- Josh Eidelson
On November 5, Seattle voters made
Occupy activist and economics professor Kshama Sawant the first avowed
socialist city council member in their city’s history – and the country’s
first big city socialist council member in decades. The “Socialist Alternative”
insurgent, has unseated four-term incumbent Richard Conlin, with the latest
batch of mail-in ballots nearly tripling Sawant’s lead to 1,148 votes.
The Sawant victory comes exactly 97
years after Seattle voters put their first outspoken radical into office,
Seattle School Board member Anna Louise Strong. Strong
would write about the Wobblies,
oppose U.S. entry into World War I and eventually end her days in China, where
she was on friendly terms with Mao Zedong.
Following Sawant's victory the right wing
conservative propaganda machinery has already started to spin out anti-socialist
hysteria. On the 14th of November Josh Eidelson of the web portal Salon spoke to Kshama Sawant, below is a
condensed version of the conversation:
It appears you’re on the cusp of
winning a major city’s council race as a socialist. How did that happen?
I think the basis for everything
that’s happening in Seattle, and everywhere else, is the fallout of the
economic crisis … In Seattle, we are seeing a city that is very wealthy but is
very unequal, and has become unaffordable for the vast majority of people …
Along with our [state Legislature] campaign
last year and [city council] this year, we’ve seen a movement towards $15 an
hour through the fast food movement … workers have courageously gone out on
one-day strikes … The workers of [nearby airport city] SeaTac and the labor
movement, they put a $15 an hour minimum wage initiative on the ballot for
SeaTac city, and that is now leading …
All of this is happening in the
cauldron of the economic crisis and the burden placed on the shoulders of
working people … The conditions that shape people’s consciousness in Seattle
are not different from anywhere else. And in fact, there is a deep frustration
and disgust with the political system … This is the background in which our
campaign has had a resounding echo.
After the 2008 financial crash, were
you disappointed that there wasn’t more of a left turn in U.S. policy at the
national level?
I think it’s been it’s been
demoralizing for the left for a while. But at the same time, I think what we’re
seeing is a slow but steady change, and the Occupy movement was a really
significant expression of the disenchantment from the system that we knew that
everybody was feeling…
In the absence of movements,
especially mass movements, people tend to feel atomized, and everybody is
privately thinking that “the system is not working for me.” The Occupy
movement, what it did was it ended that silence and people were more openly
talking about the economic crisis, the fact that the banks got bailed out and
the rest of us were left with unemployment, low-wage jobs, and an epidemic of
foreclosures and evictions. So I think, contrary to what people thought…It’s
really been a period where newer, small but new movements are starting to rise
up. There’s been the Occupy Homes campaign in Minnesota, which has actually
prevented several foreclosures…And there’s been sort of initial eruptions of
the environmental movement.
…Now, what [the] Left has to do is
to recognize that there is an opening here, there is a hunger among people in
the United States, especially young people, young working people…In reality,
what has become a dirty word is capitalism. Young people can see that the
system does not offer any solutions. They can see that a two-party system is
not working for them. But what is the alternative? We have to provide the alternative…
Boeing workers…rejected this
contract that has been forced on them by Boeing executives [who are] holding
the state hostage to their demands…Every few years Boeing demands a massive
corporate giveaway from the state, and the state each time gives into it – and
this is a Democratic governor of the state who was leading this effort. For
Boeing workers, it’s very clear that neither of the two parties is going to
stand by them. And so the signal that it sends to the labor movement is that we
have to have our own political organization.
So what is the most likely path in
your view to making the United States more socialist?
I wouldn’t call it “more socialist,”
in the sense that it doesn’t make sense: It can be either capitalism or
socialism. But what we can do, in the journey toward making the economy into
something that works for everybody: We have to fight for major reforms under
capitalism … We are going to be pushing forward for $15 an hour minimum wage in
Seattle in 2014 …
The only way we can get that any of
these demands to be fulfilled is if we have mass movements of workers and young
people coming together in an organized way and demanding these reforms …
But we also have to be honest …
That’s not going to be enough. Because the system itself is a system of crises
… Capitalism does not have the ability to generate the kind of living wage jobs
that will be necessary in order to sustain a decent standard of living for the
majority … So we have to have a strategy where we not only fight for every
reform that we can get, including single payer healthcare, but … It can’t be in
isolation from also thinking about fundamental shift in society …
In all this discussion, we cannot
ignore the questions about climate change that are looming large in terms of
this. And capitalism has shown itself completely incapable of addressing this
crisis. And in some ways that’s as compelling a reason as any to think about a
fundamental shift.
