In 2016, the question of socialism returned to the forefront of United States politics. Not, like it had in the past, as a kind of Cold War slur used to tar and feather any opposition. No, socialism was a rallying call for a new brand of disaffected political activists, those who had metabolized the logics of Occupy Wall Street or Thomas Piketty and were seeing a wispy, white-haired senator from Vermont make a case that corporations and their greed were the grave ill behind US politics.
That senator was independent politician Bernie Sanders, who went on to lose the Democratic nomination in 2016 to Hillary Clinton and then subsequently lost in a primary battle to Joe Biden in 2020. Despite the losses, Sander’s meteoric rise onto the national scene infused new life into the socialist cause and an until then little-known party: the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
In the years following 2016, the party, which originated in the 1980s, saw its membership skyrocket from a few thousand to nearly 100,000 in 2021. DSA endorsed Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who became a celebrity on the national stage after winning a seat in the US Congress.
But things have not been entirely smooth for the new socialist movement due in large part to two factors. First, the DSA served as a big tent organization bringing together diverse ideological orientations. Although DSA members shared a doctrine of weakening big corporations’ hold on the economy and acquiring more gains for the working class, the organization accommodates factions as diverse as Marxist-Leninists to socialist feminists. Second, DSA has largely hued toward the line of its founder Michael Harrington in adopting a strategy to reform the Democratic Party from within and focus on electoral politics as a key battle ground.
Following the DSA national convention in 2023, the Seattle chapter gave voice to some of the frustration with each of these points and expressed a hope that a “more left-leaning DSA” would bring about change: “Since DSA’s rebirth in 2016 and ’17, it has struggled to retain new members, to forge an identity for itself, and to express a socialist message independent of the Democratic Party and progressive liberals. Delegates [at the 2023 convention] voted to commit to an independent identity and program, to invest in DSA, and to recommit to work that goes beyond the electoral arena.”
Today, it is unclear where DSA will head. It revoked its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez for her attendance at a panel with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. And the question of the site of politics beyond the electoral arena remains a question of how.
To make sense of this strand of the socialist current in the US, Mada Masr sat down with Bhaskar Sunkara, the former vice-chair of the party and the founding editor of Jacobin, which he describes as a “democratic socialist publication.” Sunkara has also given voice to the new socialist current in the 2019 book The Socialist Manifesto, where he argued for a new kind of class-struggle via the social democracy presented by Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the US.
I met Sunkara at the Jacobin office in Brooklyn one week after Donald Trump’s reelection. Against this backdrop, we discussed the democratic socialists’ reading of the reason for Trump’s return, their perspective on the Democratic Party’s shift to the right under Joe Biden, and the position of the democratic socialism at this historical juncture.
Mahmoud Hadhoud: Let’s take things chronologically. In 2016, there was a lot of optimism about the future of the democratic left with the rise of the Jeremy Corbyn wing in the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, the success Bernie Sanders campaign achieved, and the existence of the new left populist parties in Greece, Spain, France and Germany.
But now I think there’s a kind of frustration with the rise of Trump in the US, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, the failures of the left in Greece, and the decline of Podemos in Spain. How do you see the future? Is this a sunset, or is it just a temporary decline?
Bhaskar Sunkara: There has been a more populous outlook in the European context and among thinkers who look forward to the formation of new actors. For example, the European left would often talk about marginalized people in cities. Some of them are immigrants. There are the women’s movement, the LGBT movement, the movement of precarious workers. So all these little movements. But honestly these aren’t mass movements. They are barely identified as groups themselves, but they were operating in political contexts where you can get a handful of MPs and have some degree of power, or rather a degree of presence, piecing together 5-10 percent coalitions.
Die Linke at its peak, a peak with like a 10 percent coalition, had a social base from the old pensioners and people in the east of Germany, which they’ve lost, but they were trying to combine that with a trade union base in the west through the efforts of people like Oscar Lafontaine. So they actually had a theory, at least, but even that was adding up to just a 10 percent coalition.
