The Wild Reed: Socialism

Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Memes of the Times

Friday, August 14, 2026

Rejecting “Cartoonish Conclusions” About Marxism and Dealing with the “Actual Architecture of Our Current Reality”

I don’t know who Gary Zajc is but I sure do appreciate his recent response on Facebook to Josh Bitterman’s take on The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 9depicted at right by an unknown artist).

Writes Bitterman: “[Although The Communist Manifesto] makes valid points about class disparity, [it] effectively uses grievance and idealistic vision to stoke the flames of envy and class warfare. . . . If equipped with wisdom and even a basic understanding of history, one will find that it is incredibly flawed, immature, arrogant, and utopian. It completely fails to account for human nature, the existence of evil, and what we, as modern-day readers of this text, now know about how it ALWAYS plays out in reality: constrained supply, increased demand and suffering, concentration of power, authoritarianism, tyranny, and mass murder. One conclusion is that it provides a dangerous roadmap for misguided, power-hungry, and charismatic leaders to manipulate the masses.”

Following is Zajc’s response.

This is just another shallow, entry-level political analysis that passes for profundity among people who have never actually had to reckon with the machinery of poverty.

Spare us your lazy deflections just because you believe reading the text reveals it to be “flawed, immature, arrogant, and utopian” because it fails to account for “human nature” and the “existence of evil.”

By reducing economic critique to a metaphysical debate about abstract “evil” and inherent “human nature,” the you run from having to deal with the actual architecture of our current reality.

It’s ignorant to blame “human nature” or “society” for economic suffering. Why are you letting the actual architects of our economy off the hook? We do not need to look at historical authoritarian regimes to find constrained supply, immense suffering, or the radical concentration of power. We are living it.

We are currently operating under an economic system meticulously designed to keep working-class people in poverty to protect the profit margins of a ruling class. The concentration of power is happening right now, out in the open, where corporate monopolies choke supply chains to artificially inflate prices, hedge funds buy up residential neighborhoods, and massive corporations use tipping as a structural payroll subsidy so they do not have to pay their own workers a living wage. That is not the tragic inevitable result of “human nature” – it is a deliberate, engineered system.

It’s even lazier to write off valid critiques of class disparity by claiming the text uses “grievance” and “idealistic vision to stoke the flames of envy.” This is the ultimate defense mechanism of the comfortable. You turn any demand for basic human dignity into a character flaw. It is not “envy” to point out that a billionaire class is extracting wealth from the very communities that do the actual physical labor to keep this country running. It is basic math, and recognizing that math is the first step toward actual accountability.

Dismissing structural critiques of capitalism as simply a “dangerous roadmap for misguided leaders” allows your comfortable ass to sit back and pretend that the economic strangulation of the working class is just a sad, unavoidable tragedy of the human condition.

It takes zero intellectual courage to declare that challenging a rigged system is dangerous. Real courage requires looking at the system currently crushing working families, recognizing it is operating exactly as it was built to, and demanding it be dismantled.

Get off your intellectually lazy ass, grow a pair, and invest the time and effort to understand a complex system before drawing cartoonish conclusions.

– Gary Zajc
via Facebook
August 14, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
Was Marx Right? It’s Not Too Late to Ask – Terry Eagleton (Commonweal, March 28, 2011).
For Karl Marx, Human Flourishing Is Inherently Social – Jan Kandiyali (Jacobin, October 12, 2025).
Karl Marx and Why Societies Stop Growing – Peter D’Autry (Medium, July 29, 2026).
How Karl Marx Went From Student to Revolutionary – Encyclopædia Britannica. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism Wins the 2018 Deutscher Prize – Climate and Capitalism (November 25, 2018).
Reading Marx in the Corpse of Neoliberalism – Jason Koslowski (Left Voice, July 25, 2025).
Marx and Internationalism – John Bellamy Foster (Monthly Review, July-August 2000).
Love in the Time of Capital: A Review of Mary Gabriel’s Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution – Timothy Shenk (Dissent, Summer 2012).
To Struggle!: A Review of Marcello Musto’s The Last Years of Karl Marx – Mauricio Betancourt (Monthly Review, February 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Marx and Class Struggle – Then and Now
• Terry Eagleton: Quote of the Day – March 28, 2011
• The Biblical Roots of “From Each According to Ability; To Each According to Need”
• A Socialist Response to the 2008 Financial Crisis
• Heather Cox Richardson on the Origin of the American Obsession with “Socialism”
• Capitalism on Trial

Thursday, August 06, 2026

Why the American Political Establishment Is Panicking

The Montana Department of Propaganda is a Facebook group dedicated to satire and parody, a place “where trolls go to die.” Like all good satirical endeavors, the group imparts deep truths about the times and events we’re living through. Following is an example from earlier today.

