swarmed” with ICE agents and disappeared for the apparent criminal act of penning a pro-Palestinian op-ed. “I am choosing to return home as planned to continue my career as a woman scholar without losing more time to the state-imposed violence and hostility I have experienced in the United States — all for nothing more than co-signing an op-ed advocating for Palestinian rights,” Ozturk announced after finally being released from detention.

For an entire year, Leqaa Kordia was kept in an ICE detention facility in Texas, far away from her home and community in New Jersey. Kordia herself has been pro-Palestinian and for that humane position, she was forced to endure brutal health conditions, including a seizure. In a letter shared by her lawyers, she recounted, “For three days in the emergency room, my hands and legs were weighed down by heavy chains.” Instead of being treated as a human being, she was purposefully abused all because she and others like her refuse to bow down to settler colonialist oppression and repression.

America’s prime business is war and extraction of resources from across the world with which Israel is completely aligned. To preserve this bond between them, measures are taken politically to not just make Zionism an accepted truth by all in Western Asia but also within the mainstream civil and political corridors of U.S. life. We’ve slowly become one nation under Christian fascism, Zionism, and white supremacist mythology. 

This coming together is now being formally sealed through the “2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)”. As reported by Ben Freeman,

Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The U.S. and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the U.S. military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.

Through such policies, the capitalist and colonialist class of the U.S. and the colonialists of Israel are forever striving for one totally united front against the left, against working people, against the colonized. Fascists on either side of the ocean find meaning and momentum in each other, and thus, the Palestinians and the oppressed and working class of even those of us within the imperial core pay a price for their sycophancy. 

Palestinians themselves have been cognizant of this lethal dynamic for generations since the Nakba of ‘48. Scholar and legendary author of modern Palestinian literature, Ghassan Kanafani, stated, 

“The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.” Kanafani believed this fervently until he was assassinated, along with his 17 year old niece, in an Israeli orchestrated car bomb attack in 1972, having served his people with bravery and cutting insights that threatened the Zionist and U.S. imperialist social order. 

Many in the Palestinian diaspora, especially those most intimate with Israeli and U.S. violence, who’ve weathered the storms of colonialism, have long recognized our common links across oceans as survivors of American imperialism, of war, of capitalism, of death and the real replacement of indigenous populations by Europeans.

Kanafani and others like him long ago warned that our fates are tied. 

israel wants the extermination of palestine

It was only in February of this year when Israeli Finance Minister Ben Smotrich stated in now quintessential Zionist and imperialist arrogance and bloodthirstiness interpreted by the Western press as bravery, what he sees as the new order: “In the end, Israel will occupy the Gaza Strip, implement a military government and establish Jewish settlements there,” adding, “It is impossible to run away from that because it is the truth.”

Currently, with a so-called ceasefire in place, Israel remains in military control of at least 70 percent of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister and war criminal standout Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken of “voluntary emigration” for Palestinians from Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Israel (yes, that’s his name) Katz and Bibi have been linked to statements and plans to first move Palestinians, much like what was done here during the Trail of Tears in 1830s America, into compounds in Rafah and from there, Palestinians would be “encouraged” to leave the strip entirely. “Netanyahu and Katz have widespread support for what they are planning: 82 percent of Israeli Jews support the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza,” writes human rights lawyer Zaha Hasssan, “With Israeli elections only weeks away, the overwhelming sentiment among voters cannot be discounted.”

The overall goal, it would seem, is to transform Palestine into a real estate bonanza for outside forces, as mentioned earlier. Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, serves on the recently established “Board of Peace”, a grouping of outside entities whose chief purpose is to colonize Gaza’s resources, removing its people out of the way of “ progress.” 

From Cleveland-Stout at Responsible Statecraft, 

In fact, Kushner and other board members have advertised the investment opportunities in Gaza’s redevelopment. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kushner unveiled a $30 billion “master plan” to replace historic sites and landmarks with data centers, industrial zones, residential towers, and seaside resorts. The president’s son-in-law went on to claim that Gaza’s redevelopment will offer “amazing investment opportunities” to the private sector.

A report from the UN has bluntly concluded that Israeli forces are seeking to establish “permanent control over the Gaza Strip while ensuring a Jewish majority in the occupied West Bank and inside Israel.”

In 1970, Kanafani, in a now iconic interview with the Australian Broadcasting Company, had defined the Israeli government as a fascist one. Even earlier, he’d pinned Israel as nothing more than an “aggressive expansionist racial structure” which was seeking to mobilize its nationals to “prevent u s from regaining our land, our freedom and our rights.” The goal of Israel has been to eradicate and eliminate Palestinian ownership and claim to the land, replacing the native inhabitants with mainly Europeans and others allied to the cause of Zionist supremacy. Again Kanafani: “It is a colonialist situation.” 

This is not a disagreement between groups of people who “misunderstand” one another. It is the  same blood soaked decision making and patterning that cast a long shadow of European domination, specifically Anglo-American, over the various nations and tribes that had lived on the North American continent for thousands of years, without disease, without major strife. 

“There was no such thing as Palestinians,” said Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister in 1969, using the very same rhetoric that one expects from European colonizers when they first arrived to the U.S., seeing all this land for the taking, impassioned to say that the people who’d lived there for generations were either “impediments” to “progress” or are as real as the flora and fauna. “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian,” said Theodore Roosevelt in 1886 when America’s empire was rapidly expanding overseas, “but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.”

Israel’s conduct during various “moderate” regimes and now under a far more explicitly extremist one will only end in more mass slaughter of the Palestinian people in the same manner by which entire nations of native people across North America had been eliminated by hordes of Euro-Americans. This is a pivotal moment in Palestinian and world history. There is no reformation of an Israeli state that has internally displaced 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents, and has left 17,000 children in Gaza without either of their parents. “These children are living in tragic conditions, with many forced to take refuge in torn tents or destroyed homes, in a near-total absence of social care and psychological support.” 

