Do you see a problem in this country with poverty, homelessness, police brutality, systemic racism, etc. and you think something needs to change? If so, do you agree or disagree with the following statement?:
“The system isn’t broken. It was built this way.”
If you agree, you’re probably a socialist. If you disagree, you’re probably a liberal. Socialists want radical changes from the ground up. We want to tear the whole system down and create something new. Liberals want incremental changes within the existing system. The liberal idea of change generally happens from the top-down. Liberals see poverty, homelessness and police brutality as a bug in the system. However, socialists see these these cruel realities as a feature not a bug. Socialists see poverty as a necessary component of a functioning, capitalist society. We see homelessness and police brutality as organic byproducts of said society.
The reason why Bernie Sanders was so popular among socialists was because he talked about building a grassroots, multiracial, gender inclusive, working-class movement. “It ain’t about Bernie. It’s about us,” he said. The Sanders campaign wasn’t just about electing a president who will use the power of the Oval Office to implement change. It was about the possibility of electing a president who had our backs. It was about those of us on the ground level of the revolution having an ally in the top level of government. Because, in the socialist’s perspective, that’s how real change happens. It doesn’t come from the president signing a piece of a legislation. It comes from a populace who raises hell and partakes in direct action.
The 20th century, socialist thinker and criminologist Steven Spitzer said crime and deviance were an inevitable result of a society that creates what he called “social junk” and “social dynamite”. According to this social theory, capitalism creates surplus populations. There are some who simply cannot thrive in a harsh, economic system based on competition. It isn’t their fault that they fall into this category. Surplus populations exist because of the conditions they live under.
According to Spitzer, this segment of population can make the choice to either “explode” into social dynamite or give up and become “social junk”. Social junk is the homeless or the so-called “junkies” filled with hopelessness and despair, living on the outskirts of the city and doing nothing productive. They are the elderly who can no longer work but can barely survive. They are the cast-aside youth, forgotten and without a future. These surplus populations must be contained by society and they must be beaten down by police forces to maintain a thriving economy.
However, surplus populations don’t have to remain as social junk. They can also explode into “social dynamite”. They can join street gangs. They can make meth labs. They can commit crimes such as armed robbery or pick pocketing. They can riot and forcibly re-distribute wealth from Target, Auto Zone or the mansions of the wealthy. Surplus populations can revolt against the powers that be. All of these deviant acts transform surplus populations into what Spitzer called “social dynamite”. In this view, wagging your finger at the individual behavior of social dynamite misses the point. This deviance is inevitable in a society that puts profit before human lives. You can either join them in solidarity or you can take the side of police forces who act to repress this explosion. This is class warfare not the so-called “marketplace of ideas”.
If you’re a socialist, you want to see fundamental changes in how society operates. And you don’t believe these kinds of changes will ever come from a congressional hearing or from the office of the presidency. In other words, you can’t vote away capitalism. And in this view, real change doesn’t come from hiring more female CEOs or more black police officers. It comes from a worldwide, multiracial, gender inclusive, working-class uprising. In other words, real change starts with the kind of protests we’ve been seeing in every major American city, all 50 states, every continent except for Antarctica and over 60 countries since the killing of George Floyd.
If this makes sense to you, perhaps you should give up on your faith in the Elephant and the Donkey. Instead, you should raise your fist in solidarity with the workers of the world.
