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POWER IN NUMBERS: Membership for DSA swelled after the election of Trump. About 700 delegates went to Chicago last week for the groups annual convention. Sebastin Hidalgo

Nobody wants to read about socialists.

My boss tells me so the day before I'm scheduled to fly to Chicago to cover the national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which recently became the largest socialist organization in the United States since the 1940s.

DSA's membership has swelled to 25,000 since the election of President Donald Trump, more than tripling its ranks in a single year. New members tend to be young, fed up with centrist Democrats, and very good at Twitter. With all this fresh interest and attention, the big challenge facing the group is proving they're more than a well-branded online phenomenon and turning their growth into real political change. The question for DSA as its members headed into the group's annual convention: How exactly do they plan to build a new American left where basically everyone else has failed before?

But Stranger editorial director Dan Savage doesn't care about any of that. In a stuffy meeting room, he notes that the share of voters who backed Green Party nominee Jill Stein in several swing states exceeded the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in those states. With that in mind, Dan has just two questions about the DSA: "Are they going to be spoilers? Are they going to run someone for president in 2020?"

At the muggy University of Illinois at Chicago campus, 1,000 delegates, observers, and journalists from around the globe arrive for the convention. The line to check in is dotted with different variations of a red shirtthe signature rose, a local chapter name, "socialism or barbarism."

As I wander around campus, the crowd is largely young, white, and male, though not overwhelmingly. (Contrary to stereotypes, some of DSA's most active leaders and organizers are women. Attendees talk about socialist feminism, and organizational rules require diversity on the group's leadership committee. During the weekend, DSA members vote to create a national Afro-socialist caucus.)

In the food court, one table discusses Lenin and another mocks the Democratic Party's new slogan (A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future). When I check in, I'm given a name tag, a campus map, a copy of the lyrics to "The Internationale," and a yellow piece of paper that says "SOCIALIST STRETCHING" at the top. The first step instructs me to "reach all the way up to our raised expectations of a visionary socialist future (stretch arms up, hold for 10)." I do not do this.

On the schedule for the weekend's convention: setting the group's political priorities for the next two years; considering resolutions expressing support for movements like the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS); and administrative issues like how the group should collect dues.

SHAUN SCOTT: A DSA member and Seattle resident, he grew up in New York City public housing. He says Seattle is proof of how deep-seated the structural issues that were taking aim at really are. Sebastin Hidalgo

"We are part of a new left-wing insurgence," DSA national director Maria Svart tells delegates in her opening remarks.

"When we look at what got us here, we don't just blame Wall Street Democrats," Svart tells the crowd. "We don't just blame the sexism and racism of Trump [and] voter suppression by the Republicans. We also recognize the failures of the left to reach beyond the choir to build a multiracial, working-class mass movement."

"We are not interested in losing," she adds. "We are not interested in performing our politics. We are here to win."

Here to win what, exactly?

At the last convention, DSA decided its top priority would be working on the Bernie Sanders campaign. This year, there's very little talk about presidential politics. Instead, the group plans to focus on a full-throated campaign for Medicare for All and work to deepen its roots in the labor movement. Endorsing and campaigning to elect socialists to office comes third. And when DSA endorses, it endorses in local races. All weekend, there's more excitement about union organizing and campaigns for city council members than about trying to draft a presidential candidate. In other words: No, they're not spoilers.

"When people look at DSA, they should be thinking about the value that it would give to a broader progressive movement to have a strong socialist pole in it," Bhaskar Sunkara, a DSA member and founder of socialist magazine Jacobin, tells me, "and not thinking about what it could mess up. It's a pretty reasonable, pragmatic organization."

The question facing DSA is not who they plan to run for president in 2020 to "spoil" the Democratsthe group "will almost without a doubt not put up an independent candidate," Sunkara saysbut how they use their newfound enthusiasm now. A small socialist organization is better positioned to phone-bank for a city council candidate or knock on doors in support of Medicare for All than do presidential campaign work. And there's a lot of local work to be done before 2020.

The spoiler question is an oversimplification, just like the assertion that leftists who critique both Republicans and Democrats see "no difference" between the two. It's possible to believe the Democratic Party has failed to deliver on policies that sufficiently address the failures of capitalism and to still see that Trump is a worse prospect.

"I think the consensus within DSAI don't think I'm being provocative to sayis that if you're in a swing state, of course you vote for the Democrat in the presidential cycle," Sunkara says. "We'd rather be in opposition under a Democrat than a Republican."

