socialism

Dear Brother John Lewis,
 
I am a Black woman, who, like you, was born in Alabama at the dawn of the modern day Civil Rights Movement. My parents supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I, like millions of others, suffered through the indignities of Jim Crow, including watching, as an adolescent, my mother being “escorted” out of a white-only public bathroom by the police. 
 
So I understand firsthand and respect your bravery and your contribution to the Black freedom struggle.
 

In 1962, Michael Harrington wrote The Other America, which basically identified the causes of poverty and inequality in the United States as the result of unregulated free market capitalism. This book in turn had a significant impact on the thinking of John F. Kennedy and the role of government in promoting greater social justice. But it was the Johnson Administration and the War on Poverty programs (Medicaid, Medicare, Food Stamps, Expanded Social Security Benefits, etc.) that followed the Kennedy Administration’s lead.

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.
– Pope Francis I, Laudato Si

What is most startling about the excited response to Sen. Sanders’s campaign is that millions of Americans seem to be saying that free-market capitalism is failing them and that there must be something better than accepting vast income inequality, as economist Richard Wolff explained to Dennis J Bernstein. By Dennis J Bernstein Sen. Bernie Sanders’s…

Is Bernie Sanders a socialist?
“Self-described socialist” … How many times have we all read that term in regard to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders? But is he really a socialist? Or is he a “social democrat”, which is what he’d be called in Europe? Or is he a “democratic socialist”, which is the American party he has been a member of (DSA – Democratic Socialists of America)? And does it really matter which one he is? They’re all socialists, are they not?

Yesterday's Salon post by Gary Legum, Bad news for the GOP: America isn’t scared of Bernie’s "socialism", emphasizes that the Republican Party has spent generations raving about the dangers of socialism but that it isn't working anymore." He talks about how the socialism smear Republicans used against Bill Clinton and against Obama had had t

Yes. I think that what is more important in Mexico is education. It’s for the children to be able to go to school. Of course, hunger is also a very big problem. But the one that really, really, really for me is very painful is education. And there’s very little money spent on education, on good teachers, on schools, on even rooms where children can go and work. And I think this is the worst problem in Mexico that has to be taken care of. And it has not been taken care of. I remember when I came to Mexico as a little girl, I loved my teacher, La Seño Velázquez.

If aggression against another foreign country means that it strains its social structure, that it ruins its finances, that is has to give up its territory for sheltering refugees, what is the difference between that kind of aggression and the other type, the more classical type, when someone declares war, or something of that sort.
— Sawer Sen, India’s Ambassador to the UN

Five hours after the polls had closed, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced a landslide victory for the opposition in Venezuela’s the National Assembly elections.

The single most important myth about Toryism — that the Tories are the best managers of the economy — needs to be confronted, and destroyed. The Tory party is best identified by its support for an economic system called capitalism, an ancient belief that concentrates wealth, and political power, in the hands of a tiny minority.
Britain’s best-known economists were Adam Smith and JM Keynes. Smith made the following observation about the capitalist model that ruled the world throughout modern history: