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There is no time in the history of the US Democratic Party that they embraced socialism as a party.
This is not actually the same as socialism. It's confusing, I agree. The closest comparison is to "social democratic" parties in Europe, which offer expanded government programs but leave capitalism intact. The simplest definition of socialism is "when the workers own the means of production" (with "means of production" being things like factories, farms, etc. Any business, really). The Democratic Party has never pushed for that and Mamdani is not pushing for that now.
Democratic Socialism is not Social Democracy. Democratic Socialism advocates for real socialism through the existing democratic institutions, whereas Social Democracy only advocates for softer capitalism. Particularly, DemSoc's view capitalism as fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
Now there's plenty of things wrong with Democratic Socialism, but the main one is you're playing by the rules written by the capitalists and are assuming the capitalists will follow those rules.
DSA's national website is ambiguous. It says: " ...democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society. " "A real voice in" is not the same as ownership of or control over.
However, DSA (both national and local ones) has a number of different movements within it. Some are social democratic, some are authoritarian socialist, some are libertarian socialist, and so on. In the context of Mamdani and Sanders, Democratic Socialism's social democratic wing is probably the movement having the biggest impact so far. I do hope the libertarian socialst/anarchist movements within DSA ultimately come to influence it the most!
The DSA was founded by Marxists and has always been socialist. If you show up at a meeting and say 'I don't think we need to overthrow capitalism' you will be laughed out of the room. I've seen it happen.
The libertarian wing of the DSA doesn't caucus within DSA because they got completely shut down in either the 2017 or 2019 confrenece. Everyone else actually learned something from the failures of Occupy.
What goes forthe Social Democrat wing of DSA is the faction most connected to Labor unions in the DSA, namely Bread and Roses. The rest are either Trotskyite or ML. There are plenty of anarchists still but they don't bother with any national caucus. Besides, its not like anarchists aren't also reading from spooky "authoritarians" like Lenin and Mao. If you want to overthrow capitalism you should read up on the people who've actually done it.
...what? They may read them, but not sympathetically.
Yeah, like the anarchists in Catalonia, the EZLN in Mexico, AANES/Rojava, and the original workers councils in Russia.
First everyone should be reading these works critically and not as absolute doctrine. Any ML who's actually knows what "scientific socialism" means and isnt a tankie larper should know that.
Second, all except for the Catalonia examples are false.
EZLN did start out as a more authoritarian-influenced group (in the 80s, that was where USSR influence and support was going!) but they have since evolved away from that in major ways, especially after learning from/integrating with indigenous peoples after some initial contact with Mexican national forces. I am not as up on PKK/AANES history, but Ocalan's major works are primarily influenced by Murray Bookchin, who was extremely anti-authoritarian.
The soviets eventually came to be dominated by the Bolsheviks, who were majorly influenced by Lenin, but they were formed and initially populated by several factions. It's reductive to the point of absurdity to give Lenin the whole credit for the overthrow of capitalism in Russia (which was messy and complex), despite his outsized influence on the country from then on. Capitalism had only begun in Russia when serfdom was abolished in 1861 anyway, so the society that was overthrown was really one that failed during the transition.
Look, debate on these points in this thread is silly and I kinda regret being baited here. We need an easy intro to what socialism even is at this moment, for people like the OP, and we can talk strategy in another place. I'm glad we're broadly on the same team! Let's show others questioning society in this moment what we can offer.
I see. I like the idea of a mix of social programs and regulated capitalism and I feel like capitalism has run amok for far too long. I’m sure you all understand it better than I do.
We all start somewhere! My politics were more like yours a while back, but now I would disagree that it is possible to keep capitalism regulated. Since then, I have come to understand that the basic drives of capitalism, especially the one that forces every capitalist to increase the amount of profit they get and the rate of increase of their profit, would just make them throw money into politics and overcome any possible regulations.
Keep reading and you'll get explanations of how capitalism works and you can decide for yourself whether regulation is possible or not.
To provide a simple historical example without getting into too much of the theory, consider the progression from The New Deal to where we are now. That was about as close as the US got to social democracy and that's been all but destroyed over the following decades by capitalists. But yeah they should definitely read more if they want to understand the mechanisms in more detail.
You get it. Regulated capitalism is ideal. Problem being, as with any economic/political system, the rich rise to the top and take over. Lemmy's hate for capitalism is childish.
"This sucks so burn it all down!"
Well, I kinda get that feel, but baby with the bathwater is a thing.
Capitalism describes a system of exploitation by which a privileged few profit from the labor of others. Regulated capitalism (also known as welfare capitalism) has only ever come about as a result of popular labor and social movements (which tended to be explicitly socialist) fighting for labor rights and threatening revolution, causing the owning class to allow reforms and expansion of welfare as a form of appeasement. This happened in the US mid-20th century and it succeeded in taking the wind out of the sails of the movement, and since then the owning class has steadily eroded the welfare state through austerity.
Capitalism should not be preserved because it creates inequality by design; that is its purpose. You can claim that is a childish perspective, but here are some of the people you're calling childish:
You have a limited perspective right now because you've been conditioned to dismiss alternatives with little thought. So was I, but I've since learned the history of capitalism and how it functions, as well as the various movements against it and what they've accomplished.