Understanding the rise of ‘democratic socialism’ from Front Burner

0:00Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13 ,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. 15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa, and from CBC's Uncover and The Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek, and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word, leave me alone. The Mile Zero Murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:58me as our guest panelist, then this is a great companion piece. Here it is now, and we'll be back with you next week with another episode of Two Blocks from the White House.

1:09Hey, everybody, I'm Jamie Poisson.

1:18Recently in the U.S., we've seen this wave of self-described democratic socialists running for and winning elected office. There is, of course, the improbable case of Zoran Mamdani, who won the New York mayoral campaign, but also recent high-profile races across the U.S. where establishment incumbents are being unseated by much younger insurgents, from Denver to New York to Washington, D.C. Even here in Canada, the new leader of the NDP, Avi Lewis, is a longtime self-described democratic socialist. According to a new Gallup poll, socialism is officially viewed more favorably among democratic voters than capitalism.

1:55And the most positively regarded politicians of the country are self-identified democratic socialists. It's a big shift from where we were not too long ago. So today, we'll look at the principles and ideas which make up democratic socialism and discuss its century-long legacy in this part of the world and the pushback against it. Bhaskar Sankara is the president of The Nation magazine, founder and editorial director of Jacobin, the former vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the author of books such as The Socialist Manifesto, the case for radical politics in an era of extreme inequality.

2:38Jayme Poisson:Bosker, thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner. It's such a pleasure to have you. Thanks for having me. So let's start maybe by defining democratic socialism, which has seen this huge rise in popularity. What exactly is it and how is it different from socialism? Well, democratic socialism aims to bring about a more egalitarian world. So at a minimum, that means that making sure that all people by virtue of just being born have the access to the necessities of a good life. So housing, health care, nutrition, education, and we can achieve this through many different means. The most common ways that democratic socialists have not only advocated for, but actually enacted, have been through the expansion of social welfare programs, including within capitalism.

3:29So, of course, the Canadian health care system was pioneered in part by the work of people like Tommy Douglas, you know, a Christian socialist, but it came out of out of a similar sort of democratic socialist tradition. So not all socialists are democratic socialists. When I look at the experiences of the 20th century in states like the Soviet Union, it becomes very easy to make a no true Scotsman argument, because I truly don't consider those states socialists, because I think democracy is such an integral part of what socialism means. But given that experience, I think it's important to clarify and have the democratic in front and to say that our version of socialism, our vision of socialism incorporates key insights from liberal traditions as well.

4:20And by that, I mean the necessity of having rights. There should be limits in the scope of the state. There should be certain things that an individual has free domain over. And no matter how democratic the state, you know, there should be limits. All these other sorts of insights, I think, are important and distinguish democratic socialism from more authoritarian forms of socialism, if you will.

4:47Jayme Poisson:For most of our political lives outside of the few years in which Bernie Sanders was kind of this insurgent force outside and then inside the Democratic Party. What democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one tenth of one percent in this country own almost 90 percent, own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Socialism and democratic socialism have been pretty radioactive ideas in mainstream American political life. You, of course, have the Red Scare in which the federal government oversaw a kind of hunt targeting communists and socialists. Even today, you have many, you will use the label of socialism or communism to fear monger and they will put those labels on democratic socialists.

5:36Communism is a loser and it always will be. The communist system is the opposite of the American system and the communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We're not going to let it happen. You heard the president talk about how he wants to effectively double the funding for national defense. Look, we live in dangerous times. We're fighting communism on our own shores. And we're fighting.

6:07Jayme Poisson:How would you describe the U.S. historical relationship with with democratic socialism? So the U.S. actually has a long history of socialist currents. A little bit over 100 years ago, we had a socialist candidate running on an independent ballot line who got over a million votes. Democratic socialism or the Socialist Party of America was polling in the double digits in even states like Oklahoma. It was a strong force in the unsettled region of U.S. capitalism in the American West, particularly, and also a major mass force in certain other enclaves like in Milwaukee, where there was socialist governance for decades and decades.

