My parents rented a small house in a good suburban school district for most of my life. I was given American social democracy to the extent to which it exists in this country — bastardized and reliant on property taxes, inherently exclusionary, of course. But I did have access to public goods, a safe environment to grow up in, food, housing, books, recreation, and all the other necessities to flourish as an individual.
These were opportunities that my parents and even some of my siblings — I’m the youngest of five and the only one born in the United States — didn’t have. That awareness was politicizing. It made me a socialist.
Socialists don’t believe people should be held hostage to accidents of birth. We believe in a society with equal respect for all, one that will bring to fruition frustrated Enlightenment values of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
But importantly, I think these “warm-and-fuzzy” goals have to be rooted in class antagonism.
Creating a society built around different values requires a revolutionary transformation of our socioeconomic order. These shifts, a radical extension of democracy into the social and economic realms, are not only desirable, but possible. The roadblocks to their implementation aren’t technical ones, like they’re often portrayed to be, but rather rooted in the political resistance of those who benefit from the exploitation and hierarchy inherent in class society.