ASH CLARK: As vice chair of Seattle DSA, she says millennials are attracted to socialism because we are really out of options. Sebastin Hidalgo

But the socialist strategy over the long term is to buildfrom local elections upan alternative that does more than settle for the current Democratic Party. Whether DSA can successfully achieve that goal remains to be seen.

"Our project is less about being a short-term electoral spoiler or anything like that. It is to build an alternative pole, alternative opposition, because you can't beat the right by just allying with the center if the center is alienating people and fueling that right itself," Sunkara says. "In order to break the cycle, at some point we need to articulate our own vision and promise of politics."

Throughout the weekend, delegates split their time between small group trainings and gathering on the convention floor to vote on resolutions and amendments using the arcane system of Robert's Rules of Order. They excitedly point out the closest thing the online left has to celebrities: the hosts of the podcast Chapo Trap House (or the "dirtbag left"). A leader from London Young Labour (the teens and twentysomethings arm of Jeremy Corbyn's party) serves as a proxy for the world's newest socialist hero. Throughout the weekend, the whole group breaks out in chants of "Ohhh, Jeremy Corbyn" to the tune of the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army."

For Ash Clark, the vice chair of Seattle DSA who joined the group after Sanders's loss in the Democratic primary, the millennial attraction to socialism should come as no surprise. They simply haven't been conditioned the same way. They have not lived through a red scare. And, in the meantime, capitalism hasn't won any loyalty.

"We really are out of options," Clark says. "You can't just get a better job. You can't just go to college and everything's going to be great... There's almost an element of nihilism with it, where we're kind of just like, fuck it."

Clark, a member of DSA's Left Caucus, wants to see DSA move further left, "away from Democratic centralism, away from neoliberalism."

But, she adds, "I understand that people in Kentucky maybe don't have that same mind-set because they haven't seen that work successfully... There's room for everybody."

Max Lewis, a former draft-card burner and Seattle delegate who's been involved in socialist politics for decades, says modern acceptance of socialism presents a "golden opportunity."

"We know sometimes movements are able to take opportunities and sometimes they slip by," Lewis says. "I think DSA is the organization to move forward with it."

ANDREJ MARKOVCIC: He is the chair of Seattle DSA and says socialists have little reason to back Democrats. Sebastin Hidalgo

Outside of DSA strongholds like New York, Seattle may prove the perfect testing ground. Shaun Scott, a Seattle writer who grew up in public housing in New York City, says some of his family members wouldn't have been able to get by without "one redistribution program or another, and all those things are steps up into a form of prosperity." Because of that background, Scott says, "class analysis is just kind of on the back of my eyelids at this point."

Seattle presents a case study of liberalism's failures, Scott says, as the city glimmers with growth but faces a worsening housing and homelessness crisis. Today, Scott is a field organizer for Seattle City Council candidate Jon Grant, a DSA member who's running on the promise of creating more city-owned housing.

"If there's discontent in the place that's supposed to be the most perfect, the place that other places are supposed to be aspiring to," Scott says, "then that lets us know how deep-seated the structural issues that we're taking aim at really are."

In a wood-paneled union hall two miles from the convention, 28-year-old Democratic Socialists of America member and Chicago City Council alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa hosts a fundraiser where $20 includes an open bar of PBR and Carlo Rossi.

Despite being a socialist, Ramirez-Rosa urges the room of young leftists against abandoning the Democratic ballot line. It's possible, Ramirez-Rosa says, to run true leftists as Democrats and "seize" the party from the inside. In some places, that's the only way to win.

Campaigning in Chicago, "one of the first questions you'll get when you knock on that door is 'Are you a Democrat?'" Ramirez-Rosa says. "And if your answer is noit doesn't matter if the answer is no because you're a Republican, or the answer is no because you're an independent, or the answer is no because you're from the Workers Partythey're going to slam that door in your face."

Ramirez-Rosa's argument wins both nods and winces in the room. It's one of the central questions facing the rapidly growing political organization: Just how should they work with Democratsif at all.

