Zohran, Democratic Socialism, and Social Democracy

Zohran Mamdani’s recent mayoral primary win again has the media asking what democratic socialism is and how it differs from mainstream European center-left politics.

Thanks to Zohran Mamdani’s shock victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary last week, the New York Times is again asking what it means to be a democratic socialist. It’s a question worth revisiting, especially since the label is so widely contested even among democratic socialists ourselves.

How does the Times answer the question?

The term has no singular definition, and its supporters and critics assign it various descriptions. But the simplest way to understand democratic socialism, from an academic standpoint, is as an ideology rooted in its opposition to capitalism and wanting to shift power to workers from corporations.

In the United States, the policies that self-described democratic socialists advocate for generally do not involve the complete abolition of capitalism, but rather working within the system to enact left-wing priorities, such as raising the minimum wage. That makes them closer to social democrats — a common ideology in Europe that emphasizes strong social safety nets and government involvement in areas like health care — than traditional democratic socialists, who tend to see less room for compromise around capitalism. Either way, it places them further to the left than the average Democrat.

Although the New York Times has an illustrious record of dishonest left-punching, this characterization of democratic socialism actually isn’t a bad starting point. It is true that democratic socialism is based in “opposition to capitalism” and “wanting to shift power to workers from corporations”; it is also true that prominent democratic socialist politicians, from Bernie Sanders to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Zohran Mamdani, have largely called for reforms in the vein of European social democrats or reviving and expanding FDR’s New Deal rather than “the complete abolition of capitalism.”

Does that mean self-described democratic socialists in the US are really just our version of European social democrats? I don’t think so. While I won’t speak for the personal beliefs of Bernie or AOC or Zohran, there is a philosophical distinction between social democracy and democratic socialism, and an argument for thinking the political project of Zohran et al. advances the cause of democratic socialism. 

The difference is that social democrats seek a class compromise between workers and capitalists as an end goal, whereas democratic socialists ultimately want to abolish the class system altogether. Social democrats believe, that is, that through government regulation and redistribution and collective bargaining, workers and capitalists can ensure sustainable economic growth whose benefits redound fairly to everyone, and that such an arrangement is indefinitely stable. Democratic socialists, on the other hand, reject the idea that such a compromise can last. We want to eventually establish an economic system that doesn’t depend on private ownership of productive assets and private owners’ exploitation of asset-less workers. 

Democratic socialists hold this goal for reasons of both moral principle and political strategy. Morally speaking, capitalism rests on the illegitimate domination of workers by capitalists in the workplace. This is true even in social democratic societies at their peak. And in most cases, capitalism produces a highly unjust and unequal distribution of the social product — a distribution that leaves some in miserable poverty and undermines the human flourishing of many people. In most cases, too, capitalism allows the very wealthy to wield undue influence in the political process through lobbying, campaign finance, and threats of capital strike and capital flight, and thereby undermines democracy. 

These moral objections correspond to a strategic objection to social democracy. Because it leaves immense wealth and power in the hands of capitalists and allows them to determine the direction of economic development, social democracy makes it easy for capitalists to undermine any class compromise that might be temporarily struck. It’s true that social democratic societies in some times and places have achieved a greater degree of equality than is the case in most capitalist societies, and in many cases these societies succeeded in putting some limits on the wealthy’s political influence. But those achievements were eroded sooner or later by ruling classes whose real source of power — their ownership over the means of production — was not successfully challenged.

How do capitalists use their immense wealth and control over the means of production to roll back social democratic reforms? Capital can use its almost-unlimited war chest to bankroll political and media opposition to unions and pro-worker policies and parties; when that is insufficient to get its way, it can use its structural leverage — its ability to withhold investments or take its money elsewhere — to force reformers to back off and eventually to undermine reforms already won. And under capitalism, profit-driven economic growth will undermine the durability of labor-movement strength and the social cohesion needed for left-wing forces to take on capitalist power. These claims are borne out by the actual history of social democratic societies, which have ultimately found their achievements halted and significantly undermined — thought not yet completely rolled back in most countries — by capitalist counteroffensives.

But what do democratic socialists mean when we say we should go beyond capitalism? Here I think we should admit that we don’t have a well-defined or widely agreed-upon goal. Most of us agree, in the near term, that we should try to establish the kinds of reforms that Nordic social democrats achieved at their height, including a generous and universalistic welfare state and strong unions with sectoral-level bargaining that reduced income inequality. 

When it comes to abolishing private ownership, most socialists reject the central planning model of the Soviet Union. But there are a variety of proposals for how to bring productive assets under more collective control while maintaining some benefits of market allocation — from worker co-ops to social wealth funds to John Roemer’s “coupon socialism” to state-owned or state-leased enterprises — with many theorists suggesting a mix of different forms of firm ownership and governance.

The institutional setup of a postcapitalist society would need to be the result of messy debate and experimentation over years or decades rather than theoretical dogma. We need to figure out through trial and error what economic policies actually facilitate equality and freedom and, more generally, human flourishing. When Karl Marx wrote that socialists should not seek to lay out intricate designs for a future socialist society, he must have had something like this point in mind. (The experimental attitude Zohran recently expressed when it came to his idea of city-owned grocery stores is very much in this spirit.) It might even be the case that some amount of private ownership (in the form of individual proprietorships or small businesses, maybe, or a limited startup sector) is beneficial for the sake of innovation or simply promoting individuals’ desire to live the way they want, so long as that doesn’t have oppressive consequences for others. 

@thebulwarkmediaZohran Mamdani on city-run grocery stores: "No matter how you think about the idea, I do think that there should be more room for reasonable policy experimentation in our cities and in our country....if they work, they work, and if they don't work, c'est la vie."

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Democratic socialists should countenance the possibility that political and economic realities are such that a return to the height of social democracy in, say, 1970s Sweden (as opposed to the abolition of capitalism) is all that’s on the table for the foreseeable future. But where social democrats see that as an end point, democratic socialists maintain the ideal of moving beyond capitalism, even if we may not reach it in our lifetimes. And we see social democratic reforms that expand the public sector and strengthen workers’ bargaining position and workplace rights — like those proposed by Zohran — as helping move us closer to that goal.