May 29, 2024

Over 48,000 members of UAW 4811, higher ed workers in the University of California system, are standing up and striking back against unfair and illegal repression by their universities. These workers make the university system run with their labor, by instructing classes and bringing in grant money with their research. The wealth they create is then invested in weapons manufacturers and other companies that supply, support, and enable the genocide in Gaza, the illegal settlement of the West Bank, and the day to day violence of Israel’s apartheid regime. This Monday, May 19, they began their strike. 

These workers heeded the call put out by their fellow students, joining the movement for a ceasefire in Gaza and Palestinian liberation. Union members were tear-gassed, beaten, and intimidated – first by counter protesters and then by police called by the University of California.

The response to students and workers exercising their right to free speech was repression and violence. But these academic workers are unionized, and have legal protections from unfair labor practices like this. And they have a tool to protect their rights: the strike.  

With this strike, UAW 4811 makes the following demands:

1. Amnesty for all academic employees, students, student groups, faculty, and staff who face disciplinary action or arrest due to protest.

2. Right to free speech and political expression on campus.  

3. Divestment from UC’s known investments in weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza. 

4. Disclosure of all funding sources and investments, including contracts, grants, gifts, and investments, through a publicly available, publicly accessible, and up-to-date database.

5. Empower researchers to opt out from funding sources tied to the military or oppression of Palestinians. The UC must provide centralized transitional funding to workers whose funding is tied to the military or foundations that support Palestinian oppression. 

UC academic workers are fighting against repression on behalf of students and workers everywhere, from California to Palestine! Their fight is our fight, and we stand with them!

As DSA members, we know that the workers at the University of California are fighting not just for their own safety and right to peacefully protest, but for workers all across the world, especially in Palestine. Workers at UC are taking a bold step, striking not only for better working conditions, but to defend their fundamental political rights and freedoms. After all, it is our collective power to withhold our labor by which these very rights are guaranteed. We know that the struggle for a better future begins on the shop floor, and as democratic socialists, we stand loudly and proudly alongside all workers who demand political freedom and an end to the genocide in Palestine.

Therefore, as Ithaca DSA members we commit to:

• Amplify the demands of the rank-and-file through public statements of support

• Hold UC accountable to meet the just demands of their workers

• (IF APPLICABLE: We will join striking workers on the picket line and provide material support to help them stay strong)

When workers, students, and social movements stand together demanding an end to US complicity in Israel’s genocide, we will win!

First Published October 29, 2023

Ithaca DSA supports Professor Russell Rickford and is disgusted by the attacks being leveled at him. He has been accused by Cornell campus groups and media outlets of celebrating Hamas’s violence against Israeli civilians and promoting hate speech. These accusations are based on a short and decontextualized video clip of a much longer, 19-minute speech that was given at a rally in support of the Palestinian people, co-organized by Jewish Voices for Peace and the Ithaca Committee for Justice for Palestine and co-sponsored by the Ithaca DSA and other local organizations. Professor Rickford did NOT support or glorify violence against civilians. In fact, he stated "I hate violence. I hate violence. I can’t stand guns. I come from a deep tradition of peace. I come from a deep tradition of resistance to militarism, and to war. I would never presume, on principle, I would never presume, to tell an oppressed people how they should seek their liberation... I abhor the killing of civilians. It’s horrific," (full transcript of speech here). 

The deliberate misrepresentation and decontextualization of his speech is an affront to open dialogue and free speech, which Cornell purports is a key value of the university. We call on Cornell to take the side of Professor Rickford, instead of those making bad faith attacks, undermine free speech, and distort others’ viewpoints for political gain. 

Professor Rickford is a wonderful scholar, teacher, community member, and activist who does not deserve this incredible outpouring of hate and disinformation. 

Sign a petition to support him here.

Adopted by ROC DSA Steering Committee November 10, 2024.

The legacy of the Democratic Party is the re-election of Donald Trump. This outcome followed decades of neoliberal policies and triangulation, which resulted in hollowing out the Party’s remaining commitments to the working class. As President Biden promised in 2020, “nothing would fundamentally change” during his term. Kamala Harris’s candidacy offered only the continuation of this message.

By rejecting any serious effort to improve material conditions for the working class, Democrats aligned themselves to the status quo, ceding ground to a Republican Party that vows to burn the system down. Abandoning transformative policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, the Democrats left no way to act on the “hope” they so readily encourage.

