Israeli forces are launching more and more incursions into southwest Syria in recent days. Having launched about 450 incursions during all of 2025, that number has been met and nearly exceeded already in 2026, despite the year being barely half over. Multiple new raids were reported again this weekend across both Quneitra and Daraa Governorates. […]

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I’m fan of Jesse Spafford.

His views aren’t mine, exactly, but there’s lots of overlap, and he’s extraordinarily sharp thinker. One small example of Spafford-at-his-best is his response to arguments like those made by libertarian philosopher Michael Huemer (and discussed here). Huemer thinks a government taxing your income to finance a welfare state is like a mugger who plans to spend the money in your wallet on charity. In both cases, maybe the theft can be justified if the purpose is morally urgent enough, but both are theft, and are therefore morally guilty until proven innocent. The fact that the particular gang of muggers that finances the welfare state is a particularly large and powerful one that calls itself a “government” and has considerable public support is neither here nor there. People are just people, and if it’s wrong for random people to use force in particular way, it’s equally wrong for a “government” to do so.

Spafford points out in response that an argument of the same type and with the same intuitive weight as Huemer’s Charity Mugger argument could be constructed about the use of force by property-owners. He imagines a case where a cruise ship docks on an uninhabited and hitherto undiscovered island.

The passengers are excited to spend the day exploring the island, but, before they have a chance to disembark, one passenger runs to the end of the gangplank and declares, “Sorry, but I have decided that this island is for my personal use only! I forbid any of you from setting foot on it — unless, of course, you pay me $50 and take off your shoes before getting off the boat.”

When the first passenger in line ignores this edict and walks onto the island, the declaration-issuer’s friends rush over and seize the “trespasser” and begin binding her wrists and ankles. She struggles a bit, but after they spray sunscreen in her eyes, she stops resisting and is carried back onto the ship and locked in one of the cabins until she agrees to stay off the island.

All the points Huemer makes about the Charity Mugger and the tax collector seem to apply to the passenger who decides the island is his and a “legitimate” property-owner. If we wouldn’t accept the passenger’s behavior, why should we accept the behavior of a “legitimate” property-owner asserting the same rights over particular bits of the world?

Perhaps taxation and property-ownership (even the individual ownership of toothbrushes!) are both illegitimate across the board and we should just live in what Roderick Long calls the “Grab What You Can World,” where no one ever gets to stop anyone from using anything. That sounds like an awfully chaotic world that certainly wouldn’t have be able to sustain a functional enough economy to keep several billion human beings fed and housed, but perhaps the collective misery of that world is what Justice requires.

Alternately, we could conclude that, since no sane person wants Grab What You Can World and hence “No Coercion” is not really an option on the table in these debates, the question is always which distribution of resources we want to be enforced by monopolistic institutions of some sort (whether “governments” or just “property-owners who recognize one another’s claims”). In order to answer that question, we need to think through substantive questions about fairness—in other words, about what share of society’s resources each of us deserves.

Both Spafford and I are start from a commitment to egalitarianism (the claim that, in some important sense, we all have equal claim). More specifically, while the devil’s in the details, we’re both sympathetic to a smaller family of views called luck-egalitarianism, which holds that the thing we should be trying to equalize is what the Marxist philosopher G.A. Cohen called “equality of access to advantage.” Roughly, inequalities are unjust to the extent that they trace to factors outside of the control of whoever ends up with the short end of the stick.

This is one of the most important reasons that I’m a socialist.

By "socialism,” I have in mind an economic system where democracy has been extended from politics to economics through collective ownership of the means of production. Whether the Soviet economy, for example, counts as a deeply flawed form of socialism or a pseudo-socialism depends on how you understand “collective ownership.” In theory, Soviet state enterprises were collectively owned by the public as a whole, but you could argue that this was a legal fiction and really they were the property of the ruling bureaucracy of the one-party state.1

Eighteen years before the Russian Revolution, the Irish republican socialist James Connolly wrote an article arguing that whether state ownership counted as socialist depended on who owned the state:

Socialism properly implies above all things the co-operative control by the workers of the machinery of production; without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not Socialism…2

I think that’s a respectable position. I’ve never been too hot and bothered, though, about the semantic dispute about how strictly we should define the word. If you want to parse “collective” ownership loosely enough that the Soviet economy would count, I’m happy enough to just accept that and express my position by saying that I advocate a very different form of socialism. That’s the rhetorical position that my co-authors and I take in our forthcoming book The Blueprint: How Socialism Could Work in the Real World, where we lay out what we think an economically viable and politically desirable form of socialism might look like in the twenty-first century.

In that book, we argue that our kind of socialism, in which the “commanding heights” of the economy would be directly publicly owned and the remaining market sector would be composed of internally democratic, worker-owned firms partnering with nationalized banks, would be desirable (among other reasons) because it would more closely realize egalitarian ideals than even the gentlest and most social-democratic versions of capitalism.3 (Note: It wouldn’t perfectly realize those ideals. It would better realize them.) In other words, we follow socialist tradition in thinking of socialism as a way for society to organize production, and thinking that one of the reasons it would be better to organize production that way is that it would lead to a better distribution of consumption.

Spafford argues in a new essay that this way of mapping the conceptual terrain doesn’t work. He writes:

With a slate of socialists having recently won numerous Democratic primaries across New York City, there has been a renewed surge of public interest in socialism. However, there is quite a bit of confusion and disagreement about what, exactly, socialism is. For some, the term “socialism” denotes systems of authoritarian control like what existed in the USSR under Stalin or China under Mao. For others, “socialism” refers to the present-day Nordic countries with their expansive welfare states. In this post, I aim to clear things up a bit by, first, explaining what socialism is not—controversially suggesting that a large portion of self-described socialists are actually wrong about the nature of socialism. I will then briefly offer a positive alternative account of socialism.

He then quickly covers the the same points we just went over in his own way:

Most generally, socialism is aptly described as an economic system that predominately involves social—as opposed to private—ownership of the means of production (i.e., the land, factories, and tools that are used to make all the things we consume). However, there are different ways of understanding social ownership, which, in turn, give rise to different conceptions of socialism.

On one interpretation, to own the means of production is to have control rights over them. Thus, the defining feature of capitalism is that private individuals—i.e., capitalists—get to decide how all the land, factories, and tools are used and, by extension, what gets produced. By contrast, a socialist society would wrest this control from the capitalist class and hand it over to the public, giving all members of society democratic control over what gets produced and how. Exactly how this would work is an open question; perhaps voters would elect an economic planning board or perhaps they might vote on certain production decisions directly. However, at the end of the day, what is produced must be a function of society’s democratic will. Call this the democratic conception of socialism.

My general impression is that most self-described socialists endorse this democratic conception. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve seen any other view defended in popular discourse.

He himself, though, doesn’t buy it for two reasons.

First, there is the tyranny of the majority problem. Suppose that the majority decides to direct production in a way that is to their benefit but impoverishes or otherwise harms the minority. Or perhaps the minority fares reasonably well in absolute terms, but the majority directs the bulk of the social product to themselves, thereby producing significant inequality. According to the democratic conception, such a society would still be a socialist one. However, this outcome would be anathema to most socialists.

Granted, this objection is not decisive, as a proponent of the democratic conception might maintain that “socialism” is strictly a descriptive term that is not intended to have any normative implications. Thus, socialism might be either good or evil depending on how the majority exercises its democratic will. However, I suspect that few self-described socialists would want the goodness of socialism to be contingent in this way.

All I can say on this last point is that I don’t share his suspicion. I think most socialists think, and have good reasons to think, that strict-definition socialism will lead to good results, not that “socialism leading to bad results” would somehow be definitionally incoherent. (Probably many also think, as I do, that democracy is valuable in itself and not just because it leads to good results.) At any rate, whichever of us is right about what most socialists think, speaking for myself I’m certainly not committed to the incoherence claim. In fact, the idea that it’s definitionally incoherent—that socialism is good by definition, so any “socialism” that led to bad stuff must really not be socialism after all—sounds pretty silly to me.

I said above that the USSR under the reign of Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, and their associates—a regime that committed any number of genuinely horrifying atrocities—could be counted at “socialist” under a loose but not entirely crazy definition. (Again, if we want to talk that way, I’d just say it’s a very different form of socialism than the one I advocate.) But I also think it’s reasonable to define our terms in a stricter way that would exclude it.

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Anti-socialists typically roll their eyes at the stricter definition because they suspect socialists who offer it of playing “No True Scotsman” games to save socialism from evaluation through inconvenient historical evidence. I don’t think that’s fair, which is why I brought up the James Connolly passage. (Connolly is chronologically safe from any suspicion of trying to No True Scotsman his way out of the verdict of history.) But if we start saying that the goodness of socialism shouldn’t be “contingent,” the anti-socialists’s point starts to look pretty reasonable.

To be fair, when Spafford talks about “goodness,” he seems to mean less all-around goodness than the specific goodness of fulfilling egalitarian ideals. So, let’s talk about that. Remember, these were his examples:

Suppose that the majority decides to direct production in a way that is to their benefit but impoverishes or otherwise harms the minority. Or perhaps the minority fares reasonably well in absolute terms, but the majority directs the bulk of the social product to themselves, thereby producing significant inequality.

So, we could imagine a really advanced socialist society—something way beyond the socialism of The Blueprint, maybe an economy that had moved beyond markets or even money, where some sort of participatory, decentralized, democratic planning bodies decided both what would be produced and how it would be allocated to individual consumers. Now, imagine that a really grotesque, virulent form of racism takes hold, and the planning bodies decide that all black and Jewish citizens are only allowed to pick up half as many groceries as Aryan citizens at the decommodified state distribution centers. If there are still collectively-owned restaurants of some kind in this society, we imagine that they all put “Whites Only” signs in their windows.

Would this severe violation of egalitarian ideals within the context of a democratically collectivized economy (indeed, in our version of Spafford’s case, a democratically collectivized economy that had transcended the commodity form, so it would meet the strictest definition of socialism I know of) be a form of *non-*socialism? I have to say that sounds like an absurd result to me.

I certainly don’t think this scenario would play out under socialism, but that’s an empirical prediction grounded in an analysis of why Jim Crow, Naziism, etc., happened in the real world and what sorts of material conditions I think would or wouldn’t be likely to lead to similar things happening in the future. If I’m trying to make the case for socialism to someone whose primary political concern is racial equality, the least interesting or reassuring answer I could possibly give them about why I don’t think this scenario would come to pass under socialism would be “because then it would no longer count as socialism.”

Here’s Spafford’s second reason for resisting the idea that socialism means collective ownership and democratic control of the means of production:

Even if proponents of the democratic conception were willing to bite this bullet and allow for minority-impoverishing socialisms4, they face an even bigger problem, namely, that the democratic conception implies that all existing democratic states are socialist in character—a result that would render socialist demands trivial.

How’s that?

To see why this is the case, consider how production decisions might be made in a socialist society. Presumably, there is no way for the mass public to make every production decision, e.g., how many pencils should be made relative to coat hangers, shoe soles, and brushes for electric motors. Rather, some degree of delegation will have to happen such that there is a class of planners tasked with making production and allocation decisions—but where those planners can be recalled if the voting public disapproves of their choices. Most plausibly, this public control would take the form of elected representatives pledging to either preserve the status quo by leaving the current slate of planners unmolested or bring about reform by either replacing the planners or modifying their decisions directly. While there might be other ways of achieving democratic control of the means of production, the just-described arrangement seemingly has to qualify as an instance of such control, i.e., of socialism.

So far, so good. It’s very different from the version of socialism Sunkara and Beggs and I advocate, but I’m happy to grant that what he’s describing—basically, appointed state planning bodies overseen by an elected government—would be one of the many forms that collective democratic control of the means of production might take.

However, the just-described system is also the one that already governs every existing (representative) democracy.

This is a confusing claim! I’m writing my response to Spafford, for example, on a MacBook that I seem to recall purchasing from a wildly profitable private company that manufactured it on its own initiative, rather than from a state-owned enterprise carrying out the directives of a planning office run by appointees of the elected government. When I finish the essay, I’m going to schedule it to post Sunday morning on the privately-owned Substack platform, and then I’m going to drive into town to sit at a privately-owned coffee shop and drink some coffee while reading a book published by a privatized, for-profit publisher.

So, what does Spafford mean?

He writes:

In any such democracy, there will be a group of people who are legally tasked with making production and allocation decisions. Granted we call these people “capitalists” rather than “planners,” but they serve an identical function, namely, deciding what to produce with society’s resources as well as how to carry out that production and how to distribute the resultant product. And, while they also don’t collaborate in the way that we might imagine a socialist planning board collaborating (as each capitalist has been delegated their own slice of the means of production to manage), one can imagine the paradigmatic socialist planning board dividing up labor in just the same way across a similarly large group of planners. In fact, such a division of management is plausibly unavoidable, as the alternative of collective, deliberation-based management seems infeasible given a suitably large economy. Thus, strictly speaking, the current day-to-day management of any capitalist economy is compatible with the democratic conception of socialism.

There is, I think, a logical leap here. If, under System 1, X performs “an identical function” that Y performs under System 2, that doesn’t mean that System 1 just is System 2, especially when that judgment of the function being “identical” is happening at this level of abstraction. Under feudalism, local lords might act as judges in disputes between their peasants and generals when it was time to mobilize for war. But the existence of judges and generals to fulfill the same functions in capitalist nation-states doesn’t make modern liberal capitalism a form of feudalism. It seems to matter a lot, when trying to figure out what’s the same and what’s different about the two systems, that the feudal lord assumes these functions merely by virtue of his hereditary relationship to the land, whereas judges and generals in liberal capitalist democracies are appointed to these positions by a separate state power. Similarly, what seems most relevant when comparing the form of democratic socialism Spafford described above to what happens under capitalism is that the capitalists derive their ability to decide what’s produced and how it’s distributed not from being appointed by and responsible to a democratic government but just by virtue of having enough money to buy the means of production. That’s not a small distinction!

Spafford continues:

But what about the element of democratic control that socialism requires? This element, too, is present in most existing democratic countries. As noted above, in a socialist economy large enough to require the delegated management of production, i.e., planners, democratic control will take the form of the public being able to vote to recall those planners and have them replaced (most plausibly by electing representatives to implement the recall). But note that this form of control already exists in practically every democracy! After all, if the voting public is unhappy with how the means of production are being managed, there is nothing preventing them from electing a slate of representatives who will oust the current managers of the economy and replace them with individuals who will change what is produced or how production is carried out.

This could take the form of anything from a democratic transition to socialism to a democratic decision to take away the means of production from the existing private owners and gift them to new private owners.

Starting with the second option, let’s ask a simple followup question:

Would this be a one-time shakeup, analogous to a new feudal king who, having taken power in a particularly bloody war, executes every single local lord and creates an all-new nobility (so the descendants of the new lords he creates will then have hereditary rights to the land and the serfs working there)? Or is the idea that each new owner will be chosen by the state?

[Jesse Spafford's Substack

What Socialism Is (and Is Not)

With a slate of socialists having recently won numerous Democratic primaries across New York City, there has been a renewed surge of public interest in socialism. However, there is quite a bit of confusion and disagreement about what, exactly, socialism is. For some, the term “socialism” denotes systems of authoritarian control like what existed in the …

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13 days ago · 4 likes · 4 comments · Jesse Spafford](https://jessespafford.substack.com/p/what-socialism-is-and-is-not)

If the latter, so we have a new system where private individuals are chosen to run the means of production on their own accord (rather than carrying out the directives of a planning agency) and they extract private profits in the usual way, but rather than getting to sell it to new owners or pass it on to heirs, each next owner is decided by the state, that sounds like a substantively new and interesting economic arrangement that we could all have fun arguing about how to classify. (Would it be a radically mutated form of capitalism? Or would it be something new, neither capitalist nor socialist?)

On the other hand, if we assume that the state-selected owners will now have full ownership rights and were able to dispose of their property as they saw fit, and the next owners got their ownership rights from standard market mechanisms, then I would agree with Spafford that what we’re imagining would still be the system we’re living under, not because there’s any sense in which we’re already living under a system of democratic control of the means of production, but because we’re living under plain old standard-issue capitalism now and we’ll continue to do so in this scenario.

On the other hand, if what we’re talking about is not democratically reassigning the means of production to different capitalists but a democratic transition to socialism, then two points seem relevant.

First, whether representative political institutions existing suffices to give voters the ability to transition to socialism is a vastly bigger and more complicated question than Spafford’s discussion suggests. (In the U.S. context, for example, any attempt to sweepingly nationalize the means of production would surely be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. And even if it weren’t, the current owners of the means of production would surely turn to extra-constitutional attempts to keep their economic power rather than meekly accepting their expropriation. That doesn’t necessarily mean that that the transition to socialism would be violent (plenty of coups around the world have been defeated peacefully through overwhelming mass noncompliance, for example), but it does mean that it’s hard to imagine getting all the way to socialism without some sort of constitutional crisis.

Putting all that aside, though, even if the public does have the capacity to use existing political institutions to seize control of the means of production, that doesn’t actually mean that it already has control of the means of production. To adapt another Michael Huemer thought experiment about property rights, if I find a hermit living by himself whose only weapon is a spear he fashioned himself, and I have a gun, then I have the capacity to seize control of the spear. That doesn’t mean that I control the spear already.

Spafford writes:

One can now see how the two objections to the democratic conception of socialism come together. The first objection worried that the conception allows for societies to be declared socialist even when the voting majority opts for production decisions that are anathema to self-described socialists.

Again, that it’s logically possible that a socialist society could do things that would be anathema to the values that make socialists prefer socialism to capitalism doesn’t strike me as any sort of reason to think we should adopt a definition that would rule this out a priori. Rather, socialists need to give substantive arguments that socialism wouldn’t play out this way. If they’re unable to do so, that should lower our confidence that socialism would be as good as socialists say.

And the second objection reveals that this isn’t just a fanciful hypothetical, but, in fact, is exactly what is happening now: voters already have democratic control over the means of production, and what they have chosen to do with them is nothing more or less than our current processes of production and the associated allocation of the social product. If voters wanted to do organize production and distribution differently, they could. Given that they have so far declined to take advantage of this opportunity, it seems hard to deny that this is because the status quo mode of production is how the majority likes to do things. But, surely, we are not now living under socialism. So, the democratic conception of socialism surely can’t be correct.

In other words, we already live under a regime of democratic control of the means of production, and this has in fact led to grotesque inequality—because it’s led to the perpetuation of capitalism! At the end of Spafford’s chain of reasoning, we’ve arrived at the conclusion that capitalism and collective democratic control of the means of production are fully compatible after all.

Pretty clearly, something somewhere has gone wrong. What?

First, it doesn’t follow from the fact that ordinary citizens of liberal capitalist democracies enjoy some degree of political power (severely limited by the disproportionate political power of capitalists!) that if we’re still living under capitalism, the majority must love capitalism. Many people vaguely assume capitalism is the only way things could be, of course (or know of no alternative but twentieth-century Stalinism), but even that’s not the biggest obstacle. Even assuming that there’s a peaceful democratic road that goes all the way from where we are to socialism using nothing but standard peaceful democratic left-wing tools like labor organizing, building mass socialist political parties out of the social base of that organized working class, and so on, every step along that road involves tremendous risks and pitfalls. As Vivek Chibber argues in effect in his excellent book The Class Matrix (which I discussed here), the most important stumbling block to this happening is not the enthusiasm of the masses, who love the share of society’s resources they have now and have no wish for more, but a variant of the same collective action problems that are also the most important obstacle of citizens of authoritarian dictatorships using their collective power to achieve political democracy. In theory, as a confident, militant, organized working class demanded more and more within the system, pushed up against its limits, etc., it should be easy to imagine support building for trying to find a way to make a leap beyond it. But as the entire history of capitalism shows us, the formation of a confident, militant, organized working class is the far bigger challenge.

Second, even if it were the easiest thing in the world to collectively organize people around maximally ambitious goals about how to improve their situation, the spear example above reminds us of the large distinction between having the power to take possession of something and actually having possession of it.

Let’s think about two versions of that case:

• Spear 1: I stumble on the hermit, who lives nowhere near civilization. I have a gun and the hermit only has a spear. If I took the spear away from him, there’s no one he could appeal to for help getting it back. Nevertheless, I choose not to take it.
• Spear 2: Let’s make the hermit a bit less of a hermit. He lives close enough to civilization to hike to the home of someone he pays to take care of the spear for him, with strict instructions on where to keep it and how to handle it until he comes back for it.

In Spear 1, I have a capacity to get my hands on the spear any time I want (by seizing control of it with my gun), just like in Spear 2, the hermit has the capacity to get his hands back on the spear any time he wants (by hiking back to retrieve it from his employee). That much we have in common. But in Spear 2, the hermit controls the spear. He exercises the control indirectly, through someone he’s entrusted to keep it safe for him, but he still exercises control. In Spear 1, there is simply no normal sense of “control” under which I am currently in control of the hermit’s spear.5

Spafford’s own alternative to the “democratic conception of socialism” is what he calls the “egalitarian conception of socialism”:

The obvious solution to this problem, then, is to define socialism in terms of outcomes rather than process. On this proposal, social ownership of the means of production is understood in terms of the public having a right to the social product rather than control rights over the means of production. Specifically, under socialism, each person has a right to an equal share of what has been produced. Thus, socialism is realized when and to the extent that there is an egalitarian distribution of resources.

Even if I’m right that Spafford’s case against the “democratic conception” fails, I should say something about why I find it more plausible than his “egalitarian conception.” There are, basically, three reasons.

First, terms like “feudalism,” “capitalism,” and “socialism” are normally (and, I think, appropriately) understood as the names of economic systems that either have existed already or might come into existence in the future. Socialism is the name of a system that (if all goes really well!) might one day replace capitalism. But the demanding form of egalitarianism that Spafford and I both subscribe to versions of is one it’s very unlikely that any economic system we could implement any time soon could fully realize.

The Soviet economy didn’t have entirely flat wage scales. Neither do actually existing worker cooperatives. It’s likely that any economically viable world of collective ownership and workplace democracy would, while distributing goods in a vastly more egalitarian way than capitalism, still violate luck-egalitarian principles to some extent. For example, people who would be particularly good at certain jobs might not be enticed to do them without a higher salary (or, if we’re imagining a marketless and moneyless form of socialism, “a greater consumption allotment”) than they’d get for many other jobs. To whatever extent this reflects unchosen differences in natural talents, their larger share violates luck-egalitarian principles.

Not only does it seem overwhelmingly likely that any post-capitalist system we could implement at this point in history would involve some degree of such violations, it’s at least an open empirical question whether we can ever completely bring economic practice into alignment with the ideal. This doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be our moral North Star, even if we never get all the way there. But it does mean that we have to choose between thinking a society is socialist “to the extent that” it fulfills the egalitarian ideal and thinking that socialism (and not just “some degree of socialism”) is actually achievable in material reality. The premise of my political life has been that it is, and I’m very reluctant to let that go without a very good reason.

Second, socialists have historically argued that one of the reasons socialist “processes” are desirable is because it would lead to more egalitarian “outcomes.” Karl Marx, for example, put it this way in his Critique of the Gotha Program:

Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one.

I worry that we would lose the ability to express thoughts like this in their clearest, most natural, and most forceful way if we redefine socialism as the realization of distributive egalitarianism, rather than saying that one good reason to be a socialist is because a socialist system of production will lead to a comparatively more egalitarian distribution.

Finally, socialists have historically been motivated not just by egalitarianism but also, and often at least as much, by other values like freedom from domination. (Read Citizen Marx.) You could argue that they were wrong to care about those other values but I’m skeptical. It seems to me that more than one thing matters.

We could, I suppose, define socialism as whatever best realizes all the ideals that are relevant to evaluating social systems—freedom, equality, material sufficiency, optimal conditions for individual flourishing—but then we really would be in the position of defining socialism as goodness, such that “socialism would bring more good things than capitalism” would become totally vacuous, like “salt is saltier than anything other than salt.”

Let’s not do that. There’s an excellent substantive case to be made for socialism. Let’s make it, and not just define the challenge out of existence.

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1

Even Leon Trotsky, whose official position was that the USSR remained a post-capitalist “workers’ state,” however much it had bureaucratically “degenerated,” sometimes hinted at this sort of analysis. In a memorable passage in his book The Revolution Betrayed (1936), he seems to suggest that Soviet public property was in practice at least much more the property of certain parts of the public than others.

”The Soviet press relates with satisfaction how a little boy in the Moscow zoo, receiving to his question, ‘Whose is that elephant?’ the answer: ‘The state’s’, made the immediate inference: ‘That means it’s a little bit mine too. However, if the elephant were actually divided, the precious tusks would fall to the chosen, a few would regale themselves with elephantine hams, and the majority would get along with hooves and guts. The boys who are done out of their share hardly identify the state property with their own. The homeless consider ‘theirs’ only that which they steal from the state. The little ‘socialist’ in the zoological garden was probably the son of some eminent official accustomed to draw inferences from the formula: ‘L’etat—c’est moi.’” [“The state, it is I,” a comment supposedly made by King Louis XIV.]

2

He goes onto say that state ownership not meeting this condition would be mere “state capitalism.” I left that part in ellipses because it strikes me as a pretty big further claim. Two people who agreed that state ownership without democracy would be something other than socialism can still reasonably disagree about what it is.

3

We’d think this even if we thought, which we are not, that social-democratic reforms are long-term sustainable if the workers’ movement never gets around to changing the economic foundations of society.

4

Again, I really don’t understand why this supposed to be any sort of bullet. Advocates of liberal capitalist democracy aren’t biting any sort of bullet when they acknowledge not just the conceptual possibility but the all-too-tangible reality that liberal capitalist democracies often institute unjust laws and continue to say that political democracy is better than political authoritarianism both as a matter of principle and because democracy provides a more promising terrain of struggle for movements to correct these injustices.

5

I don’t have necessary and sufficient conditions for “in control of” in my back pocket. But I do think any plausible definition would have to get these two cases right.

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The Guyana ferry disaster has set off a large‑scale search and rescue operation after the MV Barima went down late Saturday night near Iron Punt on the Pomeroon River. According to initial reports, the vessel was on its regular route from Georgetown to the north‑west district, with Port Kaituma as its final destination, when it issued a distress call shortly before midnight.

By the early hours of Sunday morning, authorities confirmed that 67 people had been rescued alive, including 15 children, in the first phase of emergency efforts. These survivors are the most visible sign of hope amid the unfolding Guyana ferry disaster, which has left dozens of passengers and crew still unaccounted for as operations continue.

Officials explained that the Guyana ferry disaster unfolded just before midnight, moments after the crew managed to transmit an SOS signal. Around 23:00, the Timehri air traffic control tower picked up the distress call, immediately activating national emergency response protocols and alerting maritime and air units.

Public Works Minister Juan Edghill stated that the MV Barima left Georgetown at approximately 15:15 on Saturday, carrying 116 passengers and 17 crew members. The scale of the manifest underscores the magnitude of the Guyana ferry disaster, with nearly 130 people on board when the ferry encountered trouble on the river.

At an urgent press conference held at 06:30 at Umana Yana, Minister Edghill and Prime Minister Mark Phillips announced a full government mobilization, alongside the Civil Defence Commission (CDC) and private‑sector partners. Phillips declared that “all of the Government’s efforts are being dedicated exclusively to search and rescue tasks in the area of the incident,” underlining the gravity of the Guyana ferry disaster.

Air and river operations in the Guyana ferry disaster

During the press briefing, journalists questioned the government about the limited number of aircraft deployed, particularly the use of only one helicopter from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF). Prime Minister Phillips responded that this was an operational decision by the military institution itself, and declined to confirm whether other official aircraft were out of service, a point that has already become part of the public debate around the Guyana ferry disaster.

For his part, Minister Edghill initially dismissed rumors of structural failures on board the MV Barima. He stated that there was no known hull breach and that, according to the cargo manifest, the ferry was not overloaded. He also emphasized that the vessel was equipped with 256 life jackets, two rigid life rafts and six inflatable rafts, in line with its safety requirements. These details will be crucial in the official investigation into the Guyana ferry disaster.

Private sector support has played a notable role in the ongoing response. Roraima Airways reported that at 01:36 in the morning, its BN‑2B Islander aircraft took off, piloted by captains Gerald Gouveia Jr. and Learie Barclay, reaching the Essequibo coast area in just 20 minutes. Once on site, the crew followed a search pattern over the affected zone.

From the air, the team managed to spot three distress flares and intercept an emergency beacon signal in the quadrant under surveillance. These coordinates were immediately relayed to the Coast Guard and land‑based coordination authorities, allowing rescue boats to be directed with precision toward groups of survivors. This kind of coordination between air and river units has been central to the first successes in the Guyana ferry disaster response.

Even as official information remains partial, early accounts suggest that the combination of timely distress signals, available safety equipment and rapid deployment of search units prevented the Guyana ferry disaster from turning into an even more catastrophic loss of life. However, with many people still missing, authorities stress that the operation remains in its most critical phase.

Families, information centers and the human dimension of the Guyana ferry disaster

Alongside river and air operations, the Guyana ferry disaster has prompted a broad mobilization of health and social services aimed at supporting survivors and their relatives. Health Minister Frank Anthony and Public Services Minister Deodat Indar travelled directly to the incident area to supervise medical care for those rescued from the water.

Medical teams have been deployed to stabilize hypothermic patients, treat injuries and manage shock and trauma, while coordinating hospital referrals for more serious cases. In the first hours after the Guyana ferry disaster, the priority has been to ensure that every rescued person receives immediate clinical attention and that their identities can be confirmed as soon as practical.

Because the official list of survivors has not yet been made public, authorities have set up three in‑person information centers in Umana Yana, Port Kaituma and Kumaka. Staff from the Department of Transport and Ports are stationed at these locations throughout the day, providing assistance, updated information and emotional support to families desperate for news.

For many relatives, these centers are the only channel to verify whether loved ones are among the 67 rescued, still missing or yet to be identified. The Guyana ferry disaster has therefore become not only a maritime emergency, but also a deeply human crisis, marked by hours of anxious waiting and uncertainty in these improvised hubs.

Officials have called on the public to avoid sharing unverified lists or rumors on social media, stressing that false information can intensify the suffering of families. Instead, they urge people affected by the Guyana ferry disaster to rely on the official information centers and government bulletins for accurate updates.

The government has also hinted that psychosocial support services will be expanded as the situation evolves, recognizing that the Guyana ferry disaster will have long‑lasting emotional impacts on survivors, relatives, rescue workers and river communities that rely on the MV Barima route for mobility and trade.

– Federación Internacional de la Cruz Roja
– Organización Internacional para las Migraciones

Geopolitical and regional context of the Guyana ferry disaster

Although fundamentally a national tragedy, the Guyana ferry disaster also has regional and geopolitical dimensions. Guyana’s river transport network is essential for connecting remote inland districts and border‑proximate communities, including areas that interact with Caribbean neighbors and cross‑border supply chains. Any major accident on a route like Georgetown–Port Kaituma disrupts not only passengers’ lives, but also flows of goods, fuel and basic supplies to isolated populations.

In the broader Caribbean context, the Guyana ferry disaster comes at a time when several countries are re‑evaluating maritime safety standards, fleet modernization and emergency response capacities, often with limited resources. The incident is likely to feed into regional discussions on ferry regulation, crew training, equipment requirements and coordinated search‑and‑rescue protocols.

Internationally, maritime incidents such as the Guyana ferry disaster can draw attention from insurance markets, development banks and multilateral organizations, which play a role in financing port infrastructure, vessel renewal and coastal monitoring systems. Depending on the investigation’s conclusions, Guyana may face pressure to upgrade safety frameworks or, conversely, receive support to strengthen oversight and rescue capabilities.

The Guyana ferry disaster also highlights the social vulnerability of riverine communities that depend on ferries for access to health services, education, markets and administrative centers. Ensuring that these populations are protected requires integrated policies combining transport, disaster‑risk management and social protection, an area where regional cooperation—in CARICOM and beyond—could become increasingly important.

Finally, how the government manages transparency, accountability and long‑term support for the victims will shape domestic and international perceptions of Guyana’s institutions. A thorough and credible investigation into the Guyana ferry disaster, coupled with tangible improvements in safety and support, could strengthen public trust. A weak or opaque response, by contrast, risks eroding confidence in authorities at a time when climate change and economic pressures are already testing the resilience of Caribbean states.

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A Socialist Action Journal No War on Cuba! By Barry Weisleder The Canadian Network on Cuba held its 12th biennial convention in Toronto, June 5-7. Some forty delegates, representing over 20 organizations, gathered at the downtown Steelworkers’ Hall to hear…

Read More The Red Review | Issue #34 (July 2026)

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The “progress” in last week’s Rome talks on Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon left the situation without any timetable, and as Israel continues to escalate strikes against southern Lebanon, all indications are that they’re prepping for an open-ended occupation of the region. Israeli newspapers are now reporting that the IDF is establishing another line of “permanent” […]

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Amy Acton Instagram

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Earlier this week, Ohio's Democratic nominee for governor, Amy Acton, made headlines as one of her party's most prominent political candidates to stake out an anti-trans stance, calling transgender girls "boys" and declaring that she would enforce Ohio's sports ban, which she cast as a matter of "fairness" and "kids' health and safety." The rebuke from her own party was severe. The Ohio Democrats Progressive Caucus, an official advisory group of the state party, issued a blistering page-long statement declaring that its members were now less willing to doorknock for her—before the post puzzlingly vanished shortly thereafter, prompting days of questions about why criticism of Acton's anti-trans stance had been scrubbed. Now, after prodding by Erin In The Morning, the caucus has revealed the answer: the Ohio Democratic Party itself demanded the criticism be removed, effectively barring those within the party from publicly critiquing a major candidate's transphobia.

The intra-party firestorm began shortly after the Supreme Court's ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J., in which the Court held that Title IX does not protect transgender athletes and that the law's protections extend only to "biological sex"—breaking with years of lower court precedent. Asked for her reaction by the Toledo Blade, Acton stunned voters in her own party by calling transgender girls boys and vowing to enforce Ohio's ban, endorsing its premise outright: "I do not support boys playing in girls sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor I will enforce and uphold the law," Acton said. "As a doctor, public servant, and a mom, I will always stand up for fairness and protect kids' health and safety."

Criticism was swift and severe—and perhaps the most prominent rebuke came from inside her own party infrastructure. The Ohio Democrats Progressive Caucus released a page-long statement declaring that its members would be less likely to knock doors for a candidate who had thrown trans kids under the bus in a state with some of the most severe anti-trans laws in the country. "ZERO Ohioans have become better able to buy groceries by keeping child sport players away from their favorite sport," the caucus wrote. "Our hearts break for those kids. Those who disagree with that will never vote—let alone doorknock—for Amy Acton." Its members were less willing to volunteer, the caucus said, "not out of malice, but out of the bad feeling in our chests." And it noted standing issues with the candidate not inviting LGBTQ+ voices into her campaign room: "Any one of us could have warned her of that natural consequence if any one of us had been in the room with her."

That post was quickly taken down, with no explanation. After several sources reached out to Erin In The Morning with inside information, we sent the caucus a request for comment. We never received an email back—but shortly after, the caucus posted publicly on Facebook, revealing exactly what had happened: the Ohio Democratic Party had demanded the criticism be removed. The caucus protested, appealed, but then relented. The criticism never went back up. Whatever the rule's official purpose, its effect in practice was unmistakable: the “progressive” arm of the Ohio Democratic Party is not permitted to publicly call out its own nominee's transphobia.

“A lot of people have been asking why we removed our statement addressing Amy Acton’s comments regarding transgender athletes. As a new caucus, we are still learning the ropes when it comes to being an internal part of the ODP. While operating outside of the party, we were afforded a bit more freedom with respect to our communications with the public. By posting a statement without going through the official approval process we inadvertently broke the rules we agreed to when we were recognized as an internal caucus,” stated the Progressive Caucus.

“We don’t necessarily agree with this policy and we are still negotiating how we can best comply with the party’s regulations while continuing to advocate for our members. However, despite our protests, ODP insisted that the post be removed and we follow procedure…. After deleting the original statement, we promptly asked about submitting the post for approval through the proper channels so that it could be reposted. At this point, ODP staff informed us that a meeting with Acton was on the table. After thorough discussion, caucus leadership determined this offer aligned with our goal to bring our message directly to her.”

You can see the full post here:

ODP Progressive Caucus explanation of removal

The news threatens to rock the party further, because the scandal is no longer just about the candidate. Acton called transgender girls "boys" and endorsed a sports ban; the party responded by disciplining the people who objected. The Ohio Democratic Party has now applied more pressure on its progressive caucus to quiet its criticism of anti-trans politics than it has applied on its own nominee to stop embracing them. One arm of the party endorsed discrimination and faced no visible consequence. Another arm objected and was forced into silence.

This is a moment worth marking for those who follow anti-transgender politics. Most state Democratic parties, even in deep-red states, have avoided endorsing trans sports bans. When Congress voted on a national ban early last year, just two Democrats supported it—members in swing districts held the line, and when the ban reached the Senate, not a single Democrat broke ranks. But there have been cracks. Gavin Newsom opened his podcast by telling Charlie Kirk that trans athletes in girls' sports are "deeply unfair." And in May, eight House Democrats crossed the aisle to pass a national forced outing bill—the largest Democratic defection on any standalone anti-trans bill of the modern panic.

The consequences of this shift could be severe. Some warn that a Ramaswamy victory would be worse for transgender Ohioans. But others see a deeper danger: an Acton victory built on anti-trans capitulation would teach Democrats everywhere a horrific lesson. It would spread the idea, through a party that has so far remained a relatively stalwart opposition, that embracing transphobia is what winning requires. That result could be more disastrous for transgender people than any individual right-wing victory. As long as trans people have an opposition party standing in unity against anti-trans policies, every ban, every restriction, every law remains reversible. But if enough Democrats come to see transphobia as acceptable—necessary, even—then trans rights could be eroded for a generation, with no mechanism left to reverse the losses, similar to what is currently happening with Labour in the UK. That is why, to those who understand the stakes, comments like Acton's likely read as a cancer on the party. And a candidate willing to throw transgender people under the bus to win has seemingly told every other minority exactly what their protection is worth when the polling gets tight.

In Ohio, this debate is no longer theoretical, but now is part of the political landscape, with a nominee who calls trans girls "boys," and a party apparatus that decided the real problem was the people who objected. The ODP got what it demanded. The post is gone. But the party has confused deleting dissent with resolving it. The caucus members who wrote "not out of malice, but out of the bad feeling in our chests" will not see that feeling go away just because a post was deleted.

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London Gaza protest gathers thousands demanding an immediate UK arms embargo on Israel and an end to Britain’s deadly complicity in Gaza.

Focus Keyword: UN Unveils Seven-Point Climate Roadmap at London Climate Actions Week

London Gaza protest calls out deadly UK complicity in Gaza genocide

London Gaza protest was the rallying cry in the British capital this Saturday, as thousands of people filled central London’s avenues to denounce Israel’s ongoing military assault against the Gaza Strip and to demand concrete action from the new Labour government. The mass protest called for an immediate end to the siege, which organizers say has already claimed more than 73,000 Palestinian lives since October 2023, and urged the United Kingdom to break with policies that enable the violence.

Demonstrators focused their pressure on incoming prime minister Andy Burnham, who is set to assume office on Monday, 20 July. From the streets, banners and speeches delivered a clear message: the London Gaza protest is not satisfied with rhetorical concern. Protesters demanded that the new government adopt a total arms embargo on Israel, insisting that Britain must stop supplying weapons and military components used to bombard a besieged and occupied population.

Social movements and campaign groups accused the UK of “directly funding” human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories by maintaining military and security cooperation with Israel. For them, the London Gaza protest is both a moral and political statement: no more public money, licenses or political cover for a state they accuse of carrying out genocide and apartheid.

Chants, placards and speeches linked Gaza’s suffering to the decisions taken in London, highlighting that export licenses, intelligence cooperation and diplomatic backing all contribute to prolonging the war. The London Gaza protest thus framed the new Labour government’s first major international test as a choice between continuity with past complicity or a decisive break in favor of Palestinian rights.

Key demands of the London Gaza protest and growing political pressure

At the heart of the London Gaza protest stood a central, non‑negotiable demand: that the UK impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, covering weapons, components, spare parts, and any form of military or dual‑use equipment. Protesters argued that as long as British arms and technology keep flowing, London remains complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza and the rest of occupied Palestine.

Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot played a visible role in the London Gaza protest, emphasizing the global growth of popular movements for justice and international accountability. Marching at the front of the demonstration, he carried placards denouncing impunity, colonialism and Zionist policies, and reiterated that solidarity on the streets is helping to shift global public opinion.

The London Gaza protest also turned its criticism toward the Labour Party’s recent record. Under outgoing prime minister Keir Starmer, Labour leaders were widely condemned by solidarity organizations for what they describe as “active complicity” in Israel’s campaign. Activists pointed out that limited sanctions targeting a few extremist Israeli ministers were cosmetic measures that failed to stop the continuous flow of British weapons to the occupying power.

Speakers stressed that simply condemning far‑right rhetoric in Israel while maintaining trade, arms deals and security cooperation is not enough. In their view, the London Gaza protest reflects a deep frustration with symbolic gestures, and demands binding policy changes that would directly affect Israel’s capacity to wage war on Gaza.

Among those present was veteran left‑wing figure Jeremy Corbyn, who used the London Gaza protest platform to urge the new government to cut military and economic ties that sustain what he described as an apartheid system. Corbyn assured the crowd that British grassroots movements will remain permanently mobilized until Palestine is fully liberated, and underlined that the street will not be silenced by legal persecution or smear campaigns.

Geopolitical context of the London Gaza protest and UK policy

The London Gaza protest unfolded at a time when the UK is experiencing acute internal tensions and mounting international scrutiny. Domestically, the incoming government faces a cost‑of‑living crisis, social discontent and widespread skepticism about the Labour leadership’s will to break with entrenched policies. Externally, Britain’s stance on Gaza has become a litmus test of its commitment to human rights and international law.

For many of those marching, the London Gaza protest is part of a broader wave of global mobilizations in cities across Europe, North America and the Arab world, pressing governments to respect International Court of Justice rulings, support ceasefire efforts and halt arms sales. The UK’s decisions carry particular weight due to its historical role in Palestine, its NATO membership, and its defense industry’s integration into Western supply chains.

The demonstration also reflects growing concern about the criminalization of pro‑Palestinian activism in Britain. Recent prosecutions and harsh sentences against Palestine solidarity activists, coupled with restrictive policing of protests, send a message that raising one’s voice for Gaza can come at a high personal cost. In that sense, the London Gaza protest is not only about foreign policy, but also about civil liberties and democratic space within the UK.

On a wider level, the London Gaza protest signals a shift in public opinion that could reshape Britain’s alliances and diplomatic posture. If pressure from the streets continues and expands, future governments may find it harder to justify unconditional political and military support for Israel, especially in the face of documented mass civilian casualties and devastation of civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

Finally, the protests feed into an ongoing reconfiguration of global alignments around Palestine, where states of the Global South, social movements and parts of Western civil societies increasingly converge in denouncing double standards. The London Gaza protest contributes to that realignment, underscoring that Britain’s choices on Gaza are being closely watched far beyond its borders and will shape its reputation in the Middle East and the wider Global South for years to come.

London, now. The National March for Palestine.
Three years of ongoing genocide — and the movement for justice and accountability, in Britain and worldwide, is growing louder and stronger @PSCupdates pic.twitter.com/QHym1es9vo

— Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) July 18, 2026

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Israeli settlers backed by armed forces scorch a mosque, raid homes and injure several Palestinians in attacks on the occupied West Bank.

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In a Le Monde op-ed, Oman's Badr al-Busaidi argues the West's decades-long policy of "containing" Iran was always misguided, and that the true threat comes from Tel Aviv. Al-Busaidi pushes for a new security order built around regional states.

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