What does it mean to be a Democratic Socialist? (And Why Bernie Sanders may not be one)

So what is democratic socialism?  Both the Washington Post and NY Times recently tried to answer that question. In the first Democratic presidential debate candidate Bernie Sanders described in part what it means for him to be a democratic socialist:

And what democratic socialism is about  is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent - almost - own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.  That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.

That when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States.  You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we're not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have - we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth.

For Sanders, economic justice and leveling the opportunity and income gap between the rich and poor is what part of what it means to be a democratic socialist.  Yet historically the term has meant  more that economic justice, it also included democratic control of the economy.

Democratic socialism emerges as a political movement in response to Karl Marx’s criticism of capitalism in the mid nineteenth century.  To simplify, Marx had argued that the core problem of capitalism was  a class exploitation and struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat where the latter sells labor power which is extracted as surplus value by the former.  The bourgeoisie own the means of production and over time in their race to maintain profits they increasingly replace human labor power with machines, they drive down wages placing more and more individuals into poverty.  This process creates an economic crisis, intensifying class struggle, and eventually creating conditions for a capitalist struggle.  As the theory was eventually amended by Engels, it suggested an economic inevitability for the revolution.  With Lenin, the communist party would serve as a vanguard movement to lead the revolution.  As further amended by Stalin, this party in practice was highly undemocratic.

Starting in the late nineteenth century individuals such as Eduard Bernstein in Evolutionary Socialism argued that the revolutionary tactics and economic inevitability of the revolution were not  practical or certain.  He and others agreed with much of the basic criticism of Marx but instead tied the future of a classless society to parliamentary democracy.  Specifically, the emphasis was upon linking universal franchise to socialist ideals with the hope that socialism could be brought about by elections.  For Bernstein, socialism was an ethical imperative, it was about treating everyone with respect, and it was grounded in the French Revolution ideas of promoting “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”  It was taking the ideals of political liberalism and translating them into economic democracy.  In effect, workers would have democratic control not just of the government but of the economy.

There was serious debate over whether parliamentary socialism was possible, with writers such as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, and Leon Trotsky reaching various conclusions.  But the core argument about what constituted democratic socialism centered on democratic control of the marketplace–it was democratic control of capitalism.  It was about ensuring that workers and not capitalists made decisions about what to invest, not letting the choice simply remain in the boardrooms of corporate executives.

The dividing line between democratic socialism and what we might call enlightened capitalism or liberalism is significant.  John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy argued that social injustices could be addressed by simple redistribution of economic resources–the classic welfare state.  Here the government would tax the rich and redistribute economic resources, or use its power to improve the economy.  Eventually this would be the Keynesian economics of the New Deal and Great Society.  It is state capitalism for the benefit for middle class and poor, but it is still capitalism.  Yes, the government can act and manipulate the economy for the benefit of the people, but it can also do that for the benefit of the rich.  This is what the US government has essentially done for the last couple of generations, and this is the criticism that Sanders is leveling. 

In so many ways, Sanders is a left liberal following Mill and Keynes–we can use state capitalism to augment  economic redistributions–but he is not a democratic socialist in the classic meaning where the emphasis is upon democratizing both the political and economic systems.  It is about subordinating market choices and the free market to serving democratic imperatives.

Michael Harrington was perhaps America’s finest theoretician of democratic socialism.  He was one of the founders of the Democratic Socialists of America.  His book The Other America in the early  1960s is one of the clearest criticims of American capitalism and it inspired many.  But in his Socialism Past & Future he crisply defines democratic socialism as:

[D]emocraticization of decision making in the everyday economy, of micro as well as micro choices.  It looks primarily but not exclusively to the decentralized, face-to-face participation of the direct produces and their choices in determining the matters that shape their social lives.  It is not a formula  of a specific legal mode of ownership, but a principle of empowering people at the base...This project can inspire a series of structural reforms that introduce new modes of social ownership into a mixed economy.

Democratic socialism is not the central state planning of the economy where the government owns  all the businesses.  It is as Alec Nove describes in the Economics of Feasible Socialism a variety of business types, but all are connected by the idea that there is democratic control over basic economic choices.  What China has with its state-owned enterprises is not socialism, it is state capitalism, and mostly to the benefit of a few.  Few Chinese have much say over the economic choices being made in that country, one where there is a sharper and sharper class divide.

Democratic socialism for Harrington, and Dorothy Day, as well as Norman Thomas, Eugene Debs, and Emma Goldman, is also as Bernstein argued, infused with ethical imperatives about respecting human dignity and the banner of individual rights as articulated by classical writers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Democratic socialism would assail  the power of the rich and of corporations in America, contending that is not enough just to tax them and redistribute wealth.  Instead, it is about saying they do not get to make the political and economic choices that govern the rest of society.  It is saying that the people get to own the economy and decide for themselves.  Capitalism does not dictate how democracy operates, it is vice-versa.