6:51And even in parts of New York City were garment workers on the Lower East Side in the Bronx, particularly among Jewish workers. Socialism is kind of a mass phenomenon. Obviously, there is that history. Socialism was always squeezed to the margins in part because the U.S. has a very, very unusual political system that makes ballot access extremely restrictive. So we don't not not only do we have a first past the post system like in Canada or England, it's almost impossible to even maintain a third party bout line. So as a result, generation of socialists have been within the Democratic Party tent and a major part of the New Deal coalition.

7:34Building on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans. A leading force behind movements like the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1968, and I quote, this country has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor. End of quote. When the founder of the Democratic Socialist America died in 1989, Senator Ted Kennedy said that Michael Harrington, the founder's name, never believed that we could not do better. He never stopped urging us to do better. You know, I'm paraphrasing, but this is, I think, the sentiment that a large segment of American liberalism had towards socialists, particularly democratic socialists, that these were voices of conscience.

8:31These are good people that are part of our movements. But we were always in the fringes of American political life, especially during the Cold War. It's only really been in the last couple of decades, really the last decade and a half that American socialism has made a more full-throated resurgence.

9:01Jayme Poisson:I want to talk to you about this moment. That is the momentum, essentially, that's been building around democratic socialism. I'll just run through some examples here for people listening. You have the election of Mayor Zoram Mandati in New York. The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim.

9:32I am a democratic socialist.

9:39And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.

9:44Jayme Poisson:Just last month, two of three winning and surging candidates he endorsed in congressional primaries across New York identified as Democratic Socialists. Two sitting congressmen, longstanding establishment Democrats, were toppled. Another open seat won. The winning candidates ran on a shared platform of radical change, promising to abolish ICE, taxing the rich, but also ending unconditional arms sales to Israel. In Colorado, 29-year-old Democratic Socialist Malet Kuros ousted a longtime congressional representative in L.A. A Democratic Socialist is currently in the mayoral runoff. Seattle is also governed by a Democratic Socialist.

10:27Jayme Poisson:Washington, D.C. is likely to follow, as I understand it. Both Michigan and Maine could also soon become the site of major victories by Democratic Socialist candidates. and many more officials across the country were elected after endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America. How would you characterize the energy around socialism in the U.S. today, and to what do you attribute it to? Well, I think at least part of this momentum has to do with the fact that we do live in a deeply unequal society, and it's unequal at its roots. And any sort of class society, even if you want to make the argument that capitalism does more good than harm, any society with this level of inequality and this level of inherent disparities between those who own and those who have nothing to sell but their labor is going to provoke some sort of egalitarian response.

11:20And I think the triumphalism of people who thought that all the political questions or the major political questions were being settled already discounted the extent to which there's always been since the days of the Gracchi brothers and Rome and the early Christians and so on. There's always been movements for egalitarian change in this world. And this generation is no exception. I think what's particularly interesting, though, is that the name of this egalitarian resistance is the name of democratic socialism. And in most parts of the world, from the middle of the 19th century through to the end of the 20th century, it would have been taken for granted that those who felt like they were not benefiting from the current system would identify with the language and imagery of socialism.

12:15But given the particularity of American history, it's very strange to some degree. And I think a lot of this just has to do with chance. It has to do with the fact that Bernie Sanders was someone who was politicized in the late 1950s. I don't know Bernie super, super well, but I had a conversation with him once where he referred to the Brooklyn Dodgers leaving Brooklyn as a major politicizing moment for him because he saw the way in which, you know, big capitalists can just do what they want with the property they own with no regard to the community. And I said, Bernie, the media already thinks you're too old to be president.

