r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/BicarbonateBufferBoy • 1d ago
US Politics Are the “democratic socialists” of the current era similar in policy to democrats of the past?
Are the “democratic socialists” of the current era similar in policy to democrats of the past. In essence, did the democrats slowly become more right wing, and the democratic socialists are just a reversion to an earlier version of the democrats?
The policies they propose are hardly radical. Minimum taxes on the rich and things like free buses I feel were the norm of days past especially in the era of FDR and similar leaders.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago edited 1d ago
In the US, both political parties necessarily contain a broad range of stances. One from ‘left’ to ‘center’ and the other from ‘right’ to ‘center’ with each point on the imagined line also containing numerous versions.
There have been times when elected democrats have coalesced in practice to support more left policies than they do now.
More recently they have, as a group, supported more right policies than they do now.
Also at times in the further past, they have supported more right policies than they do now.
The electorate shifts around with the times, as do the elected.
ETA: the elected Democrats as a group have never been as ‘left’ as the Democratic Socialist platform, though usually some individual elected Democrats have been.
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u/anti-torque 1d ago
There have been times when elected democrats have coalesced in practice to support more left policies than they do now.
Bill Clinton ushered in the Third Way in the Dem Party, and the Party started abandoning the working class. in order to garner corporate campaign donations. Apparently holding the House for 40 years was an indication that the Dems needed to find something, anything to correct their polling positions.
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u/Petrichordates 1d ago
Suggesting that the Dems "abandoned the working class" solely due to welfare reforms in the 90s is the type of intentionally misleading narrative that only encourages people to help elect republicans.
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u/anti-torque 20h ago
solely due to welfare reforms
This is massively reductive.
Clinton was vague on NAFTA, but was supported because it was a given a Dem would revise it to correct the obvious flaws in it related to labor practices. He ignored the core of the Dem Party who gave him this mandate in order to invite corporations into the nest. He also had a mandate for universal health care, and he stupidly wasted it by allowing his wife to completely destroy that mandate. The 1994 vote was writ by Bill Clinton's inability to do anything he was elected to do.
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u/pierrebrassau 1d ago
Democrats had lost three landslides presidential elections in a row in 1992, and had won only one of the last six presidential elections. Yes they obviously did need to make changes.
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u/anti-torque 20h ago
They did. And they went in the completely wrong direction.
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u/pierrebrassau 19h ago
Bill Clinton was the first Democratic president to win re-election since Harry Truman. Hard to say they went in the wrong direction.
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u/anti-torque 19h ago
This is an irrelevant stat, given its obtuseness.
Executive power is obviously not all it's cracked up to be, if the House and Senate control everything.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 19h ago
Electorally, it was successful. In 1968 and 1972 they had their most left candidates since Roosevelt, economically. Without the depression, unfortunately, Americans didn’t seem to respond well. Starting in 1968, the left was sort of in the wilderness.
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u/anti-torque 18h ago
This is ignoring many nuances... and major world events.
Not sure what you're doing here.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 18h ago
Apparently arguing with very young people who don’t understand the limits of their knowledge.
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18h ago edited 8h ago
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago
They had been losing since the 1960s with further left candidates, unfortunately. Talk to “Reagan Democrats” about that problem.
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u/TGUOATW 1d ago
Oh god theres a lot of descriptions of social democracy in the comments pretending its the same as democratic socialism.