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The American political establishment isn’t panicking because the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] has conquered the country. It hasn’t. They’re panicking because socialists have started proving that corporate money, incumbency and the blessing of professional political parasites do not make anyone invincible.

Zohran Mamdani won New York City. Chris Rabb won in Philadelphia. Claire Valdez won in New York. Donavan McKinney knocked a sitting congressman out of office in Detroit. Across the country, DSA candidates are beating people the party establishment had already selected for power.

Then Abdul El-Sayed [left] defeated the establishment’s chosen candidate for Michigan’s Senate nomination despite being massively outspent.

El-Sayed isn’t a DSA member, but he ran on the same material politics: Medicare for All, free childcare, taxing billionaires and rejecting corporate control. This wasn’t some tiny socialist enclave hidden behind a Brooklyn coffee shop. It was a statewide primary in Michigan.

The right immediately began screeching about “Islamo-communism,” because apparently universal healthcare plus a Muslim candidate equals the Bolshevik caliphate now. Marx is coming for your riding mower and he brought hummus. These people have one terrified little Mad Lib and they just keep changing the nouns.

The Democratic establishment has spent decades telling working people that affordable housing, universal healthcare and taxing billionaires are wonderful ideas that must never actually happen. There’s always some consultant, donor or procedural excuse standing between the public and the policies the public wants.

Then socialists show up with volunteers, knock on thousands of doors and beat candidates with enormous campaign accounts and endorsements from every professional ass warmer in Washington. Suddenly, the machine looks less like an unstoppable force and more like three lobbyists stacked inside a trench coat.

The ruling class understands something it desperately hopes working people never learn: political power comes from organization. Wealth dominates because wealth is organized. Corporations dominate because capital is organized. Workers remain weak when they are isolated, exhausted and convinced nothing can change.

That is the DSA’s real threat. Not one candidate, but the possibility that working people might organize around their shared material interests instead of letting billionaires divide them over bathrooms, immigrants and whatever beer can made conservatives piss their pants this week.

Democrats fear losing control of their primaries. Republicans fear losing socialism as their favorite boogeyman. The donor class fears both.

Different panic. Same underlying terror.

The political establishment just discovered it can bleed.

– Montana Department of Propaganda
via Facebook
August 6, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
Abdul El-Sayed Wins Michigan Senate Primary in Defining Race for Democrats – Rachel Leingang and Joseph Gedeon (The Guardian, August 5, 2026).
Michigan Primary Shows Continued Shift to the Left in U.S. – Patrick Martin (World Socialist Web Site, August 6, 2026).
The Real Meaning of Abdul El-Sayed’s Victory in Michigan – Robert Reich (The Guardian, August 6, 2026).
After Abdul El-Sayed’s Win in Michigan, Progressives Are Preparing for the Next Round Against AIPAC – Jake Johnson (In These Times, August 6, 2026).
Corporate-Funded Third Way Plans to Spend $15 Million Waging “War” on Progressives – Brad Reed (Common Dreams, August 6, 2026).
Israel Lobby Takes a Beating in Key U.S. Senate Race – Novara Media (August 5, 2026).
Outspent 9-1: Abdul El-Sayed Wins in Michigan – David Doel (The Rationale National, August 5, 2026).
Insurgent Candidate Victories Highlight Growing Movement Against Corporate and Elite Power: An Interview with John Nichols – Democracy Now! (August 5, 2025).
The Meaning of El-Sayed’s Victory – Nathan J. Robinson (Current Affairs, August 5, 2026).
Yes, the Left Won Big Last Night – Branko Marcetic (Jacobin, August 5, 2026).
Breakdown of the Biggest Wins and Losses for Socialist Candidates (So Far) – Mike Figueredo (The Humanist Report, August 5, 2026).
Abdul El-Sayed Could Be the First Muslim Senator. Here Are 5 Religion Takeaways from His Campaign – Ulaa Kuziez and Yonat Shimron (Religion News Service, August 5, 2026).
Centrists Are Not More “Electable” – Nathan J. Robinson (Current Affairs, August 3, 2026).

