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What could be more working-class than truck drivers? Spending 12 straight hours on the road, driving a big rig, isnt for sissies. And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to the manner born (the son of a prime minister), with his beautifully styled hair, has the audacity to call them fascists because they protest his arbitrary COVID-19 restrictions.

Now, our own Freedom Convoy is forming up in Barstow, California. It could be on the road as early as Wednesday. According to organizers, more than 38,000 people have signed up so far.

Theyre putting up fencing around the Capitol again, ahead of President Bidens State of the Union address. The same that was in place for most of last year in response to the insurrection of Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. Will the Army Corps of Engineers begin blowing up bridges leading to Washington to quell an imaginary uprising? And to think, we used to call it First Amendment speech.

Mr. Biden will use the Capitol Police, as Mr. Trudeau used Canadian cops, to quell demonstrations visions of the czars Cossacks swinging their sabers at marchers.

Old Joe and Young Justin are cut from the same cloth.

In 2020, the presidents campaign styled him lunch bucket Joe. Mr. Biden went to Washington in 1973, at age 29. And there he stayed, and stayed, and stayed. The president and physical labor are not well-acquainted. Mr. Trudeau entered the House of Commons at age 36.

In the fairy tale version of socialism, socialists are champions of the working class thus, the communist symbol is a hammer and sickle representing those who toil on farms and in factories.

In reality, Marxists/socialists gave up on the proletariat a century ago when they refused to join the revolution.

This gave rise to cultural Marxism, formulated by Antonio Gramsci, who said workers were being held back by faith and family. Like Soviet communism, progressives wokeism is aimed at deconstructing both.

This contempt for the working class started with Marx himself, who loved the proletariat but only at a safe distance.

During his 61 years on earth, he never set foot in a factory. His collaborator, Friedrich Engels, offered to take him on a tour of one of his families factories. Marx refused. He didnt want reality to intrude on his fantasies. He preferred to spend his time reading statistical tables in the library of the British Museum and turning out stultifying tracts.

Revolutionaries are invariably drawn from the middle or upper-middle class from Vladimir Lenin to Fidel Castro to Hugo Chavez to Mr. Trudeau.

Workers sense the hypocrisy of their would-be liberators. When I was a student at Boston University in the 1960s, the local (Maoist) Progressive Labor Party leader ordered her cadre to join a picket line with striking GE workers. They reported back: Emily, these people hate us. They hit us and spit on us.

When his soulmate Castro died in 2016, Mr. Trudeau waxed eloquently on the love the Cuban people had for their commandant to such an extent that he ruled them for 50 years without ever standing for election and sent a million of them into exile.

The typical socialist has never done hard, tedious or boring labor. Most have a post-graduate liberal arts degree. At age 30, theyre still living at home. If they ever marry, they wont have children. They think the earth is overpopulated and diapers are a capitalist conspiracy.

They fret over saving the planet, saving the trees, saving the whales, saving endangered species anything but saving the people.

Like climate change, COVID-19 has been a godsend for the left, another opportunity to coerce people, reallocate resources and get them used to taking orders and living like the proles of Orwells 1984. The faceless masses are here.

Many Trump supporters are drawn from the lower end of the middle class. Youre more likely to find them on a gun range or at a motorcycle rally than slapping bumper-stickers on their electric cars that urge us to Think globally, act locally.

In 1917, during the October Revolution, protestors were in the streets of Moscow, calling for an end to the Romanov monarchy. This time it could be patriots in Americas streets calling for the restoration of small r republican government.

Power to the People was a slogan from the era of protest. Guess what? We are the People.

Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist.

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Biden and Trudeau hate the proletariat - Washington Times

The nation's foreign policy focus has turned to how to contain Russian President Vladimir Putin's ambitions toward Ukraine, and his underlying goal of finding ways to reconstitute Russia's control over neighboring states, as he pines for the old days of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Whether Putin will use military force or other forms of continued intimidation tactics, there is little doubt he is haunted by the dissolution of the USSR and is looking for some way to reconstitute Russian influence and control over Ukraine and other key former Soviet republics.