In the US, as well as in the UK, we have a two-party system. And, of course, in the US, we have a presidential system. So we know there’s no hope of getting representation by just building a coalition of 10 percent. You have to think about building a coalition of 50 percent. And to really wield power in the US, you need a coalition of 60 percent.
You might need to know our particular stance on this. For the LGBT movement, you might need to have a particular stance on this particular issue, but as a whole, we have one message for everyone. We need to have a message that we can say with confidence. Whether you agree with me or disagree with me, my idea needs to be comprehensible enough that I could go to a white worker in the Midwest who votes for the Republicans and say, Here’s what I think about these issues. And I should be able to say the same thing to my base in Brooklyn, New York.
So I think we have been concerned with this question of class dealignment, the fact that not just the left, but even the center left has lost its historic connection to the working-class base. And I think that the weak sort of European populism you’ve seen in certain parties was unable to win back the base of social democracy. This gets to the question of strategy, the question of how you communicate to people and how you root yourself, not only at a political level but also at a cultural level.
MH: So you think that the white working class was alienated from the democratic socialist movement? You think that helped Trump and the Republicans expand in the vacuum?
BS: I think it’s a deeper problem than that, because they’re not only alienated from the far left, but they’re alienated from even the center and center left. They’re increasingly alienated from even the Democratic Party, but this election showed that the alienation is not just among white workers. It’s among workers of all races. So you’ve seen a massive swing, especially with Hispanic voters, to the Republican Party.
So, again, I think the Democratic Party has not been credible enough in its appeals to these workers. It presented a narrative in which there are protagonists and antagonists, but the protagonists are oppressed groups based on their identity. The protagonists and antagonists were not identified on class basis.
So if you’re young, let’s say white (but again, I think this applies to a lot of minorities too), and you are living in a world where you have had less. You are dealing with job market issues, the high cost of living, particularly housing if you are still living with your parents, for example, so you cannot pursue a spouse. And yet, despite all these background conditions, despite the fact that you’re relatively socially progressive, you’re being told you need to apologize, not to say that you are a victim of the economic system. Instead, you are forced to say, I’m the beneficiary of the system. I have white male privilege and so on.
What’s worse and, I think, what makes it harder is that you criticize people due to their identity not for a personal bad behavior, because there aren’t many men who are rapists or abusive or so on. But you tell them they have to apologize preemptively for the actions of other people, which is far from egalitarianism. So I think conservatism has been the only thing that has been able to point out the obvious: that the vast majority of white people, the vast majority of men, are not perpetrators of bad things. They’re just people who are living.
But also, I think at a certain cultural level, the Republicans have portrayed themselves as the ones who will say the truth. They’re ones who will say obvious things. For example, there’s a problem in our society that Americans have high rates of homicides, eight times the rate of even Germany. I’m not even giving an example like Luxembourg, which is a tiny country, but a big diverse multicultural place like Germany with advanced industry. Now, they don’t have the right solutions for this, even more, they’re openly against gun control and fair redistribution of wealth that could eliminate the root causes of this problem. But if they’re the only ones talking about that problem, if they’re the only ones questioning the social mores, this means a lot to voters.
MH: Do you think after Biden’s mandate, reforming the Democratic Party is still a viable idea, or do progressives in the United States see that they need to break with the two-party system and create their own mass party?
BS: I think it’s worth noting that the 2024 election was historic in the low percentage of votes for third parties.
I think most Americans recognize the reality of the two-party system. They recognize that in a first-past-the-post system, there are really only two options. Now, I think we need to be more distinct about who we are as democratic socialists, but, at the same time, we need to run within Democratic Party primaries or occasionally in Republican primaries, maybe, but most likely in Democratic Party primaries and in some states, like Nebraska and others, where Democrats are not equally viable, as independents.
