So, in another article pushing back against leftist gatekeeping, I'm going to explain why Bernie's economic views are appealing to liberals, and are not exclusively "socialist." As a matter of fact, I would argue that despite calling himself a socialist, and perhaps having some personal views he does not openly espouse that may have socialist inclinations, his policies are very much within the liberal or reformist capitalist sphere of influence.
Discussing liberalism, socialism, and everything in between
So, I'm going to define a hard line separating socialism from capitalism here. And that is ownership of the means of production. If you support ownership of the means of production in private, individual hands, you're a capitalist. If you support some sort of collective means of production, such as state ownership or democratic work places or what have you, you're some flavor of socialist.
But, just because you subscribe to one or the other does not mean that the two ideas don't necessarily overlap. The economic dimension of a political spectrum is...a spectrum, and there is a lot of granularity along that spectrum.
It's like a color spectrum. There's blue (capitalism), and then there's red (socialism). And then you have a lot of shades of red, blue, and purple in between. If you're arguing with me on a political forum and I don't fit into whatever label you wish to impose on me and you're gatekeeping me, that does not mean that I'm not very unlike you in actual policy preferences, even if I am in terms of ideology.
A lot of "purple" ideologies were created to address the flaws of capitalism, socialism, or both. By blending together the best elements of both, we get a potent combination of policies that can bring people together under a big tent. Some more capitalist moderates are social liberals or social democrats, while some more socialist moderates are other variations of social democrats or demsocs.
The more I interact with social democrats, the more I realize that that is where left and right actually meet. You got a lot of "leftists" who tend to support social democratic policy, perhaps seeing socialism as some end goal, but perhaps supporting more moderate policies in the mean time, while others like and accept capitalism and also support...largely the same policies.
And then you have social libertarianism, which is an offshoot of both social liberal and social democratic philosophy, although more on the capitalist side of things. They tend to support a social democratic vision, but much like conservatives, see traditional liberal or socdem ideas as very flawed or bureaucratic and want to pursue more simple types of policies. They might also want more freedom or individualism than most social liberals or social democrats want, and their distrust of government leads to them wanting policies that cannot be negatively impacted as easily by those in power. Means testing and bureaucracy are the natural enemies of social libertarians, with such policies sometimes being well meaning, sometimes being malevolent, and largely being unnecessary. I largely support a social libertarian framework for my own political approaches, hence my support of UBI, individual liberty, and support for Andrew Yang's ideology over that of Bernie Sanders.
Still, Bernie Sanders is a very good politician and he has a lot of the right ideas. I voted for him in the primaries twice, once over Yang, and I think he has a pretty good platform that would do a lot of good.
Describing why a "liberal" would identify with Bernie Sanders policy goals
When I see Bernie Sanders, I don't see socialism or communism. I basically see FDR. FDR was a social liberal. He was the big compromise we had in America between the left and right in the 20th century to save capitalism from the forces of communism on the left and fascism on the right. The dude established social security, gave us labor rights, supported unions, and at the end of World War II shortly before his death, he advocated for his economic bill of rights. This would establish a set of things seen as economic necessities in their time as "rights" that every citizen should be guaranteed access to. These include:
A right to a job
A right to adequate income
A farmer's right to a fair income
Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
A right to decent housing
A right to adequate medical care
A right to social security
And the right to an education
And when I see Bernie Sanders, I see him advocating for such things.
He supported a green new deal, which mirrored FDR's expansive jobs programs in the 1930s through the Works Progress Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority.
He supported a $15 minimum wage, which would guarantee a right to a minimum level of income. As Bernie would say, no one who works 40 hours a week should be in poverty.
The farmer's right to fair income he did not support, but this seems to be a populist measure FDR pushed to try to win over farmers. Unlike the modern democratic party, the democratic party of the 1930s had a lot of rural support among farmers who struggled to make ends meet during the great recession, and he did some populist things that may not have aged well but brought people to his side.