Do you believe that capitalism can
or will end in the United States in your lifetime?
I can’t give a definitive answer to
that because it will depend on what role we play – you know, we as in working
people, young people, older people, people who have a stake in changing
society, you know – it’s in our hands … We have to point the way forward, and
that is the responsibility of the left, and we’re trying to do that. But we
need other forces to step in.
We need the labor movement to play a
huge role in this. And you know, one of the things that the labor movement can
do is it can join hands with the environmental movement … The other thing the
labor movement needs to do is run their own candidates, independent of the two
parties, independent of corporate money, and show that it’s possible.
I mean, our campaign has shown that
you don’t have to obey the rules.
In the best case scenario for you,
the day that capitalism ended in the United States — how would that happen,
what form would that transition take?
It would be difficult for me to lay
out a blueprint of that. But … we can think about what it will require …
Capitalism is a system where it’s
extremely productive, and productivity rates are at an all-time high, but the
gains of the productivity are delivered almost exclusively to a very tiny elite
at the top …
Boeing has an enormous factory, [as
well as] all the auto factories that are lying defunct right now in the U.S. —
they all have enormous capacity for production. And there’s any number of
workers with the skills, and people who have the potential of learning those
skills. And instead we have a situation where, because we don’t have a say in
the production, either the machines are lying idle, or the machines are being
used to produce destructive machines like drones.
So what we need to do is to take the
machines and the factories into democratic, say, democratic ownership — and the
workers can contribute rail cars or buses, something like that, something that
is beneficial to society. And that’s something that creates jobs — it will
create living wage jobs …
That’s the kind of system that we
need, where the decisions on what to do with resources, and what to produce,
how much of it to produce, that is made in accordance with democratic
principles, and in accordance with what human society needs, not because the
Wal-Mart CEO needs to make 2 percentage points more profits this quarter.
Under that vision of socialism,
would there still be a Seattle City Council?
Absolutely. There has to be elected
representation. There would still be unions. There has to be accountability.
What will change is how democracy
actually functions. I mean, today we have a certain level of democracy — I
mean, when you look at the vote, that’s true. And we are running within the
system. But it’s a very limited form of democracy. You know, in order to get
your message across, if you are a campaign with loads of corporate money, it’s
easier for you. If you’re going against the status quo, it’s harder … And
voters themselves are disenfranchised in so many ways …
Democracy is nonetheless absolutely
the bedrock of socialism. In fact, I would say that democracy is absolutely
critical for this vision to come alive. And in fact democracy is antithetical
in many ways to capitalism. And in fact this democracy that we have is
something that allows us to do a little bit within the system, but that’s not
what the capitalist class want. I mean, they do not want us to fight for $15 an
hour, they don’t want to give that. But we’re able to fight for it within the
system. But that’s despite capitalism, not because of capitalism.
President Obama told the Business
Roundtable – speaking of “the capitalist class” – in his first term that he’s
an “ardent believer in the free market,” and that he sees three roles for
government: to create rules for a level playing field; to provide things that
individuals can’t do for themselves; and to provide a social safety net. What
do you make of that kind of politics?
First of all, I think Obama is being
quite honest … he believes in capitalism. And so for people to have the faith
that he is going to really fight against those ideas … there is no basis in
reality for that …
I would say that the “free market”
is basically free for the super-wealthy, and extremely un-free for the rest of
us. Because they dictate the terms. And so this idea that the free market can
generate conditions where social programs can thrive and a level playing field
can be created — it is an oxymoron. Because what the capitalist market does –
and that’s what they call the “free market” – is that if you are a big player,
like one of the oil companies, then you are in the best position to consolidate
your wealth even further … One of the systematic, statistical realities under
capitalism is intergenerational transmission of wealth and intergenerational
transmissions of poverty …
I often ask my students, “What do
you think is the best way of making money under capitalism?” They often give me
interesting answers, like maybe [creating] an app for an iPhone … I tell them,
“Look, the best way of making money under capitalism is to have money in the
first place” …
You also hear people saying, well,
it’s “crony capitalism” or it’s “disaster capitalism” or some other capitalism.
Well, the fact is, you know, they’re all dancing around [that] this is
capitalism … It’s not built into the system that the goal is to ensure that
socially responsible life is possible. The goal is to maximize profits for
those who already have wealth …
The reality is that capitalism
rewards the biggest corporations and it tends toward monopoly. That is what
capitalism is.
If you end up on the city council,
how different is your agenda on the council and your voting record going to be
from the liberal Democrats on the Seattle City Council?