It's not a new question for the DSA. The 35-year-old organization has long been a "big tent," multi-tendency group. In general, DSA advocates for taking basic needs like housing and health care off the market, empowering workers to organize and control their workplaces, and weakening the influence of corporations, all toward the long-term goal of abolishing capitalism. Exactly how society should get there depends on who you ask. DSA welcomes socialists of various stripes, including some more willing to work with Democrats than others. DSA is not a political party (it's a nonprofit), but you'd be forgiven for assuming it is. (DSA members are running for local office across the country, including in Seattle.)

Ramirez-Rosa adds a caveat to his call to infiltrate the Democratic Party.

"There are places like Seattle where you can elect an independent socialist candidate like Kshama Sawant," he says, referring to the city council member who won election running with Socialist Alternative, "and in those places, where we can do it, we should do it... The bottom line is we need to win."

For Seattle socialists, there's little reason to back a Democrat.

"I think on the whole, we need to be less concerned about the Democratic Party and need to start developing our own center of gravity," says Andrej Markovcic, chair of Seattle DSA, who joined after Sanders lost the primary.

And for Seattle candidates, there's little to gain from calling yourself a Democrat.

JON GRANT: He is running for Seattle City Council and is one of six candidates for public office endorsed by national DSA. Nate Gowdy

When Jon Grant ran for Seattle City Council as a Democrat in 2015, he lost. "The entire Democratic establishmentalmost every single Democratic incumbent and much of labor tooall sided with [incumbent] Tim Burgess, who only recently saw the light on marriage equality and a woman's right to choose," Grant says.

This year, Grant is running as a democratic socialist. Several months after he launched his campaign, he officially joined Seattle DSA. Soon after, the group endorsed him. Grant says the Democratic Party is "having an identity crisis when it can't embrace the ideals and values that democratic socialism represents." Grant is now one of six local candidates endorsed by DSA national and is likely to get phone-banking help from DSA chapters across the country.

"Until we do [embrace democratic socialist values]," Grant says, "it made a lot of sense for us to just run as an independent, to run as a democratic socialist, so that we can really make it clear that we just can't accept market solutions when we see time and time again that they're failing us."

Getting Grant elected could bring Seattle DSA new prominencenot to mention access to city hallbut the campaign will also test the group's future in grassroots organizing.

In Chicago, convention-goers constantly talk about the importance of maintaining allies in labor. Second on the group's list of national priorities: "expanding and deepening labor work." "There is no strong socialist movement absent a militant and powerful labor movement," it reads.

DSA pledges to increase its ties to existing unions and train its members on how to be "effective rank-and-file activists," changing unions from the inside. Expanding connections to labor is also DSA's core strategy for building a more diverse, more working-class movementaddressing the criticism that it's a movement led by white academics who've read Marx.

But unions and socialists have a complicated relationship in Seattle. When Kshama Sawant ran in 2013, most labor endorsements went to her opponent, an incumbent Democrat. This year, both Seattle DSA and Sawant's Socialist Alternative are backing Grant against Teresa Mosqueda, who works for the Washington State Labor Council and helped draft last year's statewide minimum-wage and sick-leave initiative. In other words: Seattle socialists will spend the next three months opposite nearly every labor union in town.

While some Seattle labor unions align with businesstake SEIU Local 775, which has endorsed the same candidate for mayor as the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of CommerceMosqueda did not win the chamber's endorsement and is running to the left of Tim Burgess. She's promising to champion workers' and renters' rights. She supports publicly funded housing, though she'd rather fund projects using bonding than taxes on corporations, as Grant has proposed.

After Socialist Alternative's endorsement, King County Labor Council executive secretary-treasurer Nicole Grant called it "an insult to the same labor movement SA clings to for credibility."

Seattle DSA members argue there's a difference between "labor" and "unions." Just because union leadership is enthusiastic about Mosqueda doesn't mean rank-and-file members facing the city's housing crisis won't support Grant, they say.

"The onus is going be on us to make that case," Scott says. "I do think our policies are going to be better for working people."

For DSA nationally, the question of how to work with Democrats is more difficult to answer in a city like Seattle. It pulses through the weekend's debates. But while some members advocate for a stronger separation from the party, efforts to put that in writing largely fail.

During several debates, members suggest changes to the language around DSA's priorities for the next two years. One proposed amendment says the group should refrain from getting involved in internal struggles within the Democratic Party, like this year's fight over who should chair the Democratic National Committee. ("I don't want to be their junior partner," a speaker in favor of this change tells the room.)