Bernie did not seem to have policies explicitly aimed at preventing unfair competition and monopolies, but there are still laws on the books, and he did support breaking up the big tech companies into smaller entities.
Bernie had a housing program that involved building more housing in order to guarantee decent housing for people.
He supported medicare for all to guarantee a right to medical care
He supported expanding social security
And he supported free college and student debt forgiveness
This is the majority of Bernie's economic policy. This is not radical in the sense that it is socialist. And these ideas are not unheard of in many capitalist countries today. Canada has universal healthcare. So does much of Europe. Free college isn't unheard of in much of the rest of the world, and if we guarantee K-12 and college becomes necessary for social mobility, why not college? Other countries have minimum wages and those that don't have significant unionization that ensures most won't work under a certain wage anyway. I don't see much support for large scale works programs in other capitalist countries, and do see some support in socialist countries like China, but at the same time, this isn't very unamerican and FDR did the same thing.
The point is, nothing here is explicitly socialist. Many of these ideas are rooted either in a deeply american tradition established by FDR and his successors (like Truman and Johnson), or they're rooted in stuff other capitalist countries do all the time. Even his support for codetermination, a potentially market socialist measure, is practiced in certain capitalist countries in Europe like Germany. There is absolutely nothing in his platform that is explicitly socialist, or exclusive to socialism.
This is not to say socialists can't support the same things. As I said, social democracy is basically where the two sides meet in the middle, and you get the most purple purple ideology. And under that banner, sure, some might have long term socialist ambitions, but others might just want capitalism to go on the way it always has, just with the above reforms in place. And this is why I, someone who leans more capitalist, can vote for Bernie, a candidate who is also attractive to socialists. And it's why I can support left wing economic policy while being quite liberal on social or foreign policy. I do not share the same worldview as "leftists". While I am educated in marxism and postmodernism, neither of those worldviews DEFINE my politics. They merely inform it from time to time. Make no mistake, push comes to shove, I'm a liberal.
The problem with the "third way"
Now, the reason I'm writing this, is because a lot of self described leftists love to just tell me I'm a neoliberal and that I would probably fit more in with them than the left. And I'll say this. On social and foreign policy, you're probably right. I am NOT a leftist on social or foreign policy, and given the modern meanings of those terms, I never claimed to be. You can call me a moderate all the way there.
But on economics? Look, you're wrong. Period. The fact is, the modern third way or "neoliberals" in the democratic party are to my right. Just as social liberalism and social democracy are compromise policies between socialism and capitalism, the third way is a compromise between THAT and conservatism. Basically, after the new deal coalition broke apart between the 1960s and 1980s, and ESPECIALLY after the republicans won the house in 1994, the democrats decided to run WAAAAY to the right economically in order to appease conservatives. New deal policies fell out of favor after stagflation in the 1970s, with right wing neoliberalism, ie, free market fundamentalism, became commonplace on the right. And this launched an assault on the legacy of the new deal and in a sense intended to undo and destroy it. Unions were bad and caused inflation, workers rights were bad and caused inflation, government doesnt work, government doesn't do anything right, we need less government, we need to means test those dirty welfare recipients (who are mostly black, but the republicans don't dare admit that openly because of dog whistle politics), blah blah blah.
And the democrats decided, hey, lets meet these guys half way. They created this empty, transactional, cynical brand of politics on the left in which the democrats give the farm away to republicans and work with them in compromise bills so that they can claim small victories for themselves. And if the democrats are for anything, it's not the grand programs of the past, it's these crappy bureaucratic means tested ones that don't do anything but allows the democrats to say they did something without doing anything of value at all, or fixing the problem.
And my politics are a direct rejection and repudiation of that kind of democratic party tradition.
Perhaps the compromises the democrats made on social and foreign policy issues ARE more up my alley, I'm not gonna disagree (although I might to some extent), but on economics? NO. My politics are literally a rejection of both reagan style conservatism and democratic third way politics.