Whatever aid is being allowed to trickle in has been deliberately used as a method of target practice for the Israelis. “Witnesses and health workers say Israeli forces have killed hundreds by opening fire on Palestinians trying to reach those food distribution hubs or while crowding around entering aid trucks.”

Whether under the guise of “moderation” or “peace”, the Israeli state has always conducted itself with the sole aim of conquering Palestinian land, and of routinely keeping Palestinians in their so-called place. “Mowing the grass” was the common phrase used by Israeli military officials when conducting military strikes every few years inside the Gaza strip, killing Palestinians at a rapid pace.

This routine slaughter of Palestinians will survive into a new governing coalition, even if that coalition does not include Bibi Netanyahu. As reported by The Cradle, Netayahu’s election rival for this upcoming Israeli elections himself is viewed as a moderate only because they do not use the same level of genocidal rhetoric at all times. Gadi Eisenkot, who could become Israel’s next prime minister, “served in Netanyahu’s war cabinet during the first months of the Gaza assault and is closely associated with the “Dahiyeh doctrine” of overwhelming force developed during his military career. His differences with Netanyahu concern strategy, responsibility, and the management of war more than any rupture with Zionist policy toward Palestinians or the wider region.”

Dr Saad Nimr, professor of political science, described this race as “a competition between the right and the right.”

Naftali Bennett, prime minister of Israel who too has become part of the anti-Netanyahu bloc, has voiced opposition to any chances at a Palestinian state. “I haven’t changed. I am a man of the right. I am against a Palestinian state, against giving away territory. I’m a security man,” are his exact words from this summer after nearly three years of a genocidal war against the Palestinian indigenous peoples of the land. With friends like these, who needs enemies. 

Rightwing or far right, the very existence of Israel itself is a crime against the Palestinian peoples. Its formation is a direct product of Palestinian people having been expelled from their homes in ‘47 and 1948. “We must expel Arabs and take their places…and, if we have to use force… then we have force at our disposal,” were the words of David Ben-Gurion, the father of the bastardized state of Israel, whose Zionist paramilitary forces had participated in the expulsion and killing of Palestinians to make way for Zionist occupation. Between 750,000 to 1 million Palestinians were driven from their homes in Palestine in the formation of Israel nearly 78 years ago, with a majority of them being forced to flee into Gaza where they’ve been since. 

Israel, for all its attempts at projecting a diverse civil society of occasional Arab and Israeli friendship, sits upon stolen land and bones of Palestinians. Said said “that the very quarters of the city in which I was born, lived and felt at home were taken over by Polish, German, and American immigrants who conquered the city and have made it the unique symbol of their sovereignty, with no place for Palestinian life.” 

Past and present horrors have merged from the Nakba of ‘48 to now steps being taken by the Israeli establishment for a Final Solution to the Palestinian question. There is no normal nor is there any future whereby an Israeli state should be allowed to function as it has for the past 78 years with near impunity. 

Unless the Palestinians are truly supported and their claims to their land are honored materially, they will be exterminated. Either Israel is dismantled, or, the Palestinian peoples will become a forever diaspora.

A free & united palestine

In an interview with Electronic Intifada, Refaat Alareer stated with his usual humor and passion, “I’m an academic; probably the toughest thing I have at home is an expo marker. But if the Israelis go door-to-door to massacre us, I’m going to use that marker to throw it at the soldiers, even if that is the last thing I would be able to do.”

Resistance, both militarily and non-violently, have been at the core at Palestinian life, having been compelled  to defend themselves against the indomitable might of American imperial hubris and Zionism. Armed Israeli tanks might sometimes hover in one’s imaginations, considering how easily they take up physical space in Palestinian life along with IDF soldiers conducting TikTok dances after committing yet another war crime. Still, Palestinians persist in the face of it, for generations now and they’re never giving up. 

Said, proudly, said, “In this, I am confident in saying, we have proved the wrongness of Israel’s policy: there is no getting away from the fact that, as an idea, a memory, and as an often buried or invisible reality, Palestine and its people have simply not disappeared.”

As Frantz Fanon once wrote as well, for the native or the indigenous resister, it is always the land that remains most important, maintaining it in some way. So long as Palestinians remain in some ownership of existing land, even parcels of it, the resistance and dream will never be completely abstract. 

That said, the timeline is swiftly dwindling. Again, the goal for elected socialist and progressive leaders, and for our progressive and leftwing movements inside the U.S. is to see this reality, to see how Palestinians continue to wage struggle against Israel and the Americans, and how we must support them in that struggle for life and at this moment, survival.

At the end of it all, the progressive and socialist leader, whether an elected member of Congress or someone who organizes in a labor union, must advocate for a total displacement of what is Israel to make way for a free, independent and a united Palestine (meaning: for Israel proper to become Palestine along with all parts of Gaza and the West Bank). This is required for the above three reasons which we’ve discussed, which include Israel’s complicity in American world domination, Israel’s toxic influence in our domestic politics, and most importantly, the fact that Israel will always be seeking the extermination of the Palestinian peoples and their chances at statehood. 

For this to be made literal, movement leaders and forces that are part of the U.S. left must advocate for a total embargo of Israel, for all of Netanyahu’s cabinet (himself included) and past Israeli leaders to be arrested and tried, and push for a future Palestinian state whereby rights are no longer attached to one’s faith. Instead, there must be a future state by which equality under the law is made real. No more military courts for Palestinians. All Palestinians to be released from Israeli captivity. 

Said once more: “In a modern state, all its members are citizens by virtue of their presence and the sharing of rights and responsibilities. Citizenship therefore entitles an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab to the same privileges and resources.”

But for this to be something truly meaningful for the ones historically oppressed in the context of Zionist exploitation and colonialism, land must be returned to its original inhabitants. As stated in the previous section, much of Gaza’s current-day residents are those who originally were forced to flee the Nakba of ‘48. For many, they carry their family’s original keys with them to where their homes had once been. In many such cases, homes were simply appropriated by Europeans who’d later on call themselves Israeli and attribute an indigeneity to themselves that does not exist. 

