It’s hard to conduct socialism without a proletariat, but it will be fun to try
It looks as though we may have a socialist city councilmember by the time you read this. This is a good time to admit what many of you already knew, I really enjoy a little socialism now and then. I mean, it’s not like it could ever get out of hand any time in the near future. We’re just talking about a little variety, a little mix in the same-old, same-old.
Given that the United States of America is essentially an oligarchy, there isn’t a whole lot of harm to capitalism that a single socialist on a city council anywhere can do. Even in advance of the certification of Kshama Sawant’s election victory (which could still be reversed or go through a paid recount for all I know now), I’ve been entertaining myself thinking about all the things socialists on city councils can’t do.
A socialist on a city council can’t, in fact, enact a $15/hour minimum wage. That scenario would be like Obama getting a really good health care plan passed, instead of the one we got.
A single socialist is not going to get either the Fremont statue of Lenin, or a statue of Trotsky, or a statue of any other deserving dead Marxist, located on the Seattle Municipal Tower plaza.
In the same vein, sad to say, meetings of the city council are not going to be opened with recordings of “The Internationale.”
Knowing how much posturing goes on in this city, I can definitely expect to see a day when the city of Seattle passes a resolution that declares housing a right, but it will only be a resolution.
Just like the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness was really the Very Long Nine Year Plan Resolving to End Some Homelessness followed by a One Year Whoops, Got to Hurry Up Plan.
Boeing Field and Boeing’s Seattle plants will not be confiscated by the city. Boeing workers who remain in Seattle after all the company’s business moves to South Carolina or Utah will still have the same economic freedom we have all had under glorious capitalism. They can invest their capital in glorious capitalist enterprises of great value to our shared economy and lift themselves out of their wretched state of dependency on the teats of other, pre-existing great capitalist enterprises such as those of Boeing. That’s how our system works. Or they can row a boat to Cuba.
OK, there may someday be collective farms, but I’ll bet they’ll be really little tiny collective farms, and the only livestock will be goats. All we ever get to raise around here is goats. Why is it always goats?
Even with all the goat farms, call me a pessimist, I don’t expect any goat milk vouchers.
We aren’t going to get us any permanent revolution or such things of that nature, because our proletariat still don’t even know they are proles.
It’s really hard to conduct socialism without a proletariat, I’ve noticed.
What you can expect around here, this being Seattle, is for everyone to look at the next guy, expecting them to be the proletariat: “Oh me? No, no, not today. No, you go right ahead and be the proletariat today.”
The city’s ownership of the roads will not be expanded to ownership of the construction companies that maintain them.
The tunnel will continue being built.
One thing I think a socialist on a city council can do and do well — and that’s proven by just being there and acting like a normal everyday socialist — is show that having someone on a city council who doesn’t follow the usual party lines and comes with a different outlook won’t end life in this city as we know it.