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socialism
Your Socialist Grandfather Wants You to Fight for Economic Democracy
"The left" must get back to what was its original reason for existence—to fight for one-person, one vote democracy in the economic as well as political systems that govern our lives.
Sep 14, 2025
What’s the best way to pass on what you learned from more than a half century of left-wing doing, reading, writing, talking, and thinking?
Write a book. This was especially obvious to a retired union-activist-journalist-novelist grandfather. So, I did. Started writing a book tentatively titled Economic Democracy or No Democracy—An Anti Oligarchy Manifesto.
But then I actually listened to my grandchildren and learned they don’t read much. Instead, their pipeline to understanding the world is social media, mostly memes and videos, few of which exceed five minutes of attention span. At first, I argued with them. “You should read. Much more. Opens your mind to places, experiences, ideas …”
They try to be polite to grandpa, but there’s no mistaking the disinterest as cellphone-induced zombie (perhaps Zen-like?) eyes stare at a screen on the table instead of me.
How to respond? What to do? Decades of union organizing has taught me the importance of listening. Meeting people where they are at. Following their lead rather than trying to impose an "organizing template" on them. The most successful organizing drives are ones in which the "organizer" is a resource, an assistant in a process where the unorganized transform themselves into the organized. “The union is U”—an old slogan expressing a fundamental truth.
So, how to meet my grandchildren and other young people where they are at? How to say something they might consider listening to?
To achieve our goals, we must get rid of capitalist dictatorship in our economy and workplaces as well as oligarchy and authoritarianism in our political systems.
Perhaps these are questions someone two generations removed can never really answer. Certainly, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when I was the ages of my two oldest grandchildren, there was no way most "old people" were deemed worthy of even asking their opinion about war, politics, and life in general, let alone the really important issues of the day like sex, relationships, and feminism.
Still, it is important for a socialist and union elder to try passing on at least a few things that might help young people today learn from our experiences—successes and, most of all, failures. According to a TV documentary about elephants, the oldest females are the ones able to lead the herd to faraway, lifesaving watering holes in times of drought.
Surely this era of climate-change-ignoring-billionaire-emperor CEOs, "free-world"-supported-live-streamed genocide, Donald Trump and all the other authoritarian, about-to-turn-fascistic "world leaders" is at least the human political equivalent of a savanna drought.
We are in a crisis almost certainly about to get worse, and the young ones need our working-class socialism, union-movement elderly-elephant-like accumulated knowledge to survive. It is up to us whose tusks are falling out to do what we can to save the herd.
So, I taught myself how to make videos, created the Your Socialist Grandfather YouTube channel, and turned my book manuscript into 43 five-minute-or-so-long videos. I call it a video book, and the first few episodes are already live on YouTube with a new one added every second day.
Mostly the free videos are about creating a new inclusive language of economic democracy to replace the old socialist-Marxist-anarchist jargon that divided us and to understand capitalism as another in a long line of tiny minorities attempting to rule over the vast majority.
As Your Socialist Grandfather sees it, "the left" must get back to what was its original reason for existence—to fight for one-person, one vote democracy in the economic as well as political systems that govern our lives. To achieve our goals, we must get rid of capitalist dictatorship in our economy and workplaces as well as oligarchy and authoritarianism in our political systems. We must challenge capitalists’ claim to “own” our economies.
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Why It Matters That Male and Female Economists See the Economy Differently
In a significant new study published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Canadian economist Mohsen Javdani reveals that gender shapes views on power, equality, and inclusion in ways politics alone can’t explain.
Sep 14, 2025
Men and women might check the same box on election day, but they see the economy through different lenses. Just ask professional economists.
That’s the striking implication of a new study by Mohsen Javdani, associate professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, who surveyed over 2,400 economists across 19 countries. His research reveals that gender shapes how they understand economic issues in ways politics alone can’t explain—and warrants attention from policymakers and campaigns alike.
Javdani wasn’t just chasing numbers; he was looking for patterns in what economists believe and focus on. What he found: Women in the field (still underrepresented) are more likely to challenge traditional theories, promote equality and social justice, and push for a more inclusive economics. They tend to lean further left than their male colleagues, who are more often centrists or right leaning.
Probably no surprise there.
But here’s the twist: Even when the men and women shared the same political beliefs, they still interpreted economics differently. Right-leaning female economists, for example, were more likely than their male peers to question orthodox ideas and emphasize equality and inclusion. Javdani’s data suggests that as economists shift right politically, men abandon progressive views more quickly than women do.
Simply put, political labels often try to explain it all, but they miss a big piece: Gender is at work behind the scenes.
If right-leaning women are more receptive to progressive economic ideas than their male counterparts, then campaigns that speak directly to these women could unlock a powerful, untapped base for fairness and inclusion.
So, just pack the room with more women and expect the conversation to shift? Not so fast.
Javdani points to earlier research by Giulia Zacchia and others, showing that numbers alone don’t cut it, especially if the loudest voices still echo the same old male-dominated, market-centered dogma. Without structural changes and real efforts to open the field to new ideas, the issues women tend to bring to the table, like labor protections, inequality, and a more hands-on role for government, keep getting sidelined. New faces, same soundtrack. Female economists are out there pushing for redistribution, calling out bias, and demanding better, but if no one’s listening, the system stays stuck.
This isn’t just academic—what’s at stake is a real understanding of how the economy hits women, what they contribute, and why their labor keeps getting undervalued.
Javdani’s study breaks new ground by showing how politics can blur—but never erase—the gender gap in economic thinking. As he writes:
While moving rightward on the political spectrum is consistently associated with weaker support for progressive and equity-oriented positions, the decline is less steep among women. In several cases—particularly among right- and far-right-leaning economists—women remained more supportive of positions emphasizing inequality, structural disadvantage, and concern about corporate power.
For anyone trying to grasp how voters think about the economy, this research is very suggestive.
Javdani study samples only economists, but it is difficult to believe that the differences he documents do not extend far more broadly, and that if we want to understand economic opinions at the ballot box, we have to look beyond party lines and pay attention to gender.
A recent NBC News poll, for example, shows a wide gap between conservative young male voters and their liberal female counterparts on issues like financial independence, debt, and home ownership. And a new Gallup survey reveals meaningful differences in how male and female respondents view capitalism and socialism—with men viewing capitalism more positively than women, and the reverse for socialism.
But significantly, there are also large gaps among men and women in the same political categories. A March 2025 Pew analysis found Republican women were more than twice as likely as Republican men to see employer bias as a major cause of the gender wage gap (43% vs. 18%). Meanwhile, polling by Navigator Research shows American women are consistently more pessimistic about the economy than men, across race, income, and party lines. This stems from how women experience the economy day-to-day—focusing on costs like groceries, rent, and healthcare rather than abstract numbers like GDP or the stock market.
As a result, women tend to strongly support policies that directly ease these burdens, from paid family leave and the Child Tax Credit to cracking down on corporate price gouging.
Yet much economic messaging still treats the economy as gender-neutral—a costly oversight for anyone hoping to connect with voters. Javdani’s research points to a missed opportunity: If right-leaning women are more receptive to progressive economic ideas than their male counterparts, then campaigns that speak directly to these women could unlock a powerful, untapped base for fairness and inclusion.
Talking about economics like gender doesn’t matter is like playing checkers in a chess game. When you meet people where they actually are, not where your ideological playbook says they should be, you stop talking past each other, and start building something real, like an economy that works for everybody.
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Trump Goes Socialist—Well... Not Quite
Draining the swamp means ending corporate socialism, dismantling the apparatus that rewards big corporate contributions and empowers lobbyists arguing for big business over the interests of working people. Can either major party say they are doing that?
Sep 02, 2025
Socialism is alive and well, and it is growing, though maybe not in the way you expect.
The federal government provides more than $700 billion in contracts to private sector corporations. It also forgoes approximately $1.5 trillion in tax receipts to provide tax breaks for corporations to encourage job-creating investments, or so we are told. The net result is that corporations avoid paying their fair share while we, the taxpaying public, make up the difference.
As if that public support for private enterprise isn’t enough, now President Trump is taking it to the next level by acquiring 10 percent of Intel’s stock in exchange for the $8.9 billion the government is providing the company via the Chips and Science Act.
From one angle, this certainly is an improvement over the big bank bailouts, where the taxpayer took all the risk but received none of the upside once the banks became solvent again. But it also marks a new version of "too big to fail." After all, when Socialist Trump takes a stake in a corporation, he certainly can’t allow that corporation to fail and wipe out all that equity.
This transaction has sent alarm bells ringing in the executive suites of hundreds of corporations on the government dole. As one corporate lawyer put it, “Virtually every company I’ve talked to which is a regular recipient of subsidies or grants from the government is concerned right now.”
What are they so worried about? They are concerned that they will have to give something back to the taxpayer in exchange for our largess. But the frank admission of their fears also tells us quite a bit about how the corporate economy is actually structured. What Trump is laying bare are decades of corporate socialism—the use of taxpayer money to support and enrich private corporations and their stockholders (including the elected officials who continue to trade shares and profit while making laws and regulations that impact the companies in which they hold shares).
This is the real swamp that is siphoning wealth and stable jobs away from working people. This is the swamp that has caused so many voters to give up on government. This is the swamp full of quicksand, sucking politicians into the suffocating cycle of endless corporate donations. Draining the swamp means ending corporate socialism, dismantling the apparatus that rewards big corporate contributions and empowers lobbyists arguing for big business over the interests of working people, and neither of our two political parties is willing to do that.
By accident, Trump’s overt support for Intel creates an opportunity for the Democrats to help working people secure their jobs from corporate greed. If the Democrats had any guts—granted that’s a big “if”—they would offer legislation prohibiting any corporation receiving taxpayer funding or subsidies from implementing compulsory layoffs. Instead, all layoffs would be voluntary based on financial buyout packages, the kind that are often offered to upper-level white-collar employees. If you take taxpayer money, you can’t force taxpayers out of their jobs. That would certainly seem fair and just to working people, who are too often simply told to take a hike just to further enrich executives and Wall Street investors.
After all, what was the Chips and Science Act for? One big reason for this big investment, supposedly, was to bring thousands of new jobs to America. The Biden administration awarded Intel an $8.5 billion grant, plus $11 billion in favorable loans, based on Intel’s claim that it would create 20,000 temporary construction jobs and 10,000 more permanent manufacturing positions.
Meanwhile, since 1990, Intel has spent $152 billion on stock buybacks. It has chosen to use its revenues to buy up its own shares, rather than investing in the company’s future. Stock buybacks boost the prices of a company’s shares and enrich its top executives and major Wall Street investors. They do not increase the worth of the company. Hey, why not grab more taxpayer money, buy back more shares, and shove the gains in your pocket as fast as possible? Isn’t that what all those corporate donations are for?
And the jobs? Nothing is guaranteed. In fact, as the Chips Act was moving through Congress, Intel laid off 2,000 workers!
So, instead of giving 24-hour speeches that no one can remember, why don’t a few Democrats get up on the Senate floor and say something like this:
“Now that the United States taxpayers own 10 percent of Intel, let’s make our investment contingent on protecting the livelihoods of working people. Mr. President, tell Intel that during the life of our investment, the company will not be permitted to conduct compulsory layoffs. Only voluntary buyouts will be permitted. Join us in a bill that puts the protection of jobs of working people front and center.”
Shouldn’t all the Democrats and even the Josh Hawley Republicans get behind such job-protecting legislation?
But here’s what comes to mind after writing that sentence: Not a chance! Get real! What are you smoking? I can’t imagine the Democratic leadership embracing such a proposal. Their knees knock at any mention of policies that offend corporations and Wall Street.
That’s why we need a new party of working people. Not a third party, but a true alternative to the corporate-dominated Republicans and Democrats. That’s what 57 percent of the voters of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin really want. They want a party that is willing to put working people at the center of economic policy, rather than provide corporations with more taxpayer dollars.
Corporate sycophants will call that socialistic, as if enhancing the jobs and income of working people is a slur. Meanwhile, the super-rich have no problem building gold-plated castles of corporate socialism... to enrich themselves.
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