Julia Conley
Aug 19, 2025
Launching a US Senate run to unseat five-term Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, oyster farmer Graham Platner on Tuesday made clear in his inaugural ad that beating the “fake” moderate also means taking on the power-hungry billionaire class that has helped keep her in power all these years.
The enemy that the vast majority of Americans and Mainers have in common, said Platner, “is the oligarchy.”
Socialists aren’t “progressive” liberals. They’re socialists. We don’t think the problem is the billionaires: we think the problem is capitalism itself. It’s private ownership of the means of production, which is foundational to liberalism.
This is petit bourgeois “job creator” talk. Those good solid people exploit their employees’ labor. This isn’t a moral judgement, it’s simply how capitalism works.