Revolutionary Socialism in the US Today

0:00Music Welcome friends to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host Richard Wolfe. Before we begin today, I want to thank every one of you for the support we get from our community of democracy at work participants. We like to think of you that way. If you haven't already, please visit our website, democracyatwork.info, and sign up for our newsletter. You will receive weekly updates on the events, promotions, and other activities that we curate to help reach a maximum number of people.

1:03I also want to encourage you to check out our substack at www.democracyatwork.substack.com. There you'll find other materials, articles, and updates from our growing community of contributors, myself included, that you won't find anywhere else. If you haven't already, you can also sign up for our Patreon page. There you can gain access to additional material created specifically for that audience by simply going to Patreon.com slash democracyatwork. And thank you all for being part of the democracy at work community. We have an unusual guest in the second half of today's program. Kishama Sawanth, known to many of you because of her remarkable political history in the west coast of the United States.

2:05We are very pleased to have her on our program in the second half the time when we normally do interviews. I want to start today's program with some updates of the sort that we try to bring to an audience that might not otherwise hear about these things or see images surrounding them. So I want to bring your attention to a left-wing political party in Germany. You might think of it a little bit like the DSA in the United States, except it is now becoming an important force in German politics. The latest polls refer to this party. It's called D-linker in German, which simply translate the left. So it's the party called the left currently polling about 12% of the national vote in Germany.

3:09That's up from 3% in February of 2025. It's a very important event, quite a move in a short amount of time. It has also passed a milestone in getting larger polling support than the socialist party, which is the inheritor of the whole socialist movement going back to the 19th century, particularly in its earlier days, such people as Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and many, many others. The leader of the D-linker, a young woman named Ainez Schwentner, another interesting phenomena of German politics. They are taking a very strong stand against the government in Germany today, and its leader, Merz. He is imposing a reform. That's what those kinds of politicians like to call big changes they're making, that they're afraid, people will understand and therefore oppose.

4:21So they cover the whole thing over with a word they hope obscures what's going on. And true to form, Merz is doing that. His reform is what used to be called by more honest politicians austerity. He's rolling back pension benefits to elderly. He's cutting health care, and he's worsening work conditions for the working class of Germany. Against that, the D-linker party, the left party, advocates a higher minimum wage, a rent-freeze, cheaper public transportation, and a cap on the wages of parliamentary representatives of the party at just above the average national wage. Perhaps their most important and glaring difference is they are not in favor of the war in Ukraine or of Germany imposing hardship on its own people in order to fund Mr. Zelensky and the Ukrainians in that part of the world.

5:36They are also clearly like their right-wing counterpart, the Afstantfjordorchland. They are not at all happy with having cut off from Russia and thereby deprived German industry and German workers of jobs in those industries because they can't access cheap Russian oil and gas, which had fueled the German economic miracle for decades before the war in Germany. Before the war in Ukraine brought all that to an end. And then there's the candidate of the link-a-party for mayor of Berlin. His name is Elif Eirolp, and you won't learn much about any of this in the American press. He's a man and immigrant in Germany of Turkish origin, and he's likened in the German press to upsetting Berlin in rather the way that Zoran Mamdani did that in New York.

6:44Look, the German working class is now split. One part of it goes to the right in its opposition against the old tradition. But a growing part is going to the left, the middleists disappearing. That's like what happening in the United States, and we should be following when it happens in the most important economy in Europe. These things are shifting, and they're shifting fast. I want to turn next to a recent speech given by Scott Besent, the Treasury Secretary in Mr. Trump's government. He announced the D-Day of All Sanctions. He's imposing a new level of sanctions on top of several already existing sanctions imposed on Iran.

7:50And, glowingly predicting that this one will bring Iran to the table, or in the words of other colleagues of his, bring the Iranians to surrender. Well, let's be clear here. Previous sanctions didn't do that, and they were promising exactly the same. In fact, we go to war against Iran in June of last year, in February of this year, again in June and July of this year. And that's because the sanctions didn't work. And then it turned out the military attacks on Iran didn't work either. And so we're back to the back and forth. Now we're going to get sanctions. And calling them D-Day, that's clever for the American public to think something big is happening. But it doesn't sound so good if it's the umpteenth time something big was supposed to happen with results that never happened.