Nevertheless, returning land is critical if there is to be real justice for a majority of Palestinians. Otherwise, what has happened in post-apartheid South Africa to Africans there will simply be repeated among the Palestinians even in a state that’s supposedly formally independent. 

Sari Bashi, a former program director at Humans Rights Watch, contextualizes this need for Palestinians:, 

Given the staggering physical, social and economic destruction that the Israeli military has wreaked on Gaza, the obstruction of humanitarian aid and the likelihood of continued hostilities even if the parties reach a cease-fire, many Palestinians in Gaza will want to relocate away from the strip, at least temporarily. But they have a legal right to return to Gaza, now or in the future. And under international law, the 1948 refugees and their descendants in Gaza, totaling 1.6 million people, also have a right to resettle on the land taken from them and their families three-quarters of a century ago, and to benefit from the housing, infrastructure, services, schools and universities in the land that is now Israel that they have been unlawfully denied.

Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani write in Ebb magazine that there is no use of equal rights if there’s no material restitutions made for the original sin of stolen land and in that same process, stolen life.

There is no moral legitimacy in the suggestion that these settlers have a ‘right’ to live on stolen Palestinian land, the theft maintained by force, as long as there has been no restoration of Palestinians’ rights. No theories of justice exist in mainstream ethical or philosophical discourse that advocate for a person who has stolen something to rightfully keep what they have taken. The act of theft, by definition, violates the basic principles of theories of justice, which emphasise fairness, equitable distribution of resources, and respect for individual rights and property.

What’s the use of freedom when you’re still poor and trapped on a strip of land while your colonizer sits just a few meters away, sipping martinis on land that once belonged to your family for generations? What’s the use of justice when it’s merely rhetorical and forces you to normalize criminality of a much larger enduring scale? What’s the rule of law amidst the ruins of land?

One could suggest that this is too much of an “all-in” project for our movement leaders and elected paragons of the democratic socialist conception. But truth be told, it is the Israelis, the Americans that support them, who’ve gone “all-in”. All in with the shuttering of Palestinian cultural life. All in with the death and mayhem of Palestinian villages and towns. All in with a genocide that’s been on full display now for nearly three horrific and unyielding years. 

Land back is a quite moderate demand when considering the true scale of violence and cruelty that the Zionists have bestowed upon the Palestinians, and now the Lebanese and Iranians. 

Isabella Hammad, a leading contemporary Palestinian novelist, had said, “My dream is that one day Palestine will no longer be a cause, it will just be a place, where some of us happen to be from, and we could fly into the airport without being interrogated and drive over to Nablus for lunch and then go further up to Akka and swim in the sea . . .”

Palestine awaits us in joining completely in her moral and political imperative to restore the land, and in that process, restore humanity. 

DSA candidates across the country are contesting elections, and the narrative that surrounds them

The post Socialists Can Never Win — Until We Do appeared first on Democratic Left.

DSA and its activities have been covered in many news outlets recently, not always favorably. Here, RS contributor C. Don Jones responds to Dennis McIntyre’s August 19 article in Patheos. It appeared in the August 20 issue of Patheos.We reprint it  in slightly adapted form with the authors permission.–Eds.

I read Dennis McIntyre’s recent Patheos article The Rise of DSA And America’s Socialist Movement with great interest. Even when we disagree, I find McIntyre to be a good writer and a sincere believer in Christian hope. I join him in his prayer “that all involved have open hearts and focus on the common good, guided by the values Jesus gives us.” I normally do not write about political ideologies. His thoughts are worth discussing.

U.S. Socialist Movements

My first objection to his piece is that there has never been one U.S. socialist movement. There have been many approaches to socialist thought and practice in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest group of socialist organizers in U.S. history, if we go by numbers rather than percentage of the population. It is a multi-tendency organization. We have experienced a number of socialist organizations in our history. DSA won’t be the final expression of the socialist dream.

There has not been a common unifying ideology of socialism in the United States either.. McIntyre errs in equating socialism with the Marxist-Leninist ideology, which is the official doctrine of about five countries in the world and unlikely to grow. There is a reason Marxist-Leninists are called “tankies.” They do not take or maintain power by democratic means. Democratic socialism is messier because democracy is messy. 

Religious Socialists

My second objection is McIntyre’s neglect of the tradition of religious socialism. McIntyre presents what he calls “the Catholic view.” I know many Catholics who are socialists. Why could they not claim theirs is “the Catholic view”? The reason is simple. They know there is not simply one such view. However, when we consider the claim that “Jesus focused on voluntary generosity and on transforming hearts,” we  must ask , “What is the point of transforming hearts if the people as a community do not transform their habits, interactions, and shared goals?” I ask another question about voluntary generosity: “Is individual generosity morally superior to collective generosity?” My experience in ministry is that pooling resources leads to more efficient use and better outcomes.

DSA has a working group of active Religious Socialists promoting shared devotion and values as part of their activism. Although they come from many faiths, these are people who also join the prayer “that all involved have open hearts and focus on the common good. . . .”

A Few Questions

I applaud every effort made by people of faith who attempt to alleviate the economic suffering of other people. Honestly, though, is it really better to have a church attempt to pay off the medical debt of people in their community than for there never to have been any debt? The same question could apply to school-lunch debt.

Which is moral: a government that provides housing or one that criminalizes homelessness? Which would Jesus. who had no place to rest his head. support?

Would Jesus support keeping workers in poverty or support human dignity with humane working conditions and pay raises to keep up with the cost of living? Historically, unions/organized labor have raised the standard of living for everyone.

Because the Gospel of John asserts that the “Word” that “became flesh” is the Creator, is environmental destruction okay with him? Would it not be moral to find ways to make the world a more livable place?

