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On Oct. 4, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. In that moment, Morey placed in jeopardy the NBAs success in cultivating an estimated 500 million Chinese basketball fans and may have derailed efforts by Tencent, its Chinese partner, to regain its luster. Tencent paid $1.5 billion for the rights to carry NBA gamesgames that it may no longer be able to broadcast.

Welcome to the world of Chinese market power. Beijings response to the NBA may appear particularly crude, but it fits a broader pattern. China routinely conditions market access, most notably by requiring foreign firms to partner in joint ventures with Chinese businesses. U.S. firms complain about how this requirement facilitates the theft of their intellectual property, but many simply cannot resist the allure of Chinas large and growing domestic market.

Even with slowing growth, Chinas market will remain a powerful force in international affairs. The Chinese internal retail market has already overtaken, or will soon overtake, that of the United States. But even the fact of such comparisons underscores the degree to which the U.S. marketclocking in at roughly $5.5 trillion this yearremains large and lucrative. The United States, however, is becoming less effective at using its market power to pursue crucial policy goals. Washington has, particularly under Republican leadership, degraded the regulatory infrastructure necessary to make the most of that market power. The result is that, in too many areas, Washington is starting to punch below its weight.

For progressives, in particular, reinvigorating U.S. market power holds the promise of transforming foreign economic policy. Since the end of the Cold War, globalization has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But in the United States, stagnant wages, growing inequality, and new economic competitors in Asia have led a number of prominent politicians on both the right and the left to sour on the whole project. Whether President Donald Trump, Sen. Bernie Sanders (to whose 2016 campaign one of the authors of this piece, Daniel Nexon, previously provided policy advice), or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, they often reach for a similar diagnosis: the failures of free trade. This leads some commentators to see little difference between the two sides, to argue that we are seeing a new left-right axis emerge around protectionism and isolationism.

It is true that Trump and the new conservative nationalists offer a crudely mercantilist economic policy based on old-fashioned tariffs. For them, the wealth of nations is a matter of trade deficits and surpluses: The greater the deficit, the weaker the country. In this vision, tariffs facilitate import substitution and force trading partners into better deals in which they agree to buy more U.S. goods. Trade wars, as Trump famously claimed, are good and easy to win. Most economists dispute the ultimate value of such an approach; Trumps policies have already generated a wide range of negative spillovers, from trying to compensate farmers with massive bailouts to undermining relations with long-standing U.S. allies such as South Korea and Japan.

Trump has polarized discussions of international trade. Pundits do their part by framing the debate in terms of more or less trade. This presents Americans with only two choices: an open economy or protectionism. And if those are the only options, then its easy to treat Trumps trade agenda as essentially the same as that of, say, left-wing Sens. Sanders and Warren. As the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy professor Daniel Drezner argues, Warrens trade policy would actually be more protectionist in its effects than Trumps.

Such framings are misleading. Across the ideological spectrum, the question is not whether the United States should engage in the international trading system but how it should pursue overseas economic relations. Even the Trump administration, for all the presidents own strange ideas about trade deficits, has pursued negotiations with the aim not of ending, but rather restructuring, the terms of bilateral and multilateral trade. Blending arguments from Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton up through President Ronald Reagan, Robert Lighthizer, who currently serves as the United States trade representative, argues for the strategic and pragmatic use of protectionism.

But while Trump focuses on specific sectors and corporate interests, progressives in the Democratic presidential primary race favor approaches that protect U.S. workers by improving conditions abroad. Thus, Warren calls for the United States to use its leverage to force other countries to raise the bar on everything from labor and environmental standards to anti-corruption rules to access to medicine to tax enforcement. Sanders similarly wants a complete overhaul of our trade policies to increase American jobs, raise wages and lift up living standards in this country and throughout the world. Another Democratic candidate, Pete Buttigieg, puts it bluntly, Globalization is not going away. So we must insist on policies that ensure that working families in cities like mine can play a more appealing role in the story of globalization than the role of victim.

