As the impact of the coronavirus continues to sweep across the country, the long-term failures of capitalism are in stark view. Yet socialism—as both a critique of capitalism and an alternative political and economic system—has until recently remained outside the narrow limits of U.S. electoral politics. Well before the anti-communist fervor of the Cold War, socialist Eugene Victor Debs ran five times for president of the United States, never receiving more than six percent of the vote. Still, this constituted an all-time high for a socialist party candidate. For a hundred years afterward, socialism remained virtually dormant in American politics.
Then the tide began to turn in September 2011. In the wake of the global financial meltdown, Occupy Wall Street protesters massed in Zuccotti Park, and subsequently in other public spaces around the nation and the world, raising a banner for the 99 percent. And then the 2016 Sanders campaign, spurred by the broadening base of anti-corporate sentiment, especially among the young, brought this critique into the realm of American electoral politics. In comparison to the outcome of the Debs candidacy in 1912, the tens of millions who voted for Bernie in the current round of Democratic primaries, show that socialism, or Democratic Socialism, has achieved a measure of influence and reached a number of adherents previously unthinkable. According to a recent Gallup poll, 43 percent of Americans now view “socialism as a good thing for the country”; and fully 61 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 hold a positive view of socialism, with capitalism trailing at 58 percent.
These burgeoning ranks of socialist-leaning activists in the United States must now grapple with the relevance of socialist thought and practice to the central challenges of contemporary politics. The spring 2020 issue of New Labor Forum—available by May 15th online at no cost in response to the conditions of the pandemic — features four activist-intellectuals who have taken on this task. Among them, Sean Sweeney presents an argument for the necessity of socialism—and specifically the reclaiming of the state—to solve the climate crisis. And in his May 2020 “Organized Money” column, Max Fraser reveals the current lobbying interests engaged in undermining state action to halt climate change, namely the proposed Green New Deal legislation.
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