The answers DSA offers support “human flourishing, dignity, protects freedom, strengthens families, and reflects biblical principles of justice and mercy.”

Jesus, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx

Karl Marx was the biggest fan Adam Smith ever had. Reading Capital by Marx and Smith’s Wealth of Nations for comparison would be important for Christian believers to understand the problems of moral philosophy as it applies to economic questions. The basic problem is a misunderstanding of human nature that comes from materialist thought.

Humanity has a spiritual side that is largely dismissed in economic thought. We do not define rational as decision making based on our own material interests. Human beings often do not know what those are. Jesus once praised the widow’s apparent irrationality of giving “all she had” amid people who gave large sums to the Temple Treasury. Why did she do that? She saw the injustice of her life that was caused by the institution of the Temple and the wealthy people who held abundance in the midst of poverty. She did not simply give her money. The mite was useless. She threw it away. Jesus pointed this out to his followers. who, to this day, fail to understand.

The post A Religious Socialist Defends Democratic Socialism appeared first on DSA Religious Socialism.

On Monday, August 24, masked ICE thugs abducted over 25 of our immigrant neighbors across Danbury, Stamford, and Bridgeport. Their […]

by Gustavus Meyers

Gustavus Meyers (1872 – 1942) was a journalist and historian most known for his study on the History of the Great American Fortunes, detailing the corruption and criminality behind their accumulation of wealth.

The Masses was a socialist monthly that ran from 1911 until 1917, when the magazine was shuttered by the federal government for violating the Espionage Act by publishing criticism of conscription during the First World War.

In the following essay, Meyers decries the weakened buying power of the working class due to rapid inflation, which he attributes to overvalued “watered stocks.” Perhaps readers will find resonance in the rising prices and looming AI bubble of our own time. – GLH

This, of all times, is the time when wage-earners should support any economic movement in their behalf which promises to conserve the power of their wages. Of this there is the most imperative need. The purchasing power of money is not only constantly falling, but a gigantic conspiracy is already successfully under way to impose upon the workers a fiat currency which has not even an artificial basis of value, as capitalists reckon value in relation to money. 

Of the whole number of workers, few realize that the money that capitalists pay them in wages is a depreciated, swindling currency in more than one sense. A dollar to-day brings less than half in commodities of what it could purchase ten years ago. The enormous, exorbitant advances in the prices of every necessity have so reduced the buying power of a dollar, that it is equal in value to less than what half a dollar was a decade ago. In no case have wages been adequately increased to meet this increase in the cost of living. The strongest labor unions have not been able to get more than a fifteen per cent increase in wages, and such an increase is exceptional, at that. What is a fifteen per cent increase compared to an increase in the cost of living which approximates more than fifty per cent of what it was ten years ago?

The worker, who has by great difficulties amassed a few hundred dollars in a savings bank as as a security for sickness or being out of work, has been robbed of more than one-half the amount of his deposit.

If, let us say, he has $200 to his credit in bank for the last few years, he really has not $200 but less than $100. If he drew the $200 out of bank, he would find out that it would buy considerably less than what $100 did a few years ago. The only value of money is its buying capacity; a dollar may still nominally be a dollar; but if its purchasing power is cut in half, it actually is only a half dollar.

Thus billions of dollars are being indirectly robbed from the meager wages of the workers to pay dividends on enormous issues of watered stocks put out by every trust and other capitalist concern. But this is not all. Under a recent act passed by Congress at the bidding of the great financial interests, the national banks are allowed to turn out currency against these very watered stocks. Hotherto, the United States Government allowed currency – that is, bank bills – to be issued against deposits of United States bonds only. But the Aldrich-Vreeland bill, passed recently, contained this “little joker,” “or any other securities.”

The result has been that immense quantities of watered stocks have been deposited with the United States Treasury, and many millions of currency have been issued against them. It is announced that $500,000,000 more will be issued against these watered stocks. All of this currency is wild-cat currency, having nothing but a fiat value, which means no basis value, even as capitalist standards go. This is the spurious stuff that is now being paid out to the workers, while the banknotes or Treasury notes representing gold, silver, or United States bonds are being carefully gathered in by the great financial interests.

A smash-up is sure to come. The dice are loaded against the working class, and pending the time when the whole capitalist regime will be overthrown, the workers should realize that they must give their support to co-operative movements. Only by this means, with the present odds so fearfully against them, can they hope to conserve something of the buying power of their scant wages, now being largely paid in wild-cat currency. If, instead of depositing their money in banks where it is cut in half and used against them, the workers should become partners in co-operative concerns, they would have the benefit of their wages, which they do not have now.

The post The Increased Cost of Living: An Analysis of Some of the Factors That Cause the Mysterious Jumps in Prices (1911) first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Maps of results for Larkin in Florida, Bush in St. Louis, McKinney in Detroit, and Kiros in Denver.

The post Red Atlas: Four DSA House Races, Precinct by Precinct appeared first on Democratic Left.

Note: posts by individual GMDSA members do not necessarily reflect the views of the broader membership or of its leadership and should not be regarded as official statements by the chapter.

Photo Credit: Coldwell Banker, Hickok & Boardman

This article originally appeared on https://organizethis.substack.com/

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Working people of Waterbury,  

I arrived in Waterbury homeless. I got a restaurant job and worked as much as I could and as long as I could to stack enough cash to get a dump apartment renting from Joe Handy with the caveat of a terrible roommate. In the years that elapsed post-homelessness, I worked hard, got my feet under me and became a contributing member of the community, with a halfway decent living situation. That situation turned sour when my landlord booted myself and my former partner out of our downtown apartment to make way for an Airbnb. That moment set off a years-long chain of events that would push me to run for Select Board on a platform of working class struggle and affordability and by the faith vested in me by the community, I won. 