Another amendment outlines the struggles socialists face to not cave to capitalists once in office. "In light of these challenges," the amendment reads, "DSA nationally should support explicitly socialist candidates wherever possible, whether they run independently or on Democratic Party ballot lines." The same amendment proposes that DSA should not endorse candidates who take money from corporations or are backed by any candidates or groups that do.

Neither change would bar DSA from ever backing Democrats, but they would make more explicit the group's oppositional relationship to the party. Both end up failing.

Another proposal would express DSA's support for the "draft Bernie" movement to urge Sanders to run a third-party campaign. The Democrats have become "a toxic brand and a failed party," the resolution reads. "DSA is not tied to the Democratic Party. Why tie our strategy to a sinking ship?"

Delegates vote to table that resolution. To the question of its future alongside the Democratic Party, DSA does not appear ready to completely sever ties.

On Saturday night, hundreds of DSA delegates flood in from a fundraising banquet to a sweaty after-party in the offices of labor magazine In These Times. A DJ plays to the packed dance floor. Partygoers lean on desks littered with beer and LaCroix cans. There are shots of Malrt and free copies of Jacobin, and the Jeremy Corbyn chant echoes again.

Next to the keg, a sign quotes Marx: "'From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.' Please donate to ensure that everyone who needs a drink gets one."

The next morning, delegates clutch coffee cups as they make their way to the meeting rooms. I see a few red-eyed Seattle members, including one who doesn't drink but is still exhausted from "just mainlining socialism" until 5 a.m. Through the fog of a hangover, delegates take their final votes. They finalize the group's priorities and break out into chants: "This is class war, eat the rich and feed the poor!"

Delegates are urged to go home and build campaigns on local issues, to back socialist candidates in their hometowns, and to strengthen their ties with labor unions. They're optimistic and frenetic, and they aren't thinking about how to spoil the election for Democrats. There's too much work to do.

Originally posted here:
Are the Socialists Here to Ruin Everything? - Features - The Stranger - TheStranger.com

Traditionally, the game industry leveraged its appeal and playful aura to exploit its workers. Young passionate developers were hired, worked until they burned out, regularly laid off, and replaced with younger, less-demanding ones.

But in the early 2000s, these unfortunate working conditions, along with the lack of individual agency for developers on increasingly large teams, collided with the wider availability of game-making tools. This gave rise to a lively independent games movement.

Like their counterparts in other culture industries, indie developers pursued more experimental and personal projects, rejecting dull and hierarchical corporate structures. They strived to build more inclusive communities of players and developers. (I talked about this in a 2012 lecture at Indiecade called Toward Independence.)

Alas, it turns out that the crucial component of informational capitalism is distribution. Conglomerates like Apple, Sony, and Microsoft quickly adapted to this peaceful seizure of the means of production. They opened their markets to indies and even supported some of them, while consolidating control over the vectors along which content previously known as culture spreads in order to get a cut at every transaction. The result is a saturated market in which small producers take all the financial risk and rarely succeed financially, while platform capitalists make handsome profits while producing basically nothing.

McKenzie Wark detected this trend more than a decade ago in A Hacker Manifesto. In it, he describes what he calls a vectoralist class, which doesnt control the means of production but instead mediates connections and access to information.

This model, which was generalized by Google and is now increasingly applied by non-informational services like Uber and Airbnb, presents daunting new challenges for socialists. Traditional responses like unionization may become less effective given the interchangeability of the productive units. Workers may see this new, precarious autonomy as a satisfying alternative to underpaid nine-to-five jobs.

And if not the factory or the office, where exactly is the primary site of class conflict? Can these platforms constitute the first primitive infrastructure for a democratic, non-centralized socialist economy in which I can be a driver one day and a game designer the next?

Continued here:
Socialism at Play - Jacobin magazine

Nation magazine is as far left as Fox News is far right. So I wasn't surprised to see this article in the Nation's online edition on Aug. 7: "America Has a Long and Storied Socialist Tradition. DSA Is Reviving It."

It's supposed to impress us with the argument that socialism has been an integral part of American politics and has had some storied successes. Chief among them, according to the article byJohn Nichols, is Milwaukee.

From 1910 to 1960, the hotbed of socialism in America was Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the time it was one of the largest and most prosperous cities in Americaand it was run by Socialists.

