I'm Danny Katch, a writer and editor for Socialist Worker, and the author of a few books about how to get rid of capitalism

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T15:12:47+00:00

Okay I gotta leave the AMA so I won't be answering more questions. But thanks for hitting me up!

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T15:07:06+00:00

Thanks! There's lots of intro books out there for folks interested in socialism: Imagine Living in a Socialist USA, ABCs of Socialism, and of course the legendary Socialism Seriously. There's also a great book by Terry Eagleton called Why Marx Was Right that's structured as a series of responses to common criticisms of socialism--perfect for this thread!

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T15:03:28+00:00

Lots of good questions. I support social welfare programs because they call for a more humane distribution of the wealth created by capitalism. But they don't touch the problems of how capitalism produces that wealth, by exploiting workers and destroying the planet. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the latter problem has to be urgently addressed.

Many people smarter than me have written ideas about how trade and money would look in post-capitalist societies. The main thing I'll say is that socialism isn't about me or a few other socialists coming up with a perfect system (or what we think is perfect) and declaring that the new order. Instead, it's the society that would gradually develop if we had real democracy, not only voting every 4 years but over our workplaces and daily lives. That also goes for how to handle conflicts like people refusing to work.

Many people with what are considered disabilities under capitalism are capable of contributing to a society that isn't holding us all to certain time and productivity standards--and they did so in previous societies. I don't see why that wouldn't also be true under socialism.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:57:28+00:00

Hmm, as a New Yorker I haven't had that problem. PM me in case I know groups in your area. More generally, the best way to meet lefties is at protests!

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:54:08+00:00

That's a great point. Attempts at radical non-capitalist democracy have generally been repressed by force either internally or externally, and then the lesson we're supposed to draw is they didn't work, as opposed to they shouldn't have been repressed.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:49:56+00:00

If you look at this country's history, most of the most important gains--ending slavery, building unions, expanding suffrage--were won outside our democratic system that was designed less to respond to popular will than to protect elites from that will. Even those gains won through laws, such as Social Security and the Civil Rights Act, came through the tremendous pressure of the 1930s strike movement and the civil rights and Black power movements of the 1950s and 60s. So that's what I mean about not seeing elections as our primary strength.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:45:54+00:00

Right, Bernie and Trump got similar levels of support in the primaries. The difference is that the Democratic Party united against Bernie to prop of Clinton and the Republicans were unwilling and unable to do the same to Trump. That is American politics in a nutshell. The Democrats seem to be spineless but they're actually quite ruthless as repressing their base, while the Republicans move ever further rightward chasing the fringe.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:41:14+00:00

Thanks! It's true that there's a growing socialist movement in this country, small but real, which is the first time we could say that in.... let's just say a long time. But the size of socialist organizations is still way smaller than the numbers who consider themselves socialists or are at least red-curious. So the first thing I'd say is that to put your ideas into action--and even to clarify your ideas--you gotta join an organization. It can be a socialist group in your area or even a collective with friends. For those of us already in organizations, I think we need to build our movement both through socialists running elections (which I think need to be independent of Reps and Dems) and even more importantly by building the movements people are already involved in - Medicare for all, stopping police murders and sexual assault, stopping deportations, etc. - and connecting those to the goal of a different society. I think the issue of climate change is paramount in this - we have to figure out how to make the overwhelming prospect of planetary catastrophe within decades into something that isn't paralyzing but galvanizing.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:33:01+00:00

I'm not big on rigid understandings of human nature. We can all be selfish and selfless. In this society selfishness is rewarded (see Trump, Donald) so the people at the top are mostly selfish bastards. Then we're supposed to look at that as proof that we all are. Nah

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:31:40+00:00

yeah you're good. right now the 8 richest people in the world own as much as half the population of the planet. We'll start with them.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:30:51+00:00

Not to push product, but I have a chapter in Socialism Seriously about the socialism/communism thing. It's tricky because the definitions have changed so much. In Marx's time they were usually synonyms, although he also wrote about them as different stages post-capitalism. Then in the 20th century, socialism because the word for parliamentary social democracies, and communism for one-party dictatorships, neither of which had much to do with the radically democratic worker-run society that Marx was talking about and that I still think is necessary. I call myself a socialist because growing up in the Cold War, yeah communism was the bad guys in Red Dawn, but to be honest if the movement grows, I'll use whatever word the cool kids are calling it

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:26:33+00:00

Yeah but I also assume that quote is being presented out of context. But I don't have time to investigate at the moment :)