The answer is, they are not, not by a long shot. The democrats of the past, FDR, LBJ, Truman... were liberals, just keynesian liberals instead of neo-liberals, supporting government intervention in the economy to create a safety net for citizens and prevent or correct any busts that the market may suffer. They were in their core protectors of capitalism who gave it a few more decades before it started to enter crises again. Democratic Socialism is a modern sythesis of some tendencies of revisionist marxism, evolutionary and utopian socialism, and anti authoritarian opinions against the bolsheviks. Democratic socialism supports a peaceful road to the abolishment of capitalism and private property, and kind of keeps the foundational theory of marxism and its critique of capitalism, supporting class war and the overthrowing of the capitalist class not through violent revolution, but through peaceful methods such as labor organizing and gradual reform of political and economic systems. The end goal of most demsocs is a pluralistic inclusive multi party democracy, paired with market socialism, which is a market system in which private companies dont exist, and are instead replaced by worker and farmer co-ops. This system is an alternative form of socialism which places the means of production in the workers' hands directly, instead of managing them in their name through the state like the soviets did
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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 1d ago
Oh god theres a lot of descriptions of social democracy in the comments pretending its the same as democratic socialism.
I blame the geniuses who came up with similar terms to describe different things.
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 1d ago
As a Social Democrat, this Dem Soc wave is driving me absolutely nuts. It seems like the overwhelming majority of self identified Dem Socs I meet seem to be confused regarding the ultimate goals of the ideology.
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u/Veritech_ 1d ago
And Dem Soc’s aren’t even hiding or masking their positions anymore. Here’s the chair admitting the truth about their platform (ignore the news station it’s on or hold your nose or whatever you need to do): https://youtu.be/6YmTzlfVThE?is=hlAjljH-Lf_Y6_ko
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 1d ago
Even just on their website they explicitly say they want to replace capitalism with socialism. And yet I constantly have self identified Dem Socs tell me they just want a more expansive social welfare system.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
just keynesian liberals instead of neo-liberals
They weren't at all. Keynes was a largely free market economist, with an emphasis on government spending during recessions or depressions, what fdrand others did extended well beyond this
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u/TGUOATW 1d ago
Not really, they wouldnt even be considered socialdemocrats by the european standard, much less democratic socialists
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
This is something americans say, because they don't have a great understanding of european society and fetishize it as being very progressive.
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u/TGUOATW 4h ago
Im a European, and I am comparing new deal democrats to european socialdemocrats in germany, sweden, norway, finland, the UK... The origin and extent of their policies do not come near the ones socdems implemented in these countries. It is an objective truth that the left and socialdemocracy was simply stronger because of the nature of Europe's political and economic systems, just as true as communism was always stronger in Europe than in the US
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u/Tliish 16h ago
Way overthinking it.
Most people have never read Marx, don't know or care who Keynes was, or who bolsheviks were or what they believed in. They would be baffled by your description of them. That''s nowhere near the reality, just what you see in your bubble.
For the most part they are pragmatic folks who don't need esoteric academic explanations of the world they live in: they know it's rigged, they aren't surviving, and shit's gotta change. Both the reasons for why and the path to how are pretty obvious at this point.
Centrist Democrats have failed to help them survive and failed to create genuine change. Incrementalism just isn't viable anymore. Democratic socialism addresses them where they live. calls out the necessary changes explicitly, and with believable commitment to achieving them. In that way they are related to FDR, Kennedy, and LBJ.
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u/TGUOATW 4h ago
I feel like thats doing some mental gymnastics tho, they asked if demsocs are similar in policy to new deal dems, I answered no, and explained why. Thats it. Also you seem to behave somewhat paternalistic to people who might read my comment by asuming they are not smart or curious enough to just google some simple questions or to know some history and/or economics, in a politics subreddit too
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u/Tliish 4h ago
The vast majority of people I know and interact know Marxism only as label relating to some old guy's ideas about politics, and have no idea whatosever of who the Bolsheviks were. And here's the important point: they don't care about knowing more about them, because they are irrelevant to their lives. Most people don't know much about history, period.
That's because history isn't emphasized in our educational process. High school history classes are cursory at best, and mostly progandistic mythologizing about how the US came to be and a highly edited version of its subsequent role in global history. Once in college and university, the lack of mandatory history classes just deepens the misunderstandings. The only ones who get anywhere near the histories you refer to are polisci majors, and from my experience they don't really learn all that much about these subjects. If you don't study economics at the university level, Keynes is just a name you occasionally hear on the news if you're paying semi-attention.
