What Is Democratic Socialism?

Whose Version
Are We Talking About?
By Maggie Astor

June 12, 2019

Democratic socialism has become a major force in American political life. Just look at Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont, who is planning a national address on Wednesday on what it is and why he believes it’s needed.

Yet if you ask five self-described democratic socialists what the term means, you’re likely to get five different answers.
Here’s why.

Democratic socialism has a definition …

Political theory isn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser on the campaign trail, but you need some of it to understand why
“democratic socialism” means so many things to so many people.

Leftist political theory encompasses a wide range of ideologies, which can be divided roughly into three categories.
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Communism is what existed in the Soviet Union and still exists in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. It isn’t
monolithic, but the common thread is a fully centralized economy achieved through revolution.

This is the image some critics evoke against less radical ideologies, as the “Fox & Friends” co-host Pete Hegseth did when
he called Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s $15 minimum wage for her staff “socialism and communism on
display.” In reality, no federal official or Democratic candidate advocates communism.

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At the other end is social democracy, which is common in Europe. It preserves capitalism, but with stricter regulations
and government programs to distribute resources more evenly. Consider Elizabeth Warren: She supports capitalism, but
her proposals would remake the American economy in an effort to reduce inequality and guarantee basic needs.

Democratic socialism falls in between.

If we use the standard definition, democratic socialists don’t support capitalism: They want workers to control the means
of production. In social democracies, by contrast, the economy continues to operate “on terms that are set by the
capitalist class,” Maria Svart, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, told The Times last year. “Our
ultimate goal really is for working people to run our society and run our workplaces and our economies.”

Unlike communists, however, democratic socialists believe socialism should be achieved, well, democratically. This
requires a long-term outlook, because they know theirs is a minority position. Their goal is to convince a majority, but in
the meantime, they support many social-democratic policies.
Ultimately, though, Sweden isn’t what democratic socialists like Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin magazine, a quarterly
socialist journal, are looking for. “We come from the same tradition,” he said of democratic socialists and social democrats.
But generally, he added, social democrats see a role for private capital in their ideal system, and democratic socialists do
not.

… but Americans use it to mean a lot of things

In countries that have multiple leftist parties, these distinctions are commonly understood. In the United States, they
aren’t.

Because a binary view of “liberals” and “conservatives” dominates American politics, ideologies to the left of mainstream
Democrats tend to get lumped together — which often means the left conflates democratic socialism and social
democracy, and the right casts all of it as socialism or communism.

“Here in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” President Trump said in his
State of the Union address this year. “Tonight, we resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Mr. Sanders identifies as a democratic socialist, but when asked on Tuesday how he defined that, he described something
closer to social democracy.

“What democratic socialism essentially means to me is completing the vision that Franklin Delano Roosevelt started
some 85 years ago, and that is to go forward in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and guarantee a decent
economic standard of living in life for all of our people,” he said. “And to do that, obviously we have to combat oligarchy
and the incredibly unfair and unequal distribution of wealth and income, and to take on the incredible political power that
the 1 percent have.”

The policies Mr. Sanders supports — like single-payer health care, free public college, and higher taxes on the wealthy to
fund safety-net programs — are also standard in social democracies.

“His practical program is a program that would be pretty comfortable within the confines of any European country,” said
Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College. “As far as the policies he’s advocating, those are
probably better viewed as social democratic — that’s what they would be in another place in which there are more left
options.”

But “because we don’t have a social-democratic party in this country,” Professor Berman said, “the only way to indicate
that you want to go further than the Democratic Party — that you are more critical of capitalism than the Democratic
Party has been — has been to identify yourself as a democratic socialist.”

And so, even on a question as basic as whether democratic socialism and capitalism can coexist, there is disagreement.

“There are some democratic socialists that would say, ʻAbsolutely not,’” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who identifies as a democratic
socialist, told MSNBC in February. Others — herself included, she said — “would say, ʻI think it’s possible.’”

This complicates the debate

Democratic socialists are not necessarily bothered by the loose definition. There is room for more than one movement on
the left, Mr. Sunkara said.

“Socialism means many things,” he said, adding that he tried to avoid policing which self-identified socialists count as real
socialists.

But there is little question that the lack of a common definition confuses the political debate.

“Socialist” and “communist” have long been catchall epithets for any proposal that would substantially expand the role of
government — including ones, like Social Security and Medicare, that are now popular across the political spectrum.
There is a big difference between social-democratic policies and ones that would actually shift control of the means of
production, but that distinction is often lost in political discourse.
This was clear in a Harris Poll conducted in April, which found that 40 percent of Americans would rather live in a
socialist country than a capitalist one — but their definitions varied widely, making it impossible to conclude how many
supported any given version of socialism.

About three-quarters of all respondents (both supporters and opponents of socialism) said a socialist system would
involve universal health care and tuition-free education. About two-thirds said it would involve a guaranteed living wage,
and a similar number mentioned a state-controlled economy. Sixty-one percent said it would include state control of
private property, and 57 percent believed the government would control the news media.

“When everybody defines a term in their own way,” Professor Berman said, “it makes it harder for voters or the public to
figure out exactly what that term is supposed to signal.”

Follow Maggie Astor on Twitter: @MaggieAstor.

Sydney Ember contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on June 13, 2019, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Idea on the Rise, Somewhere To the Left of the Democrats

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