Good post. However, like Sanders, I think you are underselling the importance of cultural issues for voters. When we say they are being forced / tricked to blame of minority groups by the media, it doesn't take into account key piece of democracy--the negotiations for values around the good life, etc.
A truly liberal (not merely "neoliberal") approach allocates cultural issues ("values around the good life") to the individual -- to be pursued in civil society rather than the political realm. Unfortunately, both left and right seem to have abandoned the simple concept of "live and let live."
Meanwhile, the oligarchs (along with the foundation-funded NGO bureaucracies) keep laughing all the way to the bank.
Really appreciate how this lays out the diffrence between rejecting markets entirely and challenging oligarchic power. Sanders' core argument about the political vacuum is solid, when you abandon economic solidarity, resentment-based politics fills that space fast. I remeber organizing in rust belt towns where folks wanted concrete policy wins, not just symbolic representation. The trickiest part is that incremental wins do matter, but they're not enough when the structural problem keeps compounding underneath.
I was a union official and finally president of my small local and you are right. Of course the jobs have all been privatized now after district council and state council sold us out.
Nordic socialism is a myth. They are all market economies with high tax rates and generous benefits. We could just as easily say the US is socialist as well. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, natl parks etc are not capitalist. True socialism is government ownership of most if not all the economy. Accurate definitions are anethma to ideologies.
Clear definitions are *crucial* to having an ideology, but today's professional political commentators think that the counter to ideology is to have no ideas at all.
This is how we got MAGA vs the blue-MAGA nonsense in this article as the only two options in mainstream politics.
Indeed, there's a world of difference between social democracy (i.e., Scandinavia) and "democratic" socialism. Despite the similar-sounding terms, this isn't a nit-picking distinction: In pre-Nazi Germany, hard leftists famously characterized social democrats as "social fascists" -- proclaiming, "After Hitler, our turn."
In this regard, Sanders has maintained an ambiguous posture, leaving his disciples to engage in a tug-of-war.
The Nordic Model is not socialism. It is social democracy, that is, capitalism within a liberal democratic system, with a relatively high level of welfare and public services. Welfare and public services, in and of themselves, are not socialism and can exist in any system. "Democratic socialism" is still traditional socialism for many. That is, they tolerate capitalism for the time being, but aim for state ownership of the means of production later on. Some democratic socialists talk like social democrats, but one can never be sure that they don't harbor the traditional goal of socialism. And socialism is still autocratic: autocracy of the collective in theory, and plain old dictatorship in practice. Theoretically, socialism is democratic, but that theoretical democracy is the sort of direct democracy that the US Founders feared: the "mob rule" of bare majorities. And of course socialism has never worked out that way in the real world, always ending up with dictators in control.
Socialism is not the answer to the problems of capitalism. Improving the system within which capitalism functions is the answer, and that means liberal democracy. You want to mitigate the power of the fat cats? Make it so they can't buy undue political influence, by reforming campaign finance. So, let's have more equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.
This is the challenge with slogans. They tend to be simplistic and can't address the full complexity of an issue and the proposed ways to address that issue. But people need some kind of shorthand for quick reference. "Equality of opportunity" does not literally mean what it says. What it really means is greater opportunity for all, but especially for those at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder. Specifically, it means more and more diverse opportunities for employment and education. Obviously this can't work the same in all fields. Some fields of work are simply far too small and specialized. However, for more common kinds of work and study, in which many more people can engage, government should strive to create conditions that foster more opportunities than currently exist. Furthermore, "more opportunity" should also entail reducing the opportunity of those wealthy enough to game the system and buy undue political influence, not with punitive policies like wealth redistribution, but with reform of campaign financing and any other ways that "fat cats" use to buy undue political influence to favor themselves.
Whether it is Sander's book or this review, and whether intended or not, their is a lot of objective truth left out of this modern socialist defense. DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) represents a pretty wide range including Marxist-Leninist adherents as well as those to the left of progressives Democrats. The DSA constitution specifically rejects an economic order based on private profit. DSA members on the right of their non-party moderate further right by ensuring non-compliance with their own constitution.
Now for the subjective part. DSA and the Democratic party need to have an adult conversation and DSA needs to become a formal political party. Certain DSA sympathetic politicians, pundits and activists are selfishly angling for undue, marginal, factional and fractured gain with corporate-Democrat denunciation that only hurts the 2/3rds of Americans who are between the far left and the far right. Every political party has corporatism, socialists are no different. The challenge for America's major THIRD PARTY is to stop angling with the fringe left and stop fearing the fringe right, stand for a capitalism with effective guardrails against cronyism and with sustainable funding for well-supported social safety nets, and to devise a simple platform based on the hopes, dreams and needs of the 2/3rds.
