By Christopher F. Rufo
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Democratic socialists are in the middle of a hostile
takeover of the Democratic Party. Led by the Bernie Sanders presidential
campaign and the “squad” of newly elected congresswomen, the hard-left
coalition has laid out an ambitious agenda to transform the United States into
a democratic socialist nation. While many commentators have dismissed the
rhetoric around the Green New Deal, Housing for All, and End Cash Bail as
pie-in-the-sky abstraction, in Seattle, the socialist coalition is quickly
translating this agenda into a political reality.
After the socialist Left’s stunning victory over
business-backed moderates in last year’s municipal elections, Seattle has
effectively become the nation’s laboratory for socialist policies. Since the
beginning of the year, the socialist faction on the Seattle City Council has
proposed a range of policies on taxes, housing, homelessness, and criminal
justice that put into practice the national democratic-socialist agenda. In the
most recent session, socialist councilwoman Kshama Sawant and her allies have proposed
massive new taxes on corporations, unprecedented regulations on landlords
(including rent control and a ban on “winter evictions”), the mandated
construction of homeless encampments, and the gradual dismantling of the
criminal justice system, beginning with the end of cash bail.
Seattle’s socialists have established a narrative that
provides the rhetorical basis for their policies. They argue that the
corporate-technological elite, led by companies such as Amazon, has hoarded the
rewards of the digital economy and created widespread misery for workers,
renters, and people of color. As Seattle-based commentator and Marxist
theoretician Charles Mudede has written: “We are in the 21st century. We are in
one of the richest cities on earth. And yet, the old war between those who
employ labor and those who sell their labor is still very much with us.”
In the socialist vision, the “new class war” is now
entering a more direct phase of conflict. They have launched a political
campaign to dramatically curtail the power of corporations, landlords, and
traditional neighborhood interests, and to build a coalition of socialists,
progressives, unions, and the dispossessed that is capable of achieving power.
In short, the solution to the class war is to win the class war.
While conservatives and moderates have typically
dismissed the socialist movement as a “big-city problem,” the new socialist
agenda is no longer confined to the municipal boundaries of places such as
Seattle, San Francisco, and New York. Increasingly, the hard-left coalition has
turned these cities into “laboratories for socialism,” with the goal of
eventually commercializing their policies through the national Democratic
Party. Already, Bernie Sanders, the current front-runner in the Democratic primary,
has proposed a nationalized version of the Seattle agenda: Tax Amazon, enact
national rent control, construct public housing, and end cash bail.
But Seattle’s socialists have gone one step further. In
order to consolidate their newfound power, the progressive-socialists have
begun to manipulate the democratic process in their own favor: first, by
providing all Seattle voters with $100 in taxpayer-funded “democracy vouchers,”
which are easily collected by unions, activists, and socialist groups; and second,
by implementing a ban on corporate spending in local elections by companies
like Amazon. At the same time, black-bloc activists and Antifa militants
intimidate any potential opposition by disrupting events, vandalizing homes,
and even orchestrating death
threats against political adversaries.
What can opponents of socialism do? First, recognize that
it must be fought on all fronts. While the socialists form a small minority of
the national electorate, they have demonstrated the capability of seizing power
in America’s major cities, which are home to much of the digital “means of
production” in tech, media, advertising, entertainment, and research. The
business sector in cities such as Seattle must recognize that the
progressive-socialists are no longer interested in gaining reasonable
concessions; they intend to overthrow capitalism itself.
Over the past decade, the dominant corporate strategy has
been to quietly advocate for neoliberal economic policies, while pandering to
the cultural mandates of “diversity and inclusion.” That era is now over. As
the experience in Seattle reveals, the socialist Left cannot be appeased on cultural
issues — they are fighting a war against capital and they intend to win it.
If the business sector wants to protect its own
interests, it must rapidly adapt to this new reality. It’s no longer enough for
local Chambers of Commerce to drop leaflets before local elections; they must
build a permanent counterbalance to the progressive-socialists. They must begin
by commissioning original policy research, funding local neighborhood groups,
and building a political alliance of conservatives, moderates, and old-line
liberals. In other words, they must reestablish a balance of power in America’s
cities.
If nothing is done, the laboratories of socialism in
America’s cities will become a national problem. It’s time to shut them down.
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