The value of remembering
During the competitive phase of this primary season, there was a diary on Daily Kos recalling Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s democratic socialist views. Rev. King’s own words show both his comfort in using that terminology to describe his view of a better future for America and the depth of his passion on this subject.
The diary was in response to former MSNBC Commentator Chris Matthew’s bizarre and ugly remark, following the Nevada Democratic debate, where he imagined people being rounded up and shot in Central Park if we had lost the Cold War. He said this in the context of discussing a candidate who (like King did) embraces democratic socialism — a system which of course has nothing to do with authoritarian violence, a system where we use the tools of democracy to broaden prosperity, where individuals can acquire wealth in the marketplace while at the same time everyone is afforded fundamental rights to necessities such as quality health care and housing; clean air and water; safe food; public education including college or trade school; a living wage; a fair and equal justice system.
I mentioned in the comment thread of that diary that another renowned leader, Nelson Mandela, was also a democratic socialist. (Though the particular circumstances of national and international politics at the point in history when he was president of South Africa led some parts of his administration’s policymaking to be more what political scientists call neoliberal than democratic socialist.)
A couple years ago, I posted a diary about King and Mandela’s democratic socialist philosophies, as part of the These Revolutionary Times series, a project of the Daily Kos group, The Political Revolution.
It's not unusual to discuss these esteemed historical figures in the context of modern politics (here’s a New Republic article from 2016 discussing U.S.-Cuba relations which mentions some comments of King’s on the subject), and one obvious reason for doing so at this moment is that the runner-up two cycles in a row for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders, espouses a democratic socialist philosophy, like these historical leaders did. And not just Sanders but also passionate young leaders in our party like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.
Whether responding to redbaiting or to folks’ honest trepidation or curiosity, it doesn’t hurt to remind folks that the democratic socialist philosophy of leaders on our side of the aisle like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib, is the same philosophy which has been embraced by some of history’s most revered human rights champions.
Rev. King also was also of course one of history’s greatest champions of non-violent political movements. And while violence against the government was indeed one part of the fight to end the violent, oppressive apartheid regime, President Mandela, though he had every reason to hate that regime, was the model of a gracious leader, seeking truth and reconciliation, not vindictive retribution and certainly not violence. Both King and Mandela were recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The fact that Sanders often alludes to King and that he has similar philosophies as King on both domestic and foreign policies and on movement politics, is not surprising, since Sanders came of age during the Civil Rights years, and like so many other progressive Americans at that time, he revered King.
Objections
While the two diaries I mentioned above were mostly well-received — there was at least one commenter in the threads of both diaries who objected. The objectors made various assertions:
- MLK’s views weren’t democratic socialist
- It’s wrong to invoke MLK because he isn’t here to “defend” himself
- It’s wrong to invoke the views of these figures for your own political purposes
- Invoking these figures is an appropriation of their legacy
King’s own words belie the first of those objections —
“I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic”—1952
“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”—1961
“There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”—1966
— and suggesting that King would need to “defend” his comfort with using the term and his affinity for democratic socialism is not doing King or his legacy any favors; it seems to be simply betraying the objector’s own discomfort. And having heard the Founding Fathers’ writings invoked so often during the Trump impeachment proceedings, I think it’s safe to say that giving due consideration to the views of leaders from the past, as wisdom and guidance for current political situations, is hardly inappropriate.
The political and ethical folly of shunning democratic socialism
In a June 2019 article, Daily Kos Founder Markos Moulitsas — who was not a Sanders supporter by any stretch — applauded Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for educating Americans about democratic socialism and thus helping to “inoculate” all Democrats against a familiar GOP attack:
The one candidate most identified with socialism, the one who literally calls himself a socialist, is not just beating Trump [in head-to-head polls], but crushing him.
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The one-two punch of [Sanders] and AOC is educating Americans that socialism is all about policies that, individually, are incredibly popular with the American people.
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[Sanders’s] standing vs. Trump today is evidence that the force of his policies is eclipsing whatever simplistic “The socialists want to take away your airplanes” bullshit is emanating from the Right.
Of course, we aren’t at a place where we can say that embracing the democratic socialist label will surely lead a candidate to victory — but we are no longer at a place where we can say it will definitely lead to their defeat. This is a big change, indeed.
For example, just this week it became all but certain that New York will elect another democratic socialist besides AOC to the U.S. House: the AP projects Jamaal Bowman has beaten the incumbent in the primary. And in 2018, in addition to AOC’s and Tlaib’s earning seats in the U.S. House, three self-described democratic socialists were elected to the Pennsylvania state House: Reps. Elizabeth Fiedler, Sara Innamorato and Summer Lee. Another Pennsylvania democratic socialist, Kristin Seale, who was a first-time Democratic candidate for the legislature in 2018, lost her race by just 450 votes; in the previous cycle, a Democrat running against the same incumbent lost by over 4600 votes.
And just prior to Joe Biden’s recovery in South Carolina which propelled him back to the lead after dismal showings in the first three contests, the picture for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders was looking rather good: despite a health scare that could easily have derailed a less popular candidate,“538” analysts had painted a fairly rosy forecast at the state level and Sanders had become the front-runner in national polls (leading the Democratic field by 16 points in the Washington Post/ABC poll; 12 points in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll and 9 points in the CBS/YouGov poll) — a milestone he had not achieved in the previous cycle. This cycle Sanders also placed first in the California primary. Being America’s largest state and one of its most diverse (only 37% non-Hispanic white), it’s a bellwether.
It would be facile to consider Sanders’s accomplishments a fluke or attributable just to a large field of candidates.
A May 2019 Gallup poll asked Americans — not just Democrats — if they would vote for a “socialist” presidential candidate. Since the poll didn’t define “socialist,” some respondents may well have interpreted it as further left than Sanders. Even so, 47% said they would would vote for a generic “socialist” president. And of course many polls this cycle and last cycle consistently reported that Americans favored self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over capitalist Donald Trump.
And it’s not just a matter of folks liking Sanders and disliking Trump. Folks’ views are evolving about the marketplace: an August 2018 Gallup poll found that more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents had a positive view of “socialism” (57%) than of “capitalism” (47%, a drop of 9 points since 2016.)
What these data suggest is that the ubiquitous Republican (and the occasional Democratic) sputtering about “socialism” are increasingly losing efficacy as a political tactic. No longer can a compelling politician like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be ruled out as a potential leading candidate for the presidency, simply because she embraces democratic socialism.
We saw the same pattern with marriage equality, which was once viewed as a radical, fringe idea. The polls in favor of equality kept rising as more and more folks saw that antagonism to the idea was not logical or practical or just.
Current events are certainly illustrating — horribly illustrating — the practical limitations of the marketplace: the coronavirus pandemic will require an unprecedented amount of public investment in economic life-support for the American populace and American businesses.
But Americans’ views on the marketplace were of course evolving before anyone had heard of COVID-19.
Sanders often calls attention to dreadfully sobering statistics such as the fact that three super-rich Americans today together own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the American population, and the fact that (even before the pandemic) an estimated half a million Americans each year have faced bankruptcy due to medical bills.
Last year, Greta Thunberg captured the world’s attention at the U.N., saying, in part,
People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
When we know we’re facing crises that demand very large-scale reforms and public investments, Democrats must beware of the moral inappropriateness of mirroring Republicans’ kneejerk cheering for capitalism and jeering at democratic socialism — not to mention the increasing political downsides of that mirroring, which those Gallup polls and the popularity of policies like Medicare for All and politicians like Sanders suggest.