![]() ![]() By 1969, it had splintered into small and internally embattled factions.” All these people pour in bringing in new energy and ideas, hard to say what. In 1968 it had 100,000 members, and it wasn’t entirely a good thing. Isserman explains how it stymied groups like SDS: “In 1965, SDS had 15,000 members. Some organizations just weren’t able to handle the influx of interest and get everyone on the same page. Ironically, some experts trace the problem to the popularity and visibility of the left that arrived with the 1960s and ’70s counterculture movements. Its candidates ran against both Democrats and Republicans, but its life as a third party essentially fell apart when the group succumbed to internal divisions in the early 1970s. The party elected more than 1,000 candidates at the state, local and federal level before World War I. Its best-known leader was Eugene Debs, the five-time presidential candidate and workers’ rights leader made famous by the Pullman strikes that helped inspire the creation of Labor Day. The Socialist Party of America was established in 1901. The DSA is the latest incarnation of a long-running socialist movement in America that dates back to the turn of the 20th century. Why was the Democratic Socialists of America founded? “ is not a violent overthrow of capitalism, but working within the system through legal and peaceful means electoral and social movements,” says Isserman. (Of course the Democratic Socialists of America website has a whole page on this very question, as do the campaign websites for Ocasio-Cortez and Salazar, as well as that of Senator Bernie Sanders, another prominent democratic socialist.) They generally support ideas such as labor reform and pro-union policies, tuition-free public universities and trade schools, universal healthcare, federal jobs programs, fair taxation that closes loopholes that the wealthiest citizens have found, and using taxes on the rich and corporations to pay for social welfare programs. The term generally refers to collectively-owned businesses and forms of government, in which workers and government entities have more control over the means of production and distribution of goods, versus the private ownership and free market that drives capitalism.Īmerican politicians today who are associated with democratic socialism generally favor New Deal-style programs, believing that government is a force for good in people’s lives and that a large European-style welfare state can exist in a capitalist society. While the idea of equalizing the distribution of wealth is an old one, the way of doing so dubbed “socialism” dates to the 19th century. What does it mean to be a democratic socialist in America? If candidates like Ocasio-Cortez and Salazar prove victorious in November, that trend is likely to continue. And even though Sex and the City actor and activist Cynthia Nixon lost the Democratic primary for Governor of New York to Andrew Cuomo, she too succeeded in raising awareness for democratic socialism. The DSA has endorsed 62 candidates for local, state and federal office, most famously Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old who defeated a 10-term incumbent in the Democratic primary to represent the Bronx and Queens, and Julia Salazar, 27, who won a New York State Senate Democratic primary. In the post-World War II era, for example, only 15% of Americans wanted to see the country “go more in the direction of socialism,” according to a 1949 Gallup poll.īut that phenomenon is a lot less surprising now than it was just a few months ago, thanks to political newcomers with DSA ties. Among them is the phenomenon of primary-election success for members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) - a situation that would have been extremely unlikely relatively recently, as socialism has long been considered a “dirty word” in American politics. ![]() As the 2018 midterm elections approach, the campaign season has come with its fair share of surprises.
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