Democratic Socialism: Recycling a Bad Idea

Upton Sinclair was an American author, very popular in the early 20th Century. He was a Progressive, after the mold of many, such as Wilson, Jack Reed (assisted Lenin and the Bolsheviks-he is buried on Red Square), Margaret Sanger, etc. of that era, and founded the California chapter of the ACLU.

His unsuccessful political career included a run for Congress on the Socialist Party ticket, and also for the Governors office on the Democratic ticket, where his greatest success was with his “End Poverty in California” (EPIC) campaign, although not great enough to win him the mansion. On reflection of his political career, in the late 1950’s, he mused, “American’s will take Socialism, they just won’t take the name…we have to outflank them.”

It is with that as a backdrop I make the following comments, related to this meme of Bernie Sanders, self declared Democratic Socialist.

I submit to you that the Progressive and “Social Justice Warrior” rhetoric against “old, white, misogynistic, chauvanistic and racist men” has more to do with marginalizing opposition and advancing the Democratic Socialist ideology than any of the aforementioned disparaging accusations.

You don’t get any older, or whiter, or manly (ok, maybe more manly) than Bernie. But hey, I give Bernie kudos for having the cajones to wear the brand!

In 2016 (according to that right wing rag, the Washington Post), twice as many voters under 30 yrs. old voted for the Democratic Socialist than for Clinton or Trump combined! (Clinton-766k, Trump-828K, Sanders-2M+)

If that’s not concerning enough, think of it this way: The Democratic Socialist candidate got 63% of that voting block compared to Hillary’s 37%. Worried yet? Wait there’s more!

Vladimir Lenin was vaulted to power by the Bolsheviks in 1917 Russia. Lenin called himself a Democratic Socialist, and their party was the “Socialist Democratic Labor Party”.

Now the situation in Russia was a bit more drastic in early 20th Century than here, now, but the language/rhetoric being used is exactly the same. Lenin capitalized on what he labeled as “Polyezni”, or “useful idiots”, to gain power, and then to carry out the next step, which was to basically marginalize, then eliminate his opposition. (I’ll not get into the gory details; you can look up “Red Terror policy”.)

Lenin said, “Communism is the end of Socialism”, or perhaps more generally translated, “The goal of Socialism is Communism”. The declared enemy of the Socialist Democrats is the “Bourgeoisie”, the Middle Class, those Capitalist business owners who own the greater percentage of wealth, both then and now.

It looks like an ever increasing portion of American voters are now willing to own the brand of “Socialist”, and judging by many of the candidates being nominated for the upcoming mid-term elections, it seems the old guard Democrats, those old Truman and Kennedy supporters, are losing ground within the party. In fact, based on this trend and some of the new Socialist nominees commentary, Truman and Kennedy would not be welcome in today’s Democrat Party. (Heck, they’d actually be in the right half of the Republican Party today!)

I leave you with this famous quote from the greatest British Premier of my lifetime, Lady Thatcher:

“Socialism works great, until you run out of other people’s money.”