UPDATES: “Voters Are Fed Up”: Michigan Primary Forces Democratic Party to Accept Leftwing Shift – David Smith (The Guardian, August 9, 2026).
Abdul El-Sayed Embraces Trump Claim He Represents “Very Different” America – Eric Berger (The Guardian, August 9, 2026).
Francesca Hong, the Progressive Leading a “Messy” Race for Wisconsin’s Governor: “They’re Tired of the Status Quo” – Rachel Leingang (The Guardian, August 10, 2026).
“It’s Not Radical to Believe You Should Have Healthcare”: El-Sayed Hits Back at Trump, GOP Attacks – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, August 10, 2026).
Centrist Democrats Dismiss Abdul El-Sayed as a Freak Radical. Do They Want to Win in 2028 or Not? – Nesrine Malik (The Guardian, August 10, 2026).
The Dangerous Corporate-Funded Morons of Third Way – Robert Reich (Common Dreams, August 10, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “Tonight Michigan Decides”
• Abdul El-Sayed: The Disruptor Michigan (and the Country) Needs
• “Our Country Right Now Is At a Crossroads”
• Jeff Waldorf: Quote of the Day – July 3, 2026
• Matthew Cooke on the Fallacy That Socialism “Doesn't Work”
• Jeff Cohen on How Obama’s “Corporate Liberalism” Led to the Rise of Trump
• A Deeper Perspective on What’s Really Attacking American Democracy
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• Democrat Talk on the Eve of Trump’s Return
• And So Here We Are

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Mariana Hernandez Debunks Mike Johnson’s Fear-Mongering Graphic

[Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives] Mike Johnson made a scary graphic so let me translate it for you, because fear only works when you don’t know what you’re looking at.

❌ ABOLISH THE SENATE – What people are actually talking about is reforming a body where a senator from Wyoming represents about 295,000 people with the same vote as one from California representing 19.5 million. Equal state representation was a compromise between large and small states at the founding. It made sense when the biggest state was 12 times the smallest. Today California is 68 times the size of Wyoming and they still get the same number of senators.

❌ REPLACE THE PRESIDENCY AND SUPREME COURT – Johnson’s graphic says “replace” but most of the actual proposals on the table are term limits and court expansion. Germany’s constitutional court judges serve 12-year terms. France’s serve 9. In the U.S. a president who wins by slim margins appoints judges who shape law for 40+ years with zero accountability. Clarence Thomas has been on the bench since 1991. The country has changed entirely. His seat hasn’t. Most functioning democracies put limits on this kind of power. The U.S. doesn’t.

❌ DEFUND THE POLICE – One of the most deliberately misrepresented phrases in modern politics. For most people using it, it means redirect some funding to mental health response and crisis intervention. Some activists did push for more sweeping cuts – but the mainstream policy conversation is about why armed police respond to mental health crises, homeless calls, and noise complaints. Finland requires police to train for three years and pairs them with social workers. Norway does the same. The U.S. had over 1,200 fatal police shootings in 2023. There’s room to ask whether the current model is the only option.

❌ OPEN BORDERS – There is no bill proposing this. There is no candidate running on this. The E.U. has open internal borders between 27 countries – a French citizen can drive to Germany without a passport and civilization holds. What people are actually proposing is a functional immigration system instead of one that costs billions, separates families, and still doesn’t work.

❌ AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS – Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. Gave legal status to roughly three million undocumented immigrants. Republican president. Republican policy. The word “amnesty” only became a political weapon when it stopped being useful to the party that created it.

❌ DEFUND THE PENTAGON – The U.S. military budget for 2024 was $886 billion. More than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and Australia combined. The Pentagon has failed to pass a full audit every single year since audits became mandatory in 2018. That doesn’t mean the money disappeared – it means the largest military in the world cannot fully account for how it spends almost a trillion dollars a year. Asking questions about that isn’t anti-military. It’s basic oversight.

