If you’ve read my work before, or at least my bio down at the bottom of this page, then you’re probably aware that I’m one of those commie pinko b****rds that old white grandfathers across the country think are ruining America along with those “hippie liberals." However, let me be frank, I’m not a liberal and I hate them as much, if not more, than your average conservative does. Why? It certainly isn’t because we seek to protect the various privileges that any given leftist might have -- no one is more of an advocate for democracy than those people who adhere to the socialist tradition, ideologically speaking. I’d like to take a bit of your time to clear some things up since Senator Bernie Sanders has greatly impacted the way we talk about left-of-center politics in America. And, please, can we not let him claim socialism? Words mean things and “democratic socialism,” as he uses it, is a branding tool meant to set him apart from other Democrats. (He’s really a New Deal age Democrat which seems extreme but was once common before 1950). He’s actually a social democrat, which is completely different. With these things in mind, I’ll also answer some discourse I hear among those who oppose the far right in America but are skeptical of the goals and praxis of socialists.
Probably the largest reason I don’t call myself a liberal, but rather a far-leftist (socialist and communist are interchangeable in a political sense, but not in a theory sense, since communism is the end goal of revolutionaries, rather than an ideological stance), is because I believe that liberalism as we know it today is not a road that leads to progress and freedom for all human beings, but merely holds up the status quo and keeps the leaders of unjust, immoral power structures safe and secure. It is quite simply the politics of cowardice. It is not liberation, nor is being “moderate” somehow more morally just than radical calls for change. We as leftists exist to challenge, and eventually overthrow, those structures and transition to a new society that no longer actively marginalizes or exploits any person living in it. Socialists have found, through meticulous sociological observation and theorizing in political economy, that white supremacy co-evolved and interwove with capitalism as far back as the early 1500s, to create the world we now live in, where Western governments seek to consolidate their power through imperialism and deregulation of markets in order to generate profits. I know I’m throwing a lot of academic jargon out here, but there are decades of research that hold up these claims, and I highly encourage you to search the Internet (and I’m aware that the World Wide Web arose as an invention of capital, I’m sure the feudal lords noted the irony of the merchants they once despised becoming more powerful than them by the late 1400s) to learn about leftist thought.
However, it must be said that there are two prominent criticisms that are often levied at socialists of various stripes (for there are indeed many strains of socialist thought, both within and without Marxism): first, it’s a “white / European thing." As my comrade @HalfAtlanta on Twitter pointed out in this nifty thread the other day, that’s a load of horsecrap rooted in ignorance propagated by McCarthyist-era mudslinging about the various contributions people of color and LGBT Marxists have made since Karl wrote the Manifesto back in the late 19th century at the height of the British Empire. Don’t fall for it. Assata and Afeni Shakur, Malcolm X, Albert Einstein, Che Guevara, Malala Yousafazai. All these people have called themselves leftists or endorsed socialism in one form or another. Socialism is real. It is possible. The lives we live under capitalism are not the end-all, be-all. Bernie’s right about one thing: we need to take back our money from the rich who stole it from us.
