Social­ism. For most of recent U.S. his­to­ry, the word was only used in main­stream dis­course as invec­tive, hurled by the Right against any­one who advo­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment do any­thing but shrink, as anti-tax advo­cate Grover Norquist once put it, ​“to the size where I can drag it into the bath­room and drown it in the bathtub.”

Only the revival of a decimated labor movement and the rebirth of socialist political parties that can bring them all together could result in the major redistribution of wealth and power that would allow real movement on these individual issues.

How is it, then, that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.), a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, has repeat­ed­ly drawn crowds in the thou­sands or tens of thou­sands in cities and towns through­out the nation and is with­in strik­ing dis­tance of Hillary Clin­ton in Iowa and New Hamp­shire? In a coun­try that’s sup­posed to be ter­ri­fied of social­ism, how did a social­ist become a seri­ous pres­i­den­tial contender?

Young peo­ple who came to polit­i­cal con­scious­ness after the Cold War are less hos­tile to social­ism than their elders, who asso­ciate the term with author­i­tar­i­an Com­mu­nist regimes. In a Pew poll from Decem­ber 2011, 49 per­cent of 18-to-29-year-olds in the Unit­ed States held a favor­able view of social­ism; only 46 per­cent had a favor­able view of cap­i­tal­ism. A New York Times/​CBS News sur­vey tak­en short­ly before Sanders’ Nov. 19, 2015, George­town Uni­ver­si­ty speech on demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism found that 56 per­cent of Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry vot­ers felt pos­i­tive­ly about social­ism ver­sus only 29 per­cent who felt neg­a­tive­ly. Most of those polled prob­a­bly do not envi­sion social­ism to be demo­c­ra­t­ic own­er­ship of the means of pro­duc­tion, but they do asso­ciate cap­i­tal­ism with inequal­i­ty, mas­sive stu­dent debt and a stag­nant labor mar­ket. They envi­sion social­ism to be a more egal­i­tar­i­an and just society.

More broad­ly, a bipar­ti­san con­sen­sus has devel­oped that the rich and cor­po­ra­tions are too pow­er­ful. In a Decem­ber 2011 Pew poll, 77 per­cent of respon­dents (includ­ing 53 per­cent of Repub­li­cans) agreed that ​“there is too much pow­er in the hands of a few rich peo­ple and cor­po­ra­tions.” More than 40 years of rul­ing class attacks on work­ing peo­ple has revived inter­est in a polit­i­cal tra­di­tion his­tor­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the asser­tion of work­ing class pow­er — socialism.

But at this point in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, as right-wing, qua­si-fas­cist pop­ulists like Don­ald Trump, Ted Cruz and oth­ers of their Tea Par­ty ilk are on the rise, we also seem to be faced with an old polit­i­cal choice: social­ism or bar­barism. Whether pro­gres­sive politi­cians can tap into the ris­ing anti-cor­po­rate sen­ti­ment around the coun­try is at the heart of a bat­tle that may define the future of the Unit­ed States: Will down­ward­ly mobile, white, mid­dle- and work­ing-class peo­ple fol­low the nativist, racist pol­i­tics of Trump and Tea Partiers (who espouse the myth that the game is rigged in favor of unde­serv­ing poor peo­ple of col­or), or lead a charge against the cor­po­rate elites respon­si­ble for the dev­as­ta­tion of work­ing- class communities?

This may be the very audi­ence, how­ev­er, for whom the term social­ism still sticks in the craw. In a 2011 Pew poll, 55 per­cent of African Amer­i­cans and 44 per­cent of Lati­nos held a favor­able view of social­ism — ver­sus only 24 per­cent of whites. One might ask, then: Should we real­ly care that the term ​“social­ism” is less radioac­tive than it used to be? With so much bag­gage attached to the word, shouldn’t activists and politi­cians just call them­selves some­thing else? Why wor­ry about a label as long as you’re pur­su­ing poli­cies that ben­e­fit the many rather than the few? Is social­ism still rel­e­vant in the 21st century?

Fear of the ​‘s’ word

To answer this ques­tion, first con­sid­er how the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment uses the word. The Right (and some­times the Democ­rats) deploy anti-social­ist sen­ti­ment against any reform that chal­lenges cor­po­rate pow­er. Take the debate over health­care reform, for exam­ple. To avoid being labeled ​“social­ist,” Oba­ma opt­ed for an Afford­able Care Act that expand­ed the num­ber of insured via mas­sive gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies to the pri­vate health­care indus­try — instead of fight­ing for Medicare for All and abol­ish­ing pri­vate health insur­ers. The Right, of course, screamed that the pres­i­dent and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty as a whole were all social­ists any­way and worked (and con­tin­ues to work) to under­mine efforts to expand health­care cov­er­age to anyone.