❌ ABOLISH ICE – ICE was created in 2003 under the Homeland Security Act after 9/11. Before that, immigration enforcement existed under the INS since 1933. America handled immigration for 227 years without ICE. Since its creation the agency has been at the center of family separations, child detention controversies, and documented abuses in detention facilities – sometimes in coordination with other agencies. Questioning a 23-year-old agency is not the same as wanting to eliminate borders.

❌ MEDICARE FOR ALL – Canada has universal healthcare. So do the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Taiwan. The U.S. spends roughly $12,500 per person per year on healthcare – the highest in the world – and consistently ranks behind peer nations on outcomes like life expectancy and infant mortality. Americans die rationing insulin. They set up GoFundMes for chemo. They avoid ambulances because a ride costs over a thousand dollars. Every other developed nation figured this out.

❌ GREEN NEW DEAL – Climate infrastructure and jobs. The E.U. launched its Green Deal in 2019 targeting climate neutrality by 2050 with hundreds of billions in investment. China produces more solar panels than the rest of the world combined and leads in EV manufacturing. Germany gets roughly half its electricity from renewables. The U.S. is still debating whether climate change is real while its own cities flood, burn, and run out of water.

❌ GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OF CORPORATIONS – We bailed out the banks in 2008 with $700 billion in taxpayer money. Bailed out GM and Chrysler. Bailed out the airlines during COVID. Government picks up the tab every time a corporation fails but when anyone suggests the public should see a return on that investment, suddenly it’s communism. Meanwhile countries like Norway built a $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund from their natural resources and their citizens get world-class public services. Different model, same question: who benefits when public money is on the table?

Mike Johnson is counting on you not knowing any of this. Now you do.

– Mariana Hernandez
via social media
July 30, 2026

Friday, July 03, 2026

Quote of the Day

The Democratic establishment just lost New York by 31 points – and instead of asking why, they turned their fire on the left. Not on Trump. Not on the camps or the purges. On the socialists who just beat them.

Dan Goldman lost his primary [to Brad Lander] 65.8 to 34. Adriano Espaillat’s machine fell [to Darializa Avila Chevalier. Nydia Velázquez’s [preferred successor, Antonio Reynoso] lost to Claire Valdez. And the loudest voices in the party – James Carville, Jaime Harrison, Rahm Emanuel, David Paterson – spent the week attacking their own voters instead of the fascist movement dismantling the country.

Here’s the thing: they don’t fight the far right this hard. They fight the left this hard. And Democratic voters are finally seeing why – it was never about the country. It was about the donors.

– Jeff Waldorf
via social media
July 3, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
Clean Sweep for Zohran Mamdani-backed Socialist Candidates in New York’s Democratic Primary – Madeline Halpert and Sareen Habeshian (BBC News, June 24, 2026).
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Mamdani-Backed Pro-Palestine Democrats Sweep New York Primaries – Democracy Now! (June 24, 2026). New York Primaries Show Zohran Mamdani Has Lost None of His Political Magic – David Smith (The Guardian, June 24, 2026).
Mamdani Proves His Power With New York Endorsements, Plus More Takeaways From Tuesday’s Primaries – The Associated Press via WCAX-3 News (June 24, 2026).
Endorsement Wars: Rep. Nydia Velázquez Takes on Mamdani and the DSA – Peter Sterne (City and State New York, June 30, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Quote of the Day – June 24, 2026
• Liberal/Centrist/Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season
• When Democrats Undermine Democracy
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Ted Rall: Democrats Are Not “the Left”
• Ted Rall on What It Means to Be a Leftist
• Building Solidarity on the Left
• Kshama Sawant: Independent Working-class Campaigns Can Succeed

Image: Democratic congressional candidates Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier appear on stage with Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a Get Out The Vote rally ahead of New York’s primary election – Thursday, June 18, 2026, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (Photo: AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Monday, March 16, 2026

Marx and Class Struggle – Then and Now

The following was published this past Saturday by the satirical Montana Department of Propaganda Facebook group, the place “where trolls go to die.”

As you’ll see, though, there’s nothing satirical about this particular post, one that marks the 143rd anniversary of the death of German philosopher, social and political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx.

_________________

Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883.