Instead, Democrats tacked further right, adopting anti-immigration rhetoric of “securing the border,” conceding to corporate interests, sidelining Palestine activists, encouraging disastrous climate policies, and promising the “most lethal fighting force in the world.” Harris touted the endorsement of Dick Cheney, architect of the Iraq War, and welcomed Republicans into her administration. In the face of these actions, the Democrats’ denouncement of Trump’s fascism and claim to protect democracy appeared hypocritical. As National DSA identified, it is the “Democratic Party establishment’s failure to present a credible alternative to the right wing,” that led to a right wing victory.

It is not working class policies that are unpopular, but the Democratic Party. In state after state, socialist candidates and progressive policies prevailed with the backing of DSA. Representative Rashida Tlaib nearly doubled Harris’s vote count in Dearborn, Michigan, while Gabriel Sanchez became the first socialist in Georgia’s House of Representatives, and Louisville, Kentucky chose J.P. Lyninger’s “no compromise, class struggle message” for city council. Voters in Missouri, who overwhelmingly favored Trump, legalized abortion and increased the state’s minimum wage; and in New York, Proposition 1 (the “Equal Rights Act”), received more votes than Harris.

While we are critical of the Democratic Party’s failures, we hold no illusions: A second Trump term will be disastrous for the working class. Aspiring to dictatorial fascism, Trump will encounter no guardrails from a reactionary Supreme Court. Access to abortion, gender affirming healthcare, and gay marriage are each under threat, and millions face “mass deportation now.” Workers confront the dilution of their power to unionize, while corporations will benefit from increasing government handouts.

We must adopt a policy of total resistance to this agenda. There can be no countenance for “Trump Democrats” who acquiesce to fascism. Congressman Joe Morelle, who previously decried Trump’s “violent attempt to overthrow the will of the American people,” now congratulates Trump on his victory and urges us to “set aside our partisanship.” We refuse to work in coalition with fascists.

The choice between socialism and fascism represents an irreconcilable political difference: That all people are created equal and deserving of the opportunity for a dignified life, or that some must dominate while the rest are disposable. On issue after issue, Harris conceded to the second vision, making her an untrustworthy ally.

We cannot expect capitalist parties to cater to the needs of the working class. We must build socialism from the ground up. In the past year, ROC DSA organized to defeat the undemocratic business improvement district, mobilized for Palestine, campaigned for public power, supported unions, and more. DSA’s 2024 program, Workers Deserve More, presents a series of proposals that would radically improve people’s lives and create a winning coalition. We must create the conditions to realize this victory. 

We can only do this by building a mass movement. Now is the time to join DSA, or get more involved. We must all take responsibility to resist the rising tide of fascism. DSA provides a space for participatory democracy, and ownership of political decisions—somewhere you don’t need to be a capitalist to get a seat at the table. A better world is possible.

The post Chapter Statement on the 2024 Election first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

By Nick Lavin

10:1 – the recommended ratio of union members to Contract Action Team (CAT) members – was the watchword of everyone on the picket line this weekend in Beverly and Gloucester as they turned out virtually every member to the picket line on regular intervals. After months without a contract, educators in both towns voted overwhelmingly to strike beginning Friday, with Marblehead set to join them on Tuesday. Here’s what the teachers, counselors, and paraprofessionals on the line had to say about their efforts to Working Mass.

“The North Shore Is Taking Its Schools Back”

The Beverly and Gloucester teachers unions, each representing over 400 educators and other school staff, have been fighting for a fair contract for months – and in the case of Gloucester’s paraprofessionals, since June of last year. Inspired by the strike actions in several other towns and cities across the state, union members took the problem of underfunded public education into their own hands and started organizing.

Years of methodical shop-floor organizing and months of contract campaign escalations culminated this fall as North Shore educators set the date for a strike – November 8th. After turning broadly and deeply felt issues over pay equity, staffing, and general working conditions into a contract proposal for teacher- and student-well-being, the unions were ready to bring the proposals back to their workplaces. Union member-organizers started “Contract Action Teams” in their buildings to develop the strength needed to take on their districts, holding 1:1 conversations, turning out as ‘silent reps’ to negotiations with the city, and rallying.

