“There’s class war­fare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s mak­ing war, and we’re win­ning.” With all the right-wing hoopla about how Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma is wag­ing class war, you might be sur­prised to learn that War­ren Buf­fet said these words in 2006. The bil­lion­aire investor was acknowl­edg­ing 30 years of a widen­ing income gap – but I’ll go a step fur­ther. I believe that unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism is inher­ent­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and that human action can sig­nif­i­cant­ly democ­ra­tize our polit­i­cal sys­tem. That’s why I’m a socialist.

Unfettered capitalism is inherently undemocratic--but human action can significantly democratize our political system.

Cor­po­rate America’s assaults on work­ing peo­ple – seek­ing prof­its through off­shoring jobs, bust­ing unions, pay­ing politi­cians to slash cor­po­rate tax­es and dereg­u­lat­ing the banks – have ruined our econ­o­my. Mean­while, mil­lions of work­ers have been thrown from their jobs while unions are scape­goat­ed for man­u­fac­tured bud­get crises at the state and local levels.

The acci­dent of birth should not deter­mine the course of a person’s life. Gov­ern­ment expen­di­tures are an indi­ca­tion of a society’s pri­or­i­ties, and it is both eco­nom­i­cal­ly and moral­ly imper­a­tive to pro­vide a safe­ty net for those who suf­fer the most in a down­turn. With­out mas­sive pub­lic invest­ment in health­care, edu­ca­tion, infra­struc­ture and green jobs – which could be fund­ed by pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion of income along with a tax on finan­cial trans­ac­tions – our future is bleak. With high unem­ploy­ment and ane­mic demand, the econ­o­my will con­tin­ue to limp for­ward. Those lucky enough to have work will like­ly remain afraid to agi­tate for bet­ter conditions.

Right now, we need more jobs and bet­ter pay for less work. In the long term, ordi­nary peo­ple need more pow­er – through unions, work­er coun­cils and seats on the board in the work­place, and in pol­i­tics, through a pub­lic cam­paign finance sys­tem that pro­vides suf­fi­cient expo­sure to all can­di­dates. We need a polit­i­cal econ­o­my that allows every­one space and time for per­son­al growth and thought­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion in the deci­sions that pro­found­ly impact their lives.

I feel so strong­ly about these val­ues that I recent­ly quit my job as an orga­niz­er for SEIU to become the nation­al direc­tor of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca (DSA), which has its roots in both the Social­ist Par­ty of Eugene Debs, Nor­man Thomas and Michael Har­ring­ton and the New Amer­i­can Move­ment, a non­sec­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tion that grew out of the Amer­i­can New Left and whose founders were instru­men­tal in estab­lish­ing In These Times back in 1976.

DSA’s strat­e­gy is to push Amer­i­can pol­i­tics to the left by strength­en­ing social move­ments such as Occu­py Wall Street. Move­ments are the only force capa­ble of mak­ing elites respond to pop­u­lar demands. That doesn’t mean we ignore elec­tions. Among oth­er races, the orga­ni­za­tion is look­ing for­ward to help­ing social­ist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) win re-election.

I was raised in a union fam­i­ly that direct­ly ben­e­fit­ed from the kind of gov­ern­ment pro­grams that DSA fights to pro­tect and expand – like the GI Bill. As a bi-racial woman, I expe­ri­enced oppres­sion and learned that the world isn’t fair, despite what I was taught in school about the Amer­i­can Dream. When I attend­ed a DSA youth sec­tion event at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, I real­ized that the pat­terns I had seen all my life sig­nal struc­tur­al prob­lems. Cap­i­tal­ism, patri­archy, white suprema­cy – they are linked struc­tures of oppres­sion that must be dismantled.

Ana­lyz­ing these struc­tures is crit­i­cal to forg­ing a polit­i­cal strat­e­gy to chal­lenge cor­po­rate pow­er. But doing so is not the only rea­son I decid­ed to become DSA’s nation­al direc­tor. Some may argue that I should work in a more main­stream orga­ni­za­tion and ​“get more done,” but with­out a clear alter­na­tive to the Tea Par­ty nar­ra­tive, nation­al pol­i­tics will con­tin­ue to slide to the right. In the cur­rent cli­mate, even the most mod­er­ate reforms are red-bait­ed. We need a strong social­ist orga­ni­za­tion in the Unit­ed States to counter Repub­li­cans’ (and often Democ­rats’) dan­ger­ous buffoonery.

As 30 years of neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic destruc­tion come home to roost, more and more peo­ple are begin­ning to ques­tion the wis­dom of cap­i­tal­ism and becom­ing open to social­ism – DSA’s mem­ber­ship has grown 60 per­cent since 2003. I believe that some­day soon Amer­i­can politi­cians will stop fear­ing the s‑word, and start enact­ing sys­temic change.