Dan Osborne, for example, in Nebraska was a pro-labor independent who outperformed power significantly and came relatively close to winning a Senate seat against a Republican in a deeply conservative state. It is the same thing in the UK. The first-past-the-post system means that, to some degree, the Labour Party is the only game in town in reforming the system. But the Labour Party is a much more coherent party as a system, so they’ve been able to block the left.
But the Democratic Party has no mechanisms to block the left because of open primaries. In other words, I am a Democratic Party member because I’m registered to vote in primaries. My membership, my standing in the party is, de jure, the same as Kamala Harris’s. I cannot be expelled from the Democratic Party even if Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, all these people who have no idea who I am, decided that this is their number one goal. They couldn’t do it. The only way I would lose my vote and my ability to participate in Democratic Party primaries is if I was disenfranchised by the state because I was a felon. And in some states you could even vote as a felon.
So I think that the situation in the US means that, for the next 20 to 30 years, as far as we can imagine it, we’re probably going on the Democratic Party ballot line. But at the same time, we need to, in parallel, build the DSA. We need to build other vehicles that identify differently, because we need people to know if you vote for me, you’re voting for a democratic socialist, but more important, you’re voting for a pro-working class Sanders-style insurgent. You’re not voting for a mainstream Democrat.
And I think that’s a complicated dilemma. But then again, when we camp in a working class area, let’s say a working class black area in Brooklyn, you can’t camp as a third party. They don’t want you there, but they would love and would even vote for you if you say, I’m gonna take on the Democratic Party establishment from within the Democratic Party — especially if you’re targeting local party elites and not popular national figures like Barack Obama.
So it’s complicated, but I think that this election does not vindicate third parties. I think Jill Stein, all things considered, performed very poorly outside of a few pockets in Dearborn, where Muslim American voters decided to punish Harris and used Stein in part as a vehicle. These are local trends, not national. I think when you talk about, like, the Muslim American vote, it’s very different in California than it is in Michigan. You know?
So again, I think there is this big danger in the way the Democratic Party thinks. The Democratic Party, even if they move left, they’ll think, okay, we need to go left on Palestine to win over Muslim voters. I think they should go left on Palestine for moral and ethical reasons. But a huge portion of Muslim voters are voting for their pocketbooks and other things.
So I think the art of politics is often lost on the Democratic Party mainstream, because they think about people as distinct blocks, as opposed to people that need to be mobilized and coherent around a message.
MH: How does the American left see the Palestinian question? Do they see it as a kind of isolated case of persecution, a kind of leftover case of colonization, or do they see it as a part of a universal frontier between the global political and economic order and the worldwide movements of emancipation?
BS: I think the American left largely sees Israel as intertwined with US imperialism. Therefore, the left has historically placed a greater emphasis on the Palestinian struggle than any other struggles for national liberation.
The overall general stance in the US left is a sort of one-state solution and is toward, pretty uncritically, support of the Palestinian resistance movement. The US left has been able to maintain these stances without historically a ton of pushback, in part because the US left is disproportionately Jewish and disproportionately radical.
But I think there’s a strong case for a much more centrist perspective that says we’re for a two-state solution on the 1967 boundaries, as, unfortunately, that is the reality that I think is feasible and accepted.
MH: Suppose that there wasn’t a war, the Gaza war. Do you think that the result would have been the same?
BS: I think that it further added to this sense of disorder that was generated after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The sense that Biden is not a strong leader.
I think setting red lines against Netanyahu then letting the red lines go gave a sense of weakness. It would have been better to almost make unpopular moves to remove the red line. But ultimately, I don’t think the war was the cause in particular.
Again, this is a case where, as a socialist, as an internationalist, even if support for the Palestinian cause has one percent support in the American public, it’s the necessary action as internationalists and socialists to support the Palestinian people.
I think, in reality, American popular support is for a ceasefire, but it wasn’t the issue motivating Americans to turn against Biden. Even for American women, abortion, which directly affects them, wasn’t the issue motivating them.