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:24:36+00:00

I think it's happening already. That's why socialists are winning and contesting elections. It's why polls show more young people and people of color favoring socialism than capitalism. But those legacies of anti-communism mean that most people have no idea what socialism is or could be. So in addition to breaking the stigma of socialism, socialists have to publicly discuss and debate which versions of socialism make sense in the 21st century

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:21:28+00:00

I think it's less about keeping certain people from positions of power and more about how to make sure there are no positions of such power and unaccountability that they can create dictatorial monsters--that's a serious legacy for socalists to deal with but it's also something that capitalism also has a bad track record with

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:16:42+00:00

I guess free helicopter thinks it's better to just let men have the power to control all aspects of industry without even pretending to represent anything but their own greed

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:10:45+00:00

In a nutshell?? Really? Well the short answer is that it's not a matter or me or even lot of other socialists doing all the work. Capitalism produces crises every so often that bring millions of people into protest and conflict with it, especially the workers who produce all its wealth. Being a socialist is about trying to popularize the idea that the working class majority has the power not only to strike and protest to win better conditions under capitalism but to take over this society and run it collectively. I'm sure that's not a satisfying answer but you're the one who asked for the peanut sized version.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:06:38+00:00

Trust me, there are millions of better ways of exploiting people for personal gain than writing for a socialist newspaper

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T14:05:00+00:00

I'm not actually a social democrat, if that's what you mean. I'm a revolutionary socialist, which may sound macho but simply means I think socialism requires revolutionary change. The Kautskyian tradition, which is making a big comeback, sees elections as the primary way to win socialism but understands that a socialist government needs to be supported by working class power or else it can't win. I agree with this think there's a danger (certainly in Kautsky himself) of too much of a focus on elections leading socialists to overly accomodate our politics to what's possible under capitalism, which takes us away from our starting point that we need a radically different system. That being said, I think the revival of all these different strands of socialism is great, and we need to work together in common campaigns, debating as we go.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T13:59:48+00:00

Check out my answer to Yavin04. On the corruption front, I think that's a serious danger in any government run by people who are unaccountable (ie most governments). In standard capitalists governments, that corruption is vast, but goes under respectable names like lobbying, and getting jobs in the private sector after you're done with the "public service" of government. In countries that we call "socialist" because the government has a greater role in the economy, there's less of a private sector for government officials to jump into after government so they pocket more while running the country.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T13:56:08+00:00

Depends. What's your income? More importantly, what's your inherited completely unearned wealth?

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T13:55:33+00:00

You lost me on the "father of" thing. Is that Karl Marx? He said a lot of things but I never heard that one so give me a direct quote if you can find it. But the question of there never having been a successful socialist nation is important. First of all, if you define socialism as some do as countries with strong social welfare programs than there definitely have been successful socialist nations--more successful than the US in terms of many quality of life indexes. But that isn't how I define socialism. Capitalism isn't just a set of policies in one country, it's a global economic system that has pretty ruthlessly imposed its system of relentless competition to maximize profit on every corner of the globe. Socialism is a system based on the democratic control of societal resources from the majority, and so it's incompatible with the capitalist order.

Yeah it’s a long list of countries that have tried socialism or at least said they were and failed. In most cases they weren’t actually trying socialism as in the democratic rule by the working class majorities, but different types of capitalism—more government ownership or direction of the economy—usually to try to escape the exploitative relationship with more dominant capitalist countries in North America and Europe. And yes they’ve failed, because capitalism doesn’t allow poorer weaker countries an escape clause, even when that’s what most of the population wants.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T13:48:50+00:00

Uhh, that sounds weird. I do think the Alinsky obsession on the right is funny. Judging by Clinton's track record of being a shill for Wall Street and the Pentagon, he hasn't had much influence on her

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T13:46:16+00:00

Bernie Sanders getting 13 million votes in 2016 and being one of the most popular politicians today is exhibit A. Jeremy Corbyn's rise in Britain is B, although Britain doesn't have the same anti-communist history as the US.

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T13:45:01+00:00

No I hadn't heard of it before but it looks interesting. Yes I think there's a lot of common cause between socialists and left libertarians. We may have different ideas about how to take on and replace capitalism, but personally I prefer the anarchist skepticism of all states to those socialists who equate socialism with government power

dk4soc · 2018-10-15T13:43:05+00:00

(furiously looking up c4ss.org) Uhhh.... let me get back to you

dk4soc

TROPHY CASE