Unfortunately, the focus on tariffs and trade agreements obscures a key promise of progressive foreign economic policy. Progressives can, and are already starting to, offer a larger strategy for securing key goalsone that turns globalization itself into a source of strength. As Warren argued in July, the United States enjoys enormous leverage because America is the worlds most attractive market. By conditioning access to that market, Washington can influence not only international negotiations over standards and the terms of trade but also the decisions made by firms themselves. Rather than employ such regulatory standards as forms of stealth protectionismones that allow corporations to extract rents from American consumersprogressives can use them to help craft a more just and sustainable global economy.

Companies that do not want to lose access to a market have strong incentives to meet regulatory standards. They are also more likely to push for similar rules at home, because harmonization standardizes production costs and eliminates competitive pressure from domestic manufactures. But this is not simply a matter of market size. To really affect the global economy through such standard-setting, a government requires the necessary regulatory expertise to identify and enforce market rules. Quality regulators understand the key pressure points for firms, as well as how they might try to evade penalties. These rules define not only the terms of competition but also exit options. The United States possesses both one of the largest markets in the world and extensive experience in the creation and enforcement of market regulations. This makes it a true market great power.

For the last 20 years, Washington has largely used this power to advance a neoliberal agenda of open markets, intellectual property protection, deregulation, and the use of sanctions to advance national security goals. As a result, Washington has usually played only a secondary role in addressing critical challenges, such as the threat posed by climate change, economic inequality, corporate tax evasion, and offshoring.

Things could be very different. A progressive administration could get started right away, using executive action, as well as reentering the Paris climate agreement and reinstating President Barack Obama-era tailpipe standards, which shape not only U.S. auto- manufacturers but also their global competitors, which want access to the U.S. market. The U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control could bolster these efforts through what are known as green sanctions, targeting carbon-intensive sectors. Such sanctions would raise the cost of financing carbon-intensive sectors in the United States and, because of the central position of U.S. banks in the global economy, would raise these costs worldwide.

On the fiscal side, market power could be turned to end global tax evasion. Warren, for example, has proposed a country-by-country minimum tax, which would prevent firms from hiding their cash in countries with zero corporate tax. Instead, firms with U.S. sales would have to pay the difference between the foreign tax rate and that in the United States, guaranteeing that corporations pay their fair share. To avoid future regulatory whiplash, Congress could legislate stronger parameters for using standards to combat climate change, money laundering, offshoring, and other major challenges.

There are two standard objections to marrying more aggressive standard-setting to market power. The first argues that any attempt to do so will drive wealth out of the countryadvocates of low taxes routinely raise this objection whenever anyone suggests raising taxes on the rich. But policymakers can manage this problem by setting the terms of exit. As of now, too many anti-tax and pro-deregulation politicians find it useful to invoke the specter of capital flight to block progressive policies, all the while opposing steps that would keep it from happening in the first place. In short, people can only hide their money in Panama or the Cayman Islandsor, for that matter, Delawarebecause the U.S. government allows them to. If Washington can decouple Irans economy from the global financial system, it certainly could do the same for tax havens.

The second stems from neoliberal ideology: the idea that such efforts undermine market efficiency. The contemporary rise of rentier capitalism, however, underscores that, in practice, neoliberalism tends to shuffle the deck chairs of regulatory capture rather than deliver libertarian utopias. Markets will always be distortedthe question is, who benefits? Such abstract arguments also ignore the degree to which the United States already sets transnational standards through its market power. As we noted earlier, the United States has successfully pushed intellectual property rules globally, for example, that generate tremendous wealth for content owners in Hollywood and the pharmaceutical industry. Pitting no regulation against too much regulation creates yet another false choice. Standards can be more or less progressive and more or less effective. The experience of the interwar period, the postwar period, and, most recently, the Great Recession all demonstrate that well-regulated markets, especially when guided to produce social goods, are the most stable and sustainable.

Washington is not the only player in international standard-setting. Other major economic great powers know this game very well. In areas such as trust-busting, environmental protections, and digital privacy, U.S. companies must comply with a variety of European Union rules. In many cases, these rules have precisely the effects one would expect: They change the practices of firms in their operations beyond EU borders, leading to global standardization of their operations.