And if you strip away all the Cold War propaganda and the cartoon versions people argue about online, what Marx actually did was pretty simple. He looked at capitalism and asked a question that polite society tries very hard not to ask.

Who is doing the work . . . and who is taking the money?

Marx spent years studying factories, wages, production, and economic crises. What he noticed was something workers had already felt in their bones for generations. The people producing the wealth were not the people controlling it.

Workers built the railroads. Workers mined the coal. Workers ran the machines. Workers produced the goods.

But the profits accumulated somewhere else.

Marx called this exploitation, not as an insult, but as a mechanical description of how the system worked. If a worker produces $200 worth of value in a day but is paid $80 in wages, the remaining value does not disappear. It flows upward to owners, investors, and shareholders. That difference is what Marx called surplus value.

And once you see that dynamic, you start noticing something else Marx talked about constantly: class struggle. Not the cartoon version where people run around waving red flags. The real one. The quiet daily struggle over wages, rent, healthcare, working hours, unions, and who gets to control the wealth society produces.

You can see it today just as clearly as Marx saw it in the 1800s.

Workers told there is no money for healthcare, but there is always money for war. Teachers told budgets are tight while corporations receive tax breaks. Communities told to tighten their belts while billionaires accumulate more wealth than entire countries.

And if you want to see how this plays out in real life, you do not even have to leave Montana.

In the early 1900s, copper miners in Butte, Montana were working some of the most dangerous industrial jobs in America. The mines were controlled by the powerful Anaconda Copper Mining Company, part of the copper trust that dominated Montana’s economy and politics. Miners worked brutal hours underground surrounded by toxic dust, cave-ins, and explosions while enormous fortunes were being built above ground.

Then came the catastrophe that ignited outrage across the state. In 1917, the Speculator Mine disaster killed 168 miners, making it one of the deadliest mining disasters in American history. Workers had been demanding better safety conditions for years. The disaster triggered massive labor unrest and strengthened organizing by groups like the Industrial Workers of the World. Workers were not asking for luxury. They were asking not to die underground for someone else’s profit.

The response from the powerful was swift. Labor organizers were harassed, jailed, and sometimes murdered. One of the most infamous cases was the lynching of union organizer Frank Little in Butte in 1917 after he criticized the mining companies and war profiteering.

And the fight between workers and power wasn’t only happening in the mines. It was happening in the streets too.

In the early 1900s, members of the Industrial Workers of the World fought a series of free speech battles in Missoula, Montana. At the time, local authorities and business interests were trying to shut down labor organizing by banning public speaking on street corners. Workers responded by deliberately violating the bans. One by one they stood on soapboxes and spoke about wages, exploitation, and labor rights.

Police arrested them by the dozens.

When the jails filled up, more workers arrived.

Some were beaten. Some were thrown in overcrowded cells. But the arrests only drew more attention to the cause, and eventually the city backed down. The workers won the right to speak publicly again.

It was one of the earliest free speech fights in the American West, and it came directly out of the labor movement.

That was class struggle playing out in Montana.

For decades the Anaconda Copper Mining Company had so much control over Montana’s politics that people joked the company owned “everything but the cemeteries.” Newspapers, legislators, and policy often moved in directions that protected corporate power while workers fought for unions, wages, and safer conditions.

Fast forward to today and the pattern still looks familiar. You see it in housing struggles in places like Missoula, Montana where working people face rising rents while housing increasingly becomes an investment vehicle for distant investors. You see it in fights over wages, healthcare, and public services. You see it when politicians promise tax cuts for the wealthy while teachers, nurses, and working families are told there just is not enough money for the things communities need.

Different century. Same conflict.

Marx did not invent those contradictions. He simply pointed at them.

And that is why more than a century after his death people still argue about him. Because Marx taught ordinary people to ask a dangerous question.

Who actually benefits from the way society is organized?

Once people start asking that question, the conversation changes. And that question has been haunting the powerful ever since.

