The Democratic Socialists of America website says,
Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But we do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either. Rather, we believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect.
. . .
Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Democratic socialists favor as much decentralization as possible. While the large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may necessitate some form of state ownership, many consumer-goods industries might be best run as cooperatives.
Sigh. I'm starting to wonder if Elizabeth Warren would have been a
better candidate to challenge Hillary. Either that or Sanders should
clarify what his economic ideology amounts to.
So I'm confused. What exactly does Sanders believe?
The Washington Post reports, in What is a democratic socialist? Bernie Sanders tries to redefine the name, that Sanders said during a recent
speech in New Hampshire, "What democratic socialism means to me, is having a government which represents all
people, rather than just the wealthiest people, which is most often the
case right now in this country."
That meaning of democratic socialism is pretty general and inclusive. It would be compatible with regulated capitalism.
The Washington Post article continues:
In this campaign, in fact, some observers believe that Sanders is even wrong to call himself a "democratic socialist."
That's because there are official Democratic Socialists -- both in other countries and in the United States -- and they generally want something more aggressive than he does. The Democratic Socialists in the United States want a system where workers or the government own factories and other means of production. (This is different from a communist system, in which the government owns everything in the people's name.)
Sanders doesn't want that. Instead, what he wants is to take existing federal programs -- many established by Democrats like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson -- and super-size them.
For example. Sanders wants Medicare for all.
"He's not a democratic socialist," said William Galston, an expert on domestic politics at the Brookings Institution. "He's a social democrat. Seriously."
Social Democrats, a separate entity in the field guide to leftists, are generally more moderate. By those definitions, then, Sanders is actually making his own life harder, by mislabeling himself.
This seems right to me. I wish Sanders would be clearer -- and more strategic -- about his choice of words.
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