A Socialist Politician in the Land of The Pursuit of Happiness

Re socialist member of Seattle City Council Kshama Sawant: "Not drowning other voices (although she'd probably like to do so)" [Emphasis added] - Vide infra

To sell one's birthright for a mess of pottage. - Esau, as described in Genesis 25:29-34

Those who sacrifice liberty for [economic] security deserve neither. - Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

The purpose is always the same, to leave the economic realm in command over all others, to explain all human impulse, as it is expressed in the political process, in terms of nothing more than the "acquisitive instinct." ... They are in bondage to an economic view of human aspiration against which they have no defense once the supremacy of [human rights in] the political realm has been surrendered. - Henry Fairlie, Bite the Hand That Feeds You, p. 274

The Rights of Man, in liberal thought, are meaningful only if applied to immunities, such as freedom of speech. To speak of entitlements as rights, as the UN Declaration of Human Rights does, is to make a fundamental category mistake.  - Vide infra

Up in Seattle a self-identified 'socialist,' Kshama Sawant, has been elected to the city council. On November 22, an acquaintance, who in turn identifies as a baby boomer, wrote to one of us:

Did you happen to catch Essex Porter's interview with K. Sawant last night?  Essex did a double-take when Kshama proclaimed, "Boeing is an economic terrorist." [The reason, as Yglesias described: "The company tried to use the lure of building those planes in Washington State to get the machinists union to agree to some concessions in other areas of negotiation. The machinists said no. So on the face of it, 777X production is going to end up somewhere else."] In Seattle, one is supposed to genuflect when the sacred name of Boeing is invoked!  Not Kshama.  She went on to elaborate:  "They hold their workers hostage.  They hold the city hostage.  They hold the state hostage.  Boeing is an economic terrorist."

This acquaintance continued:

. . . For far too long, that particular aspect has not been voiced (or not loudly and clearly enough).  With luck, Kshama can continue to be that loud clear voice―not drowning other voices (although she'd probably like to do so), but at least holding her own.

A response:

One thought to be kept in mind in what follows is that such humanitarian safety net elements as 'Social Security' are part of the core business of liberal democracy (Keillor's "Politics of kindness" PDF), not a needed modification in the direction of  'socialism.'

The late Soviet Union seems to have proclaimed that their system represented "real existing socialism." (Wikipedia: "Real socialism (also real-socialism and even actually existing socialism) is a political term popularized during the Brezhnev era in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.") "Socialism" in that sense is explicitly identified with totalitarian command societies. Thus, for example, if a European 'democratic socialist' country does not allow *anything* to trump the civil liberties of the citizen, it is not properly socialist; on the other hand, if it allows 'economic rights' to supersede civil liberties (as Franklin, above, suggests), it is not democratic.

This is one of many areas in which liberal political concept is truly profound. The Rights of Man, in liberal thought, are meaningful only if applied to immunities, such as freedom of speech. To speak of entitlements as rights, as the UN Declaration of Human Rights does, is to make a fundamental category mistake.

One, the habit of terming desirable things 'rights' in order to put the weight of the justice system behind them would place coercion everywhere in what had been a free society.

By far the most important consideration, however, is the second one. When entitlements (which belong in the democratically accepted laws and not, as the Bill of Rights is, in the Constitution which constrains those laws (i.e., Judicial Review)), are *mandated*, a tax, unreachable by the voters, is imposed. And, violating the We the People principle, the public is divided into two groups, the group which receives the entitlements, and the group which pays for them, creating powerful vested interests with lessened concern for the public good. Democracy is sundered.

The kind of safety net we have―Social Security has been modified by vote several times―we citizens are basically comfortable with that not despite, but because, of our constant arguing and grousing about it. It is the healthy "clamor of democracy":

What Walter Bagehot wrote in 1874 ... "Parliamentary Government is not a thing which always succeeds in the world; on the contrary ... First, Parliamentary Government requires that a nation should have nerve to endure incessant discussion and frequent change of rulers." - Fritz Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism

What is liberalism's answer to the way the one percent has hijacked our economics and our politics? We may not know yet. Thomas Paine said ,"On the part of the public, my intention is, to show them their true and sold [sic] interest; to encourage them to their own good . . ." (An American Crisis). A free society has to wait―painful as it may seem―for the democracy to rouse itself. That a Kshama Sawant is needed to *coerce* them into it is unworthy of a free people (her suggestion that the workers confiscate Boeing property to 'do the right thing' would come at the enormous cost of abandoning the rule of law):

From "A Man for All Seasons":

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: ...And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you―where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast―man's laws, not God's―and if you cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

Thus we read with great interest a November 20 post by Matthew Yglesias, "Socialism off to a Poor Start in Seattle":

Seattle City Council member-elect Kshama Sawant recently displaced a longtime business-friendly incumbent from the City Council, and is noteworthy for her status as an avowed socialist. ... I hope her political career blossoms so as to provide sensible liberals with someone noteworthy to triangulate against. Sen. Bernie Sanders is in some technical sense a socialist, but his views don't seem distinct from those of a dozen or two other Democratic Party senators.

By contrast, this from Sawant is some real socialism. Boeing is getting a bunch of orders for its new 777X planes. [... Without state concessions, Boeing will likely locate 777X production elsewhere.] Sawant thinks the union should counter by seizing the means of production:

“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don't need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.

Sawant says after workers “take-over” the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.

“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.

Can Boeing's front-line workers actually retool an airplane factory and turn it to bus production and win contracts to sell buses that raise enough revenue to keep everyone employed? Only time will tell for sure, but in the real world the answer is "no." This is exactly what you need executives for. Retooling plants, establishing relationships with suppliers and customers, understanding the size of the market for buses, and all that other stuff is a nontrivial task.

If Sawant were a smarter politician she would better disguise the rigid ideology under which she labors. "The executives don't do the work, the machinists do" is Marx's senseless Labor Theory of Value, which does not understand the essential role of management, distribution and marketing in successful production enterprises. Our correspondent sees Sawant as a needed "alternative" voice countering the flaws of capitalism.

But nonsense is not an alternative, it is only nonsense. (One voter responded to Sawant's proposal, "Knee-jerk party-line Marxist dogma, totally out of touch with reality and the wishes of her voters. She's an animated cliché machine.")