I Went to a Socialism Conference.
Here Are My 6 Observations. Jarrett Stepman, 7/15/19, Heritage.
Dear Readers: With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent. However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers. If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives. This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone. We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
Dear Readers: With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent. However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers. If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives. This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone. We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
While you were enjoying
your Fourth of July weekend, I was attending a national conference on
socialism. Why? Because socialism is having its moment on the left.
Since there’s often
confusion as to what socialism really is, I decided to attend the Socialism 2019 conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Chicago
over the Fourth of July weekend.
The conference, which
had the tag line “No Borders, No Bosses, No Binaries,” contained a
cross-section of the most pertinent hard-left thought in America. Among the
sponsors were the Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin, a quarterly
socialist magazine.
The liberal Left continue to
push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a
solution. The walls of
the various conference rooms were adorned with posters of Karl Marx and various
depictions of socialist thinkers and causes. Most of the conference
attendees appeared to be white, but identity politics were a major theme
throughout—especially in regard to gender.
At the registration
desk, attendees were given the option of attaching a “preferred pronoun”
sticker on their name tags.
In addition, the
multiple-occupancy men’s and women’s restrooms were relabeled as “gender
neutral,” and men and women were using both. Interestingly enough, the signs
above the doors were still labeled with the traditional “men’s” and “women’s”
signs until they were covered over with home-made labels. One of the paper
labels read: “This bathroom has been liberated from the gender binary!”
While the panelists and
attendees were certainly radical, and often expressed contempt for the
Democratic Party establishment, it was nevertheless clear how seamlessly they
blended traditional Marxist thought with the agenda of what’s becoming the
mainstream left.
They did so by weaving
their views with the identity politics that now dominate on college campuses
and in the media and popular entertainment. The culture war is being used as a
launching point for genuinely socialist ideas, many of which are re-emerging in
the 21st century. Here are six takeaways from the conference:
1. Serious About Socialism - A common line from those on the modern left is that they
embrace “democratic socialism,” rather than the brutal, totalitarian socialism
of the former Soviet Union or modern North Korea and Venezuela. Sweden is
usually cited as their guide for what it means in practice, though the reality is
that these best-case situations show the limits of socialism, not its success.
It’s odd, too, for those
who insist that “diversity is our strength” to point to the culturally homogeneous Nordic
countries as ideal models anyway.
It’s clear, however,
that while many socialists insist that their ideas don’t align with or condone
authoritarian societies, their actual ideology—certainly that of those speaking
at the conference—is in no sense distinct. Of the panels I attended, all
featured speakers who made paeans to traditional communist theories quoted
Marx, and bought into the ideology that formed the basis of those regimes.
Mainstream politicians
may dance around the meaning of the word “socialist,” but the intellectuals and
activists who attended Socialism 2019 could have few doubts about the fact that
Marxism formed the core of their beliefs.
Some sought to dodge the
issue. One was David Duhalde, the former political director of Our Revolution,
an activist group that supports Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and that was an
offshoot of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
Duhalde said that
Sanders is a creation of the socialist movement—having had direct ties to the
Socialist Party of America in his youth—but hasn’t maintained an official
connection to socialist political organizations throughout his political
career.
Sanders’ position,
according to Duhalde, is “anti-totalitarian” and that he favors a model based
on “neither Moscow, nor the United States, at least in this formation.”
It’s a convenient way of
condemning capitalist-oriented societies while avoiding connections to obviously
tyrannical ones.
It was also difficult to
mistake the sea of red shirts and posters of Marx that adorned the walls at the
conference—or the occasional use of the word “comrades”—as anything other than
an embrace of genuine socialism, but with a uniquely modern twist.
2. Gender and Identity Politics Are Ascendant - Transgenderism, gender nonconformity,
and abolishing traditional family structures were huge issues at Socialism
2019.
One panel, “Social
Reproduction Theory and Gender Liberation,” addressed how the traditional
family structure reinforced capitalism and contended that the answer was to
simply abolish families.
Corrie Westing, a
self-described “queer socialist feminist activist based in Chicago working as a
home-birth midwife,” argued that traditional family structures propped up
oppression and that the modern transgender movement plays a critical part in
achieving true “reproductive justice.”
Society is in a moment
of “tremendous political crisis,” one that “really demands a Marxism that’s up
to the par of explaining why our socialist project is leading to ending
oppression,” she said, “and we need a Marxism that can win generations of folks
that can be radicalized by this moment.”
That has broad
implications for feminism, according to Westing, who said that it’s important
to fight for transgender rights as essential to the whole feminist
project—seemingly in a direct shot at transgender-exclusionary radical
feminists, who at a Heritage Foundation event in January argued that sex is biological, not a
societal construct, and that transgenderism is at odds with a genuine feminism.
She contended that
economics is the basis of what she called “heteronormativity.”
Pregnancy becomes a tool
of oppression, she said, as women who get pregnant and then engage in child
rearing are taken out of the workforce at prime productive ages and then are
taken care of by an economic provider.
Thus, the gender binary
is reinforced, Westing said.
She insisted that the
answer to such problems is to “abolish the family.” The way to get to that
point, she said, is by “getting rid of capitalism” and reorganizing society
around what she called “queer social reproduction.” “When we’re talking about
revolution, we’re really connecting the issues of gender justice as integral to
economic and social justice,” Westing said. She then quoted a writer, Sophie
Lewis, who in a new book, “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family,”
embraced “open-sourced, fully collaborative gestation.”
3. Open Borders Is Becoming a Litmus Test - It’s perhaps not surprising that
socialists embrace open borders. After all, that’s becoming a much more mainstream position on the left in
general.
