Maybe when Newsweek declared “We’re All Socialists Now”, they were referring to Congress! Posting on Ricochet, Claire Berlinski lays out “highlights” of the Socialist platform (in their own words) and reveals the shockingly-long list of 70 members of the U.S. Congress who are also members of the Democratic Socialists of America (complete list at end of this post). Though considering how they vote, the names should come as no surprise. Can you guess which local CongressWOMAN is high on the list? Notice the similarities bewteen the DSA list and the 81-member Congressional Progressive Caucus
Socialists = Progressives = About 30% of House Democrats = ObamaCare, Cap & Trade, Amnesty, FinReg, GM Takeover, Unlimited Spending, Public/Union Jobs, Wealth Redistribution . . .
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RED AMERICA. Do your friends look at you as if you’re an anachronistic, red-baiting fruitcake when you use the word socialist to describe recent trends in American governance? Well, let me assure you, you’re not nuts. They are.
Thanks to Ricochet member Okan Altiparmak and Gateway Pundit, here’s a list of 70 members of Congress who are fully paid-up members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Shall we have a little look at the highlights of the platform of the DSA, folks? Just so we can all be clear what we’re talking about? The emphases are mine.
Vision of a Socialist Economy
Regulated markets can guarantee efficiency, consumer choice and labor mobility. However, democratic socialists recognize that market mechanisms do generate inequalities of wealth and income. But, the social ownership characteristic of a socialist society will greatly limit inequality. In fact, widespread worker and public ownership will greatly lessen the corrosive effect of capitalists markets on people’s lives. Social need will outrank narrow profitability as the measure of success for our economic life.
Section 4: A Strategy for the Next Left
Socialists have historically supported public ownership and control of the major economic institutions of society — the large corporations — in order to eliminate the injustice and inequality of a class-based society, and have depended on the the organization of a working class party to gain state power to achieve such ends. In the United States, socialists joined with others on the Left to build a broad-based, anti-corporate coalition, with the unions at the center, to address the needs of the majority by opposing the excesses of private enterprise. Many socialists have seen the Democratic Party, since at least the New Deal, as the key political arena in which to consolidate this coalition, because the Democratic Party held the allegiance of our natural allies. Through control of the government by the Democratic Party coalition, led by anti-corporate forces, a progressive program regulating the corporations, redistributing income, fostering economic growth and expanding social programs could be realized.
With the end of the post-World War II economic boom and the rise of global economic competitors in East Asia and Europe in the 1970s came the demise of the brief majoritarian moment of this progressive coalition that promised–but did not deliver–economic and social justice for all. A vicious corporate assault on the trade union movement and a right-wing racist, populist appeal to downwardly mobile, disgruntled white blue-collar workers contributed to the disintegration of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in the 1970s and 1980s.
Today, the mildly redistributive welfare state liberalism of the 1960s, which accepted the corporate dominance of economic decision-making, can no longer be the programmatic basis for a majoritarian progressive politics. New Deal and Great Society liberalism depended upon redistribution at the margins of an ever-expanding economic pie. But today corporations no longer aspire to expand production and consumption by raising global living standards; rather, global capital engages in a race to increase profits by “downsizing” and lowering wages.
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If socialism cannot be achieved primarily from above, through a democratic government that owns, control and regulates the major corporations, then it must emerge from below, through a democratic transformation of the institutions of civil society, particularly those in the economic sphere — in other words, a program for economic democracy.
As inequalities of wealth and income increase and the wages and living standards of most are either stagnant or falling, social needs expand. Only a revitalized public sector can universally and democratically meet those needs.
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Economic Democracy . Economic democracy can empower wage and income earners through building cooperative and public institutions that own and control local economic resources. Economic democracy means, in the most general terms, the direct ownership and/or control of much of the economic resources of society by the great majority of wage and income earners. Such a transformation of worklife directly embodies and presages the practices and principles of a socialist society.
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Social Redistribution. Social redistribution–the shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of society–will require:
- massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs,income maintenance and infrastructure rehabilitation, and
- a massive shift of public resources from the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian uses.
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Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end.
Are you paying attention, folks? Is that clear enough for you? I would usually use a well-known emphatic gerund before the word “clear,” but Ricochet’s code of conduct forbids it, so just use your imagination.
You may wish to read the whole thing. While you’re at it, savor the spring issue of The Red Letter. I kid you not about the name. Don’t forget to check out their perspective on foreign policy.
The DSA’s platform is not a call to expand the social-safety net so better to protect the most vulnerable and infirm members of society; it is not a call to improve access to health care; it is a call for socialism–the echt item, the discredited ideology that immiserated and enslaved and murdered hundreds of millions of human souls in the past century. The numbers of DSA members in our Congress are not trivial. Every single one of them must go in the next election.
AND NOW . . . HERE’S THE LIST, courtesy of Gateway Pundit - see any familiar names??
Co-Chairs
Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)
Vice Chairs
Hon. Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)
Hon. Diane Watson (CA-33)
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)
Hon. Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
Hon. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10)
Senate Members
Hon. Bernie Sanders (VT)
House Members
Hon. Neil Abercrombie (HI-01)
Hon. Tammy Baldwin (WI-02)
Hon. Xavier Becerra (CA-31)
Hon. Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL)
Hon. Robert Brady (PA-01)
Hon. Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Hon. Michael Capuano (MA-08)
Hon. André Carson (IN-07)
Hon. Donna Christensen (VI-AL)
Hon. Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Hon. William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01)
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)
Hon. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
Hon. John Conyers (MI-14)
Hon. Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Hon. Danny Davis (IL-07)
Hon. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
Hon. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04)
Hon. Keith Ellison (MN-05)
Hon. Sam Farr (CA-17)
Hon. Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
Hon. Bob Filner (CA-51)
Hon. Barney Frank (MA-04)
Hon. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11)
Hon. Alan Grayson (FL-08)
Hon. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)
Hon. John Hall (NY-19)
Hon. Phil Hare (IL-17)
Hon. Maurice Hinchey (NY-22)
Hon. Michael Honda (CA-15)
Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30)
Hon. Hank Johnson (GA-04)
Hon. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Hon. Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13)
Hon. Barbara Lee (CA-09)
Hon. John Lewis (GA-05)
Hon. David Loebsack (IA-02)
Hon. Ben R. Lujan (NM-3)
Hon. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Hon. Ed Markey (MA-07)
Hon. Jim McDermott (WA-07)
Hon. James McGovern (MA-03)
Hon. George Miller (CA-07)
Hon. Gwen Moore (WI-04)
Hon. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL)
Hon. John Olver (MA-01)
Hon. Ed Pastor (AZ-04)
Hon. Donald Payne (NJ-10)
Hon. Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Hon. Charles Rangel (NY-15)
Hon. Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Hon. Bobby Rush (IL-01)
Hon. Linda Sánchez (CA-47)
Hon. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)
Hon. José Serrano (NY-16)
Hon. Louise Slaughter (NY-28)
Hon. Pete Stark (CA-13)
Hon. Bennie Thompson (MS-02)
Hon. John Tierney (MA-06)
Hon. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)
Hon. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
Hon. Mel Watt (NC-12)
Hon. Henry Waxman (CA-30)
Hon. Peter Welch (VT-AL)
Hon. Robert Wexler (FL-19)