Sanders and others should do the adult thing and help make the Democratic party into that THIRD PARTY. They will see more vastly more progress for "real" Americans who they aspire to help achieve our American dream.
We live in unique times. With the loudest voices and chaos coming from the far right and far left, the Democratic party has an opportunity to be the third party for 2/3rds of Americans. It is already on record that some DSA factions want to split from the Democratic party a d form their own. That's party #1 that Dems need to disown. Any DSA members who want the protection of the Dems can come in as capitalist progressives. Now for party #2, MAGA or POT (Party of Trump) which has swallowed GOP. The Democratic party has the capacity to take in lots of disaffected Republicans who feel homeless, along with Independents like me who used to be moderate Republicans. So all of a sudden we have what most Americans have been clamoring for years, the 3rd Party which is the New Big Tent Democratic party. This isn't far-fetched but requires a divorce from DSA and a new dynamic message for 2/3rds of Americans. It requires a great deal of courage in these unique times.
I'm a former moderate Republican turned independent to escape MAGA (NeverTrumper). Plus I'm just a retired guy with no political party policy chops. Plus I used to have more ideological stances than I do now. I feel like I'm like maybe 2/3rds of Americans who (as I've mentioned on another substack) aren't pursuaded by the "perfect" solutions prodded by the DSA left or MAGA right. I'm perfectly happy if they get relegated to their corners and the Democratic Party comes up with the "good" that provides solutions to our life situations. This is all to say this could be the beginning of a wonderful conversation.
My first concrete policy statement example involves countering Citizens United. A perfect policy proposal would be to call for a constitutional amendment, which will require super-majority approval in U.S. Congress and by states.
A good proposal would be to dynamically and simply lay out the overwhelmingly obvious problem and the proposed policy:
Since Citizens United, campaign finance has become more out of hand, less transparent and more than ever. Americans support changes that happen now.
Our policy promise is to require legislation that every donation over $250 be subject to immediate reporting by political campaigns, PACs and SuperPACs. The American public has the right to this information, made easily accessible, in real time and over time in order to evaluate as they make important electoral decisions.
So if these donations are "free speech" and it's very unlikely that the numbers will be there in the next election cycle for a constitutional amendment, at least every donor to a PAC or SuperPAC will have to stand behind their "free speech". And I've always been bothered why donors to political campaigns can be hidden so long according to present reporting cycles.
Maybe this has been tried before, I am not mired in these things. But right now regardless of the issue, there is a good solution that needs sufficient support by the public and by congress to enact.
Besides the lack of viability, any third party is likely to eventually become as corrupt and ineffective as the two institutional ones. I personally favor instant runoff voting with the top 4 or 5 candidates from the primary on the general ballot.
This will probably dilute partisanship since it will probably favor moderate candidates. It is not without risk, however. It has never been tried in the US, and there's a likelihood that there will be unintended consequences.
I think the Forward Party has a strategy and is making progress on their plan to become electorally viable. I wish them well, because I believe it is essential for us to change the electoral system. The duopoly and first past the post plurality voting have entrenched incentives that produce negative campaigning and hyper partisan gridlock.
To support European style or Canadian social safety net, taxpayers in every bracket should expect higher rates. Voters support taxing the rich generally mean they support people richer than them.
I agree with that, me and my wife are retired and barely scrape by but I would willingly pay more taxes for a proper social safety net, I have always felt that way, most of my working class co workers did not.
Actually, none of us are socialists. We are liberals. That's our whole thing. A publication deciding to run a review of a book by Bernie Sanders does not make its editors socialists. Hell, the author of the review himself went out of his way to point out that we on the editorial staff vehemently disagree with Sanders' central policy plank. In the future, please try your hardest to resist offering silly replies of this sort.
Berny and the editors broadly support a capitalist economy along with a rights oriented political system. I support liberal socialism, as did John Stuart Mill when he clarified how respect for liberal rights inevitably led to supporting economic democracy. So my own vies is one cannot support a rights respecting government and capitalism simultaneously, since the latter inevitably distorts the former for the reasons Mill, Rawls and other liberal socialists gave.
“Liberal socialism” is a contradiction. May as well call yourself an advocate of "freedom dictatorship."
Liberalism requires rights-protecting government, which means capitalism in economics, which is why liberal societies are first-world.
