미국의 사회주의 운동이 지금 르네상스를 맞이하고 있답디다. 대체로 자본주의 총체적 위기의 시대에는 정치는 '중간'을 벗어나 극우 아니면 급진좌파로 가게 돼 있는데, 적어도 일부의 미국 청년층은 급진화의 물결을 타죠. 물론 여기에서 언급되는 '미국 민주사회주의자'들은, 전통적인 맑스주의적 시각으로 보면 '개혁주의' 정도 될텐데 일단 주요 생산수단에 대한 사회적 통제를 이야기하는 것만 해도, 적어도 미국적 맥락에서는 급진성이 대단하죠.
이 새 물결의 특징을 보면 좌파의 전통적 '노조 의존성'을 벗어나는 게 제일 두드러진 특징이죠. 남성, 중년, 백인, 고숙련, 정규직 조직 노동자들의 경우 오히려 "미국의 일자리"(만)을 보호하겠다는 트럼프 류의 극우들에게 간 이들이 적지도 않습니다. 그 대신 여성, 청년, 비백인, 반숙련/미숙련, 비정규직 노동자 (조직 + 미조직)의 경우, 극우 아닌 급진좌파를 택할 확률은 조금 더 높습니다. 총노동 안에서도 그들이 '비특권층'에 속하기 때문이죠. 특히 제조업 노동자들보다 훨씬 불리한 조건에 놓인 서비스업 노동자들의 급진화는 현저히 눈에 띕니다.
한국 좌파의 미래도 무엇보다는 "젊은 비정규직", 그들 중에서도 특히 여성의 조직화와 급진화일 것입니다. 진보정당들이 "젊은 비정규직 여성"에게 주도권을 안겨줄 수 있다면 그 당세 성장에 도움되지 않을까, 이런 생각도 해봅니다....
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TheMillennialSocialists
AreComing
By Michelle Goldberg
Opinion Columnist
June 30, 2018
In May, three young progressive women running for the state Legislature in Pennsylvania, each
endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won decisive primary victories over men heavily
favored by the political establishment. Two of the women, Summer Lee, 30, and Sara Innamorato, 32,
ousted incumbents, the distant cousins Dom Costa and Paul Costa, members of an iconic
Pennsylvania political family.
Elizabeth Fiedler, 37, announced her run three months after giving birth to her second child, and she
had a nursery in her Philadelphia campaign office so other parents could drop off their kids before
canvassing shifts. Talking to voters, she spoke of depending on Medicaid and CHIP for her kids’
health insurance, and of the anxiety she felt during two weeks when their insurance lapsed.
Lee was open about the more than $200,000 in student loans that have weighed on her since
graduating from law school, which gave her a visceral sense, she told me, of the “need for free,
quality education for everybody.” (An African-American woman running in a largely white district,
she ended up with 68 percent of the vote.) Innamorato spoke about how her father’s opioid addiction
had pushed her and her mother from the middle class. “I’ve lived the struggles of my district,” she
told me.
Elizabeth Fiedler, a first-time candidates who won in Pennsylvania's
primary for state representative. Tammy Bradshaw
Sara Innamorato, a Democratic Socialist, has won the Democratic Party's
nomination for State Representative in her district in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Jeff Swensen for The New York Times
Their races were part of a grass-roots civic renewal that is happening across this country, something
that is, for me, the sole source of optimism in this very dark time. Marinating in the news in New
York City, I’m often sick with despair. An authoritarian president of dubious legitimacy and depraved
character is poised to remake America for generations with a second Supreme Court pick. The
federal government is a festival of kleptocratic impunity. Kids the same age as my own are ripped
from their migrant parents.
Summer Lee defeated a longtime incumbent for a State Senate seat, in her
neighborhood of Swissvale, Penn. Mark Makela for The New York Times
But all over the nation, people, particularly women, are working with near supernatural energy to
rebuild democracy from the ground up, finding ways to exercise political power however they can.
For the middle-aged suburbanites who are the backbone of the anti-Trump resistance, that often
means shoring up the Democratic Party. For younger people who see Donald Trump’s election as the
apotheosis of a rotten political and economic system, it often means trying to remake that party as a
vehicle for democratic socialism.
Today, the victories of Lee, Innamorato and Fielder look like a portent. On Tuesday, a similar pattern
played out on a grander scale in New York City, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old
democratic socialist, shook the Democratic Party by toppling Joseph Crowley, a 19-year incumbent,
chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party and potential heir to House minority leader Nancy
Pelosi. Weeks before the election, Crowley’s own polling showed him up by 36 percentage points.
Ocasio-Cortez ended up winning by 15.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old political newcomer who upset U.S.
Rep. Joe Crowley in New York's Democrat primary.
Seth Wenig/Associated Press
She did it the same way as the women in Pennsylvania — by mobilizing scores of volunteers and
connecting with voters one-on-one. “There were folks on the ground there for months without any
national attention, talking to people at the subway stops,” said Zephyr Teachout, a candidate for New
York attorney general who endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in May.
Given the overwhelmingly Democratic makeup of her district, Ocasio-Cortez will almost certainly
win the general election. Neither Lee, Fiedler nor Innamorato is facing a serious Republican
challenger, so they are set to become legislators as well.