So, Palestine is further down the list, but I think it contributed to a broader sense of disorder and also disingenuousness.
MH: I’d like to turn to your thesis in The Socialist Manifesto on the revival of social democracy, or more accurately, democratic socialism. I think there are a lot of pressures from the international financial system on a lot of countries not to revive socialist policies, taking into account the pressure of sovereign debt and what’s happening in Argentina and Egypt and the proscriptions of the International Monetary Fund. Do you think the revival of democratic socialism reposes the old communist question of whether socialism can be implemented in one country or if it should be implemented on a global scale?
BS: I think socialism should be implemented on a world scale. But socialism, I think, can be implemented in one country. I mean, the fact is the US now — its size, GDP, and so on — is greater than the GDP of the world as a whole. So, obviously, there are questions of capital flight and other things, but think theoretically, sure, it can be implemented in one country. But should it be? No. Because it’s primarily a moral and ethical struggle against forms of exploitation and domination. So wherever it exists, revolutionaries will have to struggle against it.
But now, I do disagree with the analysis that focuses on the role of imperialism as being primarily the transfer of resources from the periphery to the core. I don’t think that actually reflects the way the global economy or value chains work today.
I think it’s much more complex. We’ve seen in the development of certain countries in recent years that it’s not a zero-sum game, that there are more seats that are being added to the table. We’ve also seen that the flow of resources in many cases is from the core to the periphery, as in the case of foreign direct investments in countries like China and Vietnam and so on. So it doesn’t fit with the easy Leninist kind of theory of imperialism.
Though the global economic pressures are related to the conditions upon which the IMF and the World Bank give their loans, I think the neoliberal orthodoxy common in those institutions in the 1980s and 1990s was foolhardy and counterproductive.
But I think those institutions have gotten, for what it’s worth, less orthodox. I think they actually have much more complex recommendations. And often in some of these cases, like in Egypt, the Egyptian state used to propagate spending to create patronage networks and an oversized military with expanded business. You know, the austerity will unfortunately hurt the poor, but the idea that austerity in the abstract is just a force coming from abroad or coming from these contractual lending institutions as opposed to austerity being the result of poor macroeconomic management from often right-wing populist regimes.
I think that is worth considering, whereas if you have an analysis like some people on the left do, that is all core versus periphery, then there’s no understanding of how spending by the core in the periphery has often been done by reactionary elements trying to build patriot networks and support and buy off the working class from socialist and more revolutionary movements.
MH: That said, I want to ask if socialism in the periphery has to be linked to a kind of national liberation, not in the nationalist conception, but in a more internationalist one?
BS: I think that historically, you have to just look at the examples. National liberation movements, when they have taken power, only a handful of them have been truly internationalist and revolutionary. So it really depends. And I think the track record, unfortunately, is not great for a lot of these national liberation movements.
I think, in the case of Palestine, we demand too much when asking this movement to be a movement for the liberation of humanity. It’s a movement of the most oppressed and brutalized people on earth. So I think we should demand nothing else but for them to pursue their own liberation, and for us to be able to aid in their effort.
I think of it sometimes less theoretically. Obviously, when we were in a different period, national liberation movements had different horizons and possibilities. And we look at the example of Cuba as the greatest internationalist force the world has ever known, a force that spent enormous resources and blood, and we look at the fighting against apartheid in the South of Africa. We still see to this day the benefits of Cuban internationalism. And Cuba, of course, is meanwhile forgotten by much of the world as it suffers.
But aside from Cuba, it’s hard to think too much about radical internationalism that actually took place out of national operation movements.
MH: Do you think that you are well prepared for Trump’s mandate? You, the left, and the progressive movement?
BS: In the first week after Trump’s election, DSA grew by over 1,000 members. Jacobin grew by over 1,000 subscribers. So I think there is a sense in the country that the left is not responsible for Harris’s defeat and that we have many of the right critiques of the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party as a whole.
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