And so forth. But what Nichols fails to mention in this long homage

Milwaukee's Sewer Socialist mayors: Emil Seidel, Dan Hoan and Frank Zeidler.(Milwaukee Public Library)

to Milwaukee "socialism" is that it was widely known as "sewer socialism." It wasa variety of municipal reforms that would not be considered socialist or progressive by the likes of Bernie Sanders or his far left supporters.

The Wisconsin Historical Society described it as " a program of political action that, while operating under the name of Socialism, was really a variety of moderate reform."

In other words, municipal ownership of the street cars and utilities and the kind of "good government" today advancedby civic and business groups. The term "sewer socialism" was...

coined by Morris Hillquit at the 1932 Milwaukee convention of the Socialist Party of America, as a commentary on the Milwaukee socialists and their perpetual boasting about the excellent public sewer system in the city. [From Wikipedia.]

Nichols' omission might not have been intentional, considering the way history is taught these days in schools. But it does, by omission, overstate the extent of socialism's "storied history."

dennis@dennisbyrne.net

http://www.dennisbyrne.net

Go here to read the rest:
Nation magazine's deceptive article about socialism in America - ChicagoNow (blog)

We can defeat socialism, but not through reactionary, survivalist methods. We must once again make the church the center of our community life, support positive local programs that truly help people become financially independent, free of government

Socialisms barbs have sunk deep into the heart of Americas soul. We see the Titanic struggle as Democrats and Republicans jointly hamper Trumps attempts to return choices to the people. Washington will never willingly stop its progressive control, but we can make them.

As one who has studied the progressive/socialist movement from the Congressional halls to small communities across the country, I believe we have a rich opportunity to adapt an explosive method to defeat the anti-Constitutional forces in America.

For years, Constitutionalists have joined marches, attended meetings, written articles, and built networks.

Through speeches, seminars and videos we have exposed regionalists for grabbing local authority, sustainable development for driving up housing costs, and federal regulations for usurping local land use and zoning laws. Experts in education, climate science, and Constitutional law have bared how our federal agencies and court system are turning the land of the free into regions of the fettered.

Despite successes, every week reveals the incessant tick-tock of the socialist advance.

In September 2016, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority used taxpayers money to reduce the monthly rents to $75 for HUD residents who visited relatives overseas for up to 3 months. The agency felt it was unfair that East Africans should have to save for so long to take an international trip most working Americans will never be able to afford.

In 2014, an affordable housing developer proposed building low-cost housing in a closed Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania warehouse. When the voters and officials rejected the plan for zoning reasons, the developer contacted HUD who sued Whitehall. By December 2016, Whitehall agreed to change their zoning laws, operate under a court-appointed monitor, and pay the developer $375,000 for costs including out of pocket expenses.

In a socialist society, the government defines fair and votes become a minor nuisance.

The progressive movement in America has advanced so far that in 2016, the unelected Thrive Regional Partnership consisting of 16 counties in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, urged their faked regional community to take inspiration from the works of Parag Khanna. Khanna is a global strategist who preaches that nations must merge into connected regions overseen by direct technocracy. He advocates that the American Democracy of our Founding Fathers, (he apparently does not realize the U.S. is a Constitutional Republic,) is crumbling and must be replaced by a technocratic intelligentsia.

Khannas technocracy model recommends we eliminate the U.S. Senate and replace the President with a 7-member panel of elite, ivy-league educated experts who are better equipped to make decisions than squabbling elected officials and uninformed citizens. The nation would consist of regions managed by unelected councils. Local community members would merely have an opportunity to offer input. (Think of a regional planning session where all opinions are welcome, but only those that meet the pre-determined outcomes are accepted.)

This Communist nightmare is closer than you think. Regions like San Franciscos Association of Bay Area Governments and Minneapolis Twin Cities Regional Council, routinely force through transit lines, toll roads, complete streets, and housing projects against voters wishes.

Along with dozens of other regions, these groups and hundreds of existing Councils of Governments are salivating to turn Khannas direct technocracy into your future.

President Trump has thrown a monkey wrench into the lefts relentless drive toward a centrally managed nation. He has been immensely successful in re-working bad trade deals, opening industries for growth, and reducing costly federal regulations. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment is the exposure of the vitriol and atrocities of the leftist establishment.

Still, Trump is not enough.

HUDs 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, handed the progressive movement a legal tool to bludgeon communities into central planning and assault the poor while masquerading as their rescuers. AFFH represents the clearest threat to independence, property rights, and local autonomy in our history.