Socialism rejects rights completely, which means it's impossible to have any kind of real economy, which is why all socialist countries starve.
In short, a liberal political system and a socialist political system are opposites.
Capitalism depends on rights-protecting government. Markets cannot exist without that specific political system. This is why we didn't have industrial civilization until we had rights-protecting government first.
In short, rights-protecting government in politics, and capitalism in economics, go together. You can't have one without the other.
Socialists attempting to pretend they are capitalists, in order to trick people into supporting their horrific and authoritarian ideas, isn't really new.
But I think it's a disgrace that the Unpopulist would host this kind of content. All this does is help MAGA.
You described Bernie Sanders as a capitalist. Listing figures associated with socialism, central planning, or extensive political management of the economy as examples of “liberalism” repeats the same move: it treats liberalism as a loose moral sentiment rather than a framework with specific institutional commitments.
Thinkers like Locke and the American Founders understood liberalism in terms of individual rights functioning as constraints on political power, especially in the economic sphere. Many later figures you cite explicitly allow those constraints to be overridden for social or distributive goals. That difference is foundational, not semantic.
This isn’t about general sympathy for “freedom” in the abstract. A system either secures individual rights against political discretion, or it doesn’t. Where economic life is subject to political control, the result is not "liberalism or freedom," regardless of the label applied.
Sure, but to be clear there is no smuch context a short review can add before it loses the plot. That's why I included a hyperlink to another article that elaborates on the theme you reference.
Good post. However, like Sanders, I think you are underselling the importance of cultural issues for voters. When we say they are being forced / tricked to blame of minority groups by the media, it doesn't take into account key piece of democracy--the negotiations for values around the good life, etc.
A truly liberal (not merely "neoliberal") approach allocates cultural issues ("values around the good life") to the individual -- to be pursued in civil society rather than the political realm. Unfortunately, both left and right seem to have abandoned the simple concept of "live and let live."
Meanwhile, the oligarchs (along with the foundation-funded NGO bureaucracies) keep laughing all the way to the bank.
Really appreciate how this lays out the diffrence between rejecting markets entirely and challenging oligarchic power. Sanders' core argument about the political vacuum is solid, when you abandon economic solidarity, resentment-based politics fills that space fast. I remeber organizing in rust belt towns where folks wanted concrete policy wins, not just symbolic representation. The trickiest part is that incremental wins do matter, but they're not enough when the structural problem keeps compounding underneath.
I was a union official and finally president of my small local and you are right. Of course the jobs have all been privatized now after district council and state council sold us out.
Nordic socialism is a myth. They are all market economies with high tax rates and generous benefits. We could just as easily say the US is socialist as well. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, natl parks etc are not capitalist. True socialism is government ownership of most if not all the economy. Accurate definitions are anethma to ideologies.
Clear definitions are *crucial* to having an ideology, but today's professional political commentators think that the counter to ideology is to have no ideas at all.
This is how we got MAGA vs the blue-MAGA nonsense in this article as the only two options in mainstream politics.
It's an unprecedented crisis of expertise.
Indeed, there's a world of difference between social democracy (i.e., Scandinavia) and "democratic" socialism. Despite the similar-sounding terms, this isn't a nit-picking distinction: In pre-Nazi Germany, hard leftists famously characterized social democrats as "social fascists" -- proclaiming, "After Hitler, our turn."
In this regard, Sanders has maintained an ambiguous posture, leaving his disciples to engage in a tug-of-war.
The Nordic Model is not socialism. It is social democracy, that is, capitalism within a liberal democratic system, with a relatively high level of welfare and public services. Welfare and public services, in and of themselves, are not socialism and can exist in any system. "Democratic socialism" is still traditional socialism for many. That is, they tolerate capitalism for the time being, but aim for state ownership of the means of production later on. Some democratic socialists talk like social democrats, but one can never be sure that they don't harbor the traditional goal of socialism. And socialism is still autocratic: autocracy of the collective in theory, and plain old dictatorship in practice. Theoretically, socialism is democratic, but that theoretical democracy is the sort of direct democracy that the US Founders feared: the "mob rule" of bare majorities. And of course socialism has never worked out that way in the real world, always ending up with dictators in control.
Socialism is not the answer to the problems of capitalism. Improving the system within which capitalism functions is the answer, and that means liberal democracy. You want to mitigate the power of the fat cats? Make it so they can't buy undue political influence, by reforming campaign finance. So, let's have more equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.
David, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about Dylan Matthews' case against "equality of opportunity" from a decade ago.
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9334215/equality-of-opportunity
This is the challenge with slogans. They tend to be simplistic and can't address the full complexity of an issue and the proposed ways to address that issue. But people need some kind of shorthand for quick reference. "Equality of opportunity" does not literally mean what it says. What it really means is greater opportunity for all, but especially for those at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder. Specifically, it means more and more diverse opportunities for employment and education. Obviously this can't work the same in all fields. Some fields of work are simply far too small and specialized. However, for more common kinds of work and study, in which many more people can engage, government should strive to create conditions that foster more opportunities than currently exist. Furthermore, "more opportunity" should also entail reducing the opportunity of those wealthy enough to game the system and buy undue political influence, not with punitive policies like wealth redistribution, but with reform of campaign financing and any other ways that "fat cats" use to buy undue political influence to favor themselves.
Wouldn't let me read it, would have been interested.
Whether it is Sander's book or this review, and whether intended or not, their is a lot of objective truth left out of this modern socialist defense. DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) represents a pretty wide range including Marxist-Leninist adherents as well as those to the left of progressives Democrats. The DSA constitution specifically rejects an economic order based on private profit. DSA members on the right of their non-party moderate further right by ensuring non-compliance with their own constitution.
Now for the subjective part. DSA and the Democratic party need to have an adult conversation and DSA needs to become a formal political party. Certain DSA sympathetic politicians, pundits and activists are selfishly angling for undue, marginal, factional and fractured gain with corporate-Democrat denunciation that only hurts the 2/3rds of Americans who are between the far left and the far right. Every political party has corporatism, socialists are no different. The challenge for America's major THIRD PARTY is to stop angling with the fringe left and stop fearing the fringe right, stand for a capitalism with effective guardrails against cronyism and with sustainable funding for well-supported social safety nets, and to devise a simple platform based on the hopes, dreams and needs of the 2/3rds.
Sanders and others should do the adult thing and help make the Democratic party into that THIRD PARTY. They will see more vastly more progress for "real" Americans who they aspire to help achieve our American dream.
Don't you think an electorally viable third party is structurally impossible—or at the very least wildly implausible—within the U.S. electoral system?
We live in unique times. With the loudest voices and chaos coming from the far right and far left, the Democratic party has an opportunity to be the third party for 2/3rds of Americans. It is already on record that some DSA factions want to split from the Democratic party a d form their own. That's party #1 that Dems need to disown. Any DSA members who want the protection of the Dems can come in as capitalist progressives. Now for party #2, MAGA or POT (Party of Trump) which has swallowed GOP. The Democratic party has the capacity to take in lots of disaffected Republicans who feel homeless, along with Independents like me who used to be moderate Republicans. So all of a sudden we have what most Americans have been clamoring for years, the 3rd Party which is the New Big Tent Democratic party. This isn't far-fetched but requires a divorce from DSA and a new dynamic message for 2/3rds of Americans. It requires a great deal of courage in these unique times.
What would the new dynamic message be, from a concrete policy perspective?
Hi Patti, sorry I couldn't get to this today, it is a very good question and I'll see what I can do tomorrow.
Thanks, Steve. I’m interested in your thoughts.
I'm a former moderate Republican turned independent to escape MAGA (NeverTrumper). Plus I'm just a retired guy with no political party policy chops. Plus I used to have more ideological stances than I do now. I feel like I'm like maybe 2/3rds of Americans who (as I've mentioned on another substack) aren't pursuaded by the "perfect" solutions prodded by the DSA left or MAGA right. I'm perfectly happy if they get relegated to their corners and the Democratic Party comes up with the "good" that provides solutions to our life situations. This is all to say this could be the beginning of a wonderful conversation.
My first concrete policy statement example involves countering Citizens United. A perfect policy proposal would be to call for a constitutional amendment, which will require super-majority approval in U.S. Congress and by states.
A good proposal would be to dynamically and simply lay out the overwhelmingly obvious problem and the proposed policy:
Since Citizens United, campaign finance has become more out of hand, less transparent and more than ever. Americans support changes that happen now.
Our policy promise is to require legislation that every donation over $250 be subject to immediate reporting by political campaigns, PACs and SuperPACs. The American public has the right to this information, made easily accessible, in real time and over time in order to evaluate as they make important electoral decisions.
So if these donations are "free speech" and it's very unlikely that the numbers will be there in the next election cycle for a constitutional amendment, at least every donor to a PAC or SuperPAC will have to stand behind their "free speech". And I've always been bothered why donors to political campaigns can be hidden so long according to present reporting cycles.