Turning Up the Heat

When federal pandemic-era relief money ran out during the last school year, Gloucester laid off twenty-two educators, a loss felt deeply in the classroom. To the paraprofessionals expected to pick up the slack as sub-separate classes became ‘inclusion’ with less resources, the district suggested they apply for second jobs (which many already have) rather than increasing their pay. This blatant disregard for the work of paras is part of what motivated the merger of Gloucester paraprofessional and teacher units, says Margaret Rudolf, an eighteen-year special-ed paraprofessional: “when we started sharing [our story] with the GTA [Gloucester Teachers Association], they were appalled at how little we made.”

Paraprofessional pay equity is a sticking point in negotiations for all union members. The housing crisis emanating from Boston hits paras especially hard in the commuter towns of Beverly and Gloucester, who make as little as $20,000 a year.

Educational staff were exasperated by the systemic underfunding of public schooling, and the union was ready to organize the frustration into positive action. “Our program in negotiations were the solutions to the problems that we see in our schools and in our district. The district says ‘oh we hear you’ but then they reject all our proposals” said Rachel Rex, president of the Union of Gloucester Educators. 

Consistent stonewalling from city administration over basic school needs forced teachers to organize to take more militant action to ensure both they and their students get the resources they need. Rather than listening to parents and educators, city administrators have turned to the typical teachers-union-busting textbook, calling on the courts to issue injunctions against the strikes.

Community Support

Educators on the North Shore are taking on local politicians over public education – and bringing the community with them. Educators in both Beverly and Gloucester reported that, despite the stories coming out of the school committees about the union, community support for the strike has been overwhelming. Across the North Shore, pro-union signs are ubiquitous, and the supportive honking as cars streamed by the pickets was incessant. 

Because the union teachers are so beloved in Gloucester, the city’s administration centers a different villain in their union-busting narrative. Officials have taken to blaming the Massachusetts Teachers Association [MTA]. “The narrative is that MTA has caused these strikes, but let me be clear: my members made this decision,” said Rex. This line of attack, called ‘third-partying’, seeks to drive a wedge not only between workers and their union, but also between the union and the greater community. As politicians try to steer austerity against the tide of renewed teacher militancy and community frustration over school budgets, third-partying has become a common, if ineffective, rhetorical crutch across Massachusetts.

Both the Beverly and Gloucester teachers unions have launched strike support fundraisers, and don’t intend to back down: “we’ve finally found our voice and enough is enough… you can’t break us anymore, you can’t burn us out. We need a living wage, we need a parental leave policy, we need safe schools, we need the tools so that we can properly educate our students.”

Anger over the cities’ treatment of educators in both the union and the community has reached a boiling point and members are ready to transform their union power into political power. Once they win their contract, says Rex, GTA’s next campaign is “to change the political landscape here in Gloucester.“ Community members, business owners, and the union are fed up with the status quo and ready to elect people who care about safe schools and fully-funded public education.

Nick Lavin is a Boston Public Schools paraprofessional and a member of the Boston Teachers Union.

I remember being the only kid in my 5th grade class at Pennell Elementary in Gray, Maine to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980. Ronald Reagan promised to Make America Great Again and he beat Carter 489 to 49 in the electoral college that year. It got worse in 1984. Reagan nearly ran the table against Walter Mondale, who managed just 13 electoral votes from his home state of Minnesota. The popular vote was 54 million to 37 million. You read that right. 

For those who had fought all their lives for civil rights, feminism, and peace, his election was a demoralizing and terrifying time. I was just a kid, but I could feel it too. Reagan made his bones in California as governor gassing anti-war protesters and staked his presidential campaign on White Supremacy, hailing States Rights in Mississippi where the Klan massacred civil rights organizers. In office, he smashed unions, mocked AIDS victims, bloodied whole nations in Central America, and pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. It was bad. 

Reaganomics

If Reagan mobilized a racist backlash against civil rights to win office, he cemented his grip on power by taming inflation, running at almost 15% by the time of the 1980 election. He teamed up with Fed Chief Paul Volcker to drive the U.S. into a steep recession in 1981 and 1982 by slashing budgets and hiking up interest rates. Unemployment spiked to over 10% with millions of jobs lost in manufacturing. Reagan portrayed the recession as tough medicine that would—coupled with a war on the unions—restore American business to world supremacy. Wall Street and Big Business loved it. Private sector unionization declined by 40% over the course of the 1980s. In capitalist terms, it worked like a charm. GDP growth stormed back to 4.5% in 1983 and 7.25% in 1984, then chugged along around 4% for the remainder of the decade.

