Thursday, August 29, 2019

The Real Socialists to the Left of Bernie Sanders

"That's what Bernie Sanders is. Certainly, he'd be right at home in the Labour Party in Britain." Further to the left lies democratic socialism, which supports social ownership of the economy itself.

These separations are not clean; the lines between social democrats and democratic socialists and progressives and New Deal Democrats are drawn and erased and redrawn over and over again.

Making the whole thing more confusing is the fact that Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist, not a proponent of social democracy.

Making it even more confusing is the fact that the country's most popular and influential socialist organization-the DSA's membership has swelled to nearly 60,000, from just a few thousand a few years ago-endorses Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama and Sanders.

"Given we have a zero-sum political system and given the fact that the two parties are quite ideologically opposed now, I think a third party on the left would be suicide," he told me.

Members of Socialist Action, the SPUSA, and other third parties see it differently, arguing that the Democratic Party is irredeemably compromised and that voters deserve true alternatives.

The socialists' campaigns and socialist parties might not be popular.


https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/real-socialists-left-bernie/596890/

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