Whose New ​“Socialism” Is It?

Socialism is back, at least in name.

But what’s behind the name and renewed interest?

A lot, according to a John Roemer, a Yale political scientist and economist who has studied the subject for decades.

Polls are now showing that a majority of Democrats, at least, favor socialism over capitalism, especially among people under 50.

A self-proclaimed democratic socialist is the leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, with his opponents following his lead in embracing plans for ​“Medicare for all,” free college tuition, and higher taxes on the wealthy.

Here in New Haven, a chapter of Democratic Socialists of America is up and running, joining a trend that has quintupled the national group’s membership in the past two years. Another local activist group, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, has been rallying on behalf of LGBTQ rights and against U.S. intervention abroad.

All that has happened against a backdrop of a decades-long widening of income inequality, observed Roemer. (His books include A Future for Socialism.)

“There’s been a massive disillusionment in this country