Democratic socialism’s appeal and its limits

When you’re a reporter, you shouldn’t get into the habit of being late, but on occa­sion, it has worked for me.

For exam­ple, one evening in October 1982, I had gone to the University of Kentucky to hear a lec­ture by Sir Harold Wilson, the social­ist for­mer prime min­is­ter of Great Britain, and I was run­ning behind — but so was he.

When I walked in, I had the plea­sure of meet­ing him in the foy­er out­side the lec­ture hall, where he was talk­ing with anoth­er man, whom I rec­og­nized at once and also greet­ed. That oth­er man was Michael Harrington, a promi­nent American social­ist, whose talk at UK I had missed a day or so before. But I had enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly read the news­pa­per cov­er­age of it, made notes, and clipped the arti­cle because I was intrigued by his ideas for a bet­ter, more just society.

I quick­ly became a follower.

I read sev­er­al of Harrington’s books, includ­ing The Other America, which has been cred­it­ed with inspir­ing the War on Poverty in the 1960s, sub­scribed to the social­ist pub­li­ca­tion In These Times, and joined the nascent polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion Harrington had found­ed in the spring of 1982, Democratic Socialists of America.

I was remind­ed of those days when I recent­ly met some young mem­bers of DSA in Winchester who were pleased to hear that I had been a mem­ber at the begin­ning, even though I was no longer a kin­dred spirit.

These days I call myself a Burkean con­ser­v­a­tive, but how I got here from there is anoth­er sto­ry for anoth­er day.

This col­umn is about demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, which is hav­ing a moment in American politics.

Socialism on the rise

The may­ors of New York, Zohran Mamdani, and of Seattle, Katie Wilson, are mem­bers of DSA. So are Democratic Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. DSA mem­bers are run­ning for local, state, and fed­er­al offices in Colorado, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

The best-known demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is nei­ther a mem­ber of DSA nor a Democrat, although the inde­pen­dent twice sought the Democratic nom­i­na­tion for pres­i­dent and got 46 per­cent of the party’s del­e­gates in his first attempt.

DSA began as a move­ment with­in the Democratic Party to move it to the left, and its recent suc­cess­es have raised alarms in the Democratic estab­lish­ment that the nom­i­na­tion of left­ists will cost the par­ty con­trol of Congress in this year’s midterms.

When DSA was found­ed in 1982, there were only about 6,000 mem­bers. Today it’s esti­mat­ed there are more than 120,000. That is only about 0.002 per­cent of the country’s 60 mil­lion reg­is­tered Democrats. But high-pro­file suc­cess­es, includ­ing Mamdani’s in New York, and can­di­da­cies, includ­ing Nithya Raman’s for may­or of Los Angeles and Janeese Lewis George’s for may­or of Washington, D.C., have many wor­ried that the par­ty will become iden­ti­fied in vot­ers’ minds as socialist.

Republicans have pushed that nar­ra­tive, exag­ger­at­ing the movement’s extrem­ism and its influence.

Although I am no longer an advo­cate for social­ism, I am annoyed that our despot­ic pres­i­dent has unfair­ly vil­i­fied demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism and con­fused it with com­mu­nism. He and his min­ions are cre­at­ing a red scare rem­i­nis­cent of those of the 1920s and 1950s.

First, let’s con­sid­er what demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism is not. It is not author­i­tar­i­an. In fact, its pur­pose is to extend democ­ra­cy from the polit­i­cal to the eco­nom­ic sphere by hav­ing more pop­u­lar own­er­ship and con­trol of the econ­o­my by work­ing class peo­ple, not nec­es­sar­i­ly, as is so often implied, by the state.

American examples

There have been, in my life­time, sev­er­al good exam­ples of this kind of demo­c­ra­t­ic own­er­ship and control.

Rural elec­tric coop­er­a­tives are the best exam­ple. They are util­i­ties that are owned by con­sumers of the elec­tric­i­ty and oper­at­ed by the own­ers’ elect­ed representatives.

