Like a broken clock, the public has been told that, for this election season, the only hope for Americans is an embrace of socialism as progress.
Bemoaning the transformation of the United States into an oligarchy and citing “radical European parties,” The Nation urged Americans to socialism as a way out of the current American malaise.
“The United States is now, in effect, an oligarchy,” Sarah Leonard and Bhaskar Sunkara write. “Beyond this sad reckoning lies an even more fundamental problem: There is no better alternative on offer. We need a vision of a better future, one that turns our modern capacity for abundant food, shelter, and health into a guarantee that no one will suffer for their lack.”
Socialism has had a prominent, and positive, platform in the 2016 election under Bernie Sanders. Sanders has gained support against Hillary Clinton and won over young voters as an authentic candidate with a different vision from Clinton’s moderate Democratic beliefs.
Leonard and Sunkara note “glimmers of such radical potential” in the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements for economic equality and racial justice. The youth have turned from a moderate consensus to something more radical. The first inkling of it was in President Obama’s 2008 campaign where he promised “hope” and “change,” a new, more positive brand of politics.
The socialist label has boosted Sanders among millennials, even if he hasn’t fleshed out details. The ideology has grabbed the youth quicker than the practicality of his platform, and what that implies about the reality of a Sanders presidency. The political ground has shifted.
“The openness of young people to socialism may indicate two things: They are fed up with being repeatedly let down by capitalism; and people who came to political consciousness after 1989 do not have a vision of socialism heavily influenced by the Cold War,” Leonard and Sunkara write.
The more persuasive indication would be the latter. Socialism to millennials isn’t the gulag or the totalitarian control over the individual and society. It’s not the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. It’s not even the socialist implosion of Venezuela. Millennials don’t understand socialism and define it in terms of public services.
Now, socialism has a countercultural edge to it, an alternative for the future. That speaks to a failure of the political status quo in satisfying or persuading the public, and it’s not limited to the left. The rise of Donald Trump on the right has been based in a large swath of the electorate the the GOP has ignored.
Socialism has been recast as something that “prizes democracy” and “makes individual human flourishing possible” that “produces more freedom than we could ever hope for under our current system.”
The swing toward socialism isn’t necessarily permanent, and the realities of a socialist system would become much less popular if they were action instead of theory. For long-term individual rights, human freedom, and economic growth, however, the appeal is concerning. Some millennials might see socialism as the “best chance” they have for the future, but until the political status quo recognizes the threat, the youth could be marching for their own destruction.