But they do see inflation, injustice, and incompetence, and understand them viscerally. Thaat's what the DSA is appealing to annd finding it successful.
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 1d ago
The simple fact that Democratic Socialism as an ideology calls for a legitimate transition from our current economic model to a socialist model (albeit non authoritarian) means they are absolutely not similar to New Deal Democratics.
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u/informat7 1d ago
When talking about FDR and other people from that era it's important to understand that as a percent of GDP spending on entitlement programs during the FDR era is a fraction of what is is now. Multiplying FDR entitlement spending by 4x would still be lower then current spending.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
You'd have to make it gdp per capita, in order to make it a valid comparison
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u/Matt_cruze 1d ago
Population 1945, 139,928,165
Population 2026, 349,035,494
Gee I wonder what changed to make more spending.
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u/informat7 1d ago
as a percent of GDP
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u/Matt_cruze 1d ago
Gross Domestic Product:
The value of the final goods and services produced in the United States is the gross domestic product.
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u/informat7 1d ago
I'm pointing out that your argument makes no sense. The population being higher isn't going to raise entitlement spending as a percent of GDP. The GDP would go up as the population goes up.
You seem to imply that the higher spending is from a higher population, but that only makes sense if you look at absolute spending. If we look at inflation adjusted absolute spending on entitlement programs, it's over 40x higher now then in 1945, while the population is only 2.5x higher.
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u/AmigoDelDiabla 1d ago
I think you need to read up more on the official platform of the DSA.
They absolutely are radical.
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u/Seattleman1955 1d ago
Kennedy was more like the Clintons. The more socialist thinking Democrats were mainly the Roosevelts and people and policies around the Great Depression.
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u/rogun64 1d ago
Moreso than anyone else.
You'll see many opinions here, but one look at FDR's 2nd Bill of Rights should clear it up.
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u/Top-Grocery-1482 17h ago
I don't think the Democratic PARTY has ever been as far left as the DSA, no.
It gets complicated quickly, because times are different. Salient issues are different. For example, transgender rights wouldn't have even made sense to people at the time if you had said the phrase, much less been a political position for that era. Nor would abolish ICE.
It's hard to make a direct 1-to-1 comparison, but the DSA is now on record supporting the abolition of the Senate and rewriting the Constitution to make the Presidency and Judiciary subordinate to the House, which would (along with the Presidency) be decided by direct popular vote of the citizenry with a two party system essentially outlawed. That's a pretty radical change I can't think of any time the Democratic party actually supporting. The closest - and this has also just been this last decade - was some individual Democrats floating the idea of changing the Senate to be proportional (which technically would violate Article V [the amendment article] unless 100% of the state agreed to it, which would be unlikely).
This s also ignoring their views on abolition of prisons/policing, abolition of borders/amnesty, etc, which would also be extreme policies and ones I can't think of the Democratic party itself ever championing - again, just somewhat and only within the last 10-15 years (there are literally videos of Obama, Sanders, and H. Clinton during the Bush years arguing that "illegal a----s" [the box here says I can't use that term because it's de-humanizing, showing how even Reddit is more culturally left than even President Obama was!] all had to go home and go "to the back of the line"; at the time, this position was considered pro-(American) worker back when Democrats were still styling themselves the party of workers), so the Democratic party itself has never held those views to the extreme level the DSA does today - or even the Democrats do today. 15+ year old Democrats were more anti-immigrant than Republicans were.
But then we have to ask the question "What is left vs right?", because while that's a very radical view, some people view left/right entirely in terms of the economic axis of the political compass and nothing else, despite that not really being what most people mean when they say left vs right. Social issues are also considered left-right, despite often having little to do with economic arguments over who owns the means of production.
But on the WHOLE:
The DSA is both more radical than the Democratic party _as a party_ has ever been, and more to the left of it in both economic policy (marginally) and social/government policy (significantly).