In the 3 years I spent on Waterbury’s Select Board I tried to prevent working people from being forced out of this town by greedy landlords, short term rental owners and bad bosses. I tried to call attention to the plight of the service industry and hospitality workers whose wages had long since failed to keep up with the rising cost of housing. I tried to create a system where the municipal government would fund the construction of affordable apartments for working people, I proposed capping short term rentals, I proposed limiting down-payments on apartments and finally, I lobbied the other members of the select board to enter into a purchase agreement with the state so that a large developer could build much needed housing to alleviate the pressure on what’s left of Waterbury’s working class. All of these attempts were failures. There has been no relief for struggling working people in Waterbury.

Since leaving the Select Board, I’ve done some much needed reflecting. If you know me at all, you know that means staring at bodies of water in silent contemplation and calling it fishing. During one of these moments of silent contemplation I came to the realization that one working class individual serving in government won’t change a damn thing. The opposition is too entrenched, too bought-in, too set in their ways and too powerful for one person to face on their own. But hey, I gave it my best shot. 

If service and hospitality workers, factory workers and teachers in this town want any real change, there is only one way that they’re going to get it — and that’s organizing. Organizing labor unions, organizing tenant unions and organizing community meetings. It will take all of you — all of us, to hit back at a system that so very clearly takes advantage of you, leaving you out in the cold. I’m not talking about Trump or the Governor or the federal government, or even Elon Musk. I’m talking about your boss and your landlord. I’m talking about Waterbury’s wannabe ruling class. People whose decisions impact your life every single day. 

For years your boss has kept your wages low and your landlord has kept your rent high and it's only ever gotten worse. You know it because you’ve been living it. Your friends live it, your coworkers live it and your neighbors live it. This town’s entire economy runs because of your sweat, because of your stress and because of your time. Now, with the local option tax, the town gets a cut of your sweat, stress and time too. We’re being squeezed and we’re all running out of juice. That tax was proposed as a means to build affordable housing and fix Waterbury’s aging infrastructure. It has not lived up to its promised goals. 

Paycheck-to-paycheck didn’t cut it years ago and it definitely doesn’t cut it now. You cater to tourists, guests and customers day in and day out just to have your hours slashed in stick season or have your boss’ buddy get the raise that you’ve worked so hard for. Instead of giving you a cost of living adjustment, your boss’ restaurant group opens a new restaurant or buys a brewery instead. You get that letter from your landlord that says that rent is going up again right after you just had to fork over hundreds to get your car to pass inspection. You skip this week's grocery trip because you’re obligated in your lease to pay for heat in an apartment with century old insulation. It’s just not sustainable anymore nor has it ever been.

The only way to stare down this machine and bargain for a better Waterbury is to do it together. Where I failed alone, we can succeed together. United we bargain but divided we beg — and we’re all tired of begging. We’re tired of begging for rent relief and we’re tired of begging for raises - and we will beg no more. It’s up to you to talk to your coworkers and talk to your neighbors about organizing. You won't be alone and you won’t fail. There are many of us who will stand behind you. 

For those of you who are teachers, talk to your fellow union members about supporting candidates for School Board and Select Board who actually understand your struggles and your plight. 

For those of you in factories, service or hospitality, talk to your coworkers about organizing labor unions in your work places. There are more of you than there are bosses to stop you and if enough of you have had enough of meager earnings and exorbitant rent and if we all can stick together, you will win better pay, benefits, working conditions and affordability.

If you rent, talk to your neighbors about forming tenant unions and create renters committees who can relentlessly hound the Select Board until they actually work up the backbone to do something about the local affordability crisis. 

If your coworker or neighbor approaches you about starting a union, listen and participate. Sign a petition, sign a union card, or take the lead. It doesn’t matter how you organize. It just matters that you organize. Your friends, coworkers and neighbors are your strength because a rising tide lifts all boats and there is no better time than right now.

Always remember, there is no economy without working people. There is no economy without you. It’s time that you get treated that way.

Events & Actions

Tuesday August 18 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM) Social Housing Working Group (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Tuesday August 25 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Wednesday August 26 (6:45 PM – 8:30 PM) Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Thursday August 27 (5:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Phonebank for Prop I (Affordable Housing Guarantee Act) (1916 McAllister St)

 Thursday August 27 (7:00 PM – 9:00 PM)  Emergency Planning Training (new location!) (1 Lilac St)

 Saturday August 29 (10:00 AM – 12:00 PM) Yes on I Lit Drop (Douglass Playground, Douglass St &, 26th St)

 Saturday August 29 (11:00 AM – 2:00 PM) Fundamentals of Tenant Organizing [ETOC] (1916 McAllister St)

 Saturday August 29 (3:00 PM – 4:30 PM) Decolonization Studies (1916 McAllister St)

 Sunday August 30 (11:00 AM – 2:00 PM)  Prop B Field Kickoff! (Mission Playground Park)

 Sunday August 30 (1:00 PM – 2:30 PM)  What is DSA? (Bayview Branch Library, 5075 3rd Street)

 Monday August 31 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Tuesday September 1 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM) Social Housing Working Group (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Wednesday September 2 (7:00 PM – 8:30 PM) Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Thursday September 3 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM) Education Board Open Meeting (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Thursday September 3 (7:00 PM – 8:30 PM) Immigrant Justice regular meeting (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Saturday September 5 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM)  No Appetite for Apartheid: Consumer Pledge Canvass (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

 Monday September 7 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Labor Working Group Meeting (online and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

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Emergency Planning Training

ICE makes immigrants “check in” periodically at their office to avoid deportation. But when immigrants show up, in many cases ICE has been detaining them anyway. An injury to one is an injury to all! Come learn how you can support immigrants outside these check-ins by helping them make an emergency plan, and get legal help if needed Thursday August 27, 7-8:30PM (1 Lilac St)
RSVP here 

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Yes on B Campaign Kickoff

This is a big week for Prop B as we will have our field kickoff at 11AM on Sunday the 30th at Mission Playground. We want comrades to come out in force to win a public bank in SF! RSVP here! 