Most of them are typical, homogenous
block of more pro-Big Business conservative advocates, although in name they’re
all Democrats … Seattle, like most major cities of the United States, is ruled
by the Democratic Party establishment. And all of the problems that we see
here, you know, crisis of affordable housing, low-wage jobs and all of those
things, lie at the doorstep of the Democratic Party …
One [example] was a vote on whether
the city should allow regulated homeless encampments … a very necessary stopgap
measure to protect families from the ravages of homelessness. And my opponent …
was the fifth vote that crushed it …
Another example — this is also
politically really instructive — is the paid sick leave for Seattle workers …
That was possible because rank-and-file workers and the labor movement took it
on themselves — I mean, they were the ones who championed it. They were out on
the streets demonstrating and demanding that the council pass a paid sick leave
initiative … That, in combination with the fact that there are one or two more
progressive voices on City Council who took that on and pushed for it, ensured
that basically the issue was passed … My opponent [cast the] sole vote against
it. That one thing should be enough for people to not elect him again, because
that was a completely unconscionable thing to do…
When we launched our campaign, and
it was early this year, no one else was talking about $15 an hour except for us
and the fast food workers, and all the corporate candidates — including the
mayoral candidates — were very, very carefully avoiding it … Ultimately, it was
impossible for the corporate candidates to ignore, and toward the end of the
campaign you had both of the mayoral candidates putting on paper that they
support $15 an hour …
What I can do on the City Council as
one socialist is really far more than what people imagine it to be. Because it
won’t just be my voice … to talk to other council members, but it’s also going
to be to continue to really encourage and to invite public pressure into it.
Which is how this camp succeeded.
Are there countries that you look to
as good examples of socialism?
There is no real full example … but
there are elements of what we are talking about in our vision for a future
society …
In the United States, the creation
of the welfare program in the first place. The creation of Social Security. All
the advances that have been made in women’s rights and LGBT rights — a lot of
this is well within the vision of what I would consider a really humane society
in the future, and what I consider socialism … The gains that we have today are
very consistent with our vision for a socialist society, and also they came
about because a lot of these movements were headed by socialists.
And there are elements of socialism
or socialist society in many other countries as well. So if you look at Finland
and the funding for public education, how strong the teachers’ unions are, the
full funding for healthcare in Cuba, also education. These are all elements
that we would want to see put in place in a future society.
But at the end of the day, it’s not
possible to have socialism in one country … If resources are organized globally
along capitalist lines, it’s just not possible to provide that really high
standard of living that some people have to everybody else …
[A] small section of the working
class has attained a really good standard of living. But first of all, that was
not delivered to the vast majority. And secondly, and more importantly, those
kinds of living are starting to disappear … It’s a politics of austerity in Europe,
and all of these programs are under major assault. And so that shows you that
you can’t have socialism in one country, and you can’t stop at social
democracy. You can’t stop at having reforms … We have to have a fundamental
shift.
In the past few decades, has the
United States been moving closer toward that ideal of socialism, or further
away from it?
As far as what has been happening
broadly in the economy, no, it hasn’t been moving closer to socialism. And in
fact what’s been happening is that some of the gains of the post-Second World
War era, the creation of the middle class, for example, the funding for public
education, a lot of these things are under attack … You don’t have to be a
socialist economist for someone to admit that the middle class is fast
disappearing. You know, Paul Krugman talks about it. So that’s going in the
wrong direction.
What it shows is that, you know,
when there is a major crisis in capitalism, the people who are going to be
squeezed are working people.
When did you become a socialist and
what brought you to socialism?
Consciously, I became a socialist
when I came to Seattle, and I just happened to attend a meeting where somebody
from Socialist Alternative gave a speech. And for me, there was — that was
exactly what I was looking for. And I haven’t looked back since then.
But I would say more accurately that
I have always been a socialist, but less consciously. From my very childhood,
it was just the experience of growing up in Mumbai, India, and seeing just the
ocean of poverty and misery all around me. And for me, it was not simply a
question of outrage or fellow-feeling. Of course that’s the starting point, but
for me it’s a logical question as well. Which is: How is it possible that there
is so much wealth in society, and you can see that there are so many wealthy
people who are just wealthy beyond measure, and you have such unimaginable
poverty and misery, and just absolute horrendous conditions that human beings
are living in …
It just seemed very, just unacceptable
to me logically that that situation was a natural one. I mean, I could see that
it had nothing to do with resources or productivity. It was clearly a political
obstacle to eliminating poverty.
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