Indiana liberals are getting nervous about the word “socialism” being bandied about more openly these days by Democrats at the national level. They want you to know there is no such thing as socialism, and even if there were it might not be such a bad thing.
I know this because a professor of political science at the university down the road tells me so in this morning’s Capital Chronicle. And professors of political science, please know, can be trusted on such matters. They are why 72 percent of college students in Generation Z believe it is acceptable to shut down a speaker who voices offensive opinions.
This particular professor has taken on the role of an apologist for socialism. He fears that it will be misunderstood by voters in the midterm elections. Indeed, he doesn’t think the word should be used at all in that context, especially if it might cost the Democrat Party any votes. In sum, he tells us to move along, not to worry about the Mamdanis or the Ocasio-Cortezes; there’s nothing to see there.
“The self-named Democratic Socialists may set off unwarranted panic among some who fear they are challenging the American way of life even if their positions are not far from the mainstream,” writes Michael Wolf, chairman of Purdue University’s Center for Indiana Politics.
Not far from the mainstream? Unwarranted? My assistant Grok tells me that the Democratic Socialist of America — with which the leadership of the Democrat Party has chosen to align or at least not oppose — lists the following policy positions, many of which are required of candidates seeking its endorsement:
- Draft a “new constitution” establishing a single federal legislature based on proportional representation, ending the role of money in politics and putting workers in charge of government.
- Abolish or radically diminish the Senate (described by a co-chair as an “anachronistic” institution that protects power), replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote or Congress selecting the president, expand the House, limit the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review and make the executive and judiciary subordinate to Congress.
- Move toward multiparty democracy and universal suffrage that includes noncitizens and people with criminal convictions.
- Public/social ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries (utilities, energy, transportation, media, finance, etc.) under democratic control so that “people come before profit.”
- 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay or benefits, federal jobs guarantee, living minimum wage, aggressive wealth taxes, free public higher education (including room and board) and cancellation of all student debt.
- Housing as a human right via massive publicly owned social housing, universal rent control, strict regulation of investment properties and right to counsel for tenants.
- Take steps toward “fully abolishing the police and prison system” (“the carceral forces of the capitalist state”), including demilitarizing police, cutting budgets annually toward zero, disempowering police unions and redirecting funds to social services.
- Abolish ICE, end all immigrant detention and deportations, immediate amnesty/legal status for all immigrants regardless of status and “freedom of movement.”
- Recognize Palestinian right of return, right to resist military occupation and self-determination in a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital; end all U.S. military and economic aid and weapons sales to Israel; prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders for “genocide in Gaza.”
- Defund the Department of Defense (“Department of War”), close overseas bases, end U.S. foreign wars and end economic sanctions/“warfare” against countries including Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.
- Universal healthcare free at the point of service (Medicare for All style), including full reproductive and gender-affirming care; public ownership of hospitals and pharma research.
- Rapid decarbonization (Green New Deal with public ownership of energy), reparations and finishing “Reconstruction” via major investment in minority communities.
I am afraid to ask what kind of opinion polling is considered credible in a political science department these days, but I would be surprised if any of those policy positions represented anything even hinting at a consensus in the American electorate.
Nonetheless, all of that understood, we still can agree with the professor that the new Democrats aren’t socialists. They aren’t interested enough in economics to make that determination. Socialists actually have a plan for the future, one based on central management of the means of production, distribution and exchange, one that repeatedly has failed. The new Democrats don’t, or at least don’t want to talk about it in detail. Nor are the Democrats technically anti- “capitalist,” a word that socialists invented and that has nothing to do with how capital works in an economy. Democrats use it nonsensically and circularly.
Instead, Democrats should be renamed the Promisers, that is, the party that promises you whatever you think you need at the moment, the future be damned. And as all such parties throughout history, the point is not to deliver on any promises but to leverage envy and resentment to concentrate power.*
The modern Democrat Party is “all in” on that. It is a distinction our professor fails to make in his pre-midterm apologia. — tcl
* The exception is Cambodia’s Pol Pot, a teacher of political science who truly believed in the promises of socialism. But while the regimes of Stalin (20 million dead) and Mao (70 million) lasted over two decades, that of Pol Pot (2 million) lasted less than four years.