In a meeting between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, for example, Nadella urged Canada to forgo Canadian-based rules and adopt European privacy standards so as to minimize Microsofts corporate compliance burden. On the aggregate, however, Americas roughly $5.5 trillion market means that it is, and will continue to be, an economic leviathan. Even as U.S. GDP growth slows, its overall economy will hardly be dwarfed by Chinas in the immediate future.

Moreover, activating market power through regulations and standards has major advantages over the more ham-handed approach represented by tariffs. In trade wars, differences in relative market size and specific patterns of bilateral trade play a central role in the shape of the ultimate bargain. When it comes to standard-setting, the absolute market size of key sectors or platforms takes on comparatively more importance. In typical trade negotiations, the locus of bargaining is government-to-government. In standard setting, its often government-to-firmat least in the absence of major disputes over whether the standard is in fact a stealth nontariff barrier. In other words, the power of U.S. rules resides in the fact that companies themselves want access to American consumers, the U.S. financial system, or other critical U.S. markets.

The rise of Chinese economic leverage, including through market power, is profoundly reshaping international politics. But one of the major threats to U.S. market power comes not from the relative decline of the overall economy when compared to China or other fast-growing countries, but instead from the Trump administrations assault on American regulatory infrastructure. The Trump administration threatens U.S. regulatory expert capital through its efforts to hollow out American regulatory agencies to facilitate their (further) capture by corporate interests. More broadly, the administration has actively politicized regulatory agencies to provide cover for presidential and corporate interests, compromising those agencies ability to provide impartial oversight of market rules. Consider the U.S. Federal Aviation Administrations attempt to keep the Boeing 737 Max flyingeven as the plane was dropping out of the skyor the infamous National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration diagram that Trump modified with a sharpie to cover for a mistaken tweet about the path of Hurricane Dorian.

Progressives will have their work cut out for them at home when it comes to restoring and expanding U.S. market power. But internationally, they will be pushing on an open door. When it comes to many progressive concerns, Americas European allies are already there. In addressing climate change, digital policy, and antitrust policy, politicians in European capitals share many similar sensibilities. While a revised trans-Atlantic trade pact might be useful, a market-power strategy that focuses on harmonizing and improving regulatory standards does not require cumbersome international trade agreements or the likely impossible hurdle of Senate ratificationand the combined might of U.S. and EU standards would put huge pressure on other markets.

The Trump administration pushes walls, tariffs, and trade wars. It seeks to damage the EU and other allies rather than reinforce their sometimes superior standards. It undermines the goodwill needed to advance more ambitious anti-corruption, environmental, antitrust, and privacy efforts. Progressives have an opportunity to leave behind the unproductive debate about whether trade is good or bad. Instead, they can use U.S. market power to shape the global trading system to work better for ordinary Americans without resorting to Trump-style protectionismby turning globalization and interdependence toward progressive ends.

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If the United States Doesn't Make The Rules, China Will - Foreign Policy

I'd like to personally bop over the head the next Democrat who says that Michael Bloomberg shouldn't be running for president because he's a billionaire. Let's give thanks that a simple-minded dismissal of rich candidates didn't sink FDR's chances.

Billionaires are not the enemy. If you believe that those raking in astronomical incomes should be paying higher taxes -- and Warren Buffet and I do -- that is a job for our elected representatives who write the tax code.

Bernie Sanders is currently rattling his tongue about striking fear in the hearts of the "billionaire class." (It was millionaires until he became one.) The news that Bloomberg may vie for the Democratic nomination has displeased him. "You ain't gonna buy this election," he thundered.

Lost in the tussle over Elizabeth Warren's proposed wealth tax are assertions by several billionaire critics that, actually, they wouldn't mind paying higher taxes. They don't like how her proposal is being portrayed as a kind of punitive measure to control bad people, rather than a means to raise revenues.

Also, a wealth tax is a crazy way of funding government. Warren would levy a 2 percent tax on assets above $50 million. Who is going to place a value on art collections, yachts and jewelry?

The sensible way to raise this group's taxes is the traditional way: Increase marginal rates applied to the top incomes.

Sweden tried and then gave up on a wealth tax. Sanders should know that his beloved social model of Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the United States. Their billionaires pay plenty of tax on their incomes.

