'Socialist Manifesto' author on past failures and governing in the real world

Brian Lehrer (0:05)

From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast.

It's Tuesday, October 6th.

With us now the influential socialist writer, editor, publisher and DSA member, Bhaskar Sunkara, who now runs two leading magazines, an academic journal, and we could say has two new books. He is president of The Nation magazine, founder and editor of Jacobin, and publisher of Catalyst, a Journal of Theory and Strategy. There's a reissue with new material of his 2019 book, The Socialist Manifesto, The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, and he is co-author of a new one called The Blueprint, How Socialism Can Work in the Real World. The first book is largely a deep dive into the successes, but ultimately starts as he describes them of 20th century socialism. The second, well, maybe we should call it a kind of Project 2029 Bhaskar, congratulations on the books and welcome to WNYC.

Bhaskar Sunkara (1:09)

Thanks for having me. I think of it more like a Project 2049, but in that direction.

Brian Lehrer (1:15)

Long-term planning. Let's start with The Socialist Manifesto, though, which I'm sure was a purposeful reference to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.

Why did you use that frame for your title?

Bhaskar Sunkara (1:27)

You know, I had an answer that I gave to people when they asked me that question in 2019, but because I have so much respect for your program, I'm going to give you the true answer, which is it was, I think, dreamed up by a publisher and a marketing team. I originally wanted to title my book Socialism in Our Time, but like a good publisher with a good marketing sense, I knew that they were right and I was wrong. But ultimately, I think the book engages really critically with a lot of the history of Socialism in the 20th century, engages with a lot of kind of the past, present and future of the movement. There is a little bit of the book, maybe a chapter that you could call like a rousing manifesto. But rereading this book while putting together the new edition of it, I was surprised about how sort of maudlin and depressive so much of the prose is.

I think in an introspective, interesting way, considering that I wrote it when I was in my 20s, I think I was channeling my inner Irving Howe.

Brian Lehrer (2:31)

Well, I guess regarding the title, there's a sidebar article to be written someday on marketing socialism.

But Donald Trump and others like to conflate socialism and communism as much as they can in the public mind with the rise of popular DSA candidates. I don't have to tell you that. Where would you start to describe the biggest differences between Marx's Communist Manifesto and your socialist one to the degree that it is a manifesto, or just the difference between communism as Trump hopes people hear it and socialism as you mean it?

Bhaskar Sunkara (3:05)

Yeah, I think that it's worth acknowledging that there's a common ancestor that all these different forms of socialism have and that ancestor is the movements of the second international, this big grouping of parties and associations that formed the workers movement of the late 19th century. And these movements tried to put into practice the vision of Marx, a vision of a society run and controlled by workers.

After World War I though, this movement split into a more revolutionary wing, the communist wing, and a more reformist wing, the social democratic wing. And through a million different permutations, the wing that I'm a part of, the democratic socialist wing, kind of took articulation in that we seek to use democratic means to do more than just introduce doses of socialism within capitalism, like social democracy does. We still aspire, like the communists do, for a socialism after capitalism. But we're deeply committed to both democratic means, but also a sort of reconciliation of, you could say, liberalism and socialism. And by liberalism, I mean, that we believe that there's certain spheres that the state should simply stay out of. We believe that there's certain unalienable rights, and that we ultimately need to reconcile our demands for equality with the demands of individuals for autonomy. So I think to some degree, even though I'm sure a lot of Democratic Socialists would disagree, that to be a Democratic Socialist is ultimately to reconcile the best of liberalism with the best of a more revolutionary socialist tradition.

Brian Lehrer (4:57)

And I think you've called it Bill of Rights socialism, right?

Bhaskar Sunkara (5:02)

Yes.

Brian Lehrer (5:02)

But what people who fear socialism, fear to some degree is that in the Soviet model, as it was applied, socialism was not compatible with democracy. That was true in Cuba and some other Latin American socialist countries too. I think you'd say for people who didn't grow up during the Cold War, it's obviously not as salient as it is today, looking at the popularity of the word socialism, or the lack of fear associated with it among younger people.