FAQs
Q: Is B&R a socialist organization?
A: No. Many of our members are socialists, and we do draw elements of our ideas from the American democratic socialist tradition (and from many other progressive traditions). Ideas originally proposed by socialists were adopted by Progressives in the early 1900s and by FDR’s New Deal. The city of Milwaukee was governed by the Socialist Party for almost the entire period between 1910 and 1960 and was admired for its successes, its infrastructure, its parks, its educational system and many other quality-of-life measures. We do endorse the social contract inherent in: “From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs.” We interpret to mean that:
Everyone is expected to make a contribution to society, whether through paid employment or other activity in the home and community.
That contribution should reflect each person’s deepest potentials and deepest self. (This implies the need for social institutions and policies that make this possible).
In exchange, each person (or family) is entitled to the means to satisfy their core economic needs, irrespective of income level.
Q: Why do you refrain from explicitly calling yourself a “socialist organization”?
A: The term “socialist” carries with it so much baggage that we are leaving behind, that it can obscure what is new and different in our outlook. Also, we want to include people who are equally dedicated to our values, but may have different ideas about how best to achieve them.
Q: What is new in your outlook?
A: After thousands of years of political and social thought, there is little that is truly new. There is, however, a great deal that is forgotten. There have been eras in which political discourse was much richer and deeper than it is today.
In terms of policy, we do not seek “social ownership of the means of production.” Indeed, we believe that today and increasingly in the future, human capital, that is, our own knowledge and skills, constitute the most important factor of production. And we seek an economy in which each individual will gain fuller control over how their own human capital is utilized. In this, our focus is on overcoming alienated labor and the under-development and under-utilization of each of our potentials.
We seek a society that goes beyond The Job System – a system that divides the world into so-called “job creators” and the rest of us, “job seekers.” This Job System is not a fact of nature. It is a relatively recent development, largely the result of industrialization and productive processes that made it impossible for workers to own their own tools.
Industrialization brought enormous gains in productivity, but to attain work in an industrialized economy, it became necessary to sell one’s labor to those who owned the “tools.” This system, where we sell our labor to others, is at the essence of the socialist critique of capitalism. It is the alienation of labor, using “alienate” as a verb, meaning “to sell” (one’s labor). And it was best explicated in the early writings of Marx, most strongly his manuscript on “Alienated Labor." We don’t believe this problem of work that is not truly one’s own is solved by government ownership of “the means of production.” Our approach is not to eliminate job-work, but to shrink its presence in our lives.
To do this, we propose Guaranteed Basic Employment, a legal right to 30 hours of job-system work per week, with accompanying policy changes, such that core economic needs can be met through those 30 hours —- thus opening a space for “passion-work” — work so deeply one’s own that one would do it, even without pay. Over time, we see that balance between Job System work and passion-work shifting towards lives that are mostly passion-work.
With Guaranteed Basic Employment and a personal decision to live with modest levels of consumption, over time, passion-work can begin to relegate job-work to a smaller and smaller segment of our lives, and of our personal and social identity. This represents a total cultural transformation and will take decades to fully achieve, but much can be done in the immediate present.
We believe in "Bread, and Roses too." The term “Bread and Roses” comes from suffragists and labor organizers in the early 20th century. It was enshrined in a popular poem in 1911 and on the banners that emerged in the historic 1912 textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, led by immigrant women.
We identify with Emma Goldman when she said, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.”
Q: How do you differ from other progressive organizations?
A: Three elements stand out:
First, our commitment to Roses, is a commitment to Beauty and Creativity, to Meaningful Work, and to Sufficient Leisure to do the things that are most important in life, as people define it for themselves. Aspects of this can be found elsewhere, but for Bread and Roses, it is central.
Secondly, Bread and Roses, especially in our commitment to an Alternative American Dream, identifies strongly with the anti-consumerist, simple-living traditions of American society. These have existed in America from the very beginnings, though in very diverse ways, whether found in the Puritans, the Quakers, the writings of John Adams, or Thoreau, or utopian communities or counter-cultural movements of the 19th and 20th century.
Specifically, we seek a society that is “used-friendly” for Americans seeking to live an Alternative American Dream: A vibrant life, with economic security, but modest consumption, and limited involvement in “getting and spending.”
We see America today as a remarkably inefficient society, one in which meeting core needs can only be accomplished at very high levels of income. Changing this is at the core of our mission.
Third, we seek a transition to a new culture, one in which a person’s social identity and self-identity will not be sharply tied to how they earn their living. We envision a culture in which when we ask of someone “who are they?” we are not asking about their Job System roles, but about their passion-work, about their values and character and excellences.
Q: What else?
A: We hope to embody a new political culture, one in which dogmatism is replaced by experimentalism. One in which political identity in not defined in terms of policy approaches such as “free markets” vs. “Big government” but rather in terms of the depth of commitment to specific ideals. Thus, a deep commitment to overcoming poverty is far more essential that whether one favors Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs, or Richard Nixon’s earned income tax credit.
John Dewey wrote about the states as laboratories through which we could experiment and learn what worked and what did not. The same is true about innovation on the local level. The key is that the commitment be genuine, rather than merely a gimmick for turning away from solving key problems of social injustice.
Q: How do you see Bread and Roses evolving?
A: We are very much at an early stage. We are seeking to create something very new and different. We do not intend to create a multi-million person Third Party that will replace the Democratic or Republican Party. While we support State-level Bread and Roses Parties, we also support Bread and Roses candidacies inside the Democratic Party. We engage in electoral politics as the central realm of free-speech and political discourse in America. We seek to inject, through campaigns, new ideas, new policies and new leaders. But we seek to be nimble, and to draw on creative thinkers. We do not intend to spend five years developing a political platform. We appreciate the observation that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, and the wisdom of Oscar Wilde who commented that the problem with socialism was too damned many meetings.