THE RISE OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
The Rise of Democratic Socialism
Kimberley A. Strassel
Of the many alarming statements uttered this past year by America’s rising tide of “democratic” socialists, pay closest attention to the one that landed in early August, via the godfather of this modern movement, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Democratic political strategist James Carville had criticized Hasan Piker, the socialist provocateur who claims that “America deserved 9/11,” that the terrorist group Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel, that communist Mao Zedong (whose policies killed 65 million Chinese) is “one of the great leaders of this world,” and that his critics are “rabid, ultra-Zionist pigs.” Carville made clear: “I have no intention of ever being in the same political party with [Piker],” adding that he believed “an overwhelming majority of Democrats agree with me.”
Sanders shot back: “If Mr. Carville doesn’t want to be in my party, the party I belong to, that Piker, that [Michigan’s socialist-aligned Democratic Senate candidate] El-Sayed belongs to, he can start his own party.”
The “my party” construction is striking, given that Sanders has long expressed contempt for both our major political parties, disparaging them as captured interests. Since his first successful election in 1981, he has styled himself a “democratic socialist” and run as an Independent on the Vermont ballot. He’s endured the Democratic Party only to the extent that it allowed him to leverage its resources to his advantage—caucusing with it in the Senate to gain seniority and using it as a platform for his presidential runs. Always while holding his nose.
But things have clearly changed. Sanders is done raging against the machines. His goal now is to own and operate one of them. His growing army of democratic socialists are working to capture the Democratic Party from within, replace its agenda with their own, and purge it of dissenters. It’s a time-worn tactic: if you can’t beat them, infiltrate them. And the elected leadership of the Democratic Party is doing nothing to stop the takeover.
Before we can address the rise of the democratic socialists, we need to clarify what it is that is rising. That’s made harder by an education system that has left generations of Americans poorly equipped to recognize socialism, and by a liberal media and left-wing political establishment that are determined to play down today’s threat.
Socialism has come in many forms through history and has seemingly infinite definitions. But simply put, it’s a system based on collective or government ownership of goods and services, as opposed to private ownership or markets. It’s animated by class warfare, the claim that the “workers” in a society are kept down and exploited by wealthy, powerful forces, and that only the forced seizure and redistribution of capital will produce a more egalitarian and just society.
Its other defining feature? It always fails, usually horrifically. Historians generally agree there have been more than two dozen major national attempts at socialism, all of which ended in tyranny and economic collapse. This dismal history has inspired advocates over the ages to produce new “versions” of socialism, ones they insist will finally produce magic. Karl Marx wrote off the earliest, failed communes as “utopian socialism” and contrasted it with his own “scientific socialism.” The world has also seen “anarcho-socialism,” “market socialism,” “ujamaa socialism,” and “goulash communism.” And untold deaths.
The modern twist is democratic socialism. Its proponents chose that descriptor with care. They know socialism’s authoritarian history, and they know how deeply Americans still hold to the Constitution. Their goal with that adjective is to fool us into believing that this version of socialism really is different, that it is no threat, that it can in fact be achieved through democratic means.
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