In the United States, while it goes unrecognized, we have our own USSRa collective of red states that are bound together in our union benefitting from the very socialism they claim to disdain, but which is so apparent they must be termed "The Union of Socialist States of Red."

What do I mean by that? Well, let's turn to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his quite ridiculous but repeatedly used term to attack Democratic policies as "socialist." McConnell and the Republican chorus have lambasted the Biden Build Back Better bill and its components by stating that if adopted, the United States would devolve into a state of "permanent socialism." Their critique is that the redistribution of wealth through renewing child credits, increasing access to child care, providing for pre-kindergarten education, or broadening Medicare coverage, are not vitally important policy initiatives but rather tenets of Democratic plans to create a socialist republic.

However, the real champions of redistributing wealth in a way that takes money from those who pay a much bigger share of the federal tax burden and channels it to those who shoulder considerably less in federal taxes are Mitch McConnell and his Republican red state "comrades." It is the blue states like New York, California, Connecticut and Massachusetts which pay into the federal government far greater amounts of federal tax revenue than what they get back from the federal government. Moreover, it is states like McConnell's home state of Kentucky that pay far less in taxes to the federal government than what they actually get back.

According to the Rockefeller Institute of Government, which measures so called state balance of tax paymentshow much each state pays in taxes to the federal government versus what the federal government grants and spends in each stateover a 5-year period New York taxpayers, for instance, have paid in $142.6 billion more to the federal government than they have gotten back from the feds in money distributed to the state. In 2019, alone New York's balance of payments with the federal government was that it received almost $23 billion less in federal expenditures relative to what it paid in.

On the other hand, taking Mitch McConnell's Kentucky, that state received $63 billion more in payments from the federal government than its citizens paid in taxes to Washington. To break that down on an individual citizen basis, on average a New Yorker is paying $1,172 more to the federal government than is being spent by the federal government per person in the state; whereas, in Kentucky on a per capita basis they are getting $14,153 more per capita returned to the state than they are paying in federal taxes. This red state favorable balance of payments redistribution whereby the state gets more back than it pays in, benefits big and small red states alikefrom the biggest one like Texas, to midsize states like Louisiana, to smaller ones like North and South Dakota and Wyoming.

There is nothing new about this data. It has been true for a long time. What is remarkable is that even states like Texas with a huge economy get back more than they send to the federal coffers. Yet, Texas Senator Ted Cruz throws around the "socialist" attack on blue state Democrats as much as anybody. So, one can surmise the way Republicans see it, as long as you are redistributing income back to their state disproportionally it is not wealth redistribution socialism, but if it is money going to lower and middle-class citizens as part of a social safety net then it is.

This also raises the question why Democratic response to the use of the socialist attack has not been squarely aimed at pointing this out. That if Republicans were truly anti-socialistusing their own concept of socialism that redistribution of significant wealth subsidizing those who pay in far less to the governmentthen Republicans should be willing to readjust all kinds of federal expenditures, and become advocates for far more money being spent in states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Minnesota and Colorado, the blue states that are on the short end of the balance of payments stick.

Democrats ought to be far better deflecting the all too often used "socialist" attack with the compelling argument that their party stands for fairness for working families, while red state Republicans are advocates of diverting federal funds under a socialist game plan. However, given that key swing states Democrats need are beneficiaries of how income tax revenue is currently redistributed, the argument would need to be put forward in a way which simply points out Republicans in fact support the very "socialist" practices they criticize. This disproportionate levying of taxes on blue states relative to what they get back is one of the key policy arguments in favor of allowing high tax blue states to get a federal tax deduction on their state and local taxes, though at this point that seems like a dead issue.

