Taxing the Rich Opens the Door to Democratic Socialism
California DSA will be hosting a zoom meeting on May 28 at 6:30 to provide an overview of the two progressive tax measures that will be placed before voters on the November state ballot. You will hear about recent tax the rich efforts in California, and speakers from the campaigns will provide updates. You will also have an opportunity to ask questions and get answers. Register here.
From the time of Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto to the present day, taxing the rich has been a central project of the socialist movement. Why?
As long as the capitalist class extracts surplus value from the labor process it will continue to grow richer at the expense of the working class. (See Piketty, R > G). Economic inequality has surpassed Gilded Age proportions. Progressive taxation is an essential means of clawing back some of the wealth created by the working class so that we may fund vital public services and provide the basis for a more egalitarian and democratic society. Campaigning for progressive taxes provides a direct opportunity to raise class consciousness, as the discussion naturally revolves around how inequality benefits the rich, hurts everyone else, and can be at least partly fixed with this solution.
As such, a tax the rich campaign opens the door to the next level of discussion: how capitalism works, and how democratic socialism can fix its problems.
A common thread
The other benefit of a tax the rich campaign is that it represents a common thread through just about every other issue and concern to DSA members. If you are working on issues like public transit, public education, universal childcare, public health and safety or social housing, none of these issues can be properly addressed without adequate funding from the state. Taxing the rich is pivotal to success in any of these areas.
If you are interested in electing democratic socialists, once in office they need more funding than currently possessed by the public sector. We shouldn’t be electing socialists to administer austerity, but that’s what usually happens, given the bad choices they face without progressive taxation to fund their work. The ‘electing’ part of local electoral work is also supported by a tax the rich campaign, because taxing the rich remains consistently popular, and when presented in cooperation with local DSA-endorsed candidates who are on board, it broadens their appeal as well.
If you want to stop the imperialist war machine of the US government in its corrupt alliance with private sector capital—including the current AI investment bubble that supports data centers, environmental destruction, and surveillance technology alongside new forms of mass death in other countries—we must wrest as much of that capital as we can out of the hands of the ruling class so that it doesn’t control these enormous sums to invest. Taxing the rich is a vehicle to do that.
If you wish the labor movement to become more militant, raising class consciousness can be transferable from the ballot box to the workplace. The working class has two methods to retrieve the capital it produces through the labor process: militant, democratic organizing unions that extract a greater share of the pie through collective bargaining, and political organizing to tax the rich. With socialist education as the nexus, each method can reinforce the other.
After November, more taxing the rich
We have created a Tax the Rich Working Group in East Bay DSA to work on the two state ballot measures that will appear in November before the voters. Similar groups have been chartered in other chapters. But our progressive tax work won’t be over with the election. Even if both measures pass, capital will continue to be bloated and the multiracial working class will continue to have needs that can only be met through other forms of progressive taxation, like increased corporate taxes and splitting commercial property off from residential property. After November we intend to turn to political education and legislative efforts along these lines. These will be key components of our ongoing May Day education and coalition-building project, reinforcing the idea of what May Day 2028 signifies in terms of a political economy for workers over billionaires.
If your chapter has not yet started working on the campaign here’s a chance to get going. Check out the campaign page on the California DSA website. Joining this work will engage the diverse activities of California DSA chapters within a unifying theme and effort. It will help us to stand alongside and uplift our allies in the labor movement and community in common struggle. And it provides the opportunity for pushing beyond reform toward revolution.
What: Online forum on taxing the rich in California
When: Thursday, May 28, 6:30 – 8 pm
Who:
Matthew Hardy, Communications Director, California Federation of Teachers
Doug Jones, Organizer, United Health Workers-SEIU
Fred Glass, Co-Chair, East Bay DSA Tax the Rich Working Group
