While neither party can be trusted, I'll take socialism over fascism every damned time.
Socialist: We want you all to have free readily available healthcare
Republican Base: OVER OUR DEAD BODIES!!
*"OVER YOUR DEAD BODIES!"
ftfy
WHERE IS THE MONEY COMING FROM screams my family as I tell them that they will pay the same or less in taxes than they were for insurance in the first place.
Universal healthcare is not socialism nor is it socialist.
Literally any kind of government can have universal healthcare. What type of government is completely irrelevant for What kind of healthcare the country has.
Socialism refers to collective ownership of the means of production. Social democracy/democratic socialism refers to a capitalist market economy supplemented by welfare programs, labor protections, and public services. The two terms are not interchangeable despite frequent misuse on the internet. You are describing and advocating for social democracy/democratic socialism not socialism.
Then the USA would actually have two parties instead of one?
But there are the De…
~Oooh. I see what you did there.~
This would be far more accurately titled as 'returns to' given FDRs New Deal and the fact that 99% of socialist policies enacted over the last century are from the Democrats, instead of the inflammatory weasel-wording 'what if socialism takes over' like it's some kind of coup.
It might be some dumb play to drum up clicks from right-wing people who have never seen a Jacobin article I guess, but it puts off their base, and looking through the article.. it doesn't hide its socialist-positive bias at all even from the first few sentences, so I kinda doubt that intent. Just dumb.
instead of the inflammatory weasel-wording 'what if socialism takes over' like it's some kind of coup.
If I can give some context, as a DSA member, while DSA is parasitizing the Democratic ballot line, it essentially acts like an independent party.
The goal isn't necessarily to "take over" the Democratic Party. Rather, the dominant position in DSA is what's called a "Dirty Break", where the org parasitizes the Dems in the short term, essentially until they kick us out (Ideally in such a way that DSA comes out the stronger org, and that the Dems whither not unlike the Whigs).
Something which is already starting to happen, with Democrats telling us to go "make our own party" as though we haven't looked at the US political system, and ruled that out for now.
Further, DSA is a big tent organization, with everyone from reformist social democrats, to Anarchists, Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninists, etc. And the DSA party platform (the updated version of which gets released on the 14th, I believe) expresses an overt desire by DSA to transcend capitalism. So this isn't just a return to FDR style social Democracy, like you're suggesting, there's a bit more going on
Thanks for the clarification, I feel like very little of this was discussed in the article and you explain it better.
If you think socialism is bad, you either are an evil piece of shit or ignorant of what socialism actually is.
Or both!
I'd be okay with just democracy taking over the Democratic party
I'd love to go socialist at this point. Capitalism has only fucked me over and over and over.
I'm pretty wealthy and I want the USA to be way more socialist. I want medical for all, free daycare, food security for everyone, and a huge expansion of public education. Unfortunately about 50% of the population equates any socialism with Marxism and refuses to even hear how bad they're getting screwed by their Corp sponsored overlords.
I'm literally explaining social democracies vs Marxism to grown adults on nextdoor constantly. These knuckle draggers have the strongest political opinions and the weakest base of knowledge, it's infuriating. The 24 hour news cycle has turned our dumb neighbors into hateful mean little people.
Social democracy isn't socialism. Which is why it has the same problems as capitalism.
Works for me. Give us universal basic income and universal healthcare. Take money out of politics. Give me an international high speed rail system. And paid by taxes higher education. Shut down the snooty universities.
They had decades to figure out how to unite their base. Obama and Bernie's popularity gave them the building blocks. They remained willfully ignorant because they like those corporate checks too much.
Good. Elected representatives funded by their constituents and others in the working class mean there's less of a risk they pull up the ladder behind them and fuck those who got them into power.
Doesn't mean this won't ever happen. That's why I said risk.
Long term goals are of course to ban Citizen's United, set a cap on money needed to campaign for an elected position, and pass Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
What if a foreign genocidal ethnostate takes over the Democratic Party?
Russia took over the GOP, not Democrats.
Democrats are very obviously in bed with Israel (not to say GOP isn’t as well).