8:55But there's something more I want to say. As Mr. Besin seemed to suggest that the United States would punish any country that did anything with Iran, buy from it, sell to it, invest in it, loan it. And of course one of the biggest trading partner Iran has is China. So it looks like Mr. Trump and Mr. Besin are going to go after China again. That didn't work the last few times it was tried either. The Chinese smiled and said they would ignore all of this. And Mr. Besin said, getting ready for that, we are very powerful. We can close people out of the swift system. That's the name of the international system set up by the United States to manage payments. If you buy something from another country, you can use the swift system to pay for it.

10:01Ditto if you sell, you can be paid. Now once upon a time that would have been a pretty stiff punishment. But it isn't anymore. And Mr. Besin forgot to tell you that, although he certainly knows it. Why not? Because an alternative to the swift system. That's a way of sending messages about payments. Then the actual payments are made by something called the chips CHIPS system. The Chinese set up their own alternative and to mark the United States they called it the SIPS CIPS instead of CHIPS. But it does the same thing and it means any company, any country frozen out of the American system for global payments can simply use the Chinese, which of course they are doing. And thereby speeding up the decline of the dollar as a global currency, the role of China as a global economic power and the decline of the American empire.

11:10It's the United States taking steps that not only don't arrest the decline, they accelerate it. And all that to look tough in the media as this war in Iran goes from bad to worse. The last economic update we can have the time for today deals with the city of Jackson, Mississippi. And what about Jackson, Mississippi? But first let me tell you briefly then you'll get the context for this story. The median household income. That's where half the people earn less than that, half the people earn more. The median household income in Jackson, Mississippi is $44,500. Half the people of Jackson earn less than households were talking of the whole household than 44.

12:12What is the household median income for the entire state of Mississippi? 25% more than that. So Jackson is way poorer than the average in one of the two or three poorer states in the union. What is the median income of the United States as a whole? 81,000. Jackson, Mississippi, the capital of that state has a median income barely over half the national average. You know what that's called? That's called extreme poverty. Anywhere else in the world it would be recognized. It would be the focus of government to do something about a region so out of whack with the rest of the country. Well, the government there isn't doing much about it. Never has. But not so Jackson.

13:13Here are two things that happen in Jackson that show what can get you out of poverty if you can do it. First, a union. Yep. Mississippi has a 4% unionization rate, one of the lowest in the country goes with being poverty. But one of the oldest unions in the state starting in 1939 says, just shy of 100 years old is the amount of major transit union local 1, 2, 0, 8. These are workers in the Jackson, Mississippi transit district. They went on strike on July 13th. And they recently August 21st went back to work, settled the strike. Each of them will get, and by the way was approved by the workers 90%. They will get an immediate 5% wage increase.

14:14They will get starting pay will rise from $17.18 to $18.04. Senior pay will go from 23 to 24.15. They will get Martin Luther King day off. They hadn't had that. And there will be no cut in the services provided by the transit district to the people of Jackson, Mississippi. A couple of days before the settlement, the mayor of Jackson, John Horn announced that the city council and the city would give the work striking workers three months more of strike pay if the strike went on. That proved to be it solidarity between the political and the labor movement meant that a government helped the working people, not the usual support to company. Maybe that's how you get out of poverty.

15:17Stay with me friends. We've come to the end of the first half. We'll turn in a moment to talking with Kishama so on. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition linen covered hard cover version of understanding capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hard cover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us at info at democracy at work.info and put in the subject line limited edition.

16:30We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of understanding capitalism in its hard back. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back friends to the second half of today's economic update. I am very pleased to bring to our microphones and to our camera. Kishama so on. She is a revolutionary socialist and co-founder of workers strike back. She was the lone socialist on the Seattle Washington City Council for a decade and she won four elections to that position. She used her office to lead movements to win the nation's highest minimum wage and the Amazon tax on wealthy corporations to fund affordable housing.

17:32Kishama ran as an independent anti war socialist in the August 2026 primary election and won the strongest ever vote for an openly Marxist candidate 17.3% running for the US Congress. So first of all, Kishama, I'm going to call you if it's okay by your first name since we have known each other for a while. Welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. Let me ask you because you are really exceptionally well positioned to deal with a question like this. What have your electoral efforts taught you about the electability of an openly socialist candidate in the United States today? We have seen as you yourself said Richard that we have been able to win four elections on the Seattle City Council as an open socials in fact as a revolutionary socialist, which is actually quite different than the DSA elected officials.

