Ignoring the Tyranny of the Majority.

• Author: Murray, Phil R.
• Position: The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality - Book review

The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality

By Bhaskar Sunkara

276 pp.; Basic Books, 2019

Bhaskar Sunkara is the creator and editor of Jacobin magazine, arguably the United States's most prominent socialist periodical. In 2019 he released The Socialist Manifesto to describe what he believes life would be like in a socialist society and how to achieve that society. I read this book in an effort to better understand what a socialist thinks.

Improving the world/ Sunkara looks at the world and recoils at its economic conditions. "What I am certain about," he writes, "is that we live in a world marked by extreme inequality, by unnecessary pain and suffering, and that a better one can be constructed."

There is no doubt that economic inequality exists. The nature of that inequality, whether it is of opportunity or of outcome, and whether it is a graver problem than poverty, are the vital issues. Hardship also exists, but the issue is whether there is more hardship today than there was in the past and whether life is more difficult in capitalist societies than in socialist societies.

Given this undesirable situation, Sunkara believes that democracy is the solution. He has in mind voting his preferred candidates into office and "extending democracy radically into our communities and workplaces." He sees few drawbacks to democracy. Will voters determine which restaurants will be in the community? Or whether Time, Sports Illustrated, and Jacobin are on the newsstand? But then, doesn't market capitalism already do this?

Consider how Sunkara thinks democracy will improve the workplace. In his first chapter, "A Day in the Life of a Socialist Citizen," he imagines that you take a job at a pasta sauce company. You earn $15 an hour bottling sauce and management respects you. After a year, your productivity rises 25%. You ask for a raise and get one, but it is only 13%. Emboldened by your accomplishment, you petition management to raise the pay of another worker. Management declines, but your effort leads to a union that's intended to improve conditions for all workers. However, the union is no match for the bogeyman of globalization; competition from producers in India reduces your company's profits and jeopardizes your job. Management responds by automating the production process, and automation is another bogeyman. Although you keep your job, you work more, lack input in company decisions, and envy earning 2% of what management earns. From this, Sunkara concludes that your life would be better without capitalism.

Labor and investment / The author defines capitalism as "a social system based on private ownership of the means of production and wage...