Before moving on, discussing the recent history of social and foreign policy issues in America
Even then, I'm not really that far right on social issues. And while I would disagree with the democratic party's policies under the "new democrats" to some degree, I'm not that far off of them. But still, I'm pretty much on the left in the overall arc of America's trajectory on social policies.
Under the new deal, America was quite socially conservative. Religion was dominant in the world, and if anything, the republican party was the less racist party. The democrats were the party of the KKK, and racism, and jim crow, and the republicans were the party of lincoln.
But, the democratic party was also a big tent, and like happens sometimes, the tent got too big. You got social conservatives and social progressives infighting, and the democratic party largely tried to keep a lid on this and keep everyone united to win elections. But during the 1960s and the cultural revolutions there, the left spiraled out of control. The left went too far left for its time, advocating for civil rights unapologetically, and also pushing things like drug legalization, legalization of abortion, getting religion out of schools, etc. And this kinda backlashed against the more socially conservative factions of the democratic party. Many of whom left and eventually joined the "moral majority" on the right.
And in the coming decades under the centrists and the new democrats, social progress was made. Racism went down significantly, although among older generations it was always under the surface. Stuff like abortion, gay marriage, secularism became mainstays of much of the social left in the US, and being a millennial, I ultimately shifted that way.
Rush Limbaugh always warned about feminazis, and basically what sound like SJWs today, but during that era, they were largely nowhere to be found, or were just quirky liberals who wanted their rights and to be left alone. And while we lost a lot of economic progress during the so called 6th party system due to reaganism, the left ultimately won the social policy arguments.
BUT...now the left is going too far. it's acting like the specter of the SJW that rush limbaugh and the right had been warning for decades, where the left wanted to push their morality in the same way that the right had in that alignment, and that they'll be persecuting people for not being pro gay marriage and blah blah blah. And now the left IS going too far with the social justice nonsense. This is LITERALLY what motivated people to vote conservative for decades. Once it seemed like those kinda of people were imaginary, people moved left on their own and progress was made, and I'd argue the modern "moral majority" is a majority on the social left, not the social right. But, the social justice people DRIVE people right.
And if this happened in the 1960s, with those liberal college students back in the days of woodstock and the like, I could see how the moral majority formed. People dont like SJW types. Period. And they dont like uppity social justice activists screaming in their face with a megaphone that they're not morally pure enough. I'd argue this is a huge reason why the new deal coalition collapsed. Because the left DID push the envelope, and while they did eventually win on social issues in the country at large (only losing as the alt right became louder, more militant, and are just actively sabotaging popular opinion to get their way), at the time, the left pushed views that were seen as radical, and they probably did it in the same obnoxious way that they do today.
heck, I know they did. Because my parents lived in this era. And to shift to foreign policy, it's much the same thing. The new deal coalition was very patriotic. They were the coalition of americans that supported FDR through world war II. Keep in mind, a lot of conservatives at that time actually had nazi sympathies. Not saying all of them did, but it wasn't uncommon for the most conservative and reactionary elements of the country to support fascism and hitler in the 1930s. But, FDR eventually joined the war on the side of the allies, teaming up with churchill to defend american liberalism and democracy itself from the authoritarians. And a whole generation sacrificed for that.
In the coming decades, the same people who supported the new deal also supported America's interventions to stop communism. Keep in mind, american social liberals are not a fan of communism. They might be left of the free marketeers, but the argument was that hey, we fixed those issues without turning to communism. And it largely kept the populace happy. We could claim we had the highest living standard in the world in the post war years. But yes, on foreign policy, we were interventionists, while also supporting bernie style economic policies at home. There is no contradiction here.