18:42We've seen that even running as a revolutionary socialist you can win elections and repeatedly win them and in this congressional primary what we showed is that you can run as a revolutionary socialist outside the Democratic Party and as confrontational against the Democratic and Republican parties because both are parties of big business of the capitalists of the billionaires and multi millionaires and of the are war mongering agenda. So it is possible to run as a fighting working class candidate with an openly revolutionary socialist program and either win elections or in this case in this primary election what we showed as you said is the highest ever vote by far for an openly Marxist and openly revolutionist candidate running for the US Congress. And then even more than that what we have shown in especially in our decade and Seattle Richard is that it is not only possible to win an election as a revolutionary socialist what is possible to do and I believe this is the foremost responsibility of anyone running as a socialist is to use your elected office as a vehicle to build mass movements of working class people uniting working people together on a common fighting agenda.

20:03And to defeat both the Democratic and Republican parties and the billionaire class you know which is what these two parties represent and win historic victories and that is the way that we were able to win what has now become the nation's highest minimum wage which is now $21.30 an hour in Seattle. But the way we won that was by using my office immediately after I took office first of the first time in January 2014 to launch the 15 now movement organized the rank and file of the working class in Seattle organized the rank and file union members to win this historic victory which is the first major city $15 in our minimum wage and then also as part of that battle winning inflation increases and I can tell you that was a better fight against the day. Democrats on the city council but we won that and that is why we now have the minimum wage automatically increasing every year but not only that because of the 15 now victory that we won through my office in Seattle that victory went nationwide because working class victories are contagious and we saw tens of millions of American working class you know minimum wage workers winning substantial wage increases to the tune of tens of billions of dollars of transfer of wealth from the bosses to the workers.

21:22We have seen that it is possible to defeat the billionaires and multi millionaires in fact it is only through a fighting approach that we have used that you can energize and electrify the working class to actually win victories. Okay that's a good basis on which I can ask you the next question. There's been a debate among people involved in these struggles and it goes something like this. The votes that are being won by you by DSA by anyone who seems to be let's call it on the left or socialist end of the spectrum that the votes you're getting are more a critique or a hostility to capitalism then they are advocacy for or interest in socialism in other words that there's still going to be some education that has to be undertake. To move Americans from their initial position as anti capitalists in some way to approach socialist how do you react to that discussion.

22:31I certainly agree that a big part of the votes that that are happening here especially with this explosion of DSA elections is a critique of the status quo and I'm not even going to claim that every single person who has this critique every working class person who has this. The working class person who is angry at the status quo is necessarily thinking of it in terms of capitalists and versus socialism but what there is absolutely overwhelming agreement on is that whatever it is that we have today the status quo that completely sucks for tens of millions of ordinary working people that much is very clear and people are looking for an alternative. However I think it is far more than that that is just the baseline in fact when you look at the opinion polls on issue after issue after issue across the spectrum the majority of the working class is well to the left of most of the politics that's on offer which is the democratic and republican parties.

23:32If you look at the question of universal public health care of the need for funding public schools public infrastructure the need to address the fact that rents are skyrocketing all of the questions that face ordinary people from the question of putting a roof over your head to the putting food on the table the struggles that and the miseries really the absolute miseries that such big sections of the working class are going through. You see that there is phenomenal agreement that these things need are completely broken the system is completely broken and that we need massive shifts I would say that it is actually even more than that even one step further which is in some some ways you can think of it as 10 steps further which is that for the first time in the nearly 80 years of the existence of the apartheid state of Israel which itself is a creation and in which functions at the behest. Of US capitalism and imperialism it functions as a garrison state for the interests of billionaires and multi millionaires for the first time in its existence you now have a majority of the American working class against the apartheid state now right obviously right now there is a huge anger against the genocide in Gaza but it's deeper than that it's also anger against the brutal occupation and we are seeing this playing out in all of the elections and all of this I agree with the you know the people you are.

