5LL #6 - Economic Change, Leftist Foreign Policy, Stomp Out Slumlords, Socialist Feminism, Opposing Authoritarianism

Socialists Need to Fight for Economic Change — Not Just Another Version of Capitalism
Richard Wolff, Huffington Post
This interpretation of socialism ― the social democracy of the Nordics ― has come to dominate the public debate about socialism. But this misses the bigger picture. It is a limited interpretation of socialism, better characterized as state capitalism, that fails to redraw the oppressive employer/employee relationship. All the modifications made to capitalism by social democracies were difficult to achieve and remain inherently insecure. First in the U.K. and later to varying degrees across much of Western Europe, strongly social democracies established during the 1930s and 1940s have been weakened and rolled back. Such changes to capitalism fall far short of the more fundamental change required for genuine socialism.
A Bold Foreign Policy Platform for the New Wave of Left Lawmakers
Phyllis Bennis, In These Times
Despite too many common assumptions, it is not political suicide for candidates or elected officials to stake out progressive anti-war, anti-militarism positions. Quite the contrary: Those positions actually have broad support within both our movements and public opinion. It’s just that it’s hard to figure out the strategies that work to connect internationally focused issues, anti-war efforts, or challenges to militarism, with the wide array of activists working on locally grounded issues. Some of those strategies seem like they should be easy—like talking about slashing the 53 cents of every discretionary federal dollar that now goes to the military as the easiest source to fund Medicare-for-all or free college education. It should be easy, but somehow it’s not: Too often, foreign policy feels remote from the urgency of domestic issues facing such crises. When our movements do figure out those strategies, candidates can easily follow suit.
These Democratic Socialists Aren't Just Targeting Incumbent Politicians
Jimmy Tobias, The Nation
From San Francisco to Austin, Chicago to New York, democratic-socialist organizers have led or joined an array of promising campaigns meant to protect tenants, resist gentrification, combat homelessness, and establish new rent regulations, among other goals. DSA members in these various cities say they are focused on housing justice because the ongoing affordability and homelessness crises have infused the issue with incredible urgency. These crises are displacing their neighbors, tearing at the bonds of their communities, and making urban life ever more unequal.
What is Socialist Feminism?
Barbara Ehrenreich, Jacobin
To begin with, Marxism and feminism have an important thing in common: they are critical ways of looking at the world. Both rip away popular mythology and “common sense” wisdom and force us to look at experience in a new way. Both seek to understand the world — not in terms of static balances, symmetries, etc. (as in conventional social science) — but in terms of antagonisms. They lead to conclusions which are jarring and disturbing at the same time that they are liberating. There is no way to have a Marxist or feminist outlook and remain a spectator. To understand the reality laid bare by these analyses is to move into action to change it.
How to be a Socialist Without Being an Apologist for the Atrocities of Communist Regimes
Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs
It’s incredibly easy to be both in favor of socialism and against the crimes committed by 20th century communist regimes. All it takes is a consistent, principled opposition to authoritarianism. I don’t like it when bosses mistreat and abuse their workers. And I don’t like it when governments mistreat and abuse their people. A system in which people must work for low wages, struggling to afford housing, healthcare, and education, is abhorrent and should be gotten rid of. A system in which people must either work or be sent to forced reeducation camps is even more abhorrent. We can dream of a world that has neither gulags nor indentured servitude, and I am such a romantic idealist that I believe such a world might even be possible…
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