Is democratic socialism coming back, and can it pull us all together? Here in the U.S., all is divided between the Democrats and the Republicans (GOP for Grand Ol’ Party), the unions and the money people. So the winners are the people who can settle their differences the quickest. On the Democratic side, who depend upon unions for boots on the ground and money at this time probably will not happen for unions are not happy with the trade agreement and the lack of support from Democrats.
The unions used to blame the Blue Dog Democrats, but now it seems that there are a lot more of the Blue Dogs-types of anti-union politicians in office. If the Democrats are going to depend on union help, they must give the unions the tools to work with because the GOP has just about emptied the union tool box with passage of Right to Work laws and attack on the right to form unions and collect dues.
The GOP has kept the unions on defense, which has slowed the unions’ offence, such as with organizing new members. This stress on unions has now taken a toll on union solidarity with the uncertainty in planning or who to support or not support. The unions need a national meeting to put their houses in order before all is lost. This is owed to the workers.
There also needs to be a new strategy for the proletariats here and in the rest of the world now that the corporations are in many countries and have gotten major trade deals through like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. With the new trade agreement, unions could be held liable for any loss that can be attributed to a union. Unions might have to reorganize to become unions without holdings to prevent losing what they have in a lawsuit.
Labor needs to keep fighting for the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage and against austerity worldwide. If austerity continues, the capitalist system will die because there will be no money spent by the masses, which will ultimately starve the capitalist system. This is why more people are turning to the socialist system, which levels the playing field for everyone. Under the capitalist system, only a handful of people prosper, so why would a person with any semblance of intelligence support the capitalist system and austerity?
Democratic socialism is not Marx’s idea of socialism of the public owning or controlling all of production, but a liberal platform that looks and smells a lot like President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders explains, democratic socialism would see the U.S. with more financial regulations on Wall Street and cable companies (for example), a higher minimum wage, free public education, universal healthcare, reigning in the military complex, and eliminating income inequality.
In 2012 more than a quarter of all political contributions came from just 30,000 people who represented the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 90 percent who spent the most won. Today, we are an experiment in either a democracy, which started in 1787 or an oligarchy, which is winning. The nonunion people, like Trump and Musk, have most all the tools in their pockets to destroy our unions. They have money, they have the courts, they have law enforcement, they have the media, and 50 percent of workers that don’t know this don’t know the history of the working class people. This is the perfect storm to lose all the gains workers have made whether they’re union or not, even our Social Security and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. So, now we will have to go way back to the late 1920s and ‘30s and dig up the old labor party books. One book, written in 1964, has the information, The Rebel Voices, an IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh, educator, activist, and advocate. The history of our labor...
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