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.
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If you think socialism is bad, you either are an evil piece of shit or ignorant of what socialism actually is.
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.
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.
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.
While I agree that the end goal of democratic socialism is an economy in which the means of production are publicly owned, it differs significantly from the Marxist-Leninist model advocated by Lenin and later implemented by Stalin. Democratic socialism rejects the one-party state and instead maintains that democratic institutions, competitive elections, and civil liberties should continue to exist even after the economy is fully socialized.
That’s a massive distinction, especially considering that every major one-party socialist state has produced severe authoritarian outcomes.
China is a notable exception in one respect: while it remains governed by a single-party communist state, its economy has embraced extensive market mechanisms, private enterprise, and foreign investment. Whether it should still be described as socialist depends largely on which definition of socialism is being used.
While neither party can be trusted, I’ll take socialism over fascism every damned time.
Socialism and fascism have always gone hand in hand.
I’ll bite.
Why?
Edit: and how? Specific examples please
It’s the catchy songs right?
Then the USA would actually have two parties instead of one?
But there are the De…
~Oooh. I see what you did there.~
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”
It’d probably mean more GOP victories, perhaps like in 1972.
wp:1972 United States presidential election
McGovern ran on a platform of immediately ending the Vietnam War and instituting a guaranteed minimum income for the nation’s poor. His campaign was harmed by his views during the primaries, which alienated many powerful Democrats, the perception that his foreign policy was too extreme, and the Eagleton debacle. As a result of these factors, McGovern’s campaign was weakened, with the Republicans portraying McGovern as a radical left-wing extremist, and Nixon led in the polls by large margins throughout the entire campaign.
Not that it invalidates the process, no more than voting for a third party.
Socialism has already taken over the Democrats. Past tense.