Red used to be a descriptor referring to communist states like Russia. Now, of course, red is a descriptor for that part of the country that supports Donald Trump, himself a great devotee of the Russian president. Red also represents the embarrassment Republicans should feel for their hypocrisy in actually being unabashed partisans for socialist redistribution.

If the "socialism" label is going to be thrown around in such a silly fashion and applied to federal policies that are intended to benefit those who need the most help, let's make sure socialism is called out everywhere it applies; and, that McConnell is clearly understood as being the biggest socialism advocate of all, and his state of Kentucky the number one balance of payments welfare recipient in the Union of Socialist States of Red.

While Democrats and Republicans appear largely united in expressing resistance to Putin in his attempts to bring Ukraine back into some USSR era zone of influencehow about Republicans also joining Democrats in tearing down the USSR in the USA, and abolishing this Union of Socialist States of Red, by advocating blue states getting back from the federal government as much as they pay in?

Tom Rogers is an editor-at-large for Newsweek, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, currently executive chair of Engine Media and is former senior counsel to a congressional committee.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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The New USSR: The Union of Socialist States of Red | Opinion - Newsweek

Resort areas have serious common problems, such as a low-wage housing (recently called workforce housing) shortage. I know. Even some families with adequate wages cant find a place to live. So, workforce is more encompassing a term. Most ideas for alleviating such issues are criticized as creeping socialism and are therefore un-American and unwanted, say the strict capitalists. Simply acknowledging that the makeup of a resort area requires more than the usual dose of socialism does not sit well with the purists.

Perhaps there is a solution after all. Suppose laws were passed to allow for an individual major resort area to opt to have a socialistic government, i.e., to be a socialistic enclave. The rest of the country would remain capitalistic, with all of the attributes of free enterprise. All of the typical coastline and mountainous resorts could qualify as socialistic enclaves.

Specifically, all businesses would have to sell out to the local government, which would provide cradle to grave everything to its residents. The system would work because it would have the key ingredient necessary to sustain itself. That ingredient is a constant influx of money from outside of the enclave, namely tourism. The size and growth of the enclave would be automatically controlled by the amount of the annual influx of tourist money. Even better would be if some natural resource or physical product is available and exported, such as mining products.

Just think how peaceful it would be if the capitalist and socialists could both have their desires in such a segmented manner. The capitalists could then concentrate on reversing socialistic programs in their domain. They could start with the carbon tax, the spending of taxes for wokeness programs, all the way back to FDRs New Deal. You think?

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Letter to the editor: Maybe socialistic enclaves in resort areas are the answer - Summit Daily

Over the past fortnight, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) has campaigned at a number of orientation events where it has student clubs, including Macquarie University in Sydney, Newcastle University in regional New South Wales and Victoria University in Melbourne.

The youth and student wing of the Socialist Equality Party won a strong response to the revolutionary, socialist and internationalist perspective it advanced. The IYSSE was the only club on the campuses raising opposition to the US-led war preparations against Russia and China, which are actively supported by the Australian political establishment, and the let it rip pandemic policies that subordinate health to private profit.

Students beginning university, aged only 17 or 18, were very receptive to the IYSSEs perspective. There was widespread opposition to the prospect of a major war, concern over the ongoing Omicron surge and a social crisis that afflicts increasingly broad layers of young people.

The IYSSE explained that all of these issues were a product of capitalism, an outmoded system in global crisis. Students and young people had to turn to the working class, the revolutionary force in society, and take up a fight for socialism based on the lessons of history.

The IYSSE is holding a major meeting, entitled As the pandemic rages onThe threat of World War looms: Take up the fight against imperialism and for international socialism! We urge students and youth to register for the meeting and take part on Saturday March 12 at 4 p.m. (AEDT). Promote it among your friends and join the IYSSE!

Below are interviews with some of the students the IYSSE spoke to at recent orientation weeks.