But what if the Unit­ed States had had a real social­ist Left, rather than one con­jured up by Repub­li­cans, that was large, well-orga­nized and polit­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant dur­ing the health­care reform debate? What would have been dif­fer­ent? For one thing, it would have been tougher for the Right to scream ​“social­ist!” at Oba­ma, since actu­al social­ists would be impor­tant, vis­i­ble forces in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, writ­ing arti­cles and knock­ing on doors and appear­ing on cable news. Repub­li­cans would have had to attack the real social­ists — poten­tial­ly open­ing up some breath­ing room for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to car­ry out more pro­gress­sive reforms. But social­ists wouldn’t have just done the Democ­rats a favor — they would also demand the par­ty go much fur­ther than the over­ly com­pli­cat­ed and insur­ance com­pa­ny friend­ly Oba­macare towards a uni­ver­sal sin­gle-pay­er health­care pro­gram. The Democ­rats need­ed a push from the Left on health­care reform, and vir­tu­al­ly no one was there to give it to them.

What is demo­c­ra­t­ic socialism?

So what do we mean by ​“demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism”? Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists want to deep­en democ­ra­cy by extend­ing it from the polit­i­cal sphere into the eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al realms. We believe in the idea that ​“what touch­es all should be gov­erned by all.” The deci­sions by top-lev­el cor­po­rate CEOs and man­agers, for exam­ple, have seri­ous effects on their employ­ees, con­sumers and the gen­er­al pub­lic — why don’t those employ­ees, con­sumers and the pub­lic have a say in how those deci­sions get made?

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists believe that human beings should demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly con­trol the wealth that we cre­ate in com­mon. The Mark Zucker­bergs and Bill Gate­ses of the world did not cre­ate Face­book and Microsoft; tens of thou­sands of pro­gram­mers, tech­ni­cal work­ers and admin­is­tra­tive employ­ees did — and they should have a demo­c­ra­t­ic voice in how those firms are run.

To be able to par­tic­i­pate demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, we all need equal access to those social, cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al goods that enable us to devel­op our human poten­tial. Thus, demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists also believe that all human beings should be guar­an­teed access, as a basic social right, to high-qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion, health­care, hous­ing, income secu­ri­ty, job train­ing and more.

And to achieve people’s equal moral worth, demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists also fight against oppres­sion based on race, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, nation­al­i­ty and more. We do not reduce all forms of oppres­sion to the eco­nom­ic; eco­nom­ic democ­ra­cy is impor­tant, but we also need strong legal and cul­tur­al guar­an­tees against oth­er forms of unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic dom­i­na­tion and exclusion.

What social­ism can do for you

The Unit­ed States has a rich — but hid­den — social­ist his­to­ry. Social­ists and Com­mu­nists played a key role in orga­niz­ing the indus­tri­al unions in the 1930s and in build­ing the civ­il rights move­ment in the 1950s and 1960s; Mar­tin Luther King Jr. iden­ti­fied as a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist; Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Ran­dolph, the two key orga­niz­ers of the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton for Jobs and Free­dom were both mem­bers of the Social­ist Par­ty. Not only did Social­ist can­di­date Eugene V. Debs receive rough­ly 6 per­cent of the vote for pres­i­dent in 1912, but on the eve of U.S. entry into World War I, mem­bers of the Social­ist Par­ty held 1,200 pub­lic offices in 340 cities. They served as may­ors of 79 cities in 24 states, includ­ing Min­neapo­lis, Mil­wau­kee, Read­ing, Penn., and Buffalo.

Bru­tal­ly repressed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for oppos­ing World War I and lat­er by the Cold War hys­te­ria of the McCarthy era, social­ists nev­er regained com­pa­ra­ble influ­ence. But as orga­niz­ers and thinkers they have always played a sig­nif­i­cant role in social move­ments. The real lega­cy of the last sig­nif­i­cant social­ist cam­paigns for pres­i­dent, those of Eugene V. Debs and Nor­man Thomas, is how the major par­ties, espe­cial­ly the Democ­rats, co-opt­ed their calls for work­ers’ rights, the reg­u­la­tion of cor­po­rate excess and the estab­lish­ment of social insur­ance programs.