It's wise to judge a rich candidate by what that person has done other than accumulate wealth, how the money was made and whether the skills involved are applicable to holding office. Some fortunes require not a day of work. Ask the seven Walmart heirs on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.

After making his first billions, Bloomberg labored in the urban trenches as a successful mayor of New York City. He started shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, when people were afraid to come into town and businesses were reeling.

The city's revenues plummeted, so he raised real estate taxes to maintain essential services. This was also no time to lay off public workers, who had performed so valiantly throughout the crisis.

Conservatives went straight for Bloomberg's throat. His "tax-and-spend liberalism will cost a fragile New York many thousands of jobs and make its recovery uncertain," the right-leaning City Journal opined. The opposite happened.

Bloomberg checks most of the progressive boxes. He's been a tiger in the fight against global warming. He backs gun control and reproductive rights. And he has long credited immigration with "keeping New York City and America at the front of the pack." Despite some controversial policies, he won election three times in one of the planet's most racially and ethnically diverse cities.

It would be amusing to see President Donald Trump try his tycoon swagger on a debate stage with Bloomberg. Bloomberg built a great media empire from nothing. Trump parlayed a $413 million inheritance (in today's dollars) from his father into six bankruptcies.

Forbes puts Trump's net worth at about $3.1 billion. Bloomberg's is almost 17 times that at $52.3 billion. Those who see mere wealth as an emblem of greatness have some comparing to do.

Bloomberg is certainly not the Democrats' only attractive moderate. Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are all highly impressive. But Bloomberg belongs in the mix.

"Do we need another billionaire in the White House?" some progressives ask dismissively. One like Bloomberg? Quite possibly.

Froma Harrop (fharrop@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist and a former member of The Providence Journal's editorial board. She can be followed on Twitter: @FromaHarrop.

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My Turn: Froma Harrop: Bloomberg checks the progressives' boxes - The Providence Journal

Last weeks elections delivered an overwhelming victory for progressives in Virginia, where Democrats solidified a majority in the General Assembly and candidates in local races followed suit. In Charlottesville, where the deadly white nationalist Unite the Right rally took place two years ago, voters elected a slate of progressive candidates to the city council, including an activist, Michael Payne, who is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

But the gap between electing progressive officials and enacting progressive policies is a wide one. An ongoing court battle over the Confederate statues at the center of the white nationalist rally shows how a little-known legal rule has been used to hamstring local democracy across the state.

On September 13, 2019, Charlottesville, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore overruled the Charlottesville City Councils decision to remove its public statues of the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

The council had voted to remove the Lee statue in February 2017 and later voted to remove the Jackson statue. As the council voted to remove the monuments, the racist legacy of the Southern generals came into focus.

A national movement to remove Confederate monuments was gaining momentum after Dylann Roofs 2015 Confederacy-inspired massacre at the African American Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Following the white supremacist killings, statutes of Lee were targeted for removal. Many of the monuments had been erected by reactionaries in the early 1900s, by a movement to justify the Confederacy and reframe the Souths defeat in the Civil War. However, the myth that Lee somehow abhorred slavery has by now been intensely challenged. A piece in the The Atlantic in 2017 effectively debunked the myth, by making clear he held white supremacist views and treated his slaves brutally.

Two months after the councils decision to remove the Lee statute, a small group of local residents sued the city of Charlottesville, arguing the local government had overstepped its authority.

That August, white nationalists violently marched on the city at the Unite the Right rally to defend the statue. The rally would lead to the death of 32-year-old protester Heather Heyer, and two state officers who died in a helicopter crash while patrolling the rally.

In this context, Judge Moores ruling dealt an obvious blow to those seeking to challenge the rising tide of white supremacy. But theres another, critical implication that has received less attention. This lawsuit reaffirms a rule thats been thwarting progressive policy-making by cities and counties across the country.

Under Dillons Rule, there is no check on how far a state can go in usurping local democracy.

A lesser-known element of the lawsuit against the city is its argument that the city resolutions violated a century-old legal doctrine referred to in Virginia, as the Dillon Rule. That rule, also referred to as Dillons Rule, is named after a corporate railroad attorney and eventual judge named John F. Dillon. To this day, he is credited with pioneering a judicial attack on municipalities at the peak of post-Civil War Reconstructiona time of heightened African American electoral participation following the emancipation of slaves and expansion of suffrage to African American men.