The old Burley Tobacco Growers Coöperative Association, which should have been a mod­el for agri­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy in this coun­try in con­trast to a free mar­ket, was anoth­er suc­cess­ful exam­ple, although you won’t find many farm­ers who will admit it was socialism.

Farmers paid a fee to sup­port prices and con­trol sup­ply by pool­ing their prod­ucts that didn’t meet the min­i­mum agreed-upon price.

The Associated Press, for which I briefly worked in 2012, is anoth­er suc­cess­ful coöper­a­tive. It was estab­lished and owned by mem­ber news­pa­pers and broad­cast­ers who had the right to use its news cov­er­age, and the AP, in turn, had a right to use theirs.

There are also gov­ern­ment pro­grams that are exam­ples of social­ism, such as Social Security and Medicare. They are called enti­tle­ments because those who have paid a ded­i­cat­ed tax through pay­roll deduc­tions all their lives are enti­tled to reap the ben­e­fits of a pub­lic pen­sion, in the case of Social Security, or health insur­ance, in the case of Medicare.

One pro­pos­al by demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists is Medicare for All, which would extend the exist­ing pro­gram to cov­er peo­ple of all ages, not just those of retire­ment age.

Market social­ism and cap­i­tal­ism are not nec­es­sar­i­ly exclu­sive. Every econ­o­my, to some degree, is a mixed econ­o­my. There is no such thing as pure social­ism or absolute free enter­prise, and there nev­er has been.

Employee stock own­er­ship plans are a social­ist idea. So is par­tial union own­er­ship of busi­ness­es. The United Auto Workers, for instance, own more than 40 per­cent of Chrysler. Union or work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion on cor­po­rate boards of direc­tors is socialism.

Peter F. Drucker, a man­age­ment con­sul­tant, made the case in The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America, that the United States could become the first coun­try in the world to achieve Karl Marx’s goal of own­er­ship and con­trol of the means of pro­duc­tion by the pro­le­tari­at (the work­ing class) because American work­ers, through their 401k plans and oth­er invest­ments, already owned such a large share of the economy.

I’m not sure I would agree with that assess­ment any­more because, since his book was pub­lished half a cen­tu­ry ago, inequal­i­ty has widened to the point where a few hun­dred bil­lion­aires con­trol more wealth than the bot­tom half of America’s households.

Around the world

It is true that social­ists gen­er­al­ly want more gov­ern­ment involve­ment in the econ­o­my. They sup­port spend­ing more on wel­fare pro­grams for the des­ti­tute and dis­abled and nutri­tion­al pro­grams for hun­gry chil­dren and the elder­ly. They want hous­ing for the home­less, legal ser­vices for the poor, more mon­ey for pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pub­lic hous­ing, pub­lic trans­porta­tion and pub­lic broad­cast­ing, and even direct gov­ern­ment own­er­ship of some industries.

In Britain, where Wilson led the social­ist Labor Party from 1963 to 1976, what is now British Airways was owned by the nation­al gov­ern­ment, as were the rail­roads and the coal min­ing indus­try. All have since been pri­va­tized. However, social­ists, lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives gen­er­al­ly agree in sup­port­ing the National Health Service, which owns hos­pi­tals, pays doc­tors and nurs­es as employ­ees, and pro­vides free health care at the point of ser­vice. And the gov­ern­ment owns the BBC with­out inter­fer­ing in the con­tent of its radio and tele­vi­sion programming.

Since World War II, Britain, most of Western Europe and Israel have at times been led by social­ist par­ties and are often described as exam­ples of social democ­ra­cy, an ide­ol­o­gy with­in the broad­er social­ist move­ment that sup­ports grad­ual reform, gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion of the mar­ket econ­o­my, sup­port for orga­nized labor, and a strong social safe­ty net. They are democ­ra­cies like the United States that pro­tect free­dom of reli­gion and expres­sion, prop­er­ty rights, and oth­er lib­er­ties, not total­i­tar­i­an soci­eties like China or the for­mer USSR.

