Why Democrats are Embracing Anti-Capitalism and Socialists
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has been called the future of the Democratic Party. Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that calls for an end to private profit and end to capitalism. Many people don't understand that under socialism you do not control the fruits of your labor, rather the state or collective gets to decide where your value gets put. Without private profit the individual cannot decide what they get to purchase or trade. Understanding this we can see that many people do not actually look at the values of the DSA and what they advocate, if they did many people would likely not align themselves with the group as most Americans, even on the left, are Capitalists.
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If you build something, do you believe that you have a right to keep it, sell it, or retain any profit you make off of that object?
Do you think that you have a right to choose what you do with the fruits of your labor?
If you do, you're a capitalist.
Capitalism means the private individual can control and freely trade the fruits of their labor.
And to an extreme degree, as far right on the economic scale as you can go, these are people who pretty much believe you can trade anything you want without regulation.
In the United States, we have regulated capitalism.
Some things you can't buy, some things you can't sell, and some things you can't do as a corporation.
When people criticize capitalism, they often refer to the worst aspects of it, like crony capitalism revolving door policies or massive, unaccountable, multinational corporations.
And in America, we're supposed to have laws that prevent corruption, and sometimes it doesn't work, things get out of control.
When we see wealth inequality, people start to advocate for socialism, not really understanding what socialism is.
I have a lot of friends who tell me they're democratic socialists.
And when I ask them very simple questions like, do you believe you have a right to profit off of your labor, they say yes.
And right away, you've just said you're a capitalist.
Because the democratic socialists of America, one of the lightest forms of socialism that we've seen, actually does not agree with profit.
And that is not my opinion.
It's on their website.
They actually are calling for the abolishment of capitalism, meaning the private individual has no right to control the fruits of their own labor.
To varying degrees, there is socialist policy.
Obviously, not every time someone refers to socialism, they're talking about the workers controlling the means of production.
But that's the mistake they're making.
Because when you actually look at what the DSA wants, they do want to abolish profit, they do want to control distribution of economic goods, and that's plainly visible on their website.
Too many people look at Bernie Sanders, who claims to be a socialist but is actually a social democrat, and assume socialism means we're going to have universal health care, we're going to have free college.
And, well, free college is technically incorrect because taxes still pay for it.
But they think Bernie Sanders is socialist, and Bernie Sanders thinks Scandinavian countries are socialist.
They're not.
They're all capitalists.
They all have the right to control the fruits of their labor.
So here's what we're going to do today.
We're going to take a look at some of the statements made by the Democratic Party as democratic socialism rises within their ranks, and we're going to take a look at what the Democratic Socialists of America actually believe, so that you can better understand what it means when people claim they are Democratic Socialists.
So we'll start by looking at this story from Business Insider.
The chair of the Democratic Party just embraced progressive insurgent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calling her the future of our party.
Tom Perez has wholeheartedly embraced Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old self-described Democratic Socialist, calling her the future of our party.
Ocasio-Cortez is to the left of Perez and other party leaders on some key policy issues, but Perez said Democratic candidates should fit their districts.
Other party leaders have responded less enthusiastically to Ocasio-Cortez's upset victory, warning that the party should avoid moving too far to the left.
And recently, on the Wikipedia page for the Democratic Party, we saw Democratic Socialism has been added to a list of factions within their party.
Now, the majority of the Democrats are modern liberals and social liberals, but they do have factions that are centrist, conservative, Democratic Socialist, left-wing populists, progressive, and social Democrats.
So before we look at the Democratic Socialists of America, let's look at the general understanding of what socialism means.
According to Wikipedia, socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterized by social ownership and workers' self-management of the means of production, as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.
Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective, and cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity.
There are many varieties of socialism, and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them.
Though, social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms.
So the point I was making in the beginning about you controlling the fruits of your labor actually comes from an argument put forth by the Democratic Socialists of America.
They claim to want to abolish profit.
In one tweet from the New York DSA, they say abolish profit, abolish prisons, abolish cash bail, and abolish borders.
And in the photo they posted, you can see that people are holding up signs that say abolish profit.
According to a quick Google search, profit is a financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.
To put it simply, if you build a birdhouse and it costs you $20 to buy the wood, to buy the screws and the glue, and then you sell that birdhouse for $30, You have a $10 profit.
That means that you have $20 to make another birdhouse and continue doing your job, and $10 with which you can spend on food and rent and expenses, and if you sell enough birdhouses, your profit might become a living wage.
Profit just means that you are benefiting from the fruits of your labor by contributing to society.
Obviously, capitalism can go wrong.
Massive, unaccountable corporations can start exploiting workers by paying them very tiny amounts relative to what they produce, and then we see the rise of unions.
And this is why, in my opinion, we do need some kind of regulation.
But I don't want to talk too much about that particular issue.
I want to keep the focus on socialism and what the democratic socialists believe.
So, some people have said to me, Tim, they're not calling for abolishing capitalism, when in fact they absolutely are.
This is not up for dispute.
This is not an opinion.
The DSA on their website says they want to abolish capitalism.
Wikipedia shows several quotes, and even an article by Vox highlights that their goal is to abolish capitalism.
On the DSA website, their constitution, Article 2 Purpose, they say we are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit.
They go on, and I'll look at some more of what they say, but I want to point out that private profit, as I mentioned, simply means that an individual gets to control the fruits of their labor.
That if you do work, you as a private individual will generate profit, and you can live off that profit as a wage beyond the cost of your labor.
Without profit, essentially what they're arguing is that society should provide for you, and any value generated from your goods will go to the state or some kind of collective.
