I've written a few of these articles at this point. There was this one with a run-down of what Democratic Socialists want. And there was this one based on a Thomas Edsall column saying the DSA were really just pretending to be working class.
Today the Washington Post business section has an article which, similar to the first one linked above, walks through the differences between mainstream Dems and the DSA. For instance, on how many hours people should work:
The 40-hour workweek has been the law since 1940. Although some Democrats have advocated a shorter workweek, they are largely content to focus instead on protecting overtime pay, union organizing rights and worker safety. The DSA, on the other hand, has made cutting the standard workweek to 32 hours part of its economic platform.
On the minimum wage, Dems want to put it up to $15 an hour (or maybe $17) while the DSA is talking about pushing it to $30. But as the story notes, the Dems seem to be moving the DSA's direction. As I wrote here, Sen. Chris Murphy is backing a bill to raise the minimum wage to $30.
And of course the Dems have been trying to defend and expand Obamacare while the DSA is demanding Medicare for All.
The DSA wants to replace the system entirely, framing health care as a basic need that should be “decommodified,” meaning it shouldn’t be bought and sold on the market like other goods. Their solution is Medicare-for-all, a single-payer government system that would eliminate most private insurance.
As I pointed out before, Bernie Sanders has been promoting this for years. But there's a very good reason it hasn't happened, not even in California where progressives have a supermajority. The reason is the cost. Estimates of M4A suggest it would cost at least $3 trillion per year and maybe quite a bit more than that. Given that last year's total federal budget was $7 trillion, that's a massive increase. In order to pay for this, U.S. taxes would have to literally double.
So while "decommodifying" sounds great in theory, it doesn't actually mean anything becomes free. It just means all of us get much poorer individuall and collectively to make it happen.
And here's where the DSA follows Bernie Sanders in demagoguing the rich, precisely because they can lie and pretend taxing billionaires will cover the costs of their plans.
For the DSA, taxing the wealthy is one piece of a larger project to shift economic power from corporations to workers. Their long-term aim is public ownership of the largest corporations.
If you took all of the wealth owned by all of the billionaires in the U.S. it would cover two years of Medicare for All. It would also destroy our economy. Seems like a pretty short-sighted plan.
Speaking of decommodifying, the other thing the DSA supports putting government in charge of housing too.
The DSA views housing as a human right that shouldn’t be subject to market forces. They advocate for publicly owned “social housing” and universal rent control.
And that brings us to the final step. What the DSA ultimately wants is an end to capitalism.
Democrats want to regulate and reform capitalism to curb its excesses and make the results fairer to everyone. The DSA, by contrast, seeks in the long term to replace capitalism, which the group sees as “a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us.” They want workers to “run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.”
Everything of value is owned by the state. What could possibly go wrong?
The fundamental failure of communism is this idea and it's one that is completely at odds with the U.S. system of government. The U.S. system divided power between three co-equal branches at the federal level and then leaves immense powers to the states and to the people. The idea was to prevent too much government power from accumulating in too few hands. We were fighting our way free from a monarchy.
The DSA approach wouldn't restore the monarchy, but it would put all of the power of all of the largest corporations in the hands of the government. Instead of diversifying power centers, it would consolidate them. And before you know it, you're Cuba or Venezuela or China.
Naturally, this consolidation of power provides an even greater temptation for some individual to come along and simply control everything, not unlike Xi Jinping does in China. Not only does Xi control the only party and the entire government, he also has complete control over every billionaire and every company. It's black letter law in China that every company must provide to the government whatever it asks of them. And of course Xi also has complete control over the media and over social media. He runs everything, allegedly for the people. In reality he's a dictator with no checks on his power.
This is the system the DSA would like to see the U.S. emulate. Of course they would deny it but once you consolidate corporate power under government control, you get power that can't be challenged because there are no power centers outside the government's control. And once that control is established, the people in charge (Maduro, Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un) never give it up. Democracy becomes the last obstacle to overcome, all for the good of the people of course.
There are lots of arguments in the comments about what is right there in their own plan:
With a government by, for, and of the working class and with powerful labor unions and social movements organizing in every city and town, we hope to build a socialist society where people come before profit, basic needs are guaranteed, the largest corporations are put under public ownership and democratic control, peace around the world is secured, and workers around the world join together in common struggle to construct socialism worldwide.
It's not like they're hiding it, but there are lots of DSA fans in the comments who simply won't believe that they really mean it.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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