Yet, HUDs recent resolution of the AFFH-based Westchester case and the confirmation of Dr. Carson as HUD Secretary have left the rule fully intact.

We must disconnect local communities from federal dependence because it is the lifeblood of socialism. Big government does not help the poor, it feeds on them. Since 1965 the U.S. poverty rate has not wavered from between 11% and 15%, ever! This, despite spending over $20 trillion.

The left needs the poor to be poor. It is the only way they can garner the votes to remain office. Imagine entering an election cycle knowing that 11%-15% of the people think they need you for they fear they will not eat.

It is not just poverty that propels socialism. The socialist movement eliminated Christianity in government and education because they know what our Founders knew. Only a moral society can be a free society. Without a Christian moral foundation, America devolves into more offenses and violence, which leads to more elitists and tighter state control.

It is time to attack the heart of the progressive beast. The only way to kill the socialist movement is to free the poor, eliminate the demand for federal money and reinstate the church as the center of community life.

A growing society of independent, financially successful, Christian practicing, and capitalist African-Americans and Latinos is the equivalent of an Ebola outbreak inside the haughty progressive political community.

This much-abused base must be realigned with people who have no political axes and no concern other than to help them out of poverty and to share in freedom.

Community programs are already proving that low-income minorities will change their allegiances when they feel the benefits of new opportunities. That is why, in the Spring of 2017 I started the Miss Mary Project. We are a church-based program that teaches working age members of low-income families in urban and suburban areas, not just how to get a job, but how to excel on the job and become indispensable, promotable employees. Rather than help people rise to just above poverty, we help propel them to a lifetimg of success, reducing the need for federal programs.

Our work is based on 30 years of corporate leadership training experience and builds on existing successful programs for the poor. The Miss Mary Project has been so well-received that we are already opening publicly supported centers in Chattanooga, TN and Greenville, SC with plans to go nationwide.

We can defeat socialism, but not through reactionary and survivalist methods. We must once again make the church the center of our community life and engage in and support positive local programs that truly help people become financially independent and free of government.

John Anthony is President of Sustainable Freedom Lab, LLC, John is deeply concerned about the impact of government regulations and particularly sustainable development programs on businesses, property rights and our successful American way of life. To that end, he develops and presents programs to inform conservative, liberal, and independent Americans of the pitfalls of current policies.

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How to Annihilate US Socialism and Force Washington to Listen - Canada Free Press

Satish Kumar, a beloved elder of the green movement, has been setting the global agenda for change for the last 60 years. Greatly inspired by E.F. Schumacher, author of the iconic Small is Beautiful, Satish started the Schumacher Society in the UK and the experimental Small School in Hartland, Devon. He founded the Schumacher College and has been its Programme Director since. After 43 years of editing and steering the Resurgence magazine (Britains longest-serving editor), the publication, described as the artistic and spiritual flagship of the green movement, Satish stepped down as its editor soon after his 80th birthday. He is the author of several books, the most notable one being No Destination, which is the story of his 8,000-mile walk from New Delhi to Washington to plead for nuclear disarmament.

Satish Kumar is the innovative, imaginative and ever expansive global Gandhian, pacifist, author, farmer, editor, educator and activist, mentor to millions in the green-humanitarian movement. Described as one of Indias most illustrious sons, recipient of several world accolades, he travels the world, speaking, teaching and inspiring. He turns 81 this month.

Over the years, I have come to understand that all my actions ought to be driven by a sense of service. You know that quote from Rabindranth Tagore? He said, I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. I am in the service of the earth and her forests, rivers, animals and people. Young or old is only an idea. As long as my health permits, I wish to serve until my last breath. Through service I connect with people, animals and nature. Life is nothing but connectivity which is another word for relationship. E.M. Forster famously said, only connect which means that in order to be a good earth citizen, thats all we need to do.

Schumacher offered me the post of the editor of Resurgence magazine in 1973. At that time I was only visiting the UK and was planning to return to India to work with the Gandhian movement. Schumacher said, You will make an excellent editor of Resurgence. I answered, But I want to return to India. Schumacher asked, Why? I replied, I am a Gandhian and I wish to work for the Gandhian movement. Schumacher said, But Satish, there are many Gandhians in India, we need one in England. Make Resurgence a Gandhian magazine, both have the same values. Ecological reverence, social justice, spiritual values, simple living, local industry and political action, are what Resurgence stands for. Schumachers argument was very persuasive and in 1973, I became editor of Resurgence. I am delighted to say that over the years, Resurgence has carried articles from the wisest, brightest, most iconoclastic thinkers from every part of the globe. Of particular interest to me is to link East and West, Gandhi and other global public intellectuals.

