SOCIALISM—MORE SPECIFICALLY “democratic socialism”—has recently enjoyed one of the most successful political rebrandings in modern American history.
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SOCIALISM → enjoy → history
Its most prominent champion, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, has insisted that socialism is not a foreign import, as was once charged, but sits firmly within the American political tradition.
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socialism → insist → tradition
In a 2019 speech, Sanders connected it with one of the country’s most consequential presidents, arguing that “over eighty years ago Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped create a government that made transformative progress in protecting the needs of working families.”
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that → connect → families
Sanders added that “today . . . we must take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion.”
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we → add → completion
To Sanders, socialism means recognizing that “economic rights are human rights” to be secured through guarantees of health care, housing, education, and economic security.
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rights → mean → care
In effect, Sanders envisages socialism as merely fulfilling the “Economic Bill of Rights” that FDR proposed in his State of the Union address in 1944.
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FDR → envisage → 1944
A narrative that presents democratic socialism not as something revolutionary but rather as the natural culmination of New Deal liberalism is reassuring for a country and a political culture in which socialism has been soundly demonized for at least a century.
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socialism → present → century
This framing has moved democratic socialism from the political fringe toward the electoral mainstream.
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framing → move → mainstream
Candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, a membership-based organization founded in 1982 through a merger of Old Left and New Left groups, have won major elections in deep-blue cities from Seattle to New York, while presenting their own politics less as a repudiation of American liberalism than as its logical extension.
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Candidates → affiliate → extension
When, during his successful New York City mayoral campaign, Zohran Mamdani was asked what democratic socialism means, he answered not with a call to abolish capitalism but by invoking familiar public goods and promising to extend them.
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he → ask → them
“Everyone has what they need to live a dignified life,” he said of the democratic socialist ideal.
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he → have → ideal
New Yorkers already accept that principle when it comes to “sanitation, libraries, and the fire department”; the task, he argued, is simply to extend that vision to housing (through more stringent rent controls), public transit (in the form of free city buses), food security (by way of city-owned grocery stores), and city-sponsored childcare.
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he → accept → stores
But if Roosevelt supplies a convenient and popular American rhetorical genealogy, when it comes to their policy model, socialists more commonly point abroad.
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socialists → supply → model
Rather than presenting their agenda as a radical departure from the political norms of the modern West, America’s socialists often argue that the United States has fallen behind other affluent democracies in terms of welfare and other government policies.
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States → present → welfare
Sanders, for instance, has long pointed to the universal health care, paid family leave, affordable university tuition, and social safety nets present in Scandinavia and other Northern European countries as evidence that expansive social provision is both practical and compatible with prosperous market economies.
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provision → point → economies
Asked by Anderson Cooper whether “socialism” means something akin to the Soviet Union, Cuba, or Venezuela, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York laughed off the comparison.
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Cortez → ask → comparison
The policies she had in mind, she replied, “most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden”—Northern European democratic welfare states, not Communist command economies.
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we → have → Finland
Underneath this comparison lurk two important historical questions.
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questions → lurk → comparison
One concerns finance: The generous welfare states of Northern Europe have always relied on broad taxes, something the DSA is loath to acknowledge.
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DSA → concern → taxes
The other concerns ends rather than means: The post-World War II Scandinavian settlement to which American socialists so often point largely accepted capitalism as an engine of economic production, whereas the DSA’s own platform ultimately goes beyond European-style social democracy toward a markedly different economic order.
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platform → point → order
WHEN AMERICANS DEBATE SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, they almost invariably end up debating Europe, or at least reaching for stereotypes about it.
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they → debate → it
For many on the left, the Northern European welfare state represents proof that generous social provisions can coexist with representative democracy and prosperous market economies.
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provisions → represent → democracy
For many on the right, European states serve as cautionary tales of high taxes, expansive government, and bureaucratic overreach.
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states → serve → taxes
But both sides accept that Europe is the counterexample against which America’s political economy should be measured.
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economy → accept → which
Both conservative scoffers and envious DSA-types seem to agree that the political-economic order that emerged in Northern Europe after World War II represented a triumph of socialism over capitalism.
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that → seem → capitalism
On the contrary, postwar European social democracy represented much more of a compromise between socialists and conservative proponents of a free-market economy.
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democracy → represent → economy
Governments assumed an unprecedented responsibility for protecting citizens against the economic risks of modern life, but left, with only limited exceptions, the productive economy in private hands.
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Governments → assume → hands
The Scandinavian model, often invoked today as the gold standard of social democracy, actually began taking shape before the war.
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model → invoke → war
In 1938 Sweden’s trade union confederation came together with the employers’ confederation to sign the Saltsjöbaden Agreement, establishing a system of centralized collective bargaining intended to replace recurring labor conflict with negotiated settlements.
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confederation → come → settlements
Rather than eliminating private enterprise, Swedish social democrats sought to discipline it with strong unions, coordinated wage bargaining, and an active state to produce both economic growth and greater equality.
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democrats → eliminate → growth
It was not unlike the New Deal, which recognized workers’ right to bargain collectively and sought to smooth capitalism’s rougher edges rather than replace the American market economy.
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which → recognize → economy
The appeal of this accommodation grew considerably after the catastrophes of the 1930s and 1940s.
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appeal → grow → 1930s
Depression, mass unemployment, ascendant fascism, and war had badly discredited the prewar economic order, while the political strength of organized labor and Communist parties made a simple restoration of laissez-faire capitalism neither politically attractive nor, in many countries, plausible.
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restoration → discredit → countries
The postwar settlement reflected a determination to preserve parliamentary democracy and private enterprise by providing ordinary citizens greater economic security.
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settlement → reflect → security
After 1945, variations of the Swedish settlement spread across Western Europe, as historian Tony Judt detailed in Postwar, his history of Europe in the second half of the twentieth century.
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Judt → spread → century
Britain’s Labour government pursued the most ambitious program of economic nationalization, bringing coal, railways, steel, electricity, and several other major industries under public ownership while also creating the National Health Service and expanding social insurance.
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government → pursue → insurance
While France retained important state enterprises, much of its economy remained privately owned.
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much → retain → economy
West Germany consciously embraced what became known as the “social market economy,” combining vigorous private enterprise with an expanding system of social protections.
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what → embrace → protections
Its principal political architect, Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, neatly described the bargain: “Prosperity for all and prosperity through competition are inseparably connected; the first postulate identifies the goal, the second the path that leads to it.
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that → describe → it
The object was not to displace markets but to harness them in the service of more broadly shared prosperity.
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object → displace → prosperity
…and 82 more, not listed.