– Source

Related Off-site Links:
Was Marx Right? It’s Not Too Late to Ask – Terry Eagleton (Commonweal, March 28, 2011).
For Karl Marx, Human Flourishing Is Inherently Social – Jan Kandiyali (Jacobin, October 12, 2025).
How Karl Marx Went From Student to Revolutionary – Encyclopædia Britannica. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism Wins the 2018 Deutscher Prize – Climate and Capitalism (November 25, 2018).
Reading Marx in the Corpse of Neoliberalism – Jason Koslowski (Left Voice, July 25, 2025).
Marx and Internationalism – John Bellamy Foster (Monthly Review, July-August 2000).
Love in the Time of Capital: A Review of Mary Gabriel’s Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution – Timothy Shenk (Dissent, Summer 2012).
To Struggle!: A Review of Marcello Musto’s The Last Years of Karl Marx – Mauricio Betancourt (Monthly Review, February 2024).

UPDATE: Karl Marx and Why Societies Stop Growing – Peter D’Autry (Medium, July 29, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Terry Eagleton: Quote of the Day – March 28, 2011
• The Biblical Roots of “From Each According to Ability; To Each According to Need”
• A Socialist Response to the 2008 Financial Crisis
• Heather Cox Richardson on the Origin of the American Obsession with “Socialism”
• Capitalism on Trial

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

A Socialist Agenda for 2026

Over at The World Socialist Web Site, Jerry White has written a piece in which he puts forward a concrete plan for the establishment in the coming year of a socialist agenda to counter the Trump administration’s fascist one. Following is an excerpt.

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As Christmas approaches and the year comes to an end, Trump administration officials are pointing to headlines about GDP growth and a soaring stock market to support the president’s absurd claim that Americans are enjoying the “greatest economy in the history of our country.” Behind these figures lies a sharply “K‑shaped” social reality: spectacular gains in wealth and consumption for the affluent, while tens of millions of workers confront stagnant real wages, mounting debt, mass layoffs, evictions, utility shutoffs and preventable deaths.

The past year has, in fact, seen a further concentration of wealth to levels that are unprecedented in modern history. Over the past year, billionaires in the US, consisting of 900 individuals, increased their wealth by a staggering 18 percent, to a record $6.9 trillion this year. Ten individuals alone increased their wealth by $750 billion. No figure embodies this obscene spectacle more than Elon Musk, whose net worth surged by over $500 billion in just two years, to reach $749 billion – more than the GDP of entire countries.

At the other pole of society, a recent AP/NORC poll shows that most Americans are concerned about rising prices for groceries, electricity and holiday gifts, with nearly half delaying major or non-essential purchases and searching for the lowest prices. Many are also racking up debt through “buy now, pay later” apps such as Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, PayPal, and Zip.

A Politico poll released in November found that more than a quarter of the population, 27 percent, said they had skipped a medical check-up due to cost, and nearly one in four reported skipping a prescribed medication for the same reason.

. . . There is growing anger in the working class, which possesses enormous social power. Supply chains, transport, healthcare and public services cannot function without labor. The strategic task is to convert widespread opposition into an organizational and political counteroffensive in 2026.

The World Socialist Web Site and the International Workers Alliance of Rank‑and‑File Committees (IWA‑RFC) call for the formation of rank‑and‑file committees in every plant, workplace and neighborhood to demand an immediate halt to permanent layoffs; full pay and benefits for affected workers; and shortened working weeks with no loss of pay to preserve jobs.

These committees should demand a ban on utility shutoffs and mass evictions; cancellation of predatory debt and an end to wage garnishment for student loan defaulters; and the reversal of public subsidies to billionaire projects in favor of massive public investment in housing, healthcare and services.

An industrial counteroffensive must be connected to a political struggle against the Trump administration – a government of, by and for the oligarchy. Trump is erecting a presidential dictatorship, the political form that corresponds to a society riven by staggering levels of social inequality. The vicious, fascistic campaign against immigrant workers, including Gestapo-style raids and the rounding up of entire families, is the spearhead for a broader attack on the democratic rights of the entire working class.

The Democratic Party has refused to mount any opposition, as it agrees with the main elements of Trump’s social program. Just one month ago, the Democratic Socialists of America mayor-elect of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, met with Trump at the White House, smiled for photos, and declared his readiness to work with the fascist president.

It is not a question of tinkering around the edges of a bankrupt economic and political system, but mobilizing the immense power of the working class in an irreconcilable fight against the entire corporate and financial oligarchy. This fight must be waged independently of – and in opposition to – both capitalist parties and the corrupt union bureaucracies, which serve as enforcers for the corporations and the state. The trade unions seek to divide workers along national lines and disarm them in the face of a historic offensive against jobs, wages and democratic rights.

