SOCIALISM IN THE U.S. AND EUROPE

SOCIALISM IN THE USA AND EUROPE

I’m not a professional expert on socialism or the Democratic Socialists of America. But I do know something about the subject given that my grandmother was an avid registered socialist in NYC (she was also a socialist in Poland before she emigrated to the USA), as was my father until some time in the 1950s or 60s.. And I went to a Jewish socialist summer camp as a child. My father’s family was close to David Dubinsky who was originally a committed socialist and one of the founders of the modern American labor movement. They were so close to one another that they were all buried next to another in an NYC cemetery (as part of the cemetery’s Lodz Workmen’s Circle–which had socialist roots). Socialist rhetoric and ideals were something I heard constantly as a child and were a formative part of my upbringing.

Very few of the people in that world, however, stayed socialist (like Dubinsky who became a progressive capitalist), as most realized that in the USA socialism came to mean something very different from what it has come to mean in Europe.

In Europe, social democratic movements are generally NOT anti-capitalist. In Scandinavian countries, social democratic parties are part of the fiber of political culture, but their leaders don’t believe that the state should “own the means of production”–which is what classic socialism argues for. Scandinavian countries strongly support small business and the importance of a market economy that is not dominated by monopolistic corporations. They all have publicly accessible stock markets and private markets as well. They generally emphasize a regulated free market economy with a strong social safety net that keeps business competitive with one another and protects the interests of the middle class and poor. These social democratic parties are close to what Dubinsky and many others thought of as progressive capitalism. This was also true for FDR who believed in a regulated market economy.

Obviously socialism doesn’t mean one thing, but the Democratic Socialists of America (founded in 1982) are committed to opposing capitalism and a market economy. Unlike most social democratic parties across Europe, they oppose a profit-based economy, they oppose stock markets, and they oppose open, free markets.

So, if you think that American socialism is just like liberal capitalism with a strong safety net (e.g. FDR, most of the American labor movement, liberal Democrats), you would be incorrect. There are some members of Democratic Socialists of America who share that view, but it’s not the view of their party. The DSA is in fact committed to replacing the free enterprise system with a collectivist economy–though it’s not always clear to me what precisely they mean by that.

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