As the ero­sion of the lib­er­al and social demo­c­ra­t­ic gains of the post-World War II era through­out the Unit­ed States, Europe and else­where shows, absent greater demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol over the econ­o­my, cap­i­tal will always work to erode the gains made by work­ing peo­ple. This inabil­i­ty to gain greater demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol over cap­i­tal may be a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to why the emerg­ing social move­ments resist­ing oli­garchic dom­i­na­tion have a ​“flash”-like char­ac­ter. They erupt and raise cru­cial issues, but as the neolib­er­al state rarely grants con­ces­sions to these move­ments, they often fade in strength. Win­ning con­crete reforms tends to empow­er social move­ments; the fail­ure to improve the lives of their par­tic­i­pants usu­al­ly leads these move­ments to dissipate.

In the Unit­ed States, nascent move­ments like Occu­py Wall Street, the Fight for 15, Black Lives Mat­ter and 350​.org have won notable reforms. But few flash move­ments have suc­ceed­ed in enact­ing sys­temic change. Only the revival of a dec­i­mat­ed labor move­ment and the rebirth of gov­ern­ing social­ist polit­i­cal par­ties could result in the major redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and pow­er that would allow real change on these issues.

For all their prob­lems — and there are many — this is the promise of Euro­pean par­ties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. But the Syriza gov­ern­ment retreat­ed back to aus­ter­i­ty poli­cies, in part because North­ern Euro­pean social­ist lead­ers failed to aban­don their sup­port for aus­ter­i­ty. The elec­tion of Jere­my Cor­byn as leader of the British Labour Par­ty may rep­re­sent the first step in rank-and-file social­ists break­ing with ​“third way” neo-lib­er­al leadership.

Is Bernie real­ly a socialist?

For Sanders, ​“demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism” is a byword for what is need­ed to unseat the oli­garchs who rule this new Gild­ed Age. In his much-antic­i­pat­ed George­town speech, Sanders defined demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism as ​“a gov­ern­ment which works for all of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, not just pow­er­ful spe­cial inter­ests.” Align­ing him­self with the lib­er­al social wel­fare poli­cies of Franklin D. Roo­sevelt and Lyn­don B. John­son, Sanders called for restor­ing pro­gres­sive income and strict cor­po­rate tax­a­tion to fund Medicare for All, paid parental leave, pub­licly financed child care and tuition-free pub­lic high­er education.

Yet he backed away from some basic tenets of demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism. He told the audi­ence, ​“I don’t believe the gov­ern­ment should take over the gro­cery store down the street or own the means of pro­duc­tion.” But demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists want to democ­ra­tize deci­sions over what we make, how we make it and who con­trols the social surplus.

In truth, Sanders is cam­paign­ing more as a social demo­c­rat than as a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist. While social democ­rats and demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists share a num­ber of polit­i­cal goals, they also dif­fer on some key ques­tions of what an ide­al soci­ety would look like and how we can get there. Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists ulti­mate­ly want to abol­ish cap­i­tal­ism; most tra­di­tion­al social democ­rats favor a gov­ern­ment-reg­u­lat­ed cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my that includes strong labor rights, full employ­ment poli­cies and pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion that funds a robust wel­fare state.

So why doesn’t Sanders sim­ply call him­self a New Deal or Great Soci­ety lib­er­al or (in today’s terms) a ​“pro­gres­sive”? In part, because he can­not run from the demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist label that he has proud­ly worn through­out his polit­i­cal career. As recent­ly as 1988, as may­or of Burling­ton, Vt., he stat­ed that he desired a soci­ety ​“where human beings can own the means of pro­duc­tion and work togeth­er rather than hav­ing to work as semi-slaves to oth­er peo­ple who can hire and fire.”

But today, Sanders is run­ning to win, and invok­ing the wel­fare state accom­plish­ments of FDR and LBJ plays bet­ter with the elec­torate and the main­stream media than ref­er­enc­ing icon­ic Amer­i­can social­ists like Eugene V. Debs. In his George­town speech, Sanders relied less on ref­er­ences to Den­mark and Swe­den; rather, he chan­neled FDR’s 1944 State of the Union address in which he called for an Eco­nom­ic Bill of Rights, say­ing, ​“true indi­vid­ual free­dom can­not exist with­out eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and inde­pen­dence. ​‘Neces­si­tous men are not free men.’”