The program of this counteroffensive must be the expropriation of the financial and corporate elite, the socialization of the major industries, and the use of modern technology to eliminate poverty, guarantee decent housing and healthcare and raise the material and cultural level of all humanity. The resources exist to guarantee full employment, housing, healthcare, and education for all. The question is: Who controls these resources – the oligarchy or the working class?

The answer depends on building a revolutionary socialist leadership, rooted in the working class and guided by a clear political program. The Socialist Equality Party and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees are fighting to develop this leadership and to organize the growing resistance of workers and youth throughout the world.

– Jerry White
Excerpted from “Christmas in America:
Staggering Wealth Concentration
and Deepening Social Crisis”
World Socialist Web Site
December 23, 2025

NOTE: Jerry White was the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for vice president in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Joseph Kishore was the party’s candidate for president. For the Socialist Equality Party 2024 presidential campaign’s official website, click here.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Matthew Cooke on the Fallacy That Socialism “Doesn't Work”
• No, Hitler and the Nazis Weren’t Socialists
• Martin Luther King, Jr. and Democratic Socialism
• “Hopeful and Grounded”: Omar Fateh’s Vision of Democratic Socialism
• Zohran Mamdani and the Future of the Democratic Party
• Socialist Equality Party: Quote of the Day – October 19, 2025
• A Timely and Important Conversation
• Mark Harris: Quote of the Day – August 10, 2023
• The Biblical Roots of “From Each According to Ability; To Each According to Need”
• Heather Cox Richardson on the Origin of the American Obsession with “Socialism”
• Bernie Sanders: Quote of the Day – June 12, 2019
• A Timely Reminder from Eugene Debs
• John Wight: Quote of the Day – June 2, 2017
• Jesse A. Myerson: Quote of the Day – July 31, 2016
• Something to Think About – December 14, 2011
• Jonty Langley: Quote of the Day – August 17, 2011
• A Socialist Perspective on the “Democratic Debacle” in Massachusetts
• Obama a Socialist? Hardly
• Obama, Ayers, the “S” Word, and the “Most Politically Backward Layers in America”
• A Socialist Response to the 2008 Financial Crisis
• Capitalism on Trial
• What It Means to Be a Leftist in 2025
• Ted Rall: “Democrats Are Not the Left”

Monday, December 08, 2025

Ed Felien on Why NYC Elected Zohran Mamdani, But Minneapolis Didn’t Elect Omar Fateh

Writer and publisher Ed Felien has a piece in the latest issue of Southside Pride that caught my attention, especially as I supported both Zohran Mamdani and Omar Fateh in their respective mayoral runs, even volunteering with the latter’s campaign here in Minneapolis.

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What happened with the November elections?

Everywhere there was a Blue Wave, a rejection of Trump and his policies. In New York City, an African immigrant, a Muslim, a Democratic Socialist, won the Mayor’s seat, but, in Minneapolis, an African immigrant, a Muslim, a Democratic Socialist, lost. Legislatures all over the country turned bright Blue, but, in Minneapolis, the City Council went from a nine vote DSA majority to seven DSA votes – just barely a majority. Why? What happened?

How could New York City, with all its ethnic prejudices and deep-pocketed special interests, elect Zohran Mamdani? And Minneapolis couldn’t elect Omar Fateh?

Well, first, Jacob Frey wasn’t Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo had a lot of baggage. He was abusive to women. He resigned in disgrace as Governor.

Money made a big difference. “All of Mpls,” a Frey-aligned PAC, raised nearly $1.6 million from landlords, developers, labor unions and the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. They used that money to run a non-stop smear campaign that had lots of mud and little substance.

Fateh responded by talking about rent stabilization, and a progressive income tax on residents who made more than a million dollars a year, and free college tuition for low income students. A lot of voters didn’t want to think about all that stuff, and they thought that with all that mud being thrown at Fateh—some of it would stick. They didn’t want to get themselves dirty, so they couldn’t vote for Fateh.

Early money made a big difference in the City Council races in Wards 5 and 7, and it cost the DSA-sympathetic bloc the two votes needed to override a mayor’s veto.

