Shivering the chains. The
increasing popularity of socialism is more about stiffening Democrats’ spines
than revolution, 8/30/18, The Economist.
BOZEMAN,
MONTANA is the birthplace of Ryan Zinke, the federal secretary of the interior,
and the home of Steve Daines, Montana’s Republican junior senator, and Greg
Gianforte, the state’s reporter-thumping Republican congressman. But the
public-comments part of Bozeman’s city commission meeting on August 20th was
dominated entirely by socialists. They did not sing the Internationale, or
demand public ownership of the means of production. Instead, the ten members of
the Bozeman Democratic
Socialists
of America (DSA) thanked the commission for raising city workers’ minimum wage
to $13 an hour, and urged them to raise it to $15 over the next two years.
Republicans
are using such people to stoke outrage. Newt Gingrich, eternally eager to pitch
any disagreement as an eschatological conflict, warns that socialists are
“demons” whom the Democrats are “unleashing to win elections”.
Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, a DSA member likely to win election to Congress in November, has
joined Nancy Pelosi in the right’s bogeyman pantheon (a Republican mailing
called her “mini-Maduro”, referring to Nicolás Maduro, the tyrannical president
of Venezuela).
Looking
past the label, however, American socialists are more progressive Democrats
than Castros in waiting—and their rise poses more of a challenge to the
Democratic Party than to capitalism.
Still,
socialism is having a moment in America unlike any since, perhaps, 1912, when
Eugene Debs, the socialist candidate, won 6% of the popular vote. Between the
DSA’s founding in 1982 and the election of 2016, its membership hovered at a
relatively constant 6,000—the same people, says Maurice Isserman, a professor
at Hamilton College and charter DSA member, “just getting greyer”.
Since
President Donald Trump’s election, however, its membership has risen more than
eightfold, and may soon exceed 50,000 (see chart). DSA members have lost nearly
all of the primaries they have contested, but two will almost certainly be
elected to the next Congress: Ms Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, from Detroit.
A recent Gallup poll showed that 57% of Democrats have positive views about
socialism.
But
the poll never defined “socialism”, so precisely what people were expressing
support for remains unclear.
For
decades, the cold war defined it, at least for most Americans. They were
capitalist and free, while socialism was a step removed, at best, from Soviet
communism. Americans under 30 have no memory of the cold war. To them,
socialism may be little more than a slur they have heard Republicans hurl at
Democrats—particularly Barack Obama. They may well have reckoned that if
supporting universal health care, more money for public education and policies
to combat climate change are all socialist, then they are happy to be socialist
too.
During
Mr Obama’s presidency, political energy came from the Republican Party’s right
flank; under Mr Trump’s it comes from the Democrats’ left. The centre of
American politics is having trouble holding. Jessie Kline, the 24-year-old
vice-chairman of Bozeman’s socialists, worked for mainstream Democrats, but
joined the DSA because “nobody wanted to talk about the underlying cause of why
people are poor…The establishment treats politics as a career. Morality and
ethics never came into it.”
Still,
America is not about to undergo a socialist revolution. It is too ideologically
diverse and fractious; individualism is wired too deeply into the country’s
political culture. Maria Svart, the DSA’s national director, says that her
group “doesn’t see capitalism as compatible with freedom or justice or
democracy”, but good luck winning elections with that slogan (indeed,
candidates endorsed by Democratic Party organs have won far more primaries than
those endorsed by Our Revolution, which grew out of Bernie Sanders’s campaign).
In any event, democratic socialism is not revolutionary communism.
Sara
Innamorato, a DSA member who won her primary in May and will probably represent
a heavily Democratic district of south-western Pennsylvania in the state
legislature, says that “capitalism isn’t working…but I don’t think that
capitalism and socialism are necessarily opposites. There are good lessons to
be gained from both.”
Even
the platform of Bernie Sanders, the socialist who gave Hillary Clinton a run
for her money in the 2016 Democratic primaries, left capitalism fundamentally
intact, calling instead for a broader and more redistributive social safety-net.
His supporters seem enamored of Nordic-style social-welfare policies. But those
countries are not socialist; they are free-market economies with high rates of
taxation that finance generous public services. Indeed, the “socialist” part of
those countries that Mr Sanders’s fans like would be unaffordable without the
dynamic capitalist part they dislike.
Perhaps
the surest sign that American socialists are not revolutionaries is their
willingness to work within the two-party system. Ms Innamorato and Summer Lee,
another DSA-endorsed candidate for the Pennsylvania legislature, as well as Ms
Ocasio-Cortez and Ms Tlaib, are all Democrats, as is Mr Sanders, for practical
purposes (he is an independent but caucuses with Senate Democrats). Mr Sanders
and Ms Ocasio-Cortez have campaigned for other Democrats. Mr Isserman contends
that DSA members “are not utopian, and we certainly don’t believe in
Bolshevik-style revolution”. He approvingly cites Michael Harrington, the DSA’s
founder, who said that the group should represent “the left wing of the
possible”.
Leftward, ho! - In that role, they are succeeding
wildly. On August 28th Andrew Gillum, wielding an endorsement from Mr Sanders,
pulled off a surprise victory in the Democratic primary race for governor in
Florida—a state that has long preferred bland, centrist Democrats. Mr. Gillum
wants to see universal health care, a $15 minimum wage, a more compassionate
immigration policy, corporate-tax hikes to fund public education, stricter gun-control
laws and the legalization of marijuana. Most of these positions were lefty
pipe-dreams a decade ago. Today they are de rigueur for Democrats with presidential
ambitions.
Some
have gone further: Mr Sanders, as well as Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillebrand,
senators from New Jersey and New York, respectively, have made favorable noises
about a federal jobs guarantee. Mr Gillum thinks Mr Trump should be impeached.
Such proposals are dead in the water, for now: Republicans control Congress and
the White House. But that is not the point. These are political statements
designed to signal support for a bold, activist government and an unwillingness
to triangulate, or compromise with the voters who put Mr. Trump in the White
House.
Still,
the DSA’s apparent influence on the party makes some nervous. One longtime strategist
frets that the distinction between democratic and Soviet-style socialism is
“fairly fine for most voters, and it comes with a lot of baggage”. Over the
next couple of years, through debates that Democrats must hope will prove
robust but not fracturing, the party will work out whether and how to carry
that baggage.
This
article appeared in the United States section of the print edition
under the headline "Shivering the chains"
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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