Sanders’ cam­paign rhetoric does occa­sion­al­ly stray into more explic­it­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist ter­ri­to­ry, though. He under­stands the nature of class con­flict between work­ers and the cor­po­rate moguls. Unlike most lib­er­als, Sanders rec­og­nizes that pow­er rela­tions between the rich and the rest of us deter­mine pol­i­cy out­comes. He believes pro­gres­sive change will not occur absent a revival of the labor move­ment and oth­er grass­roots move­ments for social jus­tice. And while Sanders’ plat­form calls pri­mar­i­ly for gov­ern­ment to heal the rav­ages of unre­strained cap­i­tal­ism, it also includes more rad­i­cal reforms that shift con­trol over cap­i­tal from cor­po­ra­tions to social own­er­ship: a pro­pos­al for fed­er­al finan­cial aid to work­ers’ coop­er­a­tives, a pub­lic infra­struc­ture invest­ment of $1 tril­lion over five years to cre­ate 13 mil­lion pub­lic jobs, and the cre­ation of a postal bank­ing sys­tem to pro­vide low-cost finan­cial ser­vices to peo­ple present­ly exploit­ed by check-cash­ing ser­vices and pay­day lenders.

Har­ness­ing the social­ist energy

While Sanders is not run­ning a full bore demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist cam­paign, social­ists must not let the per­fect be the ene­my of the good. The Sanders cam­paign rep­re­sents the most explic­it anti­cor­po­rate, rad­i­cal cam­paign for the U.S. pres­i­den­cy in decades. Thus the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca (DSA), of which I am a vice-chair, is run­ning an ​“inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture cam­paign” (unco­or­di­nat­ed with the offi­cial cam­paign) that aims to build the move­ment around Sanders — and its ​“polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion” — over the long run.

For us, even if Sanders’ plat­form isn’t ful­ly social­ist, his cam­paign is a gift from the social­ist gods. In just six months, Sanders has received cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from 800,000 indi­vid­u­als, signed up tens of thou­sands of cam­paign work­ers and intro­duced the term ​“demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism” and a social demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­gram to tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who wouldn’t know the dif­fer­ence between Trot­sky and a tchotchke. Since the start of the Sanders cam­paign, the num­ber of peo­ple join­ing DSA each month has more than doubled.

Though elect­ed to both the House and Sen­ate as an inde­pen­dent, Sanders chose to run in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry because he under­stood he would reach a nation­al audi­ence in the wide­ly viewed debates and gar­ner far more votes in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries than he would as an inde­pen­dent in the gen­er­al elec­tion. The peo­ple most vul­ner­a­ble to wall-to-wall Repub­li­can rule (women, trade union­ists, peo­ple of col­or) sim­ply won’t ​“waste” their votes on third-par­ty can­di­dates in con­test­ed states in a pres­i­den­tial election.

The mere fact of a social­ist in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry debates has cre­at­ed unprece­dent­ed new con­ver­sa­tions. Ander­son Cooper’s ini­tial ques­tion to Sanders in the first Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debate, in front of 15 mil­lion view­ers, implic­it­ly tried to red-bait him by ask­ing, ​“How can any kind of a social­ist win a gen­er­al elec­tion in the Unit­ed States?” The ques­tion led to a lengthy dis­cus­sion among the can­di­dates as to whether demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism or cap­i­tal­ism promised a more just soci­ety. When has the cap­i­tal­ist nature of our soci­ety last been chal­lenged in a major pres­i­den­tial forum?

Yet with­out a major shift in sen­ti­ment among vot­ers of col­or and women, Sanders is unlike­ly to win the nom­i­na­tion. Sanders enthu­si­asts, who are most­ly white, have to focus their efforts on expand­ing the racial base of the cam­paign. But, regard­less of who wins the nom­i­na­tion, Sanders will leave behind him a trans­formed polit­i­cal land­scape. His tac­ti­cal deci­sion to run as a Demo­c­rat has the poten­tial to fur­ther divide Democ­rats between elites who accom­mo­date them­selves to neolib­er­al­ism and the pop­ulist ​“demo­c­ra­t­ic” wing of the party.

Today, Democ­rats are divid­ed between afflu­ent, sub­ur­ban social lib­er­als who are eco­nom­i­cal­ly mod­er­ate — even pro-cor­po­rate — and an urban, youth, black, Lati­no, Asian Amer­i­can, Native Amer­i­can and trade union base that favors more social demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies. Over the past 30 years, the nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship — Bill Clin­ton, Rahm Emanuel, Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz — has moved the par­ty in a decid­ed­ly pro-cor­po­rate, free-trade direc­tion to cul­ti­vate wealthy donors. Sanders’ rise rep­re­sents the revolt of the party’s rank and file against this cor­po­rate-friend­ly establishment.