12:53It was a few years ago. You shouldn't invoke the Brooklyn Dodgers in such a way. But, you know, this is a man who was politicized. He joined the Young People's Socialist League when he was at the University of Chicago fighting for the rights of meatpacking workers in Chicago and for civil rights. So he was ingrained in a mid 20th century socialist tradition, and he carried that with him in his political career. And when he ran for president in 2016, he self-described as a democratic socialist because that was his history. That was his formative years. and I think a lot of young people who were attracted to him adopting the label just had to do with that so so I'm not sure I think it's just contingency and chance and having like almost Bernie um you know not to not to be too dismissive of his of his age but almost being like a a human time capsule of a certain period that that allowed it to to become this mass phenomenon again especially among millennials and now Gen Z in the U.S.?

13:56Jayme Poisson:I mean, a lot of these people running today, they would have been kind of formulating their political beliefs at university or something probably in 2016 when Bernie did his first run, right? You were talking a little bit about attitudes and polling. I just wanted to bring up this new Gallup poll that found that 66 % of Democrats now hold a favorable view of socialism. Well, just 42 % hold a favorable view of capitalism. Does it surprise you that the numbers are the way that they are? Well, I think in part, it doesn't surprise them because of how loosely defined all these terms are, to be perfectly honest.

14:37So also the American right, to the extent socialism was alive in American civil society in the early 2000s, it was alive as a pejorative. You know, they would call Barack Obama a radical Kenyan socialist, right? They would call even a plan that I frankly consider to have some good parts to it, but overall to be a giveaway to the health insurance companies and Obamacare as a sort of Marxist plot aimed at subverting American free enterprise. So they actually injected a lot of this language by associating socialism, not with bread lines and gulags, but with redistributive programs that a lot of people like and wanted.

15:20And also, it just so happens that some of the most visible and talented politicians in the Democratic Party, people like Zoran Mamdani, people like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, are Democratic Socialists of America members and do identify with this label of socialism. So, you know, I'm, again, not super surprised in that, in the sense that this now de-radicalized term can get more residents. And again, if we zoom out into the global arena, even, you know, the center left in the UK, in the case of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, maybe the center right, you could say, identify as, you know, with a party that is programmatically committed to democratic socialism.

16:12This is kind of the norm for countries all around the world, you know, the U.S. and Canada being kind of rare exceptions of countries that haven't traditionally had a first or second party that has been nominally kind of committed to socialism.

16:39Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13 ,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. Fifteen murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa, and from CBC's Uncover and The Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek, and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word. Leave me alone. The Mile Zero Murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

17:13Jayme Poisson:Is democratic socialism ultimately trying to save or reform capitalism or replace it? So I think there's different varieties of democratic socialism. In the immediate term, the types of changes that I would like to see are changes that we could call social democratic reforms. So attempts to administer many, many doses of socialism within capitalism, but ultimately not challenging the right of ordinary capitalists to start businesses and employ labor and engage in this kind of competitive market economy. And I think that's what a lot of people mean by democratic socialism. They essentially mean a social democracy, but that one that is going to encounter such rigorous opposition from rich people and particularly from the big corporations in the US, that it actually requires quite militant rhetoric and demands to even win something that has been won in much of the world, like single payer healthcare or, you know, some sort of American national.

18:26health service or something would require taking on basically one-fifth of the American GDP. So in that respect, you could understand why militant rhetoric and language might be, and tactics might be needed to even achieve goals that, again, were achieved decades ago elsewhere. But for socialists like me, we believe in something deeper and a more radical transformation, which is the idea that the means of production, to use the old language of the Marxist left, should in fact be socialized. I'm a market socialist. I think the market is a wonderful coordinating mechanism to signal what people desire and to coordinate goods and services.

19:21But ultimately, I think the firms competing in this market economy should be administered by the people who work there. Again, even if they have to elect management, even if there has to be a pretty extensive division of labor, even if there has to be plenty of wage disparities within those firms, I think that workers deserve not just the power to exit like we have within capitalism, but not feudalism, the power to leave our jobs and find new ones to exert our bargaining power there, but also that they deserve voice at the job. And in my mind, that is a vision that more and more people can get behind.

19:59But honestly, if you can't win something like Medicare for All or an American NHS in the US, then it becomes almost silly to foreground so much your far reaching demand. But me as a Democratic Socialist, a lot of people in the Democratic Socialist of America have this far reaching goal of socialization that we're not afraid to talk about, you know, as it is relevant as it comes up.

