A number of Democratic Socialists have been elected recently, most notably Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of New York City. The US is ready for a big change, but we must approach it carefully because we don’t want to get hung up on nomenclature. Even though I totally sympathize with Bernie Sanders , AOC and Democratic Socialists in general, it is important what to call this movement or to not call it. After all what is important are certain economic things like Medicare for All or more importantly a public option for Medicare, universal child care, universal elder care, taxing billionaires, government being the employer of last resort (Ro Kanna’s “Work for America” program, affordable housing and affordable education. It doesn’t matter what you call the overall umbrella for these things. Republicans will attack whatever name you give it especially the word “socialism.” So maybe it would be better not to give this movement any name at all.
I’ve thought about some other names like “Welfare Democracy”, not good because Republicans will attack the word “welfare.” I think a good umbrella name, which in and of itself is not really necessary, would be “Caring Democracy.” How could Republicans attack that name? Democratic Socialists in particular need to be careful not to get caught up in cultural issues or even in issues of foreign policy. They need to stick unswervingly to economic issues. So don’t talk about gender politics or even issues of war and peace except, if anything is to be defunded, it’s the bloated Defense Department. Since Donald Trump has already started to back off from supporting the US as the world’s policeman (he’s backed off from NATO and insisted on Europeans providing for their own defense), there is no need for the US to have the Defense Department budget it now has which amounts to $1 trillion. There’s no need, in fact it’s counterproductive, to have 800 foreign military bases.
To deal with the homeless problem we need massive increases in the number of social workers and resources for housing. We also need affordable housing for the middle class. How that is provided I won’t get into here. There are many possible approaches including public/private partnerships. But the general idea is to reduce the military-industrial complex budget and to increase the peace industrial budget meaning human help for issues at home and abroad. Instead of spending billions of dollars on personnel for ICE, we need to spend billions of dollars on providing personnel and resources for helping people at home and abroad. Expand the Peace Corps and the Work for America Corps.
What is important is not belaboring what to call these programs or how we should think of them in terms of the political spectrum. What is important is reestablishing a middle class democracy, taking care of human needs and reducing inequality which is way off the scale in terms of wealth.
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