The Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara

   Sunkara doesn’t come off as the radical socialist, and he actually respects capitalism. He admires the Swedish approach, where enterprises like healthcare and education are considered to be the government’s problem. That leaves the people free to be productive without having to worry about college bills and doctor’s fees.

He writes about how new technologies led to the Industrial Revolution, and with that came a need for labor. What Sunkara doesn’t mention, however, is that the labor all came from ruined farmers. If England’s farmers hadn’t been unemployed, I wonder where the workers would’ve come from. Would the British have imported slaves directly into England? Would they have encouraged Russian Jews to emigrate? He’s right about the relation of the Industrial Revolution and socialism, because it was the English factory workers who began what we call organized labor.

Sunkara, on the subject of business, doesn’t deny that it’s needed. He also dislikes the Soviet model, when was in fact very poor in quality. He thinks that socialism should be more concerned with worker safety, ending discrimination, ending sexual harassment, and pollution control. If you look back to the early gains in worker’s rights, the first thing they accomplished was a fixed workday. Then came child labor laws. Then came fire safety. Fixed hourly wages came last.

I’m going to sum up with a story in the recent book Food and the City, recounted by the owner of a tortilla factory. He says “in Mexico, hen you go to the hospital, you pay upfront or they leave you to die in the street, but here in New York, they patch you up and then ask how much you can pay.”