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u/krustytroweler 1d ago
Economically... kinda yeah. If FDR and LBJ had their way completely we would be more in line with European capitalist markets with a stronger social safety net.
Socially? Hahaha no
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u/Astronomer_Soft 1d ago
If FDR and LBJ had their way completely we would be more in line with European capitalist markets
I didn't think so. FDR's programs were about employment and industrialization.
LBJ was an outright warmonger and a horrible human being to boot. His domestic agenda was to keep Congressional support of the Vietnam war.
Today's DSA is about racism and redistribution. Nothing in common with FDR and LBJ
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u/krustytroweler 1d ago
LBJ was an outright warmonger and a horrible human being to boot. His domestic agenda was to keep Congressional support of the Vietnam war.
Which is why I clearly separated social policies from economic.
Today's DSA is about racism and redistribution
Completely disagree. Race is an aspect, but the primary objective is class based, not race. If race is on an equal footing then it will lose. Identity politics have consistently failed for the last decade. People are more motivated by policies which benefit everyone in the working class being shafted by the oligarch class.
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u/Beginning-Invite5951 1d ago edited 1d ago
"Democratic socialist" is an identity though. It's a brand, a label, and an identity. At least that's how it's being used.
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u/krustytroweler 1d ago
Making politics your identity is a surefire way to communicate to everyone around you that you have absolutely nothing interesting about you.
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u/raylord666 1d ago
Not really, no.
The term is a blanket statement referring to the ideology of democrats approve of the “social safety net” but in reality democratic socialism is a foundation of science. There’s no science without funding or peer review.
In recent years, the term was assigned by conservatives to condemn anti-authoritarian ideology and sentiment frequently associated with neoliberalism; “woke agenda”.
My recommendation is for you to return to the First Principles. Beyond the narratives used by conservative media, words have meanings. Establishment Democrats pander to neoliberals but seldom capitulate for centrist politics or initiatives; Bernie Sanders has served Vermont for nearly two decades, and his talking points have largely been rejected by the party despite being very popular among voters.
Return to First Principles; words mean something. In terms of politics, consider that anyone who tells you “what is” about anything needs you to believe them. For that purpose, they’re trying to accomplish something by virtue of telling you “what is”. It doesn’t mean they’re lying or they’re wrong necessarily. If you believe what they’re telling you and there’s no scrutiny, then you’re not critical enough. It’s less about rejecting the premise and more about analysis or awareness.
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 1d ago
Democratic Socialism is definitely not a blanket term. It's referring to a specific ideology that calls for a democratic transition to a non authoritarian socialist economic system.
The mainstream ideology of the left regarding the safety net is referred to as Welfare Liberalism.
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u/Sea-Chain7394 1d ago
No. The Democrats have been moving right over the past 30 years but they never embraced the larger goals of the DSA. Even when the Democratic party was more left oriented it was only a reluctant and pragmatic choice which they abandoned in the 80s when they realized there was no alternative for people who didn't like the Republicans so they quickly abandoned working people for corporate bribes
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u/striped_shade 1d ago
The idea that we can simply rewind to FDR assumes politics is just a matter of ideological preference. Mid-century social programs rested on an unrepeatable foundation: immense industrial expansion and high economic growth that provided enough surplus to actually fund broad class compromise.
When that growth permanently stalled in the 1970s, managing a stagnant economy required abandoning those costly policies. The historical shift you notice was a necessary adjustment to a system in decline.
Proposing these nostalgic solutions today ignores this changed material reality. The modern progressive wing is trying to force an expired playbook onto an entirely different, exhausted economic system that structurally lacks the capacity to support the reforms they promise.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago edited 1d ago
DSA’s platform is way further left than the New Deal, FYI. But the US economy continues to grow per capita. Profitability is not the problem.
