This is Richard Wolff from Democracy@Work responding to another AskProfWolff question
from our Patreon community. And this question comes from Greg Beglinger.
I’m hoping that I’m pronouncing it correctly. Greg asks about the “Farmer-Labor Party”
in Minnesota back in the 1930s and uses that example to pose the question: do we need/could we
benefit from having a third explicitly Socialist party contesting in the United States today
and what I might think about it? But let me respond as clearly as I know how. My answer is
yes. We need it and we would benefit from it and so would the United States. Let me explain.
The United States went through such a period of anti-communism,
anti-socialism, anti-unionism, anti-leftism after World War II on a sustained basis
for over half a century. So deep did that purge settle into the American consciousness
that more than in any other European country, for example, and indeed more than in most other
countries in the world there’s a kind of anxiety, aversion, suspicion, skepticism about left-wing
political parties here in the United States that is just this side of pathological. Very strange.
Especially these days when the instability of the United States politically, economically,
culturally, the divisiveness, the bitterness all suggest
that not having multiple parties like most other countries do is no guarantee for social stability,
social progress, or any of the other virtues that have been claimed by the two party monopoly
that dominates the United States and has for so very long.
So what would be the advantages of a third party? A Socialist party to be precise. Well
first of all it overcomes all those last 75 years of anti-leftism built into American culture and
politics. It overcomes it by reopening this country to an honest, open-ended,
wide-ranging political debate. We had that in the latter part of the 19th century.
We had it in the first half of the 20th century. And there is no basis
for believing that we are better off without it and much argument that we would be better off
if we included it and reopened ourselves to that. Americans need to relearn what socialism has to
offer. To catch up, in a way, with the discussions about socialism that have been taking place
everywhere else in the world more than they have taken place here.
Socialism for example, communism also, Marxism also, have developed/have changed over the last 75
years but Americans are not up to speed on those discussions because they were excluded from them.
This has to be fixed and a third party, a Socialist party, could reintroduce all of those
interesting, important, innovative changes in the notions of what socialism means that have
happened over the last 75 years in those parts of the world—most parts of the world where debates
and discussions about socialism have continued and been rich in the insights they deliver.
But there are more reasons. We now have one kind or three kinds of socialism inside the
Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others are socialists
and by their activity they are very important introducing or reintroducing socialism into the
discourse, the political discourse of the United States. But they are constrained by being part
of a political party whose leadership is not only not socialist but pretty intensively
anti-socialist and that has to impact on what Bernie, or Alexandria, or any of the others
can say and do. I understand that's a limit and I appreciate what Bernie and Alexandria do
within those limits. But I think we ought to also have socialists who are operating openly and
politically without those limits. I think it will help Bernie and Alexandria develop their plans,
their ideas. I think they will be in a stronger position to argue with the existing
leadership of the Democratic Party about the importance of moving in socialist directions
if for no other reason than being able to point to those who are free of the constraints of the
Democratic Party. If they are making gains as I am sure they will, if they are winning supporters
which I'm sure they will, that will empower the socialists inside the Democratic Party. Nor do I
put aside the possibility eventually of some sort of coming together of the Socialist party
outside the Democrats and the socialists inside the Democrats. That has happened politically
in other countries and I'm sure it is perfectly possible for such an evolution to happen here.
And I want the socialist imagination to be free. Yes, it will develop in important ways
inside the Democratic Party living with the constraints that that implies. But it will also
develop interesting new ideas, plans, programs, platforms, strategies outside those constraints.
And I think the future of the United States will be benefited by having both kinds
of political activity going ahead at full speed. So we now have
socialists inside the Democratic Party. I think it is overdue that we also organize
socialists openly outside the Democratic Party [to be] free to develop their own political identity
presented to the American people and see how persuasive and how effective they can be. This
is Richard Wolff responding to our Patreon community on the AskProfWolff platform.