The AFL-CIO used to
support immigration restrictions until it flipped in 2000 and
called for illegal immigrants to be granted citizenship. As recently as 2015,
Sanders rejected the
idea of open borders as a ploy to impoverish Americans.
But Justin Akers-Chacon,
a socialist activist, argued on a panel, “A Socialist Case for Open Borders,”
that open borders are not only a socialist idea, but vital to the
movement.
Akers-Chacon said that
while capital has moved freely between the United States and Central and South
America, labor has been contained and restricted. He said that while
working-class people have difficulty moving across borders, high-skilled labor
and “the 1%” are able to move freely to other countries. South of the border,
especially in Mexico and Honduras, Akers-Chacon said, there’s a stronger
“class-consciousness, as part of cultural and historical memory exists in the
working class.” “My experiences in Mexico and my experiences working with
immigrant workers, and my experiences with people from different parts of this
region, socialist politics are much more deeply rooted,” he said.
That has implications
for the labor movement.
Despite past attempts to
exclude immigrants, Akers-Chacon said, it’s important for organized labor to
embrace them. He didn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.
For instance, he said
one of the biggest benefits of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
was that there was a brief boost in union membership amid a more general
decline in unionism. Besides simply boosting unions, the influx “changed the
whole AFL-CIO position on immigrants, [which was] still backwards, restrictive,
anti-immigrant,” Akers-Chacon said. “So, there’s a correlation between
expanding rights for immigrants and the growth, and confidence, and militancy
of the labor movement as a whole,” he said.
4. ‘Clickbait’ Communism Is Being Used to Propagandize Young Americans - The magazine Teen Vogue has come under
fire recently for flattering
profiles of Karl Marx and promoting prostitution as a career choice, among other controversial pieces. It would be easy to write these
articles off as mere “clickbait,” but it’s clear that the far-left nature of
its editorials—and its attempt to reach young people with these views—is
genuine. Teen Vogue hosted a panel
at Socialism 2019, “System Change, Not Climate Change: Youth Climate Activists
in Conversation with Teen Vogue.”
The panel moderator was Lucy Diavolo,
news and politics editor at the publication, who is transgender.“I know there’s
maybe a contradiction in inviting Teen Vogue to a socialism conference …
especially because the youth spinoff brand is a magazine so associated with
capitalist excess,” Diavolo said. “If you’re not familiar with our work, I
encourage you to read Teen Vogue’s coverage of social justice issues,
capitalism, revolutionary theory, and Karl Marx, or you can check out the
right-wing op-eds that accuse me of ‘clickbait communism’ and teaching your daughters
Marxism and revolution.” The panel attendees responded enthusiastically.“Suffice
to say, the barbarians are beyond the gates. We are in the tower,” Diavolo
boasted.
5.
The Green Movement Is Red - It’s perhaps no surprise that an openly socialist member of
Congress is pushing for the Green New Deal—which would essentially turn the U.S. into a command-and-control economy
reminiscent of the Soviet Union. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief
of staff Saikat Chakrabarti recently said, according
to The Washington Post: “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it
wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”
“Do you guys think of it as a climate
thing?” Chakrabarti asked Sam Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov.
Jay Inslee, who is running for president in the Democratic primary. “Because we
really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” Economic
transformation barely disguised as a way to address environmental concerns
appears to be the main point.
One of the speakers on the Teen Vogue
climate panel, Sally Taylor, is a member of the Sunrise Movement,
a youth-oriented environmental activist group that made headlines in February
when several elementary school-age members of the groupconfronted Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., about her lack of support for the Green New Deal.
The other speaker on the Teen Vogue
climate panel was Haven Coleman, a 13-year-old environmental activist who has
received favorable coverage for
leading the U.S. Youth Climate Strike in March. She was open about the system change
she was aiming for to address climate change.
She noted during her remarks that she
was receiving cues from her mother, who she said was in attendance. Haven said
the answer to the climate change problem was moving on from our “capitalistic
society” to something “other than capitalism.” Interestingly, none of the glowing media profiles of
Haven or the Climate Strike mentioned a link to socialism or abolishing
capitalism.
6.
Socialism Can’t Be Ignored as a Rising Ethos on the Left. According to a recent Gallup survey,
4 in 10 Americans have a positive view of socialism. Support among Democrats is
even higher than among the general population, with a majority of Democrats
saying they prefer socialism to capitalism. But many who say they want
socialism rather than capitalism struggle to define what those terms mean and
change their views once asked about specific policies.
As another Gallup poll from 2018 indicated, many associate socialism with vague notions of
“equality,” rather than as government control over the means of production in
the economy. What’s clear from my observations at Socialism 2019 is that
traditional Marxists have successfully melded their ideology with the identity
politics and culture war issues that animate modern liberalism—despite still
being quite far from the beliefs of the average citizen.
Socialists at the conference focused
more on social change, rather than electoral politics, but there were still
many core public policy issues that animated them; notably, “Medicare for All”
and government run-health care, some kind of Green New Deal to stop global
warming (and more importantly, abolish capitalism), open borders to increase
class consciousness and promote transnational solidarity, removing all
restrictions on—and publicly funding—abortion, and breaking down social and
legal distinctions between the sexes.
They were particularly able to weave
their issues together through the thread of “oppressor versus oppressed” class
conflict—for instance, supporting government-run health care meant also
unquestioningly supporting unfettered abortion and transgender rights. Though
their analyses typically leaned more heavily on economic class struggle and
determinism than what one would expect from more mainstream progressives, there
wasn’t a wide gap between what was being discussed at Socialism 2019 and the
ideas emerging from a growing segment of the American left.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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