Ronan, a 17-year-old journalism student at University of Technology in Sydney, said: I think that the COVID response isnt actually dictated by the medical science. To a degree it is but for the most part its more determined by the economy. So, the governments are trying to reopen the country, reopen the borders. And I think that is generally just to stimulate the economy so they can continue their wealthy lifestyles.

Its not about the common good of the people. Its about the people on top, I would say politicians, wealthy billionaires. They always seem to be ahead of everyone else, even though the rest of the world is so far behind. They really should be helping to bring their fellow humans up but instead they exploit them for profit, all the time.

As a journalism student, our reporters asked for his opinion on the persecution and show-trial of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. I think he should be free. He needs to be free because he isnt in contempt of anything. Hes working for journalistic freedoms. So, if the government is keeping national secrets, then, if that is the national security, how secure is your nation if you are having to keep secrets from your own populace?

The United States has been militaristic for many, many years now. Its amazing to see how much they have continued that trend. We should try to unite people. We shouldnt be trying to kill them. It just saddens me almost. It just feels wrong in so many ways.

Asked what he thinks can be done to resolve social ills, Ronan answered: I genuinely think that equality and equality for the people would be definitely the right move. So, socialism is a good system, and it works, and its been proven to work in many cases. But it doesnt make people rich. It just brings up the entire populace. So, the 1 percent, or even smaller than the 1 percent dont want it. And if they dont want it, they have the power to throw around and stop it. As a populace we need to unite. We need to unite, and we need to make things happen. We need action. You can talk about it all you want, but there needs to be some form of action done.

Asked by a reporter what social force would do that, he said I would think, just the working class. The people who are always downtrodden, everybody who is just going through a rough time. If you are at work and you are just paid minimum wage by an employer who expects you to be doing every possible thing that you can. They expect maximum effort for minimum pay. How is that fair? It isnt.

Asked about Trotsky and his role, Ronan said: I did modern history in school, so I know at least a little bit about what he stood for. He stood for the working class. He stood for the same ideals that Lenin did, unlike his opposition, Stalin, who actually said he stood for Leninist ideals but instead was more a totalitarian dictatorship.

Youp spoke to the IYSSE at the University of Newcastle, in the regional industrial city north of Sydney.

Speaking of the let it rip policies, he said: Initially I understood why there was the argument for making it endemic, given the nature of COVID being very widespread. But in reality whats happening is a huge number of working people are getting sick, which is making things worse for the economy, and things are falling apart.

We dont need to infect everyone. Plus therell be a lot of deaths. I think that it could get to the point where it will become extremely challenging to come up with a vaccine against a constantly evolving virus that is allowed to spread. Its unsustainable.

Asked about his interest in socialism, Youp said, Capitalism has some very obvious flaws, the 1 percent getting richer at the expense of everyone else. You end up looking for an alternative, and socialism is very enticing. Having an interest in science and technology I recognise that a lot of scientific achievements occurred in the Soviet Union. To list just a couple they put the first man into space Yuri Gagarin, and Pyotr Ufimtsev who came up with the mathematics behind stealth aircraft.

I have ended up spending a lot of time researching the Soviet Union and the Russian Revolution online (you could call me a Wikipedia warrior of sorts!). We dont get any education about it in school, which is strange because its a massive thing that dominated peoples lives for an entire century. Its immensely important but I know next to nothing about it. I am interested in hearing other peoples perspectives so thats why I signed up.

Amelie, a psychological science student, also at the University of Newcastle, opposed the official pandemic policies: As soon as [Prime Minister] Scott Morrison put us into lockdown and then as soon as the economy started slowing down, it was like, I dont really care if Australian citizens are dying, we need the economy to start back up again.

Dominic Perrottet came straight in, he was so against the Delta wave lockdown. Then when he came in as the New South Wales state premier, straight away, he got rid of the lockdowns and then we saw the infections went up from hundreds a day all the way up to 80,000 plus cases a day, and having over 400,000 active cases at a given time recently. You can tell they just dont care about anyone, anything but money, capital, big business. It is so devastating to see that so many people had to suffer because the government does not care at all.

