socialism

Socialist gets fired for his political beliefs

socialism
Published on

(This is old news, as it happened in October of last year but still instructive.)

Michael Italie was a sewing machine operator at Goodwill Industries in Florida, who also ran for mayor of Miami on behalf of the US Socialist Workers Party. A few days after he appeared on a televised debat with the other candidates for mayor, he was sacked:

On Oct. 22, a sewing-machine operator named Michael Italie was fired by Goodwill Industries, the network of nonprofit groups best-known for collecting and selling used clothing and furniture in order to provide job training for the disabled. Among Goodwill’s lesser-known functions is to supply low-cost contract labor to the federal government. Italie’s job was to sew U.S. Navy jackets in Goodwill’s Miami plant. The factory had been humming since Sept. 11; to meet the surging demand for American flags, it had gone on a 24-hour production schedule.

At 5 p.m., half an hour before the conclusion of his 10-and-a-half-hour shift, Italie’s supervisor called him into the personnel office, where he was greeted by the plant’s head of security. “Because of your views of the U.S. government, which are contrary to those of this agency, you are a disruptive force and cannot work here anymore,” he said, according to Italie. “Take your things and go.”

Italie does indeed have a view of the U.S. government that is unconventional, even hostile: As a member of the Socialist Workers Party, he favors creation of a “workers’ and farmers’ government” in the United States along the lines envisioned by Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, and Leon Trotsky. (The Socialist Workers Party began life in 1928 as a Trotskyist splinter from the Communist Party U.S.A., but over the past 30 years the venerable blood-feud between Leninists and Trotskyites has faded.) “We don’t advocate violence,” Italie told Chatterbox. “Violence is rooted in the capitalist system.” (He really does talk like that.)

According to the above Slate article this politically motivated firing was completely legal. I find that disturbing. In my view employers should never be able to fire their workers for what they do outside work (apart from criminal activities like
theft or rape).

We Won!

Dutch politics, Pim Fortuyn, Socialistische Partij
Published on

Just came back from the SP election party. As it looks now, we’ve more or less doubled our seats in Parlement, from five seats in 1998 to at least nine, possibly ten now. In Amsterdam we got just short of eleven percent of the votes, which was incredible.

Apart from us, the other big two winners were the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) who got 26, setting the record for most sears won by a new party in an parlementary election and the CDA, who went from 29 to 43 (!) seats, becoming by far the biggest party, followed by the LPF. The big losers were the three government parties PvdA, from 45 to 23, VVD, from 38 to 23 and D66, from 14 to 8. The other left wing party, Groen Links also lost one seat, going from 11 to 10 seats. Also “losing” big was Leefbaar Nederland, who once were thought to win as much seats as LPF did now, but who now got only two seats, the result of their principled decision to kick Fortuyn out of their party.

So what does this all mean? Is this a move to the right, as television pundits repeated constantly? Or is there more to it?

I think there is. This was not as much a move to the right as it was a punishment of a coalition which managed to lose almost all voter sympathy over the last two years or so. People were sick and tired of Paars, of the way the three coalition partners stifled debate and wanted something new and exciting, something that would break open debate again. At first this was Leefbaar Nederland, but with the entry of Pim Fortuyn, he became the crowbar which forced open Dutch politics. In my opinion, only he was able to do it, because the other alternatives, like CDA were seen as part of the Den haag establishment or like my own party SP and Groen Links, but also the Christenunie too much of a fringe party. There has always been a tradition of new parties doing well in elections when established parties became too arrogant (D66 started out that way) and LPF fitted in nicely. What is new is the margin with which they won, probalby explained by the combination of revulsion of Paars, the charisma of Fortuyn as well as the populistic message he brought of simle answers to complex problems.

It’s tempting to ask what would’ve happened if Fortuyn was still alive. Personally I think his party would’ve become even bigger as I think a lot of people who would’ve voted for him saw what a nitwits the rest of the party were and voted for others. The CDA, the christendemocrats profited from this, picking up Fortuyn voters as did the VVD perhaps, not as much in winning voters from them as in stopping losing voters to them. PvdA otoh and also Groen Links were I think damaged by the witchhunt against the left after Fortuyn’s murder, losing votes to CDA and LPF. For the SP, it mattered less, we stayed mostly out of it. The fact that we nearly doubled is also a sign that it wasn’t just a battle of left versus right wing parties.

I had intended to speculate about possible coalitions now as well but a) it’s late and b) I’m not
entirely sober anymore so I’ll save it till later.

