NR

I go back a lot to the Eugene Debs quote, “While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” You can hear echoes of that in Bernie’s incredible speech about being willing to fight for someone whose problems you don’t necessarily have.

I talked in the book about the ethic of solidarity, about identifying other people’s struggles as your own, even if they’re not your own. Eugene Debs could have lived a relatively comfortable life. He grew up relatively well off. Lots of people who are socialists are concerned with problems that don’t necessarily affect them directly.

Now, in one sense, it’s in all of our material interest to fight for a socialist world, because there is no escape from what capitalism does in the long run. Climate change is a problem from which wealthy people can shield themselves to a certain degree, but not entirely. But still, even if we can find self-interest in socialism for everyone, I don’t think it gives people on the Left enough credit to say, well, they’ve just recognized their real material self-interest. A lot of socialists are very caring people who don’t like to see others around them struggle and suffer, and they can’t feel comfortable with that even when they’re not suffering or struggling themselves.

Of course, many socialists do experience struggle and suffering. But whether they do or not, many feel like Debs did that “while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” Socialists identify with humanity as a whole, and it matters to us when other people go through things that we don’t go through ourselves.

One thing I always think about is, well, what if it turns out empirically that having a greater number of immigrants to this country makes my wage slightly lower? Or what if it turns out that the crime rate might be a bit higher if we had a more humane system of criminal punishment? That shouldn’t affect my judgment of whether we should have a sociopathic system of criminal punishment or a brutal immigration system. Because it just sees me as the only person whose interests matter.

I’ve written about the conception of the self-interest of the US as a legitimate thing. It’s commonly accepted that it’s okay for our country to pursue its self-interest, and this has led to basically treating the people of every other country on earth as ants whose lives don’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many of them are exterminated by one of our policies because we are entitled to pursue our self-interest.

Now, if you reimagined the concept, you could argue that it’s in Americans’ self-interest to live a world that is peaceful, where everyone is respected. And then the self-interests of separate categories of people no longer conflict. But the point is we have to be careful about what we mean by self-interest. It can’t just be “Join us and you’ll get a bigger paycheck.” Some people are going to have to make certain sacrifices for the opportunity to live in a world in which all people are cared for.