20:27Jayme Poisson:Do you worry, though, that by talking about that, you might freak some people out? I think, you know, Michael Harrington, the founder of DSA, used to say something to the fact that socialists and radicals as a whole had to walk a tightrope. So on the one hand, we had we could fall to our left into, you know, a pit of just talking about our far vision of a new society. and the problem with that is that we would just be talking our vision but we would almost be aloof to the demands of actual movements fighting not to transform the system but for some little incremental dignity or even just kind of a piece of piece of bread not having to worry about losing their job and losing their health care and and and things like that so lofty talk can often and isolate yourself to the left.

21:28But also to the right, I think, is the danger of subsuming our vision in a very narrow prism of what's possible. And I think that's the other danger as well, because I think what people were attracted to with a candidate like Zoran Mamdani was the fact that he thought everything was broken And everything needed kind of reform or change. And obviously, when in power, he's governing very responsibly. He's governing as someone who right now administers a police department with over 30 ,000 armed men and women, bigger than a lot of standing armies in the world. He administers a budget in the billions.

22:16And he, by many accounts, at least the polls, think that he's doing a very good job in his first six or seven months in office. So I think we always need to balance those two things. We always just need to communicate a vision that explains our principles, but also explains the fact that, you know, the Democratic comes before a socialist for a reason. And, you know, ultimately, this is going to be a vision that we win over a majority of people to or it's not going to be enacted.

22:58Jayme Poisson:You mentioned throughout this conversation, the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, several times, this organization that you were once vice chair of. they're the largest socialist organization in American history I believe at the center of many careers of the politicians that people listening will know Ocasio-Cortez Mamdani they give support for grassroots campaigns that can boost their name ID and as you said I think it's not an independent political party obviously they filter their candidates for the Democratic Party and I just wonder if you could talk to me a little bit more about the role that the organization plays in American politics today, or the role that you think that it is playing?

23:42The DSA is actually, in a sense, not a political party because we don't aim to have our own outline. But in another sense, also the only major political party in American political life, because we have 125 or so thousand members. Those members are active in their chapters, They have to pay their dues every month. They elect the leadership. They vote on platforms. They vote on whether or not to endorse a candidate. At a somewhat recent election forum in New York City, Zohan Mamdani was mayor-elect at the time, not yet mayor, wanted to speak in favor or against or neutral on a particular proposal.

24:28he showed up to the meeting and, you know, he waited in line. Of course, you know, he didn't really have to wait in line. We would have let him cut to the front of the lines, but he waited in line, which again made his two-minute intervention. When he was going over a little bit, over two minutes, someone told him to, you know, he had to wrap up. This is not that unusual for people around the world used to parliamentary traditions because, you know, parliamentary system, you know, your party leader is just an ordinary MP and that MP can be voted out and or, you know, your prime minister can change if the party decides to elect a new leader through its internal processes.

25:09In an American style presidential system with weak parties, this is extremely, you know, unusual. So I would say that that the Democratic Socialist America is essentially a political party just without a ballot line, in part because it is so difficult to get in the ballot in the U.S. If that was our goal, that's all we would be doing. And we would have the risk of a spoiler effect, which we don't have, you know, now through our mechanism, only running in primaries and generally voting for whatever Democrat gets through the primary process.

25:44Jayme Poisson:Right, right. Because I'm sure if there are a few things that you agree on with establishment Democrats, it's probably, you know, beating the Republicans, right? And but I do want to talk to you about the reaction within the Democratic Party and among its establishment leaders to this wave of DSA-endorsed candidates, some of whom, well, many of whom articulate this really more radical vision for the party itself. And there has been open debate about primarying all these establishment figures like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, previously Nancy Pelosi, among lots of others. Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville has talked about not wanting to be in the same party as someone like New York City congressional nominee Avila Chevalier.

26:37These people are really out there. A lot of people feel like I do. We just don't want to be in the same political party with them.