Good?
Good.
Author of the article never got to any sort of point. Just some random rambling. Jacobin needs to do better than this garbage.
Instead of a "what if" we need a "how" and "when"
100%!
The right wing has been pushing the Democratic Party to the right by making the Republicans more conservative/fascist. This pulls the Overton window to the right and the Democrats with it.
Socialism in the Democratic Party is the natural reaction to this pull. While welcome, the real solution is to do away with the two party system. Otherwise, it’s just a see-saw forever swinging back and forth.
the real solution is to do away with the two party system
How do envision getting from here to there?
I think it has to happen locally. Ranked choice voting (or similar) needs to be pushed through. Then, school boards, city/county councils and state elections.
People need to recognize and relate to new parties. National elections are not the way to do it (fuck you Stein and the American Green Party).
The Democratic Party needs an anti-trump:
Someone who is the opposite of trump in every way...
Smart, wise, humble, charitable, brave, gregarious, kind, caring, socialist, democratic, and good.
Essentially, someone who embodies all the virtues that the hypocrites of the Christian Right eschew.
Smart and wise folk generally do their best to stay out of formal politics. politics sucks.
Closest I can think of is Bernie Sanders, but he may have aged out of a presidential run.
Not so scary if you do five minutes of research.
Socialism refers to collective ownership of the means of production. Social democracy/democratic socialism refers to a capitalist market economy supplemented by welfare programs, labor protections, and public services. The two terms are not interchangeable despite frequent misuse on the internet. You are describing and advocating for social democracy/democratic socialism not socialism.
Social democracy and democratic socialism are not the same.
Social democracy, yes, is what you describe: try to regulate capitalism and make it livable via labor protections, public services and a welfare state. The end horizon is something like the Scandinavian dream.
Democratic socialism is different: the end horizon is indeed full blown socialism, with social ownership of the means of production and ultimately with abolition of capitalist relations altogether. However, for democratic socialists, the path to that horizon does not pass via revolution but via the democratic process.
In practice social-democrats and democratic-socialists end up finding it easy to agree on a political program for the here and now and so very often they coexist. Both want to reform capitalism.They just don't agree as to how deep that reform can go. For the democratic socialists, the things social-democrats want are in fact the means towards the end result. For the social-democrats that end result is not necessary considered possible or even desirable. But the two have never won that much that their differences would actually come to a head.
At some point we're just masturbating over minutia.
In practice, in the real world, there will never be such a thing as a purely socialist or purely capitalist economy. You could have a fully automated luxury communist economy, and there would still be someone out there doing what is effectively capitalism, just in exchange for favors and owed favors. You could organize your society into Ayn Rand's dream world, and there would still be some folks there giving each other things for free out of the kindness of their hearts. Hell, even the Soviets tried running an economy without money for awhile, and it failed miserably.
There is a continuous spectrum between a fully government-run economy and an entirely stateless economy. And all real-world governments lie somewhere on that spectrum. The governments that we call "socialist" just lie more towards the government-run side of things. Neither extreme has ever existed. The USSR was not a complete collective ownership of the means of production. The US is not and never has been a purely market economy.
Masturbating over pointless minutia is just pointless masturbation.
We can hope.
What socialism is happening? Who is advocating workers controlling the means of production? All I see are social programs being touted.
Who is advocating workers controlling the means of production?
That would be communism, not socialism. Lennonist communism is where the workers control the means of production in a collectivist but decentralized manner (Stalinist communism is where the state (Stalin) controls the means of production). Socialism is where the capitalists are allowed to maximize profit all they want (hell they keep most of that under the socialist model), but society guarantees a minimal quality of life (the social bit) by taxing the capitalists to ensure a base-level of universal health-insurance and/or housing for the masses.
Basically, democratic socialism is the logical conclusion of FDR's New Deal.
Well obviously more dems would become republicans than would become socialists...
If someone reveals themselves to be garbage, they were always garbage
Fucking authwall
Oh. If you actually read the article, it's about nomenclature. Nothing of substance. What a waste.
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