By Tom Robotham
As a young man, I was strongly drawn to the idea of socialism.
My initial spark of interest came from my paternal grandfather, who, from the age of 15, worked in granite quarries, first in England, then in Wisconsin and finally in New Hampshire. He was an ardent union man—due to his grueling and dangerous working conditions—and a strong supporter of Eugene Debs, the preeminent American socialist of his day.
While in college in Plattsburgh, NY, I became aware of Bernie Sanders who was gaining attention in nearby Burlington, VT, and I was pleased when he was elected mayor a few years later.
My interest intensified in grad school, when I read Socialism: Past and Future, by Michael Harrington, a founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He was a visiting professor at my school at the time, and though I couldn’t get into his class—it filled up within the first half hour of open registration—I had a few hallway conversations with him, and he struck me as eminently reasonable.
That was in 1988—an era in which American socialism could not have been more marginalized. With that context in mind, I’ve watched with amazement these last few years as DSA-affiliated candidates have won decisive victories in both primaries and general elections—the most notable being Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Then there’s Abul El-Sayed, Senate nominee from Michigan. He has said flatly that he’s not a socialist, but his policy stances are aligned with Mamdani’s and AOC’s, and he enjoys strong support from many in the socialist movement.
All three have been vilified, not only by the far right but also by many mainstream Democrats. Nothing they have said or done, however, justifies the reactionary response. On the contrary, they’re a breath of fresh air, with their youthful energy, charisma and sensible proposals. Mamdani, in particular, has demonstrated his commitment to solving nuts-and-bolts problems alongside his efforts to establish more ambitious programs. Thus, for example, he has seen to it that 100,000 potholes were filled. (Oh, the horrors of Communism!)
There is, unfortunately, a stark disconnect between their actions, and the DSA platform, as presented on the organization’s website. For one thing, it’s absurdly vague, with statements like, “Our goal is a democratic society of the working class.” Who exactly is part of that working class is not clear. Are doctors and lawyers, many of whom work hard to live comfortably but are hardly members of the super-rich? Or does the working class only include factory workers, miners, day laborers and the like? Statements like that made sense in the early 20th century, but sound hopelessly out of date at a time when the average salary of a plumber is about $64,000 a year and our median household income is nearly $84,000.
That’s not a lot to raise a family on, but it’s not exactly going to drive the plumbers into the streets with chants of “workers of the world unite!”
Some of the DSA’s more specific proposals, meanwhile, are both wrongheaded and hopelessly naïve. Among its stated long-term goals are the abolition of police and prisons, and the establishment of fully open borders. They also want to draft a new constitution and abolish the Senate. In the end, they envision a future in which “you have no bills.”
It’s unfortunate, because I agree with many of their interim proposals: Medicare for all, tuition-free college or trade school, an end to mass incarceration, regulations to make housing more affordable, a decent minimum wage, and stronger environmental protections, among others.
That these sound “far left” today is ironic, given that they are fundamentally the same as those proposed by FDR in his 1944 State of the Union address. As the war effort was finally going well, Roosevelt turned his attention to a post-war future and proposed a “second bill of rights.”
It included the rights to a “useful and remunerative” job; a wage sufficient to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies; a decent home; adequate medical care; adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment, and a good education.
Roosevelt wasn’t proposing amendments to the Constitution, but he did call on Congress to encode these rights into federal law.
Eighty-two years later, I find it encouraging that we have some of these rights. Every month, I thank God (and FDR) for my Social Security check, and when I go to the doctor, I’m profoundly grateful for Medicare. Were it not for those socialist programs, I’d barely eke out a living.
That said, we still fall far short of FDR’s vision, what with the lack of affordable housing, the soaring costs of medical care for everyone under 65, a pitiful minimum wage that hasn’t been raised in 17 years, the lack of affordable child care, obscenely expensive post-secondary education, and a corporate oligarchy that has far too much influence on politics and, as such, has created the biggest wealth gap in our nation’s history.
The last of these points to the fundamental problem with corporate capitalism. Under that system, publicly traded companies are ethically obligated to maximize profits for shareholders—the welfare of employees and the general public be damned.
In spite of this, I don’t regard myself as a socialist, per se. Rather, I advocate the implementation of more—and more robust—socialist programs on a policy-by-policy basis. There is nothing radical about this, since we long ago became a mixed economy with many elements of socialism. Take public schools, for example. They are socialist enterprises pure and simple. They just need more resources, and the concept needs to be expanded to the college level. The country as a whole, after all, would benefit from having a well-educated workforce and citizenry.
I hold that truth to be self-evident. So why is socialism such a dirty word in many circles?
I believe it’s tied to education—or lack thereof. Would-be authoritarians know that they can use it to scare many people because they know that a large segment of the population has no idea what it means.
At the same time, the DSA web site needs a lot of work. The organization has officially condemned socialist revolutions of the past that have devolved into brutal dictatorships, but the site in its current form too much resembles the naïve rhetoric of those eras. They need to more forcefully explain how they are different and distance themselves from fringe individuals who do romanticize those movements.
As John Lennon put it, “If you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao / You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”