When all was said and done, Reagan had won the Cold War, rearmed the Pentagon, rolled back abortion rights, affirmative action, and environmental protection, and imposed the neoliberal model on friend and foe alike across the world. George H.W. Bush rode to an easy victory in 1988, spreading Reaganism into the 1990s and looked set to extend its run even further in the wake of the 1991 Iraq War. 

What finally undid the Reagan/Bush hold on the White House? As Clinton advisor James Carville put it, “It’s the economy stupid.” Post-war joblessness climbed to nearly 8% and that was just enough to put Clinton over the top in 1992. However, it’s worth remembering that billionaire Ross Perot won almost 20 million votes in his independent (rightward leaning) bid that year, so Clinton only won 43 million votes to Bush’s 39 million. The ghost of Ronald Reagan still haunted the country. Especially so considering that Clinton adopted much of Reagan’s anti-welfare and tough on crime rhetoric and policy. 

The left in the 1980s

There were important social movements and leftwing campaigns in the 1980s and early 1990s. Millions marched for Earth Day, disarmament, abortion rights, and Central American solidarity. Campus occupations protested South African Apartheid and Los Angeles and other cities erupted in rebellion after Rodney King’s attackers were acquitted in 1992. And while labor took it on the chin, strikes like the paper workers’ battle in Jay, Maine demonstrated that unions could still put up a fight. Many of these impulses found political expression in Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 Democratic Party primary challenges, growing his left-wing vote from 3 million to almost 8 million in the darkest period of Reagan’s rule. However, the trend was clear. Feminism, civil rights, environmentalism, socialism, Indigenous sovereignty, disarmament were all on the decline and capitalism reigned supreme. Margerat Thatcher’s dictum “There is no alternative” rang true. 

Fast forward. Is Trump just a return to Reagan? Yes and no. 

Leftwing ideas are all more popular now—especially among young people—than in the 1980s. If Jackson’s campaigns brought together the remaining forces from the previous round of social movements, then Bernie’s campaigns gave a common language of socialism and solidarity to contemporary struggles whose trajectory has not yet been determined. Certainly, the NLRB will turn hostile under Trump, but there is more energy in the labor movement than we’ve seen since the 1960s. And if hundreds or thousands protested Reagan’s genocidal wars in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua and demanded divestment from South Africa in the 1980s, tens of thousands and more are standing in solidarity with Gaza now. Today to be young and to fight for socialism seems pretty normal, just ask all the people you know in DSA. That’s a big change. 

On the other hand, although Reagan’s margins were bigger than Trump’s, and Reaganism did help revive the far right—David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the KKK won a seat in the Louisiana legislature and Timothy McVeigh sprung from a widespread militia movement—Trump has brought together a kind of mass, participatory proto-fascist movement unlike anything Reagan ever managed (or cared about). That “movement” side of Trump—both its expression in the streets and its permeation of the state—is of a different order of magnitude and it might mean that Trumpism is more durable than Reaganism. 

What about global capitalism? Reagan wanted to win the Cold War, but I don’t think he and his team really imagined the Soviet Union would collapse. That is, they wanted to rebalance the existing global structures in favor of U.S. business, which they did. But today’s fractured worldscape—led by mutually antagonistic strongmen on the one hand and imperial democracies on the other—the escalating ecological catastrophe, and the creeping substitution of “normal” political channels for demagogic freelancing all add up to a more precarious world order. It was unnerving to hear Reagan “joke” about nuking the Soviet Union in 1984 (“We begin bombing in 5 minutes”) but it is positively terrifying to consider the damage Trump can do with, as Kamala Harris liked to put it, the “world’s most lethal military.” 

What now? 

At the risk of oversimplification, three roads suggest themselves based on this reading of Reaganism v. Trumpism. 

First, Trumpism could succeed in consolidating itself for a generation in terms of beefed up street (thug) power and control over the existing state. This is a very dangerous scenario and anyone who expects the CIA, the FBI, or the DNC to stand in its way ought to think twice. Deepening control over already Red state apparatuses and despotic inroads into Blue state defenses by means of Federal regulations, court rulings, and laws will radically restrict rights for whole groups of people and throw fuel on fire warming the planet. We might look to India today, or the U.S. before the end of Jim Crow, to see what this looks like. Not a totalizing Third Reich police state, but enough of a police state (with popular support) to change the terms. Just think about what things would be like under a second Vance Administration 2032-2036.