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Decolonization Studies

Come join your friendly neighborhood socialists for study time! We’re reading from a collection of texts chosen to elevate our understanding of decolonization, reading is done beforehand and participants are invited to the office for a monthly in-person facilitated discussion. Please feel free to come to the session even if you’ve only partially completed the readings!
RSVP here (Decolonization Studies – DSA San Francisco Organization)

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Beach Day with Palestine Solidarity Working Group

Join the Palestine Solidarity Working Group at Ocean Beach on August 29 at 2:00 PM as we play some games and enjoy some time on the beach together! We’ll have snacks/drinks and a volleyball net, and of course we will be snagging a bonfire pit for the vibes.  Please bring whatever you’d like to roast over the fire and come learn more about our work with Palestine!

RSVP for Beach Day via Partiful

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Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

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Reportbacks

Socialist Picnic

A big socialist thank you to all the comrades new and old who came out to picnic and socialize together this past Saturday, especially our comrades visiting from the Boise DSA chapter! The better world is the one we make together! See you at the next one!

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No Appetite for Apartheid Canvassing 

On Sunday Aug 23rd, seven of us from the Palestine Solidarity Working Group canvassed local stores in the Excelsior neighborhood and were able to put up three No Appetite for Apartheid posters! We had a few Spanish speakers who were able to connect with local businesses and met a few Palestinian American business owners.

Hit @Ryan Cruz or @Eli Edelman up if you’re ever looking to get plugged in as we continue our NA4A campaign and also set our sights on Rainbow!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 25, 2026

Contact:
Susie & Katie
Co-chairs, Denver Democratic Socialists of America
info@denverdsa.org

DENVER, CO, August 25, 2026 — The Denver Democratic Socialists of America are proud to announce their endorsement of Councilwoman Shontel M. Lewis for Mayor of Denver in the 2027 election.

Lewis was previously endorsed by Denver DSA in 2023 for her successful race to represent the communities of East Colfax, Montbello, Park Hill, Northfield and Central Park in District 8 on Denver City Council. 

"Shontel Lewis has spent her career advancing socialist policies to help working people," said Katie, Denver DSA Co-Chair. "With the city in a budget crisis and survival becoming more precarious for everyday Denverites, we need a Mayor with the vision, experience, and tenacity to make meaningful change happen." 

During her time in office, Lewis has fought alongside Denver DSA and other working-class coalitions to deliver on municipal sentencing reform, renter protections, collective bargaining rights for city workers, and most recently, protections for trans Denverites.

"I am proudly running again as a democratic socialist and having the support of Denver’s DSA behind another one of my races means the world to me," said Lewis.

"I was asked to run for mayor by union organizers, my neighbors who go to work every day and still struggle, tired folks close to losing their hope. We can run a campaign of joy, one centering what our city and her residents deserve. We will bring lasting and real change to Denver, we have a world to win and I am committed to the vision.”

This endorsement comes as a result of Denver DSA’s democratic process, including candidate forums, member deliberation, and an all-member vote. It reflects the democratic will of the organization’s almost 2,000 members and commits the membership to volunteer for Lewis's campaign.

Denver DSA is proud to stand alongside Councilwoman Lewis in her fight to win the mayoralty and build the Denver that workers deserve. 

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ABOUT DENVER DSA: Denver Democratic Socialists of America is the metro Denver chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the country. We seek to build a mass movement and transfer power from the ruling elite to the working class, thereby gaining freedom and democratic control over all aspects of our society. A better world is possible - join DSA to build it with us.

The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book “The American Road to Socialism: The Unfinished Struggle for Democracy”

Ask an American whether workers should own the results of their labor, and you will get a yes. Ask whether the economy is rigged in favor of corporations and the wealthy, and you will get a yes – 70 percent of respondents in a national poll last year, including 58 percent of Republicans, said the system is rigged and needs to be replaced. Ask whether your boss, your landlord, and your insurance company have too much control over your life, and you will get a yes. Then say the word “socialism,” and watch the yes turn into a maybe.

That gap is the central strategic problem we in the American left face. This is a challenge we socialists have faced for decades, but the political foundations are changing. Sixty-two percent of Americans under thirty now hold a favorable view of socialism. Among Democrats, favorable views have climbed from 50 percent in 2010 to 66 percent in 2025. Meanwhile Gallup found the approval rate of capitalism slipping to 54 percent, its worst showing in over a decade of polling. Roughly 15 percent of 2024 Trump voters — younger, more racially diverse, and largely disengaged from politics — told pollsters they prefer democratic socialism to capitalism. These results have been matched with equal intensity in the waves of socialist primary victories across the country this cycle. DSA endorsed roughly 150 candidates in 2026. By the end of June, thirty-five had won their primaries or gone unopposed. 

These wins are only the beginning of building a durable socialist movement in this country. If we are to displace the political establishment rather than merely embarrass it, we have to build a movement that crosses the partisan spectrum. Closing the gap between what Americans already believe and what they think socialism is takes three things: understanding why the gap exists, learning to speak in a way that closes it, and building an organization disciplined enough to contest the communities where the gap will be closed.

Why Has America Not (Yet) Embraced Socialism?

We first have to address the elephant in the room: Why over the 250 years of this country’s existence has socialism failed to take root? There are four structural obstacles in this country that have historically prevented the United States of America from embracing socialism. First, the deliberate repression of the left by capital and the state cannot be ignored when answering this question. McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, the destruction of radical unions, elite-driven cultural backlash to eras of progressive political dominance, and the outright assassination of prominent leftist leaders in this country have all been tools used by the elite to prevent the destruction of capitalism. 

Second is elite-driven racial divisiveness. In a multiracial society like ours, racism has been the most reliable instrument the political and economic elite have for keeping the working class divided against itself, deployed by reactionary coalitions from the founding of this country, through the end of Reconstruction, the Dixiecrats and the Southern Strategy, and present day racial divides. When workers are pitted against each other, they cannot organize alongside one other against the capitalist minority.