Suc­cess­ful Left inde­pen­dent or third-par­ty can­di­dates invari­ably have to gar­ner sup­port from the same con­stituen­cies that pro­gres­sive Democ­rats depend on, and almost all third-par­ty vic­to­ries in the Unit­ed States occur in local non-par­ti­san races. There are only a few dozen third-par­ty mem­bers out of the near­ly 7,400 state leg­is­la­tors in the Unit­ed States. Kshama Sawant, a mem­ber of Social­ist Alter­na­tive, has won twice in Seattle’s non-par­ti­san city coun­cil race, draw­ing strong back­ing from unions and left-lean­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists (and some Demo­c­ra­t­ic elect­ed offi­cials). But giv­en state government’s major role in fund­ing pub­lic works, social democ­ra­cy can­not be achieved in any one city.

The par­ty that rules state gov­ern­ment pro­found­ly affects what is pos­si­ble at the munic­i­pal lev­el. My rec­ol­lec­tion is that in the 1970s and 1980s, DSA (and one of its pre­de­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee) had more than 30 mem­bers who were elect­ed mem­bers of state leg­is­la­tures or city coun­cils. Almost all of those social­ist offi­cials first won Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries against con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nents. In the sev­en states (most notably in New York, Con­necti­cut and Ore­gon) where third par­ties can com­bine their votes with major par­ty lines, the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty has tried to devel­op an ​“inside-out­side,” ​“fusion” strat­e­gy vis-a-vis the Democ­rats. But the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cor­po­rate estab­lish­ment will nev­er fear pro­gres­sive elec­toral activists unless they are will­ing to pun­ish pro-cor­po­rate Democ­rats by either chal­leng­ing them in pri­maries or with­hold­ing sup­port in gen­er­al elections.

The tragedy of Jesse Jackson’s 1988 cam­paign was that despite win­ning 7 mil­lion votes from vot­ers of col­or, trade union­ists and white pro­gres­sives, the cam­paign failed to turn its Rain­bow Coali­tion into an elec­toral orga­ni­za­tion that could con­tin­ue the campaign’s fight for racial and eco­nom­ic jus­tice. This les­son is not lost on Sanders; he clear­ly under­stands that his cam­paign must sur­vive his pres­i­den­tial bid.

As In These Times went to press, the Sanders cam­paign only has offi­cial staff in the ear­ly pri­ma­ry states of New Hamp­shire, Iowa, South Car­oli­na and Neva­da. Con­se­quent­ly, the Sanders move­ment is extreme­ly decen­tral­ized, and dri­ven by vol­un­teers and social media. Only if these local activists are able to cre­ate mul­ti-racial pro­gres­sive coali­tions and orga­ni­za­tions that out­last the cam­paign can Sanders’ call for polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion be realized.

Cam­paign orga­ni­za­tions them­selves rarely build demo­c­ra­t­ic, grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions that per­sist after the elec­tion (see Obama’s Orga­niz­ing for Amer­i­ca). Sanders activists must keep this in mind and ask them­selves: ​“What can we do in our local­i­ty to build the polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion?” The Right still dom­i­nates pol­i­tics at the state and local lev­el; thus, Sanders activists can play a par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial role in the 24 states where Repub­li­cans con­trol all three branch­es of the government.

Embrac­ing the ​‘s’ word

Sanders has cap­ti­vat­ed the atten­tion of America’s youth. He has gen­er­at­ed a nation­al con­ver­sa­tion about demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist val­ues and social demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies. Sanders under­stands that to win such pro­grams will take the revival of mass move­ments for low wage jus­tice, immi­grant rights, envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and racial equal­i­ty. To build an inde­pen­dent left that oper­ates elec­toral­ly both inside and out­side the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the Sanders cam­paign — and social­ists — must bring togeth­er white pro­gres­sives with activists of col­or and pro­gres­sive trade union­ists. The ulti­mate log­ic of such a pol­i­tics is the social­ist demand for work­ers’ rights and greater demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol over investment.

If Sanders’ call for a polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion is to be sus­tained, then his cam­paign must give rise to a stronger orga­ni­za­tion of long-dis­tance run­ners for democ­ra­cy — a vibrant U.S. demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist move­ment. Elec­toral cam­paigns can mobi­lize peo­ple and alter polit­i­cal dis­course, but engaged cit­i­zens can spark a rev­o­lu­tion only if they build social move­ments and the polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions and orga­ni­za­tions that sus­tain polit­i­cal work over the long-term.

And because anti-social­ism is the ide­ol­o­gy that bipar­ti­san polit­i­cal elites deploy to rule out any reforms that lim­it the pre­rog­a­tives of cap­i­tal, now is the time for social­ists to come out of the clos­et. Sanders run­ning in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for social­ists to do just that, and for the broad Left to gain strength. If and when social­ism becomes a legit­i­mate part of main­stream U.S. pol­i­tics, only then will the polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion begin.