But money wasn’t enough to topple Aisha Chughtai in Ward 10, even though they outspent her three to one.

Another important factor that hurt Fateh’s chances was the discrediting of the DFL endorsement. The Frey campaign complained to the State DFL that there were more delegates registered than voted. Voting didn’t begin until late afternoon. Many delegates had left, exhausted by the delaying tactics of the Frey campaign, but there were still sufficient numbers to qualify as a quorum.

The Frey campaign knew how to count. They could see that they had no chance to get to 60% for endorsement, so they wanted to make sure no one else did either. They knew that when Jazz Hampton and DeWayne Davis were eliminated, their votes would go to Fateh. They tried to drag out the Convention with elaborate motions and vote-counting machinations. After the first vote for endorsement, Aisha Chughtai saw what was happening. She moved for a change in the rules that would allow visible counting of delegate’s hands to tally a second vote, after all candidates other than Frey and Fateh had been eliminated on the first ballot. If she wouldn’t have done that, the Convention would have had to adjourn at its designated time without an endorsement.

After the second ballot and the endorsement of Omar Fateh, the Frey campaign complained that DeWayne Davis had been unfairly eliminated from inclusion on the second ballot. If Davis had survived the first ballot with enough votes to qualify for the second ballot, he would most certainly have been eliminated in the second ballot, and his votes would have gone to Fateh on the third ballot. But that would have taken so much time that the Convention would have been forced to adjourn.

The Frey campaign took their complaint to the DFL State Central Committee. DFL Chair Ken Martin had just gotten promoted to Chair of the National Democratic Party. Tim Walz appointed Richard Carlbom as the new Chair of the State DFL. Carlbom had worked for Walz since 2007 as his Policy Director and fundraiser. Carlbom’s old firm, United Strategies, received $30,000 in consulting fees from the Frey campaign this year. Carlbom convened a committee that ruled that the Minneapolis DFL Convention was flawed. They revoked Fateh’s endorsement and put the Minneapolis DFL in receivership for two years, so none of their endorsements would be valid until reviewed by the State DFL hierarchy. Tim Walz then endorsed Frey for mayor.

The Minnesota DFL is a result of the merger of the Democratic Party and the Farmer-Labor Party in 1944 by Hubert Humphrey, so he could run for the U S Senate. The Democratic Party was conventionally liberal, and the Farmer Labor Party was radical and anti-capitalist. “Capitalism has failed and should be abolished. We mean to establish a Cooperative Commonwealth” – 1934 Farmer-Labor Party Platform. “I am what I want to be. I’m a radical. I’m not a liberal. We need a definite change in the system.” – Floyd B Olson, Farmer Labor Governor.

It seems the Democrats in charge of the State DFL wanted to break with the Farmer-Laborites in Minneapolis.

Maybe the radicals in Minneapolis should accept that challenge.

Maybe someone like Aisha Chughtai should challenge Walz for the DFL endorsement for Governor next year – articulating a progressive vision for Minnesota, and, in case she doesn’t win the DFL endorsement or the DFL Primary Election, maybe Robin Wonsley should run for Governor as an Independent in the Farmer-Labor tradition.

The State DFL has sown the seeds of discontent; they deserve to reap a harvest of nettles and thorns.

Jacob Frey was asked what he thought about the election, he said, “I do think the message that has been sent loud and clear is that we have to love our city more than our ideology.” In other words, we should accept the wisdom of our landlords and the Chamber of Commerce and forget about all that sharing and caring.

– Ed Felien
What Happened?
Southside Pride
December 2, 2025

The Wild Reed

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Memes of the Times

Friday, August 14, 2026

Rejecting “Cartoonish Conclusions” About Marxism and Dealing with the “Actual Architecture of Our Current Reality”

Thursday, August 06, 2026

Why the American Political Establishment Is Panicking

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Mariana Hernandez Debunks Mike Johnson’s Fear-Mongering Graphic

Friday, July 03, 2026

Quote of the Day

Monday, March 16, 2026

Marx and Class Struggle – Then and Now

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

A Socialist Agenda for 2026

Monday, December 08, 2025

Ed Felien on Why NYC Elected Zohran Mamdani, But Minneapolis Didn’t Elect Omar Fateh

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