Is there a reason why we’re all acting like there’s some stark distinction between socialism and “democratic socialism”?
The national media take such pains to ensure that their audiences are never under the impression that Bernie Sanders is a socialist-socialist but instead a democratic socialist, and I can only imagine it’s because they think placing the word “democratic” at the beginning makes it sound pleasant.
The tendency was best captured last month on MSNBC when journalist A.B. Stoddard said that Democrats were likely going to suffer should they nominate “a socialist.”
With the reflexes of a Serengeti cat, anchor Stephanie Ruhle pounced. “A democratic socialist,” she said in an effort to correct Stoddard. “That is not the same as a socialist.”
“Whatever,” replied Stoddard.
“It’s not a whatever.”
But it actually is “a whatever.” If a “democratic socialist” is different in some profound way from a socialist-socialist, I’ve yet to hear what that difference is. The East German communists called their country the German Democratic Republic. Did that make it so?
The website for the Democratic Socialists of America defines what they believe, and anyone who reads it can’t possibly come away believing there’s any divergence from standard, everyday socialism, and whatever it is that the Vermont senator is trying to sell.
The site says, “We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them”; that “the economy and society should be run democratically — to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few” and that major industries should “run as cooperatives.”
Democratic socialism really is just socialism, or even “communism,” a word that was once a synonym for socialism before socialist regimes began using it to describe the future paradise of perfect socialism.
“To meet public needs, not to make profits for a few” is nothing more than the Kidz Bop rendition of, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” And to socialists, strangely, that’s actually what democracy means. It isn’t about voting; it’s about redistributing economic power by redistributing other people’s property.
The DSA asserts with enthusiasm that “democratic socialism” is not about establishing an “all-powerful government bureaucracy” and that, indeed, democratic socialists “have been among the harshest critics of authoritarian Communist states.”
But how do these people think their fantasy world works? Who’s going to ensure that Tim Cook steps down as CEO and hands the keys to the kingdom to the janitors who wipe down the Apple stores each night? Who’s going to make certain that Tesla is producing its cars “to meet public needs”?
That’s going to require government force — a lot of it.
And yet the media continue to qualify Sanders’s ideology as if it’s any different than standard socialism as it’s been defined for centuries.
An Associated Press report on Monday referred to Sanders’ “avowed democratic socialist ideology.”
The New York Times on Sunday described Sanders as “the democratic socialist.”
The Washington Post on Saturday called him “the democratic socialist from Vermont.”
Why is his ideology being given this qualification? Sanders himself has made no serious distinction between socialism and what it is he’s advocating for. That is free education at public universities, free health insurance via government-run Medicare, free state-run child care, and guaranteed government jobs.
What’s left for him to do for the media to make the leap from describing him as “democratic socialist” to just plain “socialist”?
There was never any difference.