On Twitter, Trump has fantasized about a red wave that will sweep even more Republicans into
power in November and reinforce his rule. But the real red wave may be democratic socialism’s
growing political influence, especially among young people. “She really showed that you can run on
these issues and win,” Maria Svart, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, said
about Ocasio-Cortez’s platform, which includes Medicare for All, abolishing the United States
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and a federal jobs guarantee.
The D.S.A., to which Ocasio-Cortez belongs, is the largest socialist organization in America. Its
growth has exploded since the 2016 election — when, of course, avowed democratic socialist Bernie
Sanders ran in the Democratic primary — from 7,000 members to more than 37,000. It’s an activist
group rather than a political party, working with Democrats in the electoral realm while also
agitating against injustice from the outside.
Many of the D.S.A.’s goals, reflected in Ocasio-Cortez’s platform, are indistinguishable from those of
progressive democrats. But if the D.S.A. is happy to work alongside liberals, its members are
generally serious about the “socialist” part of democratic socialist. Its constitution envisions “a
humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning,
equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships.”
Talk of popular control of the means of production is anathema to many older Democrats, even very
liberal ones. It plays a lot better with the young; one recent survey shows that 61 percent of
Democrats between 18 and 34 view socialism positively. The combination of the Great Recession, the
rising cost of education, the unreliability of health insurance and the growing precariousness of the
workplace has left young people with gnawing material insecurity. They have no memory of the
widespread failure of Communism, but the failures of capitalism are all around them.
The D.S.A. alone neither claims nor deserves sole credit for the victories of candidates it endorses.
Many groups came together behind Ocasio-Cortez, including the populist Brand New Congress and
local chapters of the resistance group Indivisible. Nor was the D.S.A. the prime mover behind the
Fiedler, Lee and Innamorato wins, though it helped in all of them.
Indeed, while there’s a lot of talk about an ideological civil war among Democrats, on the ground,
boundaries seem more fluid. In Pennsylvania recently, I met with moderate suburban resistance
activists who’d volunteered for Innamorato, thrilled to support a young woman who could help
revitalize the Democratic Party.
Barry Rush is a 63-year-old retiree who used to vote for both Democrats and Republicans, but who,
horrified by Trump, now devotes himself full time to a liberal group called Progress PA. His main
concern is electing Democrats — “I’m gonna pull the Smurf lever till this gets fixed,” he says of
voting blue — and he knows that the Democratic Party needs young people. He was heartened by all
the millennials at Innamorato’s victory celebration: “There were 500 kids there!” he said. It gave him
hope for his grandkids.
The young members of the D.S.A., meanwhile, are hopeful because their analysis helps them make
sense of the Trump catastrophe. They often seem less panicked about what is happening in America
right now than liberals are, because they believe they know why our society is coming undone, and
how it can be rebuilt.
“The Trump disaster is that everyone feels threatened individually, and feels like they have to fight
Trump and fight this administration,” Arielle Cohen, the Pittsburgh D.S.A.’s 29-year-old co-chair, told
me as I sat with her and two other chapter leaders in a small coffee shop in the city’s East End. “And
socialists are saying, this has actually been going on for a long time. It’s not just Trump. It’s not just
who’s in office.”
There is a strange sort of comfort in this perspective; the socialists see themselves as building the
world they want to live in decades in the future rather than just scrambling to avert catastrophe in
the present.
Talking to Cohen and others from the D.S.A.’s Pittsburgh chapter, which has more than 620 members,
I was struck by the work they put into building community. On some days that public schools are
closed, the D.S.A.’s socialist-feminist committee puts on all-day events with child care and free
lunches. Like several other chapters, the Pittsburgh D.S.A. holds clinics where members change
people’s burned-out car brake lights for free, helping them avoid unnecessary police run-ins while
making inroads into the community. A local mechanic named Metal Mary helped train them.
Democratic socialist chapters have constant streams of meetings and social events, creating an
antidote to the isolation that’s epidemic in American life. “Everything is highly individualized, and it
is isolating,” Svart said. “People are very, very lonely. Suicide rates have gone up astronomically. And
we do create a community for folks.” This fusion of politics and communal life isn’t so different from
what the Christian right has offered its adherents. Such social capital is something no amount of
campaign spending can buy.
After Ocasio-Cortez’s win, Pelosi denied Republican claims that socialism is ascendant in the
Democratic Party. It’s hard to blame her for being defensive, since for generations “socialist” was
considered a slur, and it’s one that’s hurled at Democrats indiscriminately. But I think she’s wrong.
There are more candidates like Ocasio-Cortez out there, and the Democrats should welcome them. It
needs their youth and zeal and willingness to do the work of rebuilding the party as a neighborhood
institution. And they’re coming, whether the party’s leadership likes it or not.
In Pennsylvania, unlike many other states, being a state legislator is a full-time job. When I met Lee
a month after her victory, she was thinking about all she needed to learn once she gets to Harrisburg,
the capital. But she was also confident that she and others like her are ready to remake the
Democratic Party.
“If what we did here in Pennsylvania shows anything, it’s that we can do that,” she said. “We can go
up against the establishment. We can support our own candidacies. We can run positive campaigns.
We can do all that, and we can actually win. And then we can do it again, and we can do it
everywhere.”
I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@michelleinbklyn) and join me on Facebook.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion
Today newsletter.
A version of this article appears in print on July 1, 2018, on Page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Millennial Socialists Are Coming
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