Where things got weird was vietnam. Vietnam wasn't seen as a defensive war, it was an offensive war. It was a war where people were drafted by the tens of thousands and sent into a meat grinder against their will. And for what? The goals seemed abstract. Sure we were "stopping communism", but many americans wanted nothing to do with a conflict half way across the world. Especially when young people were sent involuntarily to fight in it. Likewise, it was the first televised war. It was the first war where dead bodies and the horrors of warfare were shown on TV. And many people turned against it.
Not everyone did, the issue was contentious, and it was contentious in a way that transcended party lines. Johnson, a democrat was for it, then nixon was against it, and then nixon was for it when he got in, and the left turned against it. And things got muddled.
But one thing I will say. Just as the social justice left alienates people so does the anti war left. it's the same smug self righteousness, and the same attacking people who dont agree with you. My dad was a vietnam vet. He didnt want to be there. He enlisted, but he did so because he knew he was about to be drafted and wanted to go in on his terms. Despite that, he ended up in the thick of it all. And what happened when he got home? He was greeted in port authority by leftists screaming he was a "baby killer" for wearing a US uniform. And for the rest of his life, he's always hated leftists. it actually drove him to be more conservative through the reagan era and beyond. And while he's moderated to supporting biden in the trump era (because trump disrespects the vets and has no idea what hes doing on foreign policy), for a while, like many conservatives, he believed the left hated america.
Because that's the propaganda the right pushed. That the left hates america. The social justice warrior mentality has always been a boogeyman the right has played into in all of its forms. Including the idea of the college aged hippie who thinks we should all sing kumbaya and never fight any wars ever, even when we have to, and that they hate america. Because they do.
And that image is kryptonite for the left.
Look, I may have fallen in with the "neoliberal left" outside of economics. But the neoliberal left is just...right on the issues. On social policy, they arent opposed to social progress, they just arent going to loudly and militantly stick their necks out for it and are going to value electability and popular opinion over the opinions of the loudest, most extreme minorities. And on foreign policy, they've spent decades trying to overcome attacks that democrats are weak on foreign policy and hate america, instead opting for a middle ground where we're wrong when we have to be, but not as psychotic as the right. But we absolutely reject this image of the anti war leftist who is a hippie who literally doesnt understand reality.
And quite frankly, if you're reading this in relation to a foreign policy issue you argued with me about, yes, I'm talking about you.
The fact is, the economic spectrum is completely unrelated to the social and foreign policy spectrums. With the new deal democrats of the past being very economically left relative to the modern era, but also far more socially conservative.
The neoliberal era for the democrats represented a right wing shift on economics, but a leftward shift on social policy, with the foreign policy following a moderate framing similar to the economic shift.
Me? I support something closer to the new deal democrats' economics, with the neoliberal democrats' social and foreign policy.
And if youre encountering me on a leftwing forum, it's because, like you, I like Bernie Sanders and economically left ideas (within an american context). The problem is unlike you I'm not one of those full blooded batcrap insane "leftists" who acts like some strawman rush limbaugh came up with. You guys are actually problematic for our movement, and threaten to set back progress decades because the last time you guys ran this rampant, we had the reagan revolution and the left was in the dog house for literally decades.
I want a strong left, but that left needs to embrace a more moderate framing on social and foreign policy issues (akin to the biden administration) while going left on economics.
I'm not sure why this is so complicated. Only pure ideology makes this complicated.
How I differ from Bernie Sanders and his ideas
Now, just because Bernie Sanders is some middle point where leftists/socialists and liberals/moderates can come together in agreement of a platform, doesnt' mean I always agree with him. As I said, I'm not a social liberal, I'm a social libertarianism.
My ideas arose out of an analysis and rejection of both traditions, in a sense with me rejecting fiscal conservatism, but also reforming liberalism for a modern context.
In some ways I'm both more radical and moderate than social liberalism and bernie sanders.
In a sense I'm more moderate because like the Reagan people, I believe that government is inefficient and doesn't do things right.
But there's good news. Actually studying the issues and thinking of how to do things right drove me left.