When told about the death toll in the past two months surpassing the total death toll of the past two years, she said: That is absolutely horrific, its like their whole attitude is like we can see that you are all dying, but we are making money so we dont care.

On the US-led drive to war with Russia over Ukraine, Amelie stated: There is such a lack of effort by so many governments to be diplomatic, even in Australia, Scott Morrison is like, well pull all our people in the embassy out [of Ukraine], lets hope nothing happens. This is on top of us putting so much money into defence. You have all your citizens struggling so much, they have got virtually no welfare support, were not getting free rapid antigen tests, tens of people are dying from COVID everyday here and you are putting that much wealth into the defence force?

Asked why she thinks governments are turning to war, Amelia responded: Money. Its all about what is in their best interests economically.

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IYSSE wins support at Australian university orientations from students opposed to war, herd immunity policies - WSWS

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is preparing to move further to the right as the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled Congress unabashedly prosecute the interests of Wall Street and American imperialism and reject even the paltriest proposals of social reform.

The DSA has long presented a mythical version of the Democratic Party, suggesting that it would open up avenues for social reform once in power.

Since the inauguration of Joe Biden, the DSA has presented the Democratic administrationbacked by a Democratic majority in both houses of Congressas a driving force of progressive social change.

In its first quarterly statement published after the November 2020 election and Bidens inauguration in January 2021, the DSAs Socialist Forum editorial committee wrote: It seems like Democrats have learned some important lessons from the Obama administration. Whats more, there is now, for the first time in many years, a meaningful Left in this country that will continue to push for the biggest and boldest policies possible to combat the pandemic, social inequality, racial injustice, and climate change.

The DSAs promise of a meaningful Left through the Democratic Party has proven to be a disaster for the working class. Biden has brought the world closer to the prospect of nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Half a million more Americans have died of COVID in the year since Biden took office, and now the Biden administration and Democratic governors are ending all restrictions on the pandemic as more than 2,000 people die every day.

This reality explodes the DSAs claims that its influence has encouraged the 200-year-old party of imperialist reaction to transform itself into a left-wing party of social progress.

In a series of recent statements, the Democratic operatives who lead the DSA have begun to acknowledge the growth of left-wing opposition to DSA-backed politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, who are increasingly seen as conventional capitalist politicians and apologists for Biden and Pelosi. Aware that this opposition reflects broader working-class discontent, the DSA concludes that it must work even harder to present a mythical version of the Democratic Party in order to better channel social discontent behind it.

To bridge the growing chasm between the DSA myth and the Democratic reality, the DSA leadership is maneuvering to the right, calling for an end to any political principle that might marginalize the DSA from the Democratic Party establishment. Prominent DSA figures are praising even conservative Democrats like Chuck Schumer and New York Governor Kathy Hochul. DSA-linked politicians are abandoning slogans that were associated with the mass demonstrations of the Trump administration, including Abolish ICE and defund the police.

There is a growing recognition by the DSA leadership that its defense of the Democratic Party is so detached from reality that it is provoking serious opposition from the left.

A February 14 Jacobin article by Natalie Shure, The End of the AOC Honeymoon, notes that the enthusiasm of the Sanders presidential campaign of 2020 has largely dissolved and given way to frustration with the Democratic Partys progressive elements. Two years later, the outlook for this new left is still not clear, Shure writes. Thanks to the limits of the human life span, there wont be a Bernie 2024. And large parts of the post-Bernie vacuum are losing faith in his young successors, thirty-two-year-old Ocasio-Cortez and the progressive members of Congress surrounding her.

These concerns over large parts of the post-Bernie vacuum losing faith in the DSAs political leaders are at the heart of the DSAs raison dtre. The DSA exists to trap social opposition and to channel it back into the Democratic Party.