Dillon became well-known for a legal treatise he wrote in 1873 called The Law of Municipal Corporations which raised alarms about local governments that were trying to redistribute wealth and expand democratic participation in local public services. Populations of urban immigrants were booming. At the time, there were numerous legal battles over local governments powers to tax property owners who were overwhelmingly whiteand set labor standards for city contractors. In a Yale University lecture, Dillon called laws that tax property discrimination legislation that infringes on property rights, and urged his audience to fear and guard against the despotism of the many,of the majority.

Similar arguments that upheld the rightful enjoyment of property, as he wrote, were at the time also being used to protect property owners rights to discriminate in private places, and shield them from taxation. His treatise arguedin reactionary fashionthat local governments only possess those powers which states explicitly grant them.

This idea has morphed into a legal doctrine that blankets the nation.

In 1891, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively applied Dillons Rule to all American communities by citing it in a ruling that said an Indiana town didnt have the authority to sell bonds. The Court later reaffirmed and broadened Dillons Rule in 1907. Since then, its been used to undermine community democracy in many states.

Just as it was used in the late 1800s, Dillons Rule was a tool the State of Michigan used to successfully defend dissolving the power of half a dozen majority African American city governments after the financial crisis of 2008 (including Detroit and Flint). It has been used to defend the Alabama State Legislatures restrictions on the governing powers of Birmingham, a majority-African American city, and other cities. Everywhere, it defines fundamental power dynamics. The rule is rigorously defended by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative corporate-led, state-level policy network.

In communities across the nation, local movements are stymied from raising the minimum wage, governing the fossil fuel industry, heightening civil rights protections, and otherwise weighing in on key societal questions.

Some states, such as Michigan, identify as Home Rule states. There, local governments enjoy some assumed local self-governing authority. However, this authority is superficial compared to the deeper influence Dillons Rule wields, which allows state legislators to unilaterally redefine and restrict what those Home Rule powers are, at their whim. Home Rule did not protect the power of the Detroit and Flint city councils from being gutted.

Thats because, under Dillons Rule, there is no check on how far a state can go in usurping local democracy.

The impact of Dillons Rule in Charlottesville is not limited to the fight over statues. Following the white nationalist Unite the Right rally there was an effort to ban assault weapons in public spaces. That too was prohibited by Dillons Rule.

A local movement also successfully lobbied the city to pursue racial justice reforms. This activism led the city to consider affordable housing reforms that were seen as a benefit to the African American community. It was a concrete response to the white nationalist rally.

But, according to Dillons Rule, the city had limited power to enact meaningful affordable housing measures. The Virginia General Assembly hadnt granted the city authority to pass something as simple as an inclusionary zoning ordinance to require developers set aside a percentage of new developments as affordable. That reformmuch less anything strongeralso never went forward.

Charlottesville community members also mobilized to establish a stronger civilian review panel to process complaints against local police officers. These efforts were also stymied by the legislature, which, thanks to Dillons Rule, does not allow subpoena powers for Charlottesvilles review board.

This form of repression is not unique to Virginia, Alabama, or Michigan. In communities across the nation, local movements are stymied from raising the minimum wage, governing the fossil fuel industry, heightening civil rights protections, and otherwise weighing in on key societal questions.

However, despite the racially-disproportionate impacts of Dillons Rule, demands for more local democracy are often misunderstood and confused with demands for racist libertarianism. Thats why communities that work with Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which I work for, challenges Dillons Rule in a way that maintains a commitment to state and federal protections for civil and human rights, while fighting for local communities rights to increase and expand those protections.

CELDF works with local governments and local grassroots groups that aim to make fundamental change to state constitutional law, including abolishing Dillons Rule. This means redefining state law as a floor that local governments have a right to build upon, in order to heighten protections for civil and human rightsjust as federal law acts as a floor upon which states can increase protections. It means recognizing some constitutional democratic powers for local democracy, and moving away from the system we have todaywhere states remain unconstrained in their repression of local laws.

This means redefining state law as a floor that local governments have a right to build upon, in order to heighten protections for civil and human rights.