Like welfare? Why have tons of broken incremental means tested programs that don't do anything of value, when we can have one big program under UBI? And for all the talk of government giving money establishing control over people, uh, isn't that what welfare is doing? Maybe people should be allowed to do what they want? THe older I get, the more I shake off the shackles of the compromises made in the 6th party system between left and right and believe the answer is actually "big government". But that big government is also, simultaneously limited. It's big in dollars, but small in the impact it has on peoples' freedoms, and helps allow people to pursue the life they want, not the life other people (social conservatives) think they should have.
Or how about healthcare. I became a liberal around the time when the ACA was a new thing. And I looked at this complicated mess of a bill and realized my issues with it werent that it went too far, it didnt go far enough. I mean, insurance mandates seemed intrusive, the program didnt actually make healthcare affordable, it just mandated they spend money on insurance they couldnt afford and couldnt use, and it really didn't fix the problems. It was a neoliberal, technocratic solution that was toothless, but also existed so democrats could say they did something.
I instead preferred a solution that actually guaranteed universal coverage. Single payer seems like the best way to do it, but a public option is also a possibility, just a slightly more neoliberal and technocratic one (but given my ambitions I might be willing to accept that if it means I get a UBI).
Free college. Well, we established the student loan system to allow people to take out loans for college and to pay them back when you get a job. But in an era where you go to college and then end up in mcdonalds anyway for about half of us, it just makes college more expensive, and traps us in debt.
I mean the student loan program was well meaning, but it basically just drove college costs up as suddenly colleges had a huge guaranteed money stream. Which is why suddenly colleges cost tens of thousands a year. In some ways student loans made the college situation worse. And it just ended up trapping an entire generation deep in debt without much to show for it.
So...I supported free college as a way to fix this.
Housing. Looking at the issues with housing the problem is, as I say, a supply and demand problem, in addition to issues like growing populations, people wanting to live alone, and zoning, the issue is that american life...is just...problematic. We insist everyone live in these big cities to get jobs there, but then there are too many people who wanna live there for the housing available. And then we wonder why housing costs are spiraling out of control. That's a huge reason why.
I'm not gonna say leftists are wrong in that landlords and house flippers play a role too, but their analyses are dogmatic and simplistic. Everything boils down to those big bad capitalists, and they literally ignore many root causes of the problems.
It seems obvious we need more housing to alleviate the problems, as well as some relatively mild reforms (relative to socialism) to fix the ownership problem with the housing market. Maybe taxes on excessive land/home ownership, or restrictions on how much any individual or corporate entity may own.
I mean, just going down the list, you can see how I align with bernie here. But I also take things in my own direction. And this is where I start liking Andrew Yang, because he is basically also a social libertarian with some similar values to me, there's more overlap there ideologically.
But I like Bernie. I like his platform. I like his politics. And he tends to represent my views better than most neoliberals who insist on the same piecemeal and technocratic fixes that don't do anything. And I believe, much like is the case with social or foreign policy leftism, that that stuff is political suicide and doesnt actually help anyone. People want solutions to our modern problems. And modern problems require modern solutions. We need to look at the issues anew from the perspective of the modern era, and the root causes, and we need to fix those issues. And my policies intend to do that.
I just happen to vote for people who align with those policies, with bernie being one of the closest in alignment with what I want.
But again, that doesnt make me a leftist, even on economics. Again, I'm just a centrist on social/foreign policy issues with left of the democrats' but right of the socialists' economic policies. Nothing more, nothing less. No need to gatekeep. I'm not in your weirdo little cult.
Why the left likes Bernie Sanders
So, talking to leftists online, I can see why a lot of leftists like Bernie. A lot of them are anti capitalist and anti market fundamentalists. While I consider myself a moderate in the sense that I'm a capitalist sometimes I'm more for government action other times, a lot of the extremes take things one way or another. With a lot of capitalists wanting the market to run everything, and a lot of leftists wanting the government to run everything.