Maybe this has been tried before, I am not mired in these things. But right now regardless of the issue, there is a good solution that needs sufficient support by the public and by congress to enact.
Lots of policies to go!
Besides the lack of viability, any third party is likely to eventually become as corrupt and ineffective as the two institutional ones. I personally favor instant runoff voting with the top 4 or 5 candidates from the primary on the general ballot.
This will probably dilute partisanship since it will probably favor moderate candidates. It is not without risk, however. It has never been tried in the US, and there's a likelihood that there will be unintended consequences.
I think the Forward Party has a strategy and is making progress on their plan to become electorally viable. I wish them well, because I believe it is essential for us to change the electoral system. The duopoly and first past the post plurality voting have entrenched incentives that produce negative campaigning and hyper partisan gridlock.
To support European style or Canadian social safety net, taxpayers in every bracket should expect higher rates. Voters support taxing the rich generally mean they support people richer than them.
I agree with that, me and my wife are retired and barely scrape by but I would willingly pay more taxes for a proper social safety net, I have always felt that way, most of my working class co workers did not.
And there we have it.
The "liberals" at the UnPopulist, are actually just advocates of socialist authoritarianism.
Sorry but the blue-MAGA nonsense of socialism is no counter to MAGA national socialism.
Actually, none of us are socialists. We are liberals. That's our whole thing. A publication deciding to run a review of a book by Bernie Sanders does not make its editors socialists. Hell, the author of the review himself went out of his way to point out that we on the editorial staff vehemently disagree with Sanders' central policy plank. In the future, please try your hardest to resist offering silly replies of this sort.
Hey, I will even happily retract my original comment if I've misunderstood something, but I'm not holding out much hope.
This is very easy to clarify though. So, you support rights-protecting government (in politics) and capitalism (in economics), right?
As a liberal, you oppose socialism, just like you oppose MAGA, right?
You certainly don't consider socialism to be a "bold alternative" to MAGA, or something, right?
Berny and the editors broadly support a capitalist economy along with a rights oriented political system. I support liberal socialism, as did John Stuart Mill when he clarified how respect for liberal rights inevitably led to supporting economic democracy. So my own vies is one cannot support a rights respecting government and capitalism simultaneously, since the latter inevitably distorts the former for the reasons Mill, Rawls and other liberal socialists gave.
Bernie Sanders is not a capitalist—full stop.
“Liberal socialism” is a contradiction. May as well call yourself an advocate of "freedom dictatorship."
Liberalism requires rights-protecting government, which means capitalism in economics, which is why liberal societies are first-world.
Socialism rejects rights completely, which means it's impossible to have any kind of real economy, which is why all socialist countries starve.
In short, a liberal political system and a socialist political system are opposites.
Capitalism depends on rights-protecting government. Markets cannot exist without that specific political system. This is why we didn't have industrial civilization until we had rights-protecting government first.
In short, rights-protecting government in politics, and capitalism in economics, go together. You can't have one without the other.
Socialists attempting to pretend they are capitalists, in order to trick people into supporting their horrific and authoritarian ideas, isn't really new.
But I think it's a disgrace that the Unpopulist would host this kind of content. All this does is help MAGA.
Really? So John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, Keynes, George Orwell etc all didn't believe in liberalism or freedom I guess...
You described Bernie Sanders as a capitalist. Listing figures associated with socialism, central planning, or extensive political management of the economy as examples of “liberalism” repeats the same move: it treats liberalism as a loose moral sentiment rather than a framework with specific institutional commitments.
Thinkers like Locke and the American Founders understood liberalism in terms of individual rights functioning as constraints on political power, especially in the economic sphere. Many later figures you cite explicitly allow those constraints to be overridden for social or distributive goals. That difference is foundational, not semantic.
This isn’t about general sympathy for “freedom” in the abstract. A system either secures individual rights against political discretion, or it doesn’t. Where economic life is subject to political control, the result is not "liberalism or freedom," regardless of the label applied.
That’s the disagreement.
Sure, but to be clear there is no smuch context a short review can add before it loses the plot. That's why I included a hyperlink to another article that elaborates on the theme you reference.
https://unherd.com/2025/09/socialism-is-as-american-as-apple-pie/
As for Zwolinski/Tomasi I mince those differneces here:
https://jacobin.com/2023/04/libertarians-right-left-capitalism-socialism-mises-rand
Best,
Matt