Third, unlike almost every other industrialized democracy, the United States has for most of its history lacked a durable labor or socialist party, leaving the working class without an independent political vehicle to organize. The Socialist Party, as well as the Democratic Party at certain points in its history, offered a space for working class political organization. But this wasn’t permanent. The structural explanation for this absence lies in the American electoral system itself. Winner-take-all elections, single-member congressional districts, and the Electoral College create nearly insurmountable barriers to third parties that simply do not exist in the proportional representation systems of Europe and Latin America.

The fourth obstacle is closely related to the third—the cultural identification of socialism with foreign ideologies and anti-Americanism. For a century, the right has successfully branded socialism as something alien to the American tradition: a European import at best and Soviet totalitarianism at worst. This branding has been reinforced by a corporate-controlled media apparatus that has consistently marginalized socialist voices from mainstream political discourse while amplifying the association between socialism and authoritarianism. This is the obstacle that matters most, because all others can be overcome through organizing, institution-building, and political strategy. If Americans continue to believe socialism is fundamentally un-American, no amount of doorknocking will overcome that barrier. The cultural and rhetorical reframing of socialism that we present to the masses is the foundation everything else rests on.

Speaking American: How We Talk About Socialism 

The reason why socialism in this country has failed to take off isn’t because Americans reject its core premises, but because they reject its branding. When we describe the actual tenets  of democratic socialism: workers controlling their workplaces, affordable housing, universal healthcare, strong communities, freedom from corporate domination, etc., polls consistently show majority support among Americans. What Americans reject is the word socialism and the cultural associations it carries. The task is therefore to show them that what they already want is socialism. We can achieve this goal through five cultural and rhetorical strategies.

The most effective brand of political communication is narrative rather than argumentative. People are not persuaded by policy papers, ideological frameworks, or abstract appeals to justice. What persuades voters are stories that connect political ideas to lived human experiences. When a worker describes watching the company they spent twenty years building get sold out from under them so that a private equity firm could extract its assets, that story makes the case for cooperative ownership more powerfully than any theoretical argument ever could. When a single mother describes choosing between filling a prescription and paying rent, that story makes the case for universal healthcare in terms no policy brief can match. Socialists must learn to lead with stories because stories create the emotional connection that opens people to ideas they might otherwise reject on ideological grounds. This is the basis of agitation as a political strategy—the simple act of using leading questions and “whose side are you on” to bring voters to your desired outcome—which then opens voters to political organizing. 

The American Dream with Socialist Characteristics 

Socialism isn’t a rejection of the American Dream, but is instead its ultimate fulfillment. The dream as originally conceived—that through hard work, anyone can build a good life in this country—has been hollowed out by capitalism. When wages stagnate, housing is unaffordable, healthcare bankrupts families, and student debt crushes an entire generation, the promise of a better life becomes a cruel joke for the working American. Socialism restores the American Dream by giving Americans the material security to actually turn their hard work into a higher standard of living. This is how we should communicate our vision to the American public—not as a radical departure from what they’ve been promised, but as a radical fulfillment of the promise they have known their whole lives. It is through socialism that the life of a happy family, a happy home, a good job, and a Fourth of July barbecue can be realized for the working majority of this country.

You Do the Work, You Own the Results 

Producerism is the belief that those who produce wealth should get to control wealth. Producerism should be at the rhetorical and policy center of our movement. In a country where voters pride themselves on hard work, hard work should be rewarded. Socialism accomplishes this by giving workers control over their own labor. No longer is there surplus labor value for capitalists to extract. What you create is what you control. Producerism has deep roots in the American political tradition from Jefferson, Jackson, and the Populists all the way through the labor movement, the New Deal, and the Great Society. The twenty-first century version of this argument is simple: you produce the wealth, you should own it. Corporate executives, Wall Street traders, and trust fund inheritors produce nothing. Instead, they extract wealth from Americans who work for a living. Socialism—which is fundamentally the belief that workers should control the wealth they create—isn’t a foreign import. Cooperative ownership is the logical conclusion of the producerist principle that Americans have believed in for two centuries. When we talk to voters, we should frame our project as “we believe the people who do the work should own the results of their work.” That is a sentence that virtually every American will agree with, and it is the most basic definition of socialism.

Your Neighbor is Not Your Enemy 

Americans have a deep attachment to community, whether religious, familial, neighborhood, or civic. Barn raisings, mutual aid societies, the labor union, and the tradition of neighbors helping neighbors were all core institutions of American culture hollowed out by capitalism. Capitalism has left the American worker small, isolated, and unable to defend themselves against either an abusive employer or an indifferent state. Cooperatives, tenant unions, and popular assemblies are the tools ordinary people use to rebuild that. Socialism is what happens when neighbors decide to look out for each other instead of leaving everyone to fend for themselves.

Us Against the Oligarchs 

The defining feature of American politics right now is that voters across the spectrum are furious at elites. The right channels that fury at cultural figures, immigrants, and minorities. Our job is to channel it to the economic elites who actually control people’s lives. Democratic socialism is not “big government.” It is the opposite of oligarchy: a system where ordinary people hold power instead of billionaires. Every proposal we make should be framed as transferring power from elites to working people, not from the private sector to the state. Americans distrust both big business and big government, and our answer is therefore neither. Socialism is the democratic self-governance of working people, which is what the natural conclusion of the values most Americans ascribe to the founding of this country.

What Freedom Really Means 

This is the framing we underuse most. The right insists socialism means the government running your life. In reality it is the capitalist class running it. Your boss controls your time, your wages, your conditions. Your landlord controls your housing. Your insurance company controls whether you get treatment. There is no meaningful freedom when every condition of your survival depends on the decisions of unaccountable private actors. Democratic socialism offers two freedoms at once: the freedom that comes from a baseline of material security, and the freedom that comes from actual control over your workplace, your building, and your neighborhood. What could be more American than that?