Leftists think the answer to everything is socialism, or some sort of public ownership of the means of production, and some want the government to run everything.
While having some sectors of the economy like healthcare or education run by the state make sense, a lot of leftists was government everything. Government housing. Government food production and distribution. They often call for the "decommodification" of basic needs, and basically the idea is that rather than these things being commodified by the market, they want things to be run and administered by the state.
Now, I have no issues with say, government run healthcare or government run education. If anything it makes sense. many capitalist countries have done these things, and given such industries seem to be effectively what we like to call "market failures" on the capitalist side of things, we still largely like markets otherwise. And rather than have everything commodified by a government who runs all industries and tells people what to get, I like the efficiency of the market.
The efficiency of the market is a great thing for someone like me. It leads to products people want being made and products people dont want not being made. When government just gives you stuff, there's no guarantee you get something you want or something you dont want. You basically get a situation where the government just decides whats good for you and you get what you get.
I want people to decide what's good for themselves, and that's where I like markets. That's not to say markets cant be predatory. When they are, that's the job of regulation to prevent that. And sometimes when governments very severely dont produce the needs of all effectively, maybe the government should step in and do it themselves, either in part (housing), or in full (education and healthcare).
But, with me, I don't extend that logic beyond things that need to be done. Leftists envision a society in which we eventually destroy capitalism. And the government does everything, and everything is socialized, and they think that will be a utopia. Quite frankly, sounds like the USSR to me, and I don't think that's a good idea.
but the left does. So when the left likes bernie, they do it because they see him as nationalizing industries. While Bernie represents for me a once in a generation rewriting of the american social contract, they see bernie as just the beginning, which his successors pushing for more and more socialized and government guaranteed everything.
I just ain't on board with that.
Again, Bernie Sanders can appeal to leftists who ultimately are more extreme to bernie himself, but he also appeals to a lot of liberals. And a lot of us liberals...DONT want that stuff.
And if the leftists and the socialists get their way, watch their coalition shrink to nothing. Because the majority of people on board with bernie are not full blooded leftists, even if it looks that way online. The leftists are a vocal minority, and the public will very quickly turn against that stuff.
Conclusion
So, I rambled more than I wanted to, but my summary is this. Bernie Sanders occupies a place on the economic spectrum while both liberals and leftists like him. And a lot of us who end up liking him, and supporting people like him in elections are not leftists they're liberals.
I've gone through much of the history of how these coalitions formed. I explained where I'm coming from, and yeah. Like I said in other articles, I may be moderate on social policy and foreign policy, but on economics, yeah, I'm a bit further left. Not socialist, but largely aligned with bernie's politics, with a few asterisks here and there.
And honestly? Nothing about bernie's politics are exclusively leftist. All of them fit well within the American liberal tradition. And nothing about his economic policy is exclusive to left wing social or foreign policy views. Historically those views were often paired with far more conservative ideologies than I would espouse. New deal dems were actually quite conservative both on foreign and social policy. And most of the reason the new deal coalition collapsed was in part because of backlash over those changes, leading to the far more moderate neoliberal democrats. And while my ideas might align with them on social and foreign policy, on economics, no, I'm not a neoliberal, and 5 seconds on this blog should make that clear since I've spouting nothing but nasty things about actual neolibs since 2016, with the exception of me warming up to biden lately.
Like I've been saying every time the issue of me being more moderate comes up, it's not that I've shifted right. It's that I was never that far left, and often what passes as left today by leftist gatekeepers is the loony left rush limbaugh used to strawman the entire left into looking like. It's not the real mainstream left.
I support policies that would largely be moderate, reasonable, and electable by the American people. I might push the envelope on economics, and that's where I tend to be more left. But by liking people like Bernie Sanders, or Kyle Kulinski, I didn't sign up to the loony "dumb dumb" left as some have called them in the past.
Some of yall need to touch grass. That's all I'm gonna say.
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