When I was in British Columbia, Canada, in ear­ly July, I learned that the social­ist New Democrats are the major­i­ty par­ty in its par­lia­ment and con­trol its provin­cial gov­ern­ment. I saw no signs that the beau­ti­ful, vibrant coun­try had become any­thing like North Korea.

And Seattle impressed me as a pros­per­ous city despite hav­ing a social­ist may­or and a pro­gres­sive city government.

It isn’t communism

Only a few days before my vaca­tion on the West Coast, how­ev­er, President Trump denounced demo­c­ra­t­ic socialists.

“These are hard­core, god­less com­mu­nists,” he said, and “the most seri­ous threat to our coun­try since its existence.”

I would argue that Trump’s extreme-right move­ment is the most seri­ous threat to our coun­try, at least in my lifetime.

He and his allies have silenced jour­nal­ists, evis­cer­at­ed pro­grams for the poor, waged unde­clared wars from Venezuela to Iran, threat­ened Canada and Greenland with annex­a­tion, alien­at­ed our allies, launched a cam­paign of ter­ror against migrants, sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed American pro­test­ers in the streets, weak­ened pub­lic health pro­tec­tions against dead­ly virus­es, spread dis­in­for­ma­tion on social media and the air­waves, inter­fered in elec­tions to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers, and incit­ed a dead­ly insur­rec­tion by ille­gal para­mil­i­tary groups with the inten­tion of over­turn­ing a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion Trump lost by sig­nif­i­cant margin.

I think it’s fair­er to describe Trump’s brand of Republicanism as fas­cist than to label Mamdani’s Democratic brand as com­mu­nist, although I think both are hyperbole.

As a mod­er­ate, I would pre­fer a return to some­thing like the cen­trist, bipar­ti­san era of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama and John McCain. Extremism of the left and right isn’t good for our democ­ra­cy or our culture.

Reject the radical left

Having explained why demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism isn’t a har­bin­ger of a com­mu­nist apoc­a­lypse, I will now say why I am against it. I’ve changed in 40 years but so has the demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist move­ment in America.

Michael Harrington, for exam­ple, was a sup­port­er of Israel, but the day after the worst mas­sacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a social­ist can­di­date in New York, cel­e­brat­ed Hamas’s killing of a thou­sand Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

DSA opposed U.S. assis­tance to Ukraine when Russia invad­ed that country.

There is broad agree­ment that we need immi­gra­tion reform, but not the kind the far left wants. Democratic social­ists are in favor of abol­ish­ing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rather than reform­ing it.

And DSA wants gov­ern­ment health insur­ance for undoc­u­ment­ed migrants.

The left has called for defund­ing police, con­fis­cat­ing wealth through exor­bi­tant tax­a­tion, and pay­ing repa­ra­tions to descen­dants of peo­ple who were enslaved more than 160 years ago.

Although I sup­port rea­son­able poli­cies to pro­mote afford­able hous­ing and low­er infla­tion, includ­ing revers­ing Republicans’ dis­as­trous tar­iff poli­cies and oppo­si­tion to legal immi­gra­tion, I don’t think Mamdani’s plans for gov­ern­ment-owned gro­ceries and rent freezes are the right way to go.

And at a time when the U.S. nation­al debt is near­ly $40 tril­lion, I don’t think we can afford uni­ver­sal child­care, uni­ver­sal health­care, tuition-free high­er edu­ca­tion, and pub­licly fund­ed full retirement.

While this is a time when vot­ers want change, I don’t think most want rad­i­cal change.

Democrats might get by with nom­i­nat­ing pro­gres­sives in Berkeley or the Bronx, but not in Philadelphia or Phoenix.

If they want to retake Congress, which is bal­anced on a knife’s edge for the midterms, win the White House two years from now, and return our coun­try to some sem­blance of san­i­ty, Democrats are going to have to get over their infat­u­a­tion with demo­c­ra­t­ic socialism.