Shure references growing opposition to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who left-wing critics say had been tamed and co-opted by the Democratic Party. Shure also refers to left-wing dissent about the Squads political project when DSA member and New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman sparked ire for voting to fund Israels Iron Dome.

Shure admits that the hundred-plus DSA members serving in state and local office across the country, and even the socialists with significant blocs on city councils in urban centers like Chicago and New York, sometimes take positions that are wildly at odds with those of their organization.

But Shure defends Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman and argues there is no principle worth defending if it alienates the Democratic Party establishment. Imperfect progressives make insurgent progressive politics more popular within the Democratic Party, Shure writes, and attacks left-wing critics: This angry fallout and the media spectacle that accompanies it risks turning progressives like Bowman away from the DSA and prevents the DSA from working in coalition with more and more groups. This is an appeal for a reconciliation with a broader, more explicitly right-wing segment of the Democratic Party.

Referencing Bowmans Iron Dome vote, Shure cites DSA Vice President and former DNC official David Duhalde as advocating for the need for flexibility when it comes to public officeholders. Shure quotes Duhalde as saying, For people like me, this is about winning, about building power with those elected to advance public policy and coalition work, and to raise the profile of DSA, not to act as a tribune for the organization. In other words, the DSA must abandon all positions that threaten to disrupt its coalition work with the Democratic Party establishment.

In a January 11 article by Liza Featherstone titled New York Democratic Socialists are Playing the Long Game, Jacobin acknowledged left-wing frustration over the inability of DSA members of Congress to accomplish anything, but she argued that prospects for pressuring the Democrats are much better on the state and local level. According to Featherstone, the New York Democratic Party state machine is leading the march to socialism:

Democrats in Albany work with the socialists on issues of common ground, cosponsoring bills and even joining protests together. Both New York senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, who are centrist Democrats, endorsed [DSA-backed Buffalo Mayoral candidate] India Walton after she won her primary. Schumer has embraced some of the socialists top priorities, even showing up for the taxi workers protest. [New York State Senator Julia] Salazar explains, Senator Schumer is a shrewd politician who has his ear to the ground, and sees that politics are changing and that communities are electing democratic socialists because these are the policies they support.

Featherstone praises right-wing Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul as being somewhat responsive to socialist demands. Featherstone then claims the DSA has given a substantial section of the Democratic Party the strength to proclaim that they are longtime socialists: Others are progressive politicians who might not have admitted their socialist sympathies and now feel emboldened to do so more openly.

In reality, Comrade Hochul is an unelected arch-reactionary who took over control of the state after former governor Andrew Cuomo was ousted in a sex scandal and is the party establishments pick for the 2022 gubernatorial election. Hochul has recently ended the states mask requirements, implemented a ban on homeless people resting in subways during cold winter months, declared that no one in my administration supports defunding the police, won the enthusiastic endorsement of Hillary Clinton, and has raised $21 million in campaign funding, largely from Wall Street, real estate speculators, hospitals and nursing homes, hotel chains and gambling companies.

Notably, Jacobins article praises Hochuls support for increasing police budgets, with Featherstone writing, There is no one working-class view on policing, but so far, the defund the police message could complicate NYC-DSAs efforts to build a mass electoral base, calling it a risky message that can seem out of touch with well-founded fears of crime. Such statements make clear the DSA is not pressuring the Democrats to move to the left, but that the DSA is voluntarily moving further to the right to accommodate the Democratic establishment.

Additional evidence of this is seen in the open repudiation of protest slogans by DSA-linked candidates like New York Assemblywoman Alessandra Biaggi, who helped instigate the sex scandal that unseated Cuomo and is now running for Congress.

