If we want a habitable planet and a future for humanity, nothing less than democratic socialism will do.
Liberals are not taking the threats we face seriously enough. They’ve gotten caught up in sideshow spectacles rather than working to put forward an alternative to the grinding misery of life in America under capitalism. Sanders, meanwhile, showed that we aren’t doomed to live in a world of inequality, oppression, and misery—that millions of people really are ready for a critique of the political and economic system we live under, and eager to create a society that’s just, sustainable, and gives everyone a chance to flourish as human beings. The movement that his interventions have sparked, which is just beginning to find its footing, is our best hope for winning that society.
People often quote Werner Sombart’s remark about the preponderance of “roast beef and apple pie,” the incredible abundance that the US working class supposedly has access to, as a way to explain why socialism has not taken root here the way that it has elsewhere. Less quoted, however, is the ending of the 1906 book from which that line comes. Sombart, having given his full explanation for socialism’s absence in the US, has this to say:
These are roughly the reasons why there is no Socialism in the United States. However, my present opinion is as follows: all the factors that till now have prevented the development of Socialism in the United States are about to disappear or to be converted into their opposite, with the result that in the next generation socialism in America will very probably experience the greatest possible expansion of its appeal.
Over a century later, these words ring true. We are in a rare, perhaps brief, window of political opportunity. Let’s seize it to go beyond the Bernie Sanders campaign and win socialism in our time.
Contrary to conventional wisdom about the viability of class politics in the beating heart of global capitalism, Bernie Sanders’s rhetoric—calls for justice, equality, security, and shared prosperity in the form of free education, affordable housing, free high-quality health care, full employment, a secure retirement, and a clean environment for all—hasn’t scared off masses of people. Instead, by polarizing politics along class lines, insisting that the reason many are denied these basic rights is that wealth and resources are captured by the top of society and kept there by design, Sanders has inspired the masses: 13.2 million voted for Sanders in the Democratic Party presidential primary in 2016, and his 2020 presidential campaign broke records for individual donations and volunteers.
Even his adversaries are often forced to respond to him— some, mostly Democrats, by half-heartedly adopting his popular demands in order to appeal to a constituency that is clearly moving left on key issues like Medicare for All; others, both Republicans and Democrats, by reviving the Cold War specter of authoritarian socialism to scare people into opposing an ambitious vision for social and economic change.
Socialism is now on the tip of the nation’s tongue. In 2015, when Bernie first began running for president, it was the most-searched word on Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. Tens of thousands have joined the Democratic Socialists of America, and millions more talk about the merits of socialism over capitalism in conversations with their friends, families, and coworkers. Democratic socialist politicians are running and winning at the local, state, and national level. The sun is rising again on the idea that capitalism cannot provide the freedom and prosperity that it promises, and that the wealth created by all belongs to all.
What’s most important about Sanders, however, isn’t the policy ideas he’s popularizing, or even his role in detoxifying the word “socialism.” Yes, Medicare for All and tuition-free college as well as full medical and student debt cancellation would transform millions of lives. Likewise, the fact that socialism is no longer anathema has opened up new possibilities in politics (and has significantly increased socialist magazine subscriptions and socialist magazine employment, for which we are both grateful). But what matters most is how Bernie has promoted the idea that nothing he or any other candidate can do in office will win the kind of change we need without a political revolution of millions of people, a mass working-class movement taking to the streets and workplaces and fighting on its own behalf.
Sanders has played an important role in sparking that movement, and demonstrated that electoral politics shouldn’t be seen as something contrary to or apart from its development. “He has absolutely infuriated the liberal establishment by committing a major crime,” said Noam Chomsky in an interview with the Intercept. “It’s not his policies. His crime was to organize an ongoing political movement that doesn’t just show up at the polls every four years and push a button, but keeps working. That’s no good. The rabble is supposed to stay home. Their job is to watch not to participate.” Sanders’s greatest contribution to American politics is that he continues to convince people that their own participation is necessary to win a better society.
If socialists had the opportunity to design the ideal scenario leading up to a viable democratic socialist presidential campaign, we would have scripted something very different. Ideally, a campaign like Sanders’s would have been the culmination of a long path paved with many smaller victories. Socialism would already be a powerful movement in electoral politics, the workplace, and civil society, and the candidate would rise organically through the ranks of this dynamic, popular, and organized movement.
Unfortunately, both socialism and working-class movements were nowhere near ascendant when Sanders first ran for president. Instead, in a strange feat of reverse-engineering that few socialists saw coming, his campaign helped revive those movements.
After decades of marginalization and defeat, US socialist politics are entering a new era. When future histories of the American socialist movement are written, Sanders will play a prominent role. How does his life fit into the broader trajectory of the American Left?
On the one hand, Bernie’s formative years aren’t that different from many people his age on the Left. Born to a Jewish immigrant family (a demographic that has played key roles in the history of the American Left), he dove headlong into the political upheavals of the 1960s, joining the civil rights and socialist movements. As those upheavals subsided, he, too, retreated momentarily—to the idyll of rural Vermont. That story tracks closely to what we hear from many fellow travelers who were young and active during the last period of American social unrest and mass agitation.
On the other hand, especially after the 1970s, Sanders has managed throughout his career to stand both outside the main currents of the socialist movement and outside the American political mainstream. He has largely walked alone, remaining politically independent of the Democratic Party and avoiding its open embrace of neoliberal policies and abandonment of the labor movement, while also carving a successful path as an elected official. We should be grateful he did; otherwise, Sanders wouldn’t have been able to hold the unique position he has held over the last four decades, culminating in his presidential runs and his contribution to the revival of socialist and working-class movements. Sanders’s unique political biography has a lot to teach us about how to weather periods of left marginalization and defeat by remaining true to leftist principles—and how to strike again when the iron’s hot.
Socialism and Sanders
Socialism has a long and storied history in the United States— never dominant, but at times popular and powerful.
Thomas Paine, one of the country’s founding fathers (and its most radical), was an ardent critic of economic inequality and rule over the many by the few. Socialism didn’t exist as an ideology in the late eighteenth century, but Paine believed in a society shaped by the ideals of democracy and equality, and even