And that means you can work, but you don't necessarily get to control the fruits of your labor.
Though the idea of democratic socialism is that the society gets to vote as a whole, and that is still socialism.
People try to claim that democratic socialism simply refers to Scandinavia, and that's also not true because those companies are capitalist.
Democratic socialism means, literally, everyone gets to vote on the economy.
It is still a socialist system.
There is just a qualifier in front of it.
So democratic socialism exists underneath the umbrella of socialism.
There are many different forms of socialism, there are many different forms of capitalism, and not everyone uses the same definition.
Suffice it to say, democratic socialism does mean, at least according to the DSA on their own website, that there will be popular control of resources.
They say, we are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.
And that is entirely different to what Bernie Sanders argues, though he is not a member of the DSA as far as I know.
It's also entirely different as to how these Scandinavian countries run.
They are capitalist countries with a welfare state.
That's different.
You can say that, to an extent, welfare programs are socialist policies, but at the core, the economy is not socialist, nor is it planned, nor is there popular distribution of resources, to an extent.
Vox has an article.
Nine questions about the Democratic Socialists of America you were too embarrassed to ask.
Number one.
What does DSA believe in?
Like most socialist organizations, DSA believes in the abolition of capitalism, in favor of an economy run either by the workers or the state, though the exact specifics of abolishing capitalism are fiercely debated by socialists.
The academic debates about socialism's meaning are huge and arcane and rife with disagreements, but what all definitions have in common is either the elimination of the market or its strict containment.
said Francis Fox Piven, a scholar of the left at the City University of New York and a former DSA board member.
In practice, that means DSA believes in ending the private ownership of a wide range of industries whose products are viewed as necessities, which they say should not be left to those seeking to turn a profit.
According to DSA's current mission statement, the government should ensure all citizens receive adequate food, housing, health care, child care, and education.
DSA also believes that the government should democratize private businesses, i.e.
force owners to give workers control over them to the greatest extent possible.
But DSA members also say that overthrowing capitalism must include the eradication of hierarchical systems.
That lie beyond the market as well.
As a result, DSA supports the missions of Black Lives Matter, gay and lesbian rights, and environmentalism as integral parts of this broader anti-capitalist program.
Most people in this country are capitalists.
In fact, most people I've talked to who claim to be democratic socialists are actually capitalists too, and they kind of just don't realize it, because they keep referring to Denmark and Sweden and Norway and Finland as socialist countries, which they are not.
In 2015, some controversy was generated by Bernie Sanders calling Denmark socialist.
Danish PM in US, Denmark is not socialist.
Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Danish PM Lars Lakersmussen told students
that he had absolutely no wish to interfere the presidential debate in the US, but nonetheless
attempted to set the record straight about his country.
I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism.
Therefore I would like to make one thing clear.
Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy.
Denmark is a market economy.
The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security for its citizens, but is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish, he added.
And this is in direct contrast to the constitution of the Democratic Socialists of America, who said,
We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and
That is relatively different to what the Nordic model is doing, where you have a free market economy,
where the PM of Denmark says you're free to pursue your life's dreams, but they have a social security net for its
citizens.
And it's easy to do when your country is relatively small, and it's much harder to scale up.
But democratic socialists, according to their constitution, want a planned economy.
They want popular control of resources.
With a planned economy and redistribution of resources across racial lines and identity-based lines, you enter a very strange, identitarian, racist, sexist society.
And of course, many people associated with the DSA will say they're anti-racist, but of course, that's just the word they use to protect themselves when they actually institute racist policies.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, racist is when you show discrimination or prejudice against other races.
And by that simple understanding of the word, you can call them racist.
Now, they use a different definition of racist.
They use a deeper academic understanding that emerged in the 70s, which is prejudice plus power.
But that is a minority definition.
So they'll claim they're not racist based on their own esoteric definition, and most people don't understand it's actually relatively racist.
Many of the actions they take fly in the face of core values of our country, such as free speech and the free press, as we saw with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez banning the press from two of her events.
This story from CNN.
Ocasio-Cortez faces heat for excluding media from town hall events.
As these things move incrementally, and as these policies get instituted by degree, people are kind of okay with it.
But I assure you, a person who advocates for a controlled economy, where the government or state or some kind of
cooperative gets to determine where your labor goes and what you are allowed to receive,
and also believes you do not have a right to know what they are saying in private meetings, is not a democratic
socialist at all, but just a plain old socialist.
It sounds good on paper.
They can highlight the worst aspects of capitalism and claim that socialism is a better alternative, but you're really talking about the extreme end of capitalism, the corruption, and telling people that they deserve a more extreme in the other direction when in reality we need something closer to the middle and that's kind of what we have.
The system we have isn't perfect.
But, simply put, people don't really understand what they're advocating for when they claim to be democratic socialists.
And this is the Bernie Sanders type gateway drug.
When he says he's a socialist, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she's a socialist, and they publicly advocate for simple welfare programs, that's not necessarily socialism.
And people need to better understand what socialism really is, and at the same time understand there is a nuanced understanding of it.
I like the idea of being able to sell what I produce as I see fit.
I like the idea of recognizing that some things probably shouldn't be sold, and we do need to have controls in our economy and laws to prevent corruption, regardless of which direction it goes.
Government can be corrupt, and corporations can be corrupt.
But right now, you can't trade one extreme for the other.
If we have problems with our system as it stands, we need to enact our existing laws to stop that from happening.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
How do you feel about the DSA?
Do you have friends who think they're socialists and really aren't?
We'll keep the conversation going in the comments.