My biggest challenge is to interpret Gandhi for our times. It is not necessary to go back to Gandhi, we have to transport him to our time. For me sarvodaya (the upliftment of all) is much more inclusive than any political ideal. Capitalism and the free market benefit the 'few' at the expense of the 'many' and particularly at the expense of nature. Socialism or communism also puts humans above nature. Socialism is utilitarian the greatest good of the greatest number. But sarvodaya does not put humans above nature. Sarvodaya is the well-being and upliftment of all living entities humans, animals, forests and oceans. Capitalism and socialism are both anthropocentric. Sarvodaya is bio-centric or life-centric and much more relevant today when life-giving air, water, forests and land are being sucked away from us by commerce. For far too long has Nature been sacrificed at the altar of growth. Sarvodaya promotes elegant simplicity, frugality, sustainability, respect for bio-diversity and nature conservation. This dimension of Gandhi has been at the centre of Resurgence and my lifes work.

Schumacher College is a new model of radical and cutting-edge education which encourages one to critically engage with ecology, economics, livelihood, political action and sustainable living. Our work is to inspire, challenge and question ourselves as co-inhabitants of the world, to ask the questions we all struggle to find answers to and to find sound knowledge, intuition and wonder in our search for solutions. This is a place for personal transformation and collective action. We describe this as a holistic approach to learning, practising the education of head, heart and hands, bridging the gap between theory and practice, knowledge and experience. Schumacher College is now a respected college that attracts some of the worlds most well-known thinkers, philosophers, writers, scientists, activists and artistes and students of all ages and from every corner of the globe.

Look at what the realists and pragmatists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of the realistic leaders of the world. I tell people who call me unrealistic to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept. Instead, we need to learn from nature. Nature is realistic; man is the only being who is not. Who else goes to bed hungry? Not snakes or tigers or any other animal. Nature does not need 'realistic' Tescos or Monsantos to feed itself. Our system of 'realistic' business leadership has totally failed. We need more idealism in the world. And yes, the poor are never the problem. It is the rich who are making a mess of the world in pursuit of greater and greater wealth, causing pollution, resource depletion and climate change.

Disenfranchisement or feelings of powerlessness are the casualties of globalisation because globalisation benefits only the global players big companies, multinational corporations. Globalisation concentrates wealth in fewer and fewer hands. This is why the top 1% own more than 50% of global wealth. So, fundamentalism is, to some extent, the result of the failure of the neoliberal market economy. The pursuit of power and wealth by any means, corrupt or otherwise, has been the agenda of politicians during the past 50 years. So, we need to return to a decentralised human scale, humble, modest and sustainable form of economics and politics. The more people are empowered, the less extremism there will be.

It is time for the environmental movement to embrace the cause of animal rights. The green movement is rightly concerned about global warming and climate change, loss of biodiversity, clear-cutting of rainforests, pollution of our rivers and oceans and the explosion of human population. But one important dimension is missing from our environmental agenda and that is attention to the cruel plight of animals used for food, entertainment and experiments as much as those lost to us by poaching and forest depletion. Animals are part and parcel of the environment, so I call upon all environmental activists and organisations to remedy this and embrace the cause of animal rights as an integral and important part of the environment movement. We need to add the rights of animals to the welfare of animals. This fundamental dignity of life and equality of rights is an essential foundation upon which the environmental movement has to be built.

My guiding mantra is Soil, Soul, Society. The nurturing of the first two will automatically give rise to the happy third. I have spoken and written about this extensively.

India has a soul that is philosophically so large that it is unfathomable to many cultures. So, it pains me to see narrow sectarian thinking, keeping India in the dark ages, causing strife and dissent, and in the process ignoring the real issues that concern the county. I ask Indians to exercise their own independent judgement to focus on what really matters. I also ask Indians to lead the world in ahimsa (non-violence) and kindness, through embracing all that is culturally and socially noble.

Satish Kumar will be teaching Gandhi and Globalisation at Navdanya Farm, Dehradun, between October 29 and November 2, 2017.

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Sarvodaya, the solution to the ills of capitalism and socialism - The Hindu