CELDF has worked with nearly 200 municipalities and Native nations across ten states that have adopted laws that embody this vision. Our partners are advancing state constitutional change and have passed and advanced local laws that challenge Dillons Rule.

Opposition to Dillons Rule is gaining some momentum in Virginia, where CELDF has organized with communities. The new Democratic majority has made some promises about allowing local governments more authority to take down racist statues. However, its support for structural change to reverse Dillons Rule is far from clear. And it will take more than a simple electoral majority to make such transformative change.

In Charlottesville, the battle over statues continues. Supporters of the Confederate monuments are pressing the city to spend money to protect the statues from vandalism. The city on the other hand is now appealing Judge Moores ruling, arguing the statues send a racist message. They will likely get some help from the new legislature.

One Charlottesville activist I spoke to told me, I wish a thousand locals and [University of Virginia] students would put a chain over [the statutes] and pull them down.

Originally posted here:
Progressive wins in Virginia are limited as long as Dillon's Rule is on the books - scalawagmagazine.org

I often get asked what the difference between a "liberal" and a "progressive" is. The questions from the media on this subject are always something like, "Isn't 'progressive' just another name for 'liberal' that people want to use because 'liberal' has become a bad word?"

The answer, in my opinion, is no - there is a fundamental difference when it comes to core economic issues. It seems to me that traditional "liberals" in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A "progressive" are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.

To put it in more concrete terms - a liberal solution to some of our current problems with high energy costs would be to increase funding for programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). A more "progressive" solution would be to increase LIHEAP but also crack down on price gouging and pass laws better-regulating the oil industry's profiteering and market manipulation tactics. A liberal policy towards prescription drugs is one that would throw a lot of taxpayer cash at the pharmaceutical industry to get them to provide medicine to the poor; A progressive prescription drug policy would be one that centered around price regulations and bulk purchasing in order to force down the actual cost of medicine in America (much of which was originally developed with taxpayer R&D money).

Let's be clear - most progressives are also liberals, and liberal goals in better funding America's social safety net are noble and critical. It's the other direction that's the problem. Many of today's liberals are not fully comfortable with progressivism as defined in these terms. Many of today's Democratic politicians, for instance, are simply not comfortable taking a more confrontational posture towards large economic institutions (many of whom fund their campaigns) - institutions that regularly take a confrontational posture towards America's middle-class.

We can see a good example of this hestitation from Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) in his "health care to hybrids" proposal. As the Detroit News reports, Obama is calling "for using government money to relieve Detroit automakers of some of their staggering health care obligations if they commit to improving fuel economy by 3 percent a year for 15 years."

Here's the thing - we all want to see autoworkers' health care preserved, and we all want to see better fuel efficiency standards for cars. But is this really the road we want to go down as a society? I'd say no. The fact is, the auto industry should be forced to produce more fuel efficient cars through higher government fuel efficiency mandates, without taxpayers having to bail out the industry. It's not like those mandates would be asking the industry to do something that doesn't make good business sense - demand for higher fuel-efficiency cars is skyrocketing.

Paying off corporations to do what they already should be doing sets a dangerous precedent - it sends a message to Big Business that they can leverage their irresponsible behavior into government handouts. In this case, the auto industry would be leveraging its refusal to produce more fuel efficient cars and preserve its workers' health care into a giant taxpayer-funded subsidy.

To be sure, Obama has solid motives in pushing his proposal, and it is a creative cross of issues (health care and energy/environment). But the general unwillingness of Democrats to consistently push for more sharp-edged progressive solutions is a big problem right now. The "free market" conservatives have so dominated the political debate over the last two decades that our side seems only comfortable proposing to pay off different economic players, instead of forcing those players to behave themselves. It's time for that to change. The government has a job to play in protecting Americans from being ripped off, and that doesn't mean just handing the economic bullies a bribe. It means pushing back - hard.

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What's the Difference Between a Liberal and a Progressive ...

Roots of socialism in America

The roots of socialism in America can be traced to the arrival of German immigrants in the 1850s when Marxian socialist unions began, such as the National Typographic Union in 1852, United Hatters of 1856, and Iron Moulders` Union of North America in 1859. Theodore H. White, author of Fire in the Ashes: Europe in Mid-Century (1953) wrote, "Socialism is the belief and the hope that by proper use of government power, men can be rescued from their helplessness in the wild cycling cruelty of depression and boom."