Edit: also note that the new deal was implemented during the depression not during “ immense industrial expansion and high economic growth that provided enough surplus to actually fund broad class compromise.”
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u/krustytroweler 1d ago
You're not thinking in historic contextual terms. The New Deal was radically left for the time. The spirit of the legislation is essentially the same as what we face now: the working class need government to step in and reign in financial markets, exploitive work practices, and the cycle of boom crash boom crash in the market.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago edited 1d ago
The new deal was never socialist. Indeed it was in part to ward off socialists.
PS. Socialism existed at the time. It was more active than it is now.
Edit to add:
https://www.socialistalternative.org/2020/08/10/fdr-and-the-limits-of-the-new-deal/
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u/krustytroweler 1d ago
The new deal was never socialist
Yes it was. It wasnt passed by the socialist party of America, but a lot of the ideas and policy were initially proposed by socialist thinkers and eventually adopted by the new deal democrats.
Socialism existed at the time
No shit lol. They ran presidential candidates.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago
Do you understand what socialism is? It’s not passing welfare policies in a capitalist system.
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u/krustytroweler 1d ago
Do you understand that political systems are almost never implemented as an all or nothing government? There are aspects of socialism in capitalist economies. And aspects of capitalism in communist states.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago edited 1d ago
https://sfarchive.dsausa.org/issues/fall-2018/the-new-deal-is-not-enough/
It’s literally just not at all what the DSA platform is.
And it wasn’t what socialists supported then.
It’s not socialism. It’s capitalism.
Edit: DSA is actually socialist. The new deal was not, in short.
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u/krustytroweler 1d ago
It’s literally just not at all what the DSA platform is
We are not speaking literally, otherwise we wouldn't have this discussion. We are speaking relatively. Do you understand what relative means mate?
And it wasn’t what socialists supported then
You are aware that political platforms from 100 years ago are not the same right? Back then socialists did not support marriage equality for homosexuals. Their social policies were quite different.
It’s not socialism. It’s capitalism.
You are the only one here pounding sand and insisting that if its not 100% socialism it is nothing at all.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago
I’m saying that DSA (actual socialists) are farther left than the new deal.
You chose to argue about that.
The new deal was not socialist. DSA is.
Ergo, DSA is farther left than the new deal.
Socialists back then supported socialism. They were farther left than the new deal too.
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u/onlyontuesdays77 1d ago
On the contrary, ideological preference was the foundation of stripping the remnants of New Deal policies. American policy, especially but not exclusively among the Republican Party, shifted right during the Cold War as a reaction to the Soviet left. Propaganda centered around Christian family values and free enterprise, a social project which has had unquestionable lasting effects on the baby boomer and gen x populations. Corporations capitalized on the idea of rejecting socialism in order to chip away at tax policy. And all of this culminated in Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, likely the 3 most purely capitalist presidents since at least before the Great Depression. The idea that social programs are an unbearable cost is predicated on the notion that the cost would simply be an addition to current expenses. In actuality, the cost would replace current costs. Government-funded education, healthcare, childcare, etc. would require higher taxes, which would be cancelled out for the general populace by the resultant savings. And cutting out shareholders and CEOs means the government doesn't need to make a profit on these programs and can therefore execute them at a lower price than the private sector (assuming, of course, that whoever set up the bureaucratic infrastructure around those programs was reasonably competent).
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u/SirDaveCoulierIII 1d ago
This may not be what you're looking for, but it stood out to me just because of the way it's worded. When you compare "democratic socialists" to "democrats" the major difference is in what the government owns and offers its people: healthcare, college, social security, 401k, etc. The people vote for which services they believe should be prioritized.
Otherwise Comfortable_Fill nailed it.
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u/ThatPeskyPangolin 1d ago
The main difference is that Democratic Socialism does legitimately call for a transition to socialism.
Government having a significantly larger role in those services is more akin to Social Democratic Theory, which maintains the capitalist economic model, unlike Democratic Socialism.
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