25:00Recording the people who say that we need further education absolutely we need education and I in my view as a revolutionary socialist the biggest form of education that needs to be provided the biggest kind of clarity political clarity that needs to be provided and I consider this one of my biggest responsibilities as a revolutionary socialist is to clarify two things one is that capitalism itself cannot be reform into a system that will be a word the climate catastrophe and wars and genocide and deliver decent standards of living for the billions of people on the planet that capitalism itself is the reason why all these crises have come into place in the in the coming to being in the first place and that capitalism itself as a system needs to be overthrown and be replaced with a socialist world so that's the first point of clarity but in order to achieve that and indeed in order to achieve even some far reaching reforms within the framework of capitalism like free health care for all funded by taxing the billionaires and multi millionaires something that I'm fighting for like ending the genocide and the brutal occupation of Palestinian lands to win any of these in fact let alone to overthrow capitalism what the working class will need is to build militant movements that are very clear about who is on our side and who is not meaning understanding first of all that both the democratic and republican parties

26:29regardless of their differences they both serve the capitalist class and that we need a working class party of our own and that we cannot put our faith in the gatekeepers which includes the so-called progressive democrats who serve as a fig leaf or the democratic parties broke capitalist and pro war mongering agenda and these two points have to be clarified and that is why actually I would say that one of the biggest forms of service that we have performed you know myself and my fellow revolutionist during the 50th century war and we were according to the democratic Islamic participants and we were according to the democratic party and we were dividing all of those by processings meaning no inquiry had anywhere carbon dioxide was supplied whatsoever instarted by that landscape it stronger and equal from the expansive war food is never gone and eventually people had got cancer and different cultures across the world came up together with the democratic party and now Members of thespace is the need to break from the Democrats and Republicans because both of them serve the capitalist class

27:32and to build a new working class party of our own. And part of that education is looking at history and throughout history we have seen that all the big victories that were won, whether it is Canada's Medicare or public health care one, you know, through the National Health Service in the UK, these victories were not won by putting our faith in the parties of capitalism, but they were one precisely because new parties of the working class were built and that presented an existential threat for the parties of the ruling class. And it was under that threat that the ruling class was forced to concede these victories to the working class. And that is the approach that we need again in America. Here's a question as we begin to run that out of time, but I know it's a question on many people's mind. When you identify as a socialist, revolutionary socialist, what is the most difficult obstacle you face that has to be overcome by people like you and

28:35fighting like you do? What is your biggest problem to get across to the audience you're trying to undoubtedly not everybody is going to agree with this. You know, we don't claim that the working class has some sort of homogeneous consciousness. And in fact, there might be disagreements on even the world's socialism, but I would say that at this moment, we are in a dramatically different period of American mass consciousness than we were a certainly 25, 30 years ago, but even five or 10 years ago actually, because the current system is so deeply discredited that working class people are very, very open and not just open. They are hungry for an alternative. So in my experience, calling myself a revolutionary socialist has never been the obstacle. It has always been the question of whether we can energize working class people. And I can tell you, one of the biggest barriers is working people, especially young people feeling checked out of

29:36politics because they correctly feel betrayed over and over again. And there's a deep mistrust of any kind of leadership, which in my view is a healthy instinct in the sense that the most of the leaders, which is what I call business unionist labor leaders, you know, the unionists who don't use class struggle methods, but are making deals with the bosses and with the democratic and republican parties. The DSA elected leaders like AOC and Mamdani who ran on very important programs that I strongly supported, but then have a prefer to make deals with the billionaire class and with the democratic party. All of this is leading many working class people to feel dejected and demoralized from the politics that's on offer. And that is the biggest thing that we have to overcome. And the only way that it can be overcome is by continuing to build movements in the way that we did in Seattle. And that is why actually I've also launched a nationwide organization called Workers Strike Back where working people, young people from different cities across the nation are

30:41joining workers strike back precisely because they are not seeing the kind of fight back that they want to see. So I would say the biggest obstacle right now is not mass consciousness. The biggest obstacle is the chasm between the eagerness, the hunger of the mass of the working class to have a fight back and the leadership that's on offer. And that is the biggest thing that we have to deal with, which is most of the leadership of the labor movement being business unionist, most of the DSA leaders leading us back into the democratic party. All of these being, so to sort of having betrayal written on its face and needing an alternative to all of these people which I call the gatekeepers. Well, Sharma, you remain as I remember you and I went out to Seattle. You remain a very good proponent of your arguments and your point of view. I'm very glad that you shared them with us and I urge my audience to think, to think long and hard about these kinds of ideas as

31:43to what is going on in our country today and what it is we need to do about it. Thank you very much, Sharma, for your time. And to my audience as usual, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.