This is what democratic socialism has historically meant. Hillary Clinton is not a democratic socialist.  Nor is Obama.  Both are state capitalists. Sanders may or may not be one or he may be redefining what the term means.  But orthodox democratic socialism is something different than what Sanders described in the first Democratic Party debate.

What does it mean to be a progressive Democrat today?

What does it mean to be a Democrat let alone a progressive one  these days?  The question was prompted by my recent op-ed in Minnpost where in response to an argument against the State of Minnesota granting the NFL tax exemptions to host the Super Bowl, one reader wrote that he supported public funding for the stadium along with the tax breaks, and that he was a Democrat and a “fairly far to the left one too.”
    Since when does a progressive Democrat support tax subsidies and breaks for billionaires and hugely profitable private companies that generate few jobs for working people and provide entertainment (in person) that only a few can afford?  I thought that was what the Republican Party did?  With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans.
    But the debate over tax breaks for the Vikings stadium and the NFL does prompt a broader debate about what it means to be a Democrat or a progressive these days?   It is certainly not  good old-fashioned economic liberalism.  This is not Bill Clinton liberalism that supported NAFTA and welfare reform and which Mitt Romney once warmly embraced as the kind of Democratic Party politics he liked. 
    Instead, the progressive politics that appears dead is that of Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, and even Teddy Roosevelt. It is about a 21st century version of the Great Society and the New Deal.  It is about redistributive politics that seek to raise those at the economic bottom, narrow the gap between the rich and poor, and wrestle control of political power in the United States from corporations and plutocrats.  It is about the spirit of John Rawls, Michael Harrington, and Dorothy Day and a commitment to believing that the government has an important role in make sure we are a nation that is  not one-third ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed, that kids should not go off to school hungry, and that corporations should not have the same rights as people.  It is the idea that we help out the least advantaged and most vulnerable first and that the rich have an obligation to help the poor.
    What has taken over for Democrat Party politics is warmed over Republicanism–the centrist sort of corporate politics that some GOP once represented but now have  abandoned as it races further and further to the right, embracing xenophobia, homophobia, and a market fundamentalism that Social Darwinists would embrace. Oh, and vaccines cause mental retardation and global warming does not exist, at least this is what many current Republicans believe.  Even the Republican Party of Abe Lincoln supported civil rights, but not this party–instead it is committed to fine vision that a nineteenth century politician would weep over.  But now consider the Democrats.
    Start at the top.  Obama ran promising change.  The reason why so many are disappointed in him is not that he was too far left but that instead he failed to deliver on his lofty promises.  At inauguration Obama had a window to change America but he flinched.  Carpe diem was not his motto.  But in reality, Obama was never a progressive.  He ran for president opposing a single payer health insurance plan and instead embraced the Republican plan that Mitt Romney adopted in Massachusetts.  Obama was not originally in favor of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and he did not embrace same-sex marriage until public opinion and political necessity dictated he do so.  
    Obama has deported more  individuals than any other president, he supports coal and nuclear power, and his big victory in repealing the Bush era tax cuts came with a reinstating of the payroll tax, imposing on Americans a more regressive and costly tax system than before.  Obama also defends the use of drones to kill Americans abroad, and he refuses to make any serious changes in an NSA surveillance program that  runs roughshod on the civil liberties of Americans. And in 2008 he took more money in from Wall Street than any presidential candidate in history.
    Across the board many Democrats seem confused to their identity.  They support public subsidies for downtown ball park stadiums and convention centers ahead of neighborhoods.  They defend NSA spying on Americans except when they are spied on.  They take little action to address the impact of money in politics and instead beg for money from big donors and PACs.  They offer few real substantive ideas regarding how to tackle issues such as the achievement gap and the economic discrimination against women (who still make only 77% of what men make).
    Worst of all Democrats lack the guts to fight.  Why?  Democrats (and one should not confuse the current party with progressivism) believe that they are the caretakers for government.  They believe that they need to be responsible and not run the risk of shutting the government down for fear of how it would ruin the economy or hurt people.  But conservatives know this and take advantage of the Democrats willingness to blink.  But guess what?  By blinking the Democrats are screwing over poor people and the economy slowly by giving ground one inch at a time and they seem unable to recapture it. Until Democrats are willing to fight and show conservatives they are willing to shut the government down and hold conservatives responsible they will never win.
    What passes for progressive  Democratic Party politics seems so bland.  Same-sex marriage?  Supporting it a decade ago was progressive but now that is mainstream.  Opposing NSA spying on Americans?  Even Rand Paul does that.  No one should be against strengthening anti-bully legislation.  This is not progressive politics but just common sense.  Yes, raising the minimum wage to an adequate level is good progressive politics, but few talk of living wages these days.
    Progressive politics is dead so long as it is married to the current Democrat Party.  Progressives need their own TEA Party revolution on the left–one that engineers a new rhetoric and take over of the party.  One that is not willing to play it safe and worry that if a few Democrats lose  that means the Republicans win.    It means a willingness to fight for what you believe in.  It also means believing in something worth fighting for.