In ​“Lean Social­ist: Why Lib­er­al­ism Needs Social­ism — and Vice Ver­sa” (May 2013), Bhaskar Sunkara calls for the rebirth of a social­ist move­ment that would work along­side lib­er­als for imme­di­ate gains for work­ing peo­ple, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly offer­ing a vision of a social­ist soci­ety that would extend democ­ra­cy into the eco­nom­ic sphere. And, at the same time, that move­ment would fight for the struc­tur­al reforms most like­ly to lead towards that goal. We at Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca (DSA), includ­ing our found­ing co-chair Michael Har­ring­ton, have always embraced this strat­e­gy. The prob­lem? Social­ists became indis­tin­guish­able from lib­er­als because the lib­er­als and a strong labor move­ment dis­ap­peared, swept away when ​“the tides of neolib­er­al­ism moved in.” As Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich fre­quent­ly not­ed in the 1990s, with lib­er­als and social democ­rats endors­ing Clinton’s and Blair’s ​“kinder, gen­tler” dis­man­tling of the wel­fare state, social­ists were often the last defend­ers of the lib­er­al gains of the 1930s and 1960s. But to go beyond lib­er­al­ism, we absolute­ly agree with Sunkara that work must be done along­side move­ment activists, rather than so-called lib­er­al tech­nocrats. Social­ists need to teach the lib­er­als to fight once again. But how?

To build an effective socialist presence in America we will have to learn from our past and look to our future, building a movement vibrant and open enough to attract a diverse new generation of activists.

First, we must remind lib­er­als of his­to­ry. Before social democ­ra­cy retreat­ed, social­ists fore­saw the dan­gers of insuf­fi­cient­ly rad­i­cal reforms. In the 1970s and 1980s, Euro­pean social­ist the­o­rists such as Nicos Poulantzas and Andre Gorz joined Har­ring­ton in warn­ing that if the Left failed to social­ize con­trol over invest­ment, the cor­po­rate dri­ve for prof­it would lead cap­i­tal to aban­don the ​“social con­tract” com­pro­mise of the wel­fare state. Social­ist gov­ern­ments in France, Swe­den and else­where pushed for democ­ra­tiz­ing invest­ment. But cap­i­tal imme­di­ate­ly fought back, begin­ning with the CIA-aid­ed over­throw of the Allende régime in Chile in 1973 and con­tin­u­ing with French capital’s strike of the ear­ly 1980s. In the face of the onslaught, democ­ra­cy and old-style lib­er­al­ism began to crum­ble. This time around, lib­er­als must rec­og­nize the true ene­my and embrace rad­i­cal reforms. Social­ists will be there to push them to do so.

Sec­ond, we must remind lib­er­als that racism and the cen­ter and Right’s use of a racial­ized pol­i­tics played a cen­tral role in the rise of neolib­er­al cap­i­tal­ism. Thatcher’s and Reagan’s oppor­tunis­tic attack on income-based child sup­port for sin­gle moth­ers (aka ​“wel­fare”) played a major role in con­struct­ing a right-wing major­i­ty. Though the main ben­e­fi­cia­ries of means-test­ed ​“wel­fare” were white, Clin­ton passed ​“wel­fare reform” to rein in myth­i­cal, non-white ​“wel­fare queens.” This dis­tract­ed the pub­lic from Cor­po­rate America’s job-killing dein­dus­tri­al­iza­tion and out­sourc­ing poli­cies. So, since con­scious social­ists are but a small part of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, how do we build the revived Left that Sunkara calls for? Clear­ly, we need an anti-racist rad­i­cal move­ment capa­ble of refut­ing per­va­sive myths about the U.S. wel­fare state. The emer­gence of a mil­i­tant immi­grant rights move­ment and low-wage work­ers move­ment will be cen­tral to a Left and labor revival, as will the resis­tance of under­em­ployed and indebt­ed col­lege graduates.

We take heart along with Sunkara that younger peo­ple are favor­able (or at least open) in their atti­tudes toward social­ism. But 30 years of neolib­er­al cap­i­tal­ist state poli­cies have fos­tered a deep skep­ti­cism about pol­i­tics. Many find it hard to envi­sion mass move­ments win­ning reforms in state pol­i­cy that would improve their lives. Sunkara is right to issue his impas­sioned plea to ​“Lean Social­ist,” and young peo­ple are join­ing the social­ist move­ment, in part due to the invalu­able intel­lec­tu­al work that he and his col­leagues car­ry out at Jacobin magazine.

But even if the social­ist Left can break out of its at times sec­tar­i­an and insu­lar cul­ture, we are unlike­ly to become a mass move­ment overnight. We know that social­ist renew­al in the Unit­ed States (what­ev­er its orga­ni­za­tion­al form) will only occur on the ter­rain of the demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist tra­di­tion of Eugene V. Debs. To build an effec­tive social­ist pres­ence in Amer­i­ca we will have to learn from our past and look to our future, build­ing a move­ment vibrant and open enough to attract a diverse new gen­er­a­tion of activists. Such a revived social­ist move­ment will have to speak to con­stituen­cies far beyond the cur­rent reach of Jacobin, In These Times or DSA.