Progress of socialism

The Socialist Party in America was born and grew dramatically between 1900 and 1912. Under the charismatic leadership of Eugene V. Debs in 1912, 160 councilmen, 145 aldermen, one congressman, and 56 mayors, including Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Berkeley, California, and Schenectady, New York, were elected as Socialists. At the time, Socialists published 300 newspapers, including the Appeal of Reason, which was a Kansas-based publication with 700,000 subscribers. Membership in the Socialist Party totaled 125,000.

Debs converted to socialism while serving jail time for his part in the Pullman Strike in 1897, and began to edit the Appeal to Reason publication. From 1900 to 1920, he ran for president on the Socialist ticket while increasing membership to the Socialist Party tenfold. Although Debs insisted he was a Marxist, he spoke more about poverty and injustice than typical socialist concerns about the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat (Marx).

In 1912, Debs received 900,000 votes, which was six percent of the presidential votes cast that year, principally for his stand against America`s involvement in World War I. Debs appealed to blue collar workers hungry for improved working conditions and higher wages, but also such intellectuals as authors Jack London and Upton Sinclair.

Prominently with President Theodore Roosevelt and through the 20th century`s first years, the Progressive Movement came into view with its belief in the perfectability of man, and in an open society where mankind was neither chained to the past nor condemned to a deterministic future; one which people were capable of changing their condition for better or worse."

The Socialist Party was included within the Progressive Movement. The party dealt with American problems in an American manner. Unlike the Communist Party, the Socialist Party at that time felt no obligation to adhere to an international party line. For example, socialists and other progressives campaigned at the local level for municipal ownership of waterworks, gas and electric plants, and made good progress in such endeavors. In 1911, there were 18 Socialist candidates for mayor, and they nearly won the Cleveland, Ohio, and Los Angeles, California, mayoral races.

In 1905, Upton Sinclair founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which soon had chapters in the leading universities. Lively young men and women discussed the New Gospel according to St. Marx." Universities were considered to be favorable ground for progressive thought.

Following the election of 1912, Socialist Party membership began to decline as some members cast their vote for Woodrow Wilson. Others were expelled, such as the Industrial Workers of the World, of which Debs and labor organizer "Mother" Mary Harris Jones had once been members. The IWW had been organized in 1905, grew into a radical, direct-action wing of American socialism by 1910, and had up to 100,000 workers by 1915.

By 1917, Socialist Party membership had slipped to 80,000. Nevertheless, by 1920 Debs managed to garner 919,800 votes for his presidential candidacy, the most a socialist has ever received in America, albeit making up only 3.4 percent of the popular vote. Those votes were representive of Americans` disillusionment with World War I, and of Debs himself, who spoke passionately against the country`s involvement in that war.

The Espionage Act of 1917 was crafted to jail anyone who interfered with the draft or encouraged disloyalty [to America]" and provided for jail sentences of 10 to 20 years. The Sedition Act of 1918 extended further penalties to those found obstructing the sale of U.S. war bonds, discouraging recruitment, uttering disloyal or abusive language" about the government, the Constitution, the American flag, or even the U.S. military uniform. Under those acts, the government arrested more than 1,500 people, including Eugene Debs.

The Socialist Party`s strength was further sapped by 1920, because of government suppression and public disapproval during World War I. Such anti-socialist hysteria as the Red Scare, and internal factionalism aggravated by the presence of Communists, took their toll. Fears associated with the Bolsheviks` seizure of power in Russia, bombings in the United States, along with a series of labor strikes, led to the Red Scare in 1919. Suspected socialists and Communists were arrested and thrown into jail. In the end, of the 5,000 people who were given arrest warrants, only slightly more than 600 aliens were actually deported.

