socialism

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• 2/21/2021
  

  From Red Finn Halls to The Lincoln Brigade: Class Formation on Washington’s “Red Coast”

  by Jerry Lembcke

  If the current crisis revives interest in class as an analytical concept, a recent book on union organizing on the Washington state coast offers a model for reconstructing the work, community and social life of a community. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  1/28/2021
  

  From Revolution to Reformism

  by Adam Przeworski

  A new book of political theory excerpted here locates the decline of the Left in its adoption of reformist rhetoric that accommodated capitalism's preferences for fiscal stability and austerity.

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• SOURCE: N+1
  12/12/2020
  

  We Live in a Society

  by Gabriel Winant

  Despite lamentations that social media have replaced face-to-face social life, those media platforms are increasingly important as sites of human contact and interaction. Anyone seeking political change must recognize this power and organize social networks to supplant it. 

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• SOURCE: MSNBC
  10/23/2020
  

  Republicans Have a History of Weaponizing 'Socialism.' But Do They Understand what it Is?

  by Kevin M. Kruse

  “Socialism,” Harry Truman argued in 1952, “is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”

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• 9/20/2020
  

  “We Are Ourselves”: Review of For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton

  by Eric Laursen

  Maurice Brinton--the pseudonym of a British neurologist--authored an influential series of works of radical political thought that urged the British left to move away from rigid party structures and doctrinal disputes toward social movements. 

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• 9/6/2020
  

  On Labor Day, Think of Bread and Roses

  by William Lambers

  On Labor Day, remember the demands of striking textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Working people deserve more than bare subsistence; they're entitled to dignity and pleasure too.

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  9/4/2020
  

  I Danced in the Streets after Allende’s Victory in Chile 50 Years Ago. Now I See its Lessons for Today

  by Ariel Dorfman

  The Chilean author Ariel Dorfman warns that while his country elected a democratic socialist in a landmark election, it was unprepared to deal with violent and ruthless efforts to maintain the status quo. Joe Biden is no socialist, but if he wins, his administration and Americans at large must be similarly prepared. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  8/17/2020
  

  Socialism Is as American as Apple Pie

  by Bruce Bartlett

  The ideology that Republicans love to hate is woven through the fabric of the country.

• 
• 5/31/2020
  

  The Decline and Fall of Socialist Zionism (Review)

  by Ralph Seliger

  A new book examines the diminished influence of left and labor parties in Israeli politics. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  5/23/2020
  

  You Should Know More About A. Philip Randolph, One of America’s Greatest Socialists

  As the Left attempts to chart a new course in the wake of the Bernie Sanders campaign, there’s no better time to learn from America’s most underrated socialist, labor leader, and civil rights legend, A. Philip Randolph.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/13/2020
  

  These Young Socialists Think They Have Courage. They Don’t.

  by Mitchell Abidor

  If Mr. Trump is re-elected, many DSA members could spend the next four years suffering little more than the pangs of political outrage. But millions of less fortunate people would suffer real consequences.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/13/2020
  

  Democrats’ Covid-19 Relief Plan Shows Charges of Socialism have Lost their Bite

  by Merlin Chowkwanyun

  McCarthyism's residual effects are on display any time an ambitious domestic policy proposal is denounced as “socialist.”

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  4/27/2020
  

  Responses to an ‘Open Letter to the New New Left’

  The Nation publishes two critical responses to the recent "Open Letter to the New New Left," which criticized a perceived unwillingness by young leftists to unite around Joe Biden's candidacy to defeat Donald Trump. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/10/2020
  

  We’ve Been Looking in the Wrong Places to Understand Sanders’s Socialism

  by Richard White

  Detractors like to equate Senator Bernie Sanders’s socialism with Soviet and Chinese Communism, but they’re swinging at the wrong century, the wrong country and the wrong socialism.

• 
• SOURCE: USA Today
  3/5/2020
  

  Obama and I took a class about socialism's dark side. Bernie would have learned a lot.

  by Jonathan Zimmerman

  Imagine if Sanders praised Hitler for reducing cigarette smoking or Mussolini for making the trains run on time. The American left would be up in arms.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Examiner
  3/03/2020
  

  So What if They Made the Trains Run on Time?

  by Rafael Medoff

  Sen. Bernie Sanders’s praise for some policies of the Cuban and Soviet regimes speaks to a broader question that has long attracted public interest: Should our view of authoritarian governments be affected by the fact that their trains run on time?

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• SOURCE: New York Daily News
  2/29/2020
  

  Democratic Socialism All Around: What Bernie Sanders’s New York Can Teach Us about America’s Future

  by Joshua Freeman

  Mid-20th-century New York had serious flaws, including poverty, economic inequality (though not as bad as today), and racial and gender discrimination. But it stands as an example of what can be done when the power of government is combined with a capacious vision of human rights, equality, and democracy. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/2/2020
  

  How Socialist is Bernie Sanders?

  The self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders’s rise in a time of political upheaval, the historian Michael Kazin argues, is less shocking than people think.

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• 2/23/20
  

  Bernie Sanders, Social Democracy, and Democratic Socialism

  by Gary Dorrien

  Sanders conceives democratic socialism as the fitting name for his belief that a living wage, universal healthcare, a complete education, affordable housing, a clean environment, and a secure retirement are economic rights. These six economic rights come from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 Economic Bill of Rights.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/13/20
  

  Socialists were winning U.S. elections long before Bernie Sanders and AOC

  The “Pledge of Allegiance” was written by a Christian socialist in 1892. Eugene V. Debs ran for president on a socialist ticket five times; in 1912, he got nearly a million votes.