A February 17 Washington Post article titled Democrats are fighting against far-left proposals they once accommodated notes that Democrats across the country are abandoning past statements of support for protest slogans. The Post quotes Biaggi as apologizing for once sharing a tweet that used #DefundThePolice: Unfortunately, the phrase doesnt fully capture that, and its been so politicized and so many people believe that it is solely about cutting funds to police departments. In 2020, Biaggis assembly campaign was endorsed by Bernie Sanders Our Revolution, with Biaggi saying at the time, A lot of what were fighting for is in alignment with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Similarly, Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes has apologized for a photo that shows him promoting a DSA t-shirt with the slogan Abolish ICE. Barnes is now running for Senate. He recently told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: I am not a part of the Abolish ICE movement because no one slogan can capture all the work we have to do. Such is the response of the Democrats to DSA efforts to pressure them from the left.

Another important shift was identifiable in a recent quarterly statement by the editorial board of DSA-aligned Socialist Forum, which offered praise for the Congressional Progressive Caucus usually only reserved for DSAs own members of Congress. It would be a mistake to write all of this off as business as usual, Socialist Forum writes of the congressional Democrats actions since the 2020 election.

For months, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) thwarted various attempts by Democratic centrists to sink the [social spending] deal. This reflects the positive changes in the CPC led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and others to turn it into a more cohesive and programmatic bloc. It reflects the growing influence the broad Left has been able to exercise since Bernie Sanders first ran for president in 2016.

In reality, the Progressive Caucus caved to Pelosi and voted to support Bidens infrastructure bill without social spending, but the shift in language is significant. In a 2018 Jacobin article called We need a Socialist Caucus in Congress, prominent DSA figure and Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara called for Ocasio-Cortez and future DSA members in Congress to not join the Democrats Progressive Caucus and to instead form a socialist caucus.

Moreover, Socialist Forums benediction of the work of the Progressive Caucus lends political support to figures like Hakeem Jeffries, a Progressive Caucus member (and leading member of the New York state Democratic machine) only undermines their own position. Jeffries recently formed a political action committee called Team Blue backed by corporate money for the explicit purpose of crushing left-wing primary challenges to right-wing Democrats.

Jacobin editor Sunkara vaguely outlined the situation confronting the DSA in a February 15 Jacobin statement titled The Left in Purgatory announcing the latest print edition of the magazine which features the same title.

In the statement, Sunkara writes, Socialists in the United States are stuck. How do we become masters of our own fate?

Sunkaras statement acknowledges growing disillusionment in figures he and Jacobin have consistently promoted. There is no doubt that were at the end of a period of rapid politicization and settling into one of either gradual decline or slow advance, he writes, adding, The considerable talents of even national figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seem to be directed less toward confrontation with political and economic elites and more toward the terrain of cultural battles of late, destined to resonate most in deep-blue districts.

Sunkara expresses his concern that the DSA has been unable to build support for its pro-Democratic Party politics in the working class:

We might feel more confident about the prospects for the Left if, rather than a momentary shift leftward in liberal economic priorities or the rhetoric of certain parts of the mainstream media, there had been deeper inroads made among workers. There have been rare exceptions, but on the whole, it would be delusional to say that our ideological left has made a decade of progress merging with a wider social base.

He writes that one year of marginality drifts into another and concludes: The question we may have to ask ourselves in the years to come is whether some of our actions could be hastening rather than reversing the process of class dealignment.

Warnings of marginalization are simply justifications for opposition to any policy that would challenge the interests of the financial aristocracy which the Democratic Party represents. To these layers. who have no connection whatsoever to the class struggle, seeking a wider social base does not mean a turn to the social interests of the working class but, on the contrary, to the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracies.

Sunkaras off-handed acknowledgement that the DSA is a barrier on the development of the struggle for socialism is perhaps the first honest statement he has ever made. The DSA is a faction of the Democratic Party that exists to protect the two-party system and stop the development of an independent socialist movement in the working class. Like its parent organization, it responds to pressure from below by moving to the right.

WSWS Review

What is the pseudo-left?

This review examines the response of pseudo-left political tendencies internationally to the major world political events of the past decade.

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Democratic Socialists of America confront left-wing opposition to Biden by shifting further to the right - WSWS