“The Party Within the Party” 

That brings us to the question every American socialist has to answer: what do we do with the Democratic Party? Make a clean break and start a third party, or organize inside? The answer is both: the “party within the party.”

This strategy is not new or revolutionary for the DSA, but it could use some sharpening and clarity. Building a third party under current conditions is not possible given the design of our electoral system and the entrenchment of the duopoly. When those conditions change, likely through our own efforts, so should our approach. But working within the Democratic Party carries its own risks. Without an independent organizational base we will be absorbed and neutralized, which is exactly what happened to progressive movements throughout the twentieth century. I can’t say when the DSA will reach a state where it can truly break from the Democrats and its bourgeois politics, but our goal is not to become Democrats. Instead, we must use Democrats’ existing infrastructure to build our own power and base of support. What we therefore need is an independent socialist organization with its own membership, funding, discipline, and platform. We can and should use the Democratic ballot line as a vehicle to win elections, gain national publicity, and push for reforms to the political system. As we do so, we will win over the sympathy of left-leaning voters while retaining the independence to hold our own officials accountable, mobilize outside election cycles, and build working-class institutions that outlast any party. 

In order to accomplish this, we must do three things: streamline our endorsement process, run for and win smaller local and state offices, and expand our fight to contest elections in more rural and conservative parts of the country.

The Endorsement Process

Ours should be an endorsement that candidates actively seek out, not one selectively and arbitrarily given. Right now the process is often slow, contentious, and dominated by factional dynamics that prioritize ideological alignment over strategic opportunity. Candidates substantively aligned with democratic socialist principles get denied because they fail to check a few boxes in our process, and races go uncontested by socialists because nobody clears the purity threshold. A strategically oriented process would test candidates against a short list of non-negotiables — economic democracy, racial justice, anti-militarism, labor rights — allow flexibility on secondary questions, and prioritize races we can actually win.

The Local Governance Gap

There are thousands of offices in this country decided by a few hundred or even a few dozen votes: city councils, county boards, township trustees, school boards, water reclamation districts, planning commissions. They are not glamorous. They generate no national press. They are also where the governance that shapes working people’s daily lives actually happens. A single organized chapter can win them with minimal resources. Winning them turns municipal and state governments into laboratories of socialist policy — and, just as importantly, makes voters comfortable with the idea of socialists governing, because they can see it working down the street. It is also how we build a bench. You do not produce candidates capable of competing at the highest level without officeholders who have already governed something. DSA’s habit of pouring electoral energy into high-profile congressional races while neglecting the offices where socialism can be practiced most tangibly is a strategic failure that caps our growth.

Purple & Red Territory

Fifty-eight percent of Republicans think the economy is rigged for the rich. Of the respondents who had never heard of DSA, 43 percent were more amenable to democratic socialism against 38 percent for capitalism — meaning our brand problem is, in a real sense, an introduction problem. Bernie Sanders and AOC draw enormous crowds in places where we currently have limited resources and support. These are communities where a candidate running the producerist message alongside concrete local issues — housing costs, healthcare access, job quality — can win, particularly in local and state races where national partisan dynamics matter least.

The proof of concept of the socialist electoral model is no longer hypothetical, and it is no longer only applicable in progressive areas like New York. Zohran Mamdani started at 1 percent in the polls and beat the entire New York establishment twice, winning 30 percent of the districts Trump carried in 2024 — not because those voters had a conversion experience, but because Mamdani was the only candidate talking about their rent. Donavan McKinney just won a congressional primary in Detroit with a fraction of his opponent’s money, running on working-class representation in government, taxing the wealthy, and getting corporate cash out of politics. Neither man asked anyone to become a socialist. Our candidates have won by speaking to material conditions and letting the label take care of itself. They are using their success in office to bring people into socialism by example. That is a replicable model, and we have been rationing it. Imagine every chapter with a few hundred members identifying one winnable local race, recruiting a candidate committed to the platform, and running a real field operation.

Expanding the Project 

But how do we accomplish all of these goals? There are several ways in which we can go about expanding the reach of the DSA organization which mostly entail building upon already existing programs.

The Socialists in Office program (SIO) is a DSA-sponsored program that coordinates with and supports DSA officials in public office through a co-governance model. The organization works with SIOs on building coalitions with key communities, teaching our politicians the ropes of local governance, and on drafting and passing legislation. The SIO program has been incredibly effective at building a base of socialist politicians with strong constituent services and strong legislative skills, but the program could be significantly expanded. 

Imagine if the SIO program was involved in the electoral process before candidates won their races? The program should be the primary vehicle by which we elect socialists across the country. It should work with candidates during their campaigns, providing media training, fundraising support, and organizing training. It should work to build coalitions between DSA candidates and key groups like labor, students’ groups, and tenants’ organizations. And it should be involved in identifying candidates across the country to run for office under the DSA banner.

But engaging in electoralism alone will not be enough to move the masses towards socialism. In essence, the DSA must break from the two-party tradition of only showing up in communities when it comes time for Americans to vote. DSA cadres must be continually present in communities, doing the work of building strong relations with local residents. As we expand our organizing capacity, we should engage in mutual-aid work, providing communities with key services that corporations and governments refuse to offer. From the public housing complex to the barn-house, we must be in the communities that will decide the future of this country, becoming a key resource for local residents without ever asking for a vote or donation in return. This is how we, and by extension socialism, can become the most trusted political project in this country.

The road to socialism here will not be paved by one election, one candidate, or one project. It will be built by the sustained, unglamorous work of people who refuse to accept that the richest country in human history cannot provide a dignified life for everyone in it. The framings and arguments above are a toolkit to be adapted to the conditions of communities across the country. The question is no longer whether socialism can win in America. It is whether we are willing to do the work to achieve that victory.

The post The Road to Power: A Socialist Guide to Winning in America appeared first on Midwest Socialist.