Bernie’s democratic socialism is nothing radical
Democratic socialism has been much in the news lately as the democratic candidates for president debate the future of their party. Bernie Sanders proudly calls himself a democratic socialist. Elizabeth Warren supports many of the same policies as Sanders but proudly declares herself a capitalist. Some say that Sanders is really a social democrat, as opposed to the democratic socialist he claims to be. Voters are understandably confused — and somewhat scared. But the essence of what Sanders calls democratic socialism is nothing radical.
The central idea behind this brand of democratic socialism is that government should have your back when you need it. Specifically, government should keep three basic promises. First, if you or someone in your family gets sick, government should make sure that you won’t die because you can’t afford the treatment you need or become poor in the process. Second, if you are willing to put in the work to continue educating yourself after high school you should be able to do so without condemning yourself to years of burdensome debt. Third, if you find yourself at the bottom of the economic ladder — either because that is where you started or that is where you ended up through no fault of your own — then government should make sure that you don’t fall into poverty while working, looking for work, or after you retire.
If those three promises make a person a socialist, then I think the majority of Americans are socialists. The majority of Americans believe that people who are willing to work should be able to support themselves both while they work and when they retire, that they shouldn’t become impoverished on account of illness, and that they should not have to begin their working life buried under educational debt.
The problem is not that Americans don’t believe government should make these three promises. Most Americans understand that modern medical care has become so expensive that it is beyond the reach of most to pay for and that most health insurance policies either cost too much or cover too little or both. Most Americans understand that either a college education or advanced vocational training is now what a high school diploma used to be — a basic requirement for getting a good job. Most Americans understand that the marketplace has become ruthlessly efficient at paying people as little as possible for their work — either through low hourly wages or through part-time or “gig” arrangements that don’t offer steady employment — and that the older you get the harder it is to keep your job and that these problems will get worse over time because of automation and globalization. Even Americans who are doing well fear that that they will fall hard if they slip off their rung in the ladder, and the rungs feel slippier every day.
The real problem is that Americans are afraid that government cannot keep these promises. They have come to accept this combination of unaffordable health care, low-paying or unreliable work and high-debt higher education as simply “the way things are.” They have come to accept economic insecurity as the American way of life.
Challenging these assumptions is what those who call themselves democratic socialists today mean when they talk about a “political revolution.” They are not asking for the end of the free market system. They are just asking voters to stop believing that hard-working citizens in the wealthiest country in the world must live economically precarious lives. I think that sounds pretty good to most people.
Government policies that make the lives of ordinary people more secure have always been described as socialist. Franklin Roosevelt was accused of being a socialist when he created the social security system. Before social security many elderly people simply fell into poverty once they could no longer work. That was simply “the way things were.” The same was true when Medicare and Medicaid were created. Today such programs aren’t considered socialist. They are just considered good government.
We live in more politically polarized times than the New Deal era. Convincing voters that affordable healthcare and higher education and economic security are possible is not for the politically faint-hearted. Nibbling around the edge of voters’ economic anxieties with “safe” promises about minor tweaks to the status quo is unlikely to inspire much confidence. Unless candidates really challenge “the way things are,” unless they fully commit to an economically more secure and less precarious way of life, those voters most affected won’t believe that change is possible. As they say in sports, go big or go home.