Sex and the City star and New
York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon is now a democratic socialist.
BY KATE ARONOFF
In real-time, candidates and,
critically, groups like DSA and the social movements and community organizing
outfits they work with, are helping map out what a 21st century American
democratic socialism might look like.
New York gubernatorial
candidate Cynthia Nixon is a democratic socialist. Nixon, who is challenging
incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo, wrote in an email to Politico that
some “more establishment, corporate Democrats get very scared by this term but
if being a democratic socialist means that you believe health care, housing,
education and the things we need to thrive should be a basic right not a
privilege then count me in.”
This move comes just weeks
after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—a self-described democratic socialist and
dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—won an upset
primary against Rep. Joe Crowley, until that point considered one of the most
powerful Democrats in the House. In the wake of Bernie Sanders’ presidential
primary, these developments have sparked a conversation about what the term
‘democratic socialism’ actually means.
The Right spent much of
Obama’s presidency, confusingly, for socialists, calling policies like the
Affordable Care Act—a market-based exchange dominated by private healthcare
insurers—socialism. Now that candidates like Nixon and Ocasio-Cortez are
actively choosing to identify with the label publicly, the Right doesn’t have
much ammunition to draw on, comparing demands for common-sense things like
affordable housing to Stalinist five-year plans.
In real-time, candidates and,
critically, groups like DSA and the social movements and community organizing
outfits they work with, are helping map out what a 21st century American
democratic socialism might look like. Nixon and Ocasio-Cortez have defined it
mainly as a natural extension of the measures outlined in their policy
platforms, which include support for policies like Medicare for All, free
public college, taxing the rich and upending backward
voter suppression laws.
As Ocasio-Cortez
straightforwardly put it when asked to define democratic socialism: “In a
modern, moral and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to
live. … What that means to me is health care as a human right. It means that
every child, no matter where you are born, should have access to a college or
trade-school education, if they so choose it. And I think that no person should
be homeless, if we can have public structures and public policy to allow for
people to have homes and food and lead a dignified life in the United States.”
It wasn’t diatribes about
ownership over the means of production that won Ocasio-Cortez her election, and
it won’t be singing the Internationale that wins Nixon hers. What has seemed to
resonate with New York voters—and with those of fellow democratic socialists
Lee Carter, in the Virginia legislature, and Carlos Ramirez Rosa, a Chicago
Alderman—is a tangible vision of a more humane society, backed up by a genuine
commitment to listening to and fighting for the concerns of their
constituencies.
Older and existing models of
socialism and social democracy offer lessons, but not exactly roadmaps.
Sweden’s universal healthcare system is both successful and popular, while the
country is one of the world’s whitest. Norway’s massive social wealth fund has
given the country a robust public sphere, but was also built on oil wealth. And
even America’s own history of democratic socialism in power—like much of
American history writ large—was at times riddled with racism, as when socialist
Milwaukee Congressman Victor Berger defended segregation. The writings of Marx
and Lenin offer plenty of valuable insights into capitalism and political
strategy, although may not be of much help in crafting a plan to effectively
abolish ICE (which both Ocasio-Cortez and Nixon call for).
Building any sustainable
democratic socialism in 21st century America—the unique challenge that
socialists in the United States find themselves saddled with—is grappling with
the fact that the country was built on a brutal foundation of genocide and
slavery which fundamentally defines our society, and that the threat of climate
change demands that we decarbonize our economy by 2050 at the absolute latest
or face civilizational annihilation.
After being stripped violently
from America’s political consciousness through decades of red-baiting and
state-sanctioned murder, socialism is, for the first time many can remember,
emerging here as something other than either a countercultural aesthetic
preference or the preoccupation of a handful of academics. It’s now firmly
enmeshed in our politics, and as such has to grapple with questions that are
harder to parse out in real life than online or in theoretical texts: How do
socialists govern? How do we run subway systems or fire departments, or the
Environmental Protection Agency? What does it actually look like to bring
things previously left to the market under public ownership?
The strength of American
democratic socialism will fail or fly in the long-run based on what it’s
actually able to deliver. In the short-run, it has to win over voters who’ve
probably never heard of it. Here’s hoping Nixon and other democratic socialist
candidates can make the case successfully this year.
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