In addition, the party`s failure during the 1920s was due to its inability to appeal to the upwardly mobile worker who yearned to be part of the middle class. The party also was divided along racial and ethnic lines. Their broadest appeal was to the well-educated members of society. In 1928, the Socialist presidential candidate, Norman Thomas, received only 267,835 votes. Thomas was a Princeton graduate and Presbyterian minister in New York. He succeeded Debs after the latter`s death as the perennial presidential candidate in the 1928, 1932 and 1936 elections. Thomas stood as more indicative of the Socialist Party member, which was made up of mostly intellectuals and the middle class, rather than a worker`s party that Debs had basically represented.

Socialists were also plagued by extreme doubt on the part of most progressives, who were leading the charge to free America from the economic woes of the Great Depression and were weathering deep hostility from conservatives. By the mid-Twenties, the party was deeply divided and failed to revive itself during the depression years of the 1930s.

During the election of 1932, the Socialist and Communist parties, who had insisted that capitalism had collapsed, pulled less than one million votes combined. American voters had grown weary of Republican policies and therefore Democrats won big in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, illustrating that Americans had faith in their country and its institutions. In that election, Norman Thomas received only 892,000 votes.

During the election of 1936, Republican painted Franklin D. Roosevelt as leading the country towards the platform of the Socialist Party. This bothered both Roosevelt and Norman Thomas, who agreed on one thing, which was that Roosevelt was not a Socialist.

Creeping socialism," an expression used in modern times to describe America`s so-called drift towards a socialistic society, was coined by author F.A. Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom. Published in 1944, Hayek`s book warned of the dangers of state control over the means of production, which he perceived to be occurring, especially in regards to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), during the New Deal and the Fair Deal administrations of presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, respectively.

Hayek believed that excessive governmental controls on society did not deliver on their promises and that their ideology actually delivered dismal economic results. But more importantly, he averred, it produces a psychological change in the character of the people in that man`s desire to better himself is what drives him to succeed and also improves the way of life for those around him. According to Hayek, socialism strips man of his desire to succeed.

Because of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and dominance of the Middle American" values, the Communist and Socialist parties virtually disappeared in the 1950s, when membership fell to below 2,000 members. Many Socialists left the party because it was seen that more progressive reform could be achieved through membership in the Democratic Party. Among those who departed were: Walter Reuther, Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin. Life was good for the average American, who worked fewer than 40 hours per week. Most received annual two-week vacations and had twice the income to spend as they had during the nation`s previous economic boom time in the late Twenties.

During the 1960s and `70s, the Socialist Party exerted little influence on American society because of intra-party conflict, as well as a refusal to support the anti-Vietnam War movement that was sweeping across America. In 1968 at the Socialist Party convention, members passed a resolution to support Democrat Hubert Humphrey for president, instead of nominating their own candidate.

And in 1972, the body chose to support George McGovern for president. But then for the first time in 20 years, in 1976, the Socialist Party decided to run its own presidential campaign with former Milwaukee mayor Frank Zeidler (1948-1960) for president and J. Quinn Brisben, a Chicago teacher, for vice president. Since that time, others have been nominated, including Willa Kenoyer (1988), J. Quinn Brisben (1992) and Mary Cal Hollis in 1996.

Modern socialist movements and organizations

In American society today, socialist groups range in political views from the extreme right to the extreme left. The extreme right wing groups comprise neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic and fascist groups such as the National Socialist Movement or NSM, whose purpose is to purify" American society through violent and non-violent means. The NSM is said to wear the uniforms and paraphernalia of the Third Reich. According to their website, the NSM is an organization that is dedicated to the preservation of our Proud Aryan Heritage, and the creation of a National Socialist Society in America and around the world."

Representing the far left wing are such groups as the Socialist Party U.S.A. That party believes in what is called Democratic Socialism," defined as a political and economic system with freedom and equality for all, so that people may develop to their fullest potential in harmony with others." The party further states that it is committed to full freedom of speech, assembly, press, and religion, and to a multi-party system" and that the ownership and control of the production and distribution of goods should be democratically controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups." Other socialist groups include the Democratic Socialists of America, National Alliance, Young Democrat Socialist, and the Democratic Progressive Party.

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The Wobblies: The Story of the IWW & Syndicalism in the United States by Patrick Renshaw. Does anyone save historians remember the Wobblies? This nickname for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the revolutionary labor union founded...

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Socialism in America - u-s-history.com