Second, Reagan’s Trickle Down economics initially juiced the economy making him a hero, but he couldn’t outrun the tendency of capitalism towards crisis and unemployment. Huge tax breaks for the rich, deregulation, and tariffs might lead to an economic boom for a time, Trump’s fabled “greatest economy in the history of the world.” But it will inevitably run out of steam, if it ever materializes at all. This expectation will determine the DNC’s strategy. The Democratic leadership will move to the (imaginary) center, “look for common ground,” and wait. They will denounce “extremists” in the Democratic Party and look for a new Bill Clinton. Despite all the damage 4, 8, or 12 more years of Trumpism might do, the Democrats will wait it out. And, in terms of the DNC elite coming back to power, it might work. Heck, it might even work in terms of winning the House or the Senate back in 2026 or even the presidency in 2028. And it’s always possible that Trump will follow Reagan into rapid mental and physical decline during his administration but before Vance is able to consolidate his own position as cult leader, touching off a bruising fist fight inside the Republican Party.

Third, there is the potential to replace Trump from the left. This could come in two shapes that I can think of. Either a left-wing populist is able to tap into a series of Trump missteps and disasters and run a short road to electoral victory. The U.S. electoral system cheats against this possibility and the DNC will be patrolling to head it off. But the bigger problem is that Bernie has no heir apparent with either his stature or political skills. 

Or the left charts a longer-term strategy for creating a genuine working-class movement rooted in workplaces and neighborhoods, oppressed communities and Indigenous Nations, and schools and universities. This strategy will face repression, cooptation, and internal debate and it will require many years if it is to grow powerful enough to accomplish its goals. And, truth be told, it is probably the least likely scenario presented here to succeed. But I can’t see another way out. Can you? 

The post Is Trump Just a Return to Reagan? Yes and No. appeared first on Pine & Roses.

by Gregory Lebens-Higgins

At the end of August 2024, the Democratic Socialists of America released the 2024 Program: Workers Deserve More! This document is the result of a resolution passed by the 2023 DSA National Convention, titled “Defend Democracy through Political Independence.” The resolution called on the National Political Committee to “prepare for the 2024 national election by putting forward a positive program modeled after our 2020 DSA-For-Bernie campaign platform.” 

“Neither major party is capable of advancing a positive program for the 2024 elections that meets the needs of the majority of Americans,” reads the preamble. “That’s why [DSA] is presenting a bold alternative course of action. In our 2024 program, ‘Workers Deserve More,’ we hope to bring together millions of people throughout the U.S. to fight for a true democracy where working people have control over their own lives, their government, and the economy.”

The program presents a series of essentially legislative proposals, including Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, reduced military spending, and elimination of the Electoral College. As a presentation accompanying the program elaborates, Workers Deserve More “represents our vision for a new workers’ party and what socialists could do if we are elected into office at every level of government.”

The realization of these policies would not on their own “achieve socialism.” Indeed, they do not radically exceed the policy proposals of Bernie Sanders’s presidential runs, and the program itself has been criticized from within DSA as “advanc[ing] a reformist vision of socialism.” So, if Workers Deserve More presents only moderate goals for the socialist movement, does it hold any value?

The “Minimum” Program

As Jean Allen recently asserted in Red Star, “With a clear platform, our conversations can start to be about programmatic issues facing the left, rather than interpersonal squabble. With a clear platform, we will no longer have to filter our political differences through interpersonal loyalties. With a clear platform, we could unite the left in a substantive way.”

Various tendencies within the socialist movement have competing visions for “actually existing socialism.” But arguments about the higher stage of socialism—a prospect that appears discouragingly far in the future—are evocative of utopian thinking that provides no clear path toward its realization. To orient the movement to its task and explain its cause to the masses, a program must define clear and achievable goals.

These immediate goals comprise the “minimum” program. While the minimum program does not contend an immediate break with capitalism, it heightens the contradictions of capitalism and represents a step toward its dissolution. The achievement of each minimum demand fundamentally transforms the field for the next stage of the battle. 

While reforms are criticized for their potential to be co-opted by capital, these “non-reformist reforms” present a direct challenge to the dominance of capital. “The struggle will advance,” said proponent of this theory, André Gorz, as “each battle reinforces the positions of strength, the weapons, and also the reasons that workers have for repelling the attacks of the conservative forces.” Revealing new possibilities, each campaign is an opportunity to organize an increasingly conscious working class toward further objectives. 

The labor struggle unquestionably remains the core of the socialist movement. It is workers, as producers of value, who have the ability to cut off the capitalist class from its source of power: profit. It is workers who hold the revolutionary potential to overcome the conditions of their exploitation by seizing the means of production. But as Marx recognized, the “organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves.” 

While workers are equalized toward the same relative position under the domination of capital, they are alienated from one another by the compulsion to market their labor. In the words of business guru Tom Peters, “We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc.” Success under neoliberalism requires the personal branding of curated LinkedIn profiles alongside callous ambition. Simultaneously, capitalist propaganda cultivates conflicting interests, fears, and identities among the working class. Despite this fracturing, the organization of the proletarians “ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier,” predicts Marx.

The working class is variously oppressed along these differing lines of identity. Unfortunately, reactionary elements within the socialist movement would sacrifice marginalized groups in favor of a purely economic struggle. Lenin recognized the importance of organizing across these lines, declaring in What is to Be Done, “Agitation must be conducted with regard to every concrete example of . . . oppression,” which “affects the most diverse classes of society [and] manifests itself in the most varied spheres of life and activity—vocational, civic, personal, family, religious, scientific, etc.”

“Any and every manifestation of police tyranny and autocratic outrage, not only in connection with the economic struggle,” says Lenin, “is not one whit less ‘widely applicable’ as a means of ‘drawing in’ the masses” (emphasis in original). The minimum program identifies which levers can be pulled to relieve pressure from our collective oppression.

The “Maximum” Program

It is no secret that the transition to socialism must go beyond these minimum demands, fundamentally changing the incentives by which the necessities of society are produced and distributed. The aim of the socialist movement is no less than the universal emancipation of humanity without distinction of sex or race, as Marx announces in the preamble to the Programme of the Workers Party (1880).

A maximum program “represents the final goal of the party that will be attained after a period of economic reconstruction and social transformation,” explains Donald Parkinson in his defense of the minimum-maximum program for Cosmonaut. 

“It describes the general aim of human emancipation and that this must be achieved through the proletariat and its party coming to power and collectivizing the means of production. In other words, it proclaims the long-term goal of moving beyond capitalism into a communist society.”

The realization of the maximum program signifies collective ownership of the means of production, production directed toward meeting need rather than accumulating profit, and halting imperial expansion and unrestricted resource extraction. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” per Marx. In short, the achievement of actually existing socialism.

The “Minimum-Maximum” Program

The socialist movement must be able to articulate both its immediate demands, and a call for the final overthrow of capitalism. A “minimum-maximum” program provides a roadmap for the achievement of this vision. Such a program “Allow[s] us to build a majority that is aware of what it is fighting for,” says Pakinson, while “exclud[ing] revolutionary phrasemongering and empty calls to action.” 

While we are working toward the establishment of socialism, we must work within the material conditions of our current moment. Minimum demands present clear tasks for the socialist movement, while providing for flexibility as conditions change. The selection of campaigns through debate centers democratic participation, and facilitates an analysis of which minimum demands will help to achieve maximum goals. Legislative proposals also create clear red lines to hold DSA electeds accountable.

The socialist movement is not currently positioned to win a presidential election, establish a proletarian dictatorship, and immediately “seize the biggest 100 corporations.” A socialist society will not be birthed, wholly formed, following the proletarian revolution, but must be built. ”Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other,” as Marx describes in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875).

While Workers Deserve More is based primarily around minimum demands, its preamble contains a nod to our maximum vision, namely, “To fight for a true democracy where working people have control over their own lives, their government, and the economy.” We must be sure that all our minimum demands function toward achieving these ends. 

In our political moment, “Neither major party is capable of advancing a positive program for the 2024 elections that meets the needs of the majority of Americans.” While Republicans tap into the resentments of the precariat, they are incapable of mitigating the material conditions of exploitation, and instead scapegoat minorities. Democrats gesture to working class credentials, but consistently capitulate to their donor class. Workers Deserve More serves to heighten these contradictions, articulating what the socialist movement can achieve. Let us demonstrate this potential, so we can raise hopes and expectations to as yet unimaginable heights.

The post Workers Deserve More and the Minimum/Maximum Program first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

The question is the same as it was a hundred years ago: Will we collectively choose Socialism or Barbarism?

Democratic socialists know that governments that protect the interests of the ruling class while refusing to guarantee our rights to housing, healthcare, and education are democracies only in name, and that both major parties in fact support a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (that is, the one percent). Even so, DSA engages with the electoral process as candidates, campaigners, canvassers, and voters. The electoral arena is often where we find allies, grow coalitions, and inspire the rest of the working class to build socialism together, brick by brick.

This election, we are faced with a stark reality that the duopoly power shared by the two major US parties is a ratchet effect, dragging the window of political discourse ever rightward, despite the broad popularity of progressive policy. As socialists, we understand the Purpose of a System is What It Does, and in an election in which progressive policies and down-ballot candidates consistently outperformed the top of the ticket, it is clear that the Democratic Party is more concerned with excising social democratic and “Berniecrat” elements from the party and providing unwavering material support for Israeli genocide than winning “the most important election of our lifetimes.” To be clear, the Democratic corporate consultant class will get paid either way, and the stock portfolios of Democratic and Republican politicians alike will continue to go up.

The bourgeois election process may have selected the American version of fascism embodied in Donald Trump, but we recognize two important facts. One, American fascism is neither recent nor novel, with a long, brutal history both domestically and internationally supported by both parties. Two, as proven in places like Indonesia and Chile, democratic socialist policies are broadly popular and effective at countering reactionary politics, at least until the forces of US capital intervene on the side of violent, anti-democratic repression. As Americans worry about the very real threat of violent, anti-democratic repression at home (an ongoing and longstanding reality for many Americans, and a new possibility for certain privileged groups), it is worth reminding ourselves that the tools of imperial control perfected abroad will inevitably come home and be used on us too.

What Is to Be Done?

The question is the same as it was a hundred years ago: Will we collectively choose Socialism or Barbarism? American support of Israel’s brutal genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, mirrored by the brutal militarization at our southern border, shows that the American ruling elite have made their choice: barbarism. Therefore, we must organize together to build a future worth passing on to the next generation. We must be sober, analytical, and adaptable. We must look to the analysis and lessons learned from those that came before us. We must help educate each other.

We are in the midst of a multi-generational class war, as well as a time of many morbid symptoms as the old world dies and the new world struggles to be born. What that new world will look like remains to be seen, but in the words of the late, great David Graeber, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

Statement from the Madison Area DSA Executive Committee on the 2024 Election

Donald Trump’s victory is a setback for the working class and will surely threaten our communities in countless ways. But it would not be possible without the failures of the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris’s focus on upholding a sorry status quo was not enough when voters are dissatisfied and disgusted with climate change, genocide, inflation, and our corrupt political system.

Workers deserve more. Workers deserve housing, Medicare for All, unions. Workers deserve a Green New Deal, taxes on the rich, an end to the US war machine. Workers deserve a party that fights for us, not the rich who exploit and divide us. Workers deserve socialism, and we won’t stop organizing until we get it.

Democrats lost, but DSA can and does win in down-ballot races throughout the country. Progressive and pro-worker ballot measures passed in several “red” states. Here in Madison, voters overwhelmingly passed budget referendums to fund our schools and city services. With those funds, we demand free school meals, affordable housing, sanctuary for immigrants, safety for trans people, and better pay for workers.

Only socialism and building mass movements and political organizations can defeat barbarism. Don’t despair – join DSA and organize for a better world with us! Come join us this week at one of the following events!

• Saturday 11/9 at The People’s Organizing Fair
• Sunday 11/10 at the Shout Your Abortion rally
• Tuesday 11/12 at our next Madison DSA monthly meeting
• Saturday 11/16 at our next New Member Orientation

Register for all of the above at https://madison-dsa.org/events/.

In the wake of the 2024 general election, many of us are feeling despair, grief, and anger over the results, especially at the national level. We had terrible options—between a wannabe fascist dictator and a neoliberal genocidaire in the Oval Office, neither outcome would be desirable for the working class in the United States. Unfortunately, the worst of all choices came to fruition. With the Senate, House, and SCOTUS also being captured by far-right forces, it is understandable to feel fear and hopelessness. But we will NOT let those feelings get the best of us. That’s how the oligarchy wins. Fear paralyzes, and apathy kills. The reality is, we’ve got work to do.

Change to the status quo doesn’t happen […]

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