Election Day

Dutch politics, Pim Fortuyn, Socialistische Partij
Published on

It’s finally election day and the polls are predicting that 90% of the twelve million people who can vote, will vote today. Which is an unheard of turnout. The previous two parlimentary elections, in 1994 and 1998 had an turnout of about 78 and 74 percent respectively [1]. According to News Planet at 15:45 42 percent of the voters had already voted, compared to just 38 percent in 1998. This included your humble narrator. I of course voted for the party I’m a member of, the SP and will be at the election party later this evening. How much of a party it will be after everything that happened this week is anybody’s guess.

And the same goes for the results of the election. With Fortuyn’s death it’s uncertain of the people who said they were going to vote for his party will still do so. On the one hand, some people may do so as a sign of respect, of grief and sympathy. On the other, many people are wondering whether voting for the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) without Pim Fortuyn is a sensible idea. Since Fortuyn’s death, the other LPF parlementary candidates have emerged from the shadows into the full glare of the media and are now seen for what they are.

I posted yesterday about how Peter “chairman-for-a-day” Langendam ranted about the leftie conspiracy against Fortuyn, but his is just the tip of the iceberg. Two other parlementary candidates made even worse remarks:

First there was porn king Eberhard who said the following in an somewhat incoherent
rant [2] about immigration:

“In 2015 is Amsterdam een negroide moslemstad, dan is de laatste oorspronkelijke bewoner neergestoken op de Zeedijk door iemand met een getinte huidskleur”.
(“In 2015 Amsterdam will be a negroid Muslimcity, with the last original inhabitant stabbed on the
Zeedijk by somebody with a tinted skincolour.”)

Then there was the horsebreeder Wiersma, whose views [2] were just as nuanced:

“Het biologisch fenomeen doet zich nu voor dat de meest succesvolle ondersoort bij de mensen;
het europese ras in aantal met rasse schreden achteruit gaat.”
(“The biological phenomenon now occurs that the most succesful human subspecies; the european race declines rapidly in number.”)

Not good for a party already suspected of being a platform for extreme rightwing, even racists views. No wonder both are already chucked out of [2] the party and will leave after the elections.

[1] Source: http://www.sp.nl/nieuws/kamer98/uitslag.stm
[2] Link leads to a Dutch language site

What I fight for

posts interesting only to me, socialism
Published on Leave a comment on What I fight for

This was quoted at Avedon Carol’s weblog, which is required reading for anybody wanting a liberal perspective on US politics. The three paragraphs below I’ve taken from this article because they express eloquently how I feel about being a Socialist.

The first thing we stand for is freedom, not just the freedom to speak our minds, but the freedom to act on our beliefs. The freedom to worship as we see fit, or not to worship anything at all. The freedom to have any kind of relationship we want with other consenting adults, be it political, financial, or sexual. The freedom to serve our country, whether it be in the military or as a public servant, or not to serve it at all. These freedoms are not exclusive to a particular race, religion, or group of people, they belong to everyone.

The second thing we stand for is responsibility, not just for ourselves and our well-being, but for the well-being of the community at large: from the local school district, the nation, to the world as a whole. We must recognize that we are more than just entities unto ourselves, but a part of a vast and complex world, and that everything we do affects the world we live in in some way, and to use the freedoms we so greatly value to ensure that future generations will be able to have that freedom.

And finally, but most importantly, we stand for the truth, the truth above all; the truth of our vision and our desire to make a better world not just for ourselves, but for our enemies, even when they can’t or won’t see it. Our enemies are blinded to the truth by their ignorance, and by their arrogance, viewing the battle itself as the truth, seeking one enemy after another for no other reason than to justify their existence and manipulate others into supporting them. What we stand for is something greater, and we should never forget that no matter how hard we fight.

The above is not complete by a longshot, but it does express two core beliefs of mine, the belief that we have both rights and responsibilities as individuals and the belief that the truth matters. If “my side” wins by deceit, by foul means, we won’t have won, we’d just become our enemies.

Related to this, earlier this evening I posted the following to Usenet, about what I think is the core of true socialism:

The whole point of socialism is that power is not in the hands of a small clique or a single dictaror, but in the hands of the people, i.e. everybody.

You can follow the teachings of Marx and Engels and all the other great socialist thinkers all you like, but without that one crucial point, you’re not socialist. The liutmus test for any country that calls itself socialist is whether people are free to disagree with socialism without fear for their life.

Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Castro’s Cuba, Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China never were socialist. Any party that talks about the Vanguard of the Revolution leading the Poor Oppressed Masses (who cannot possibly free themselves, the poor sods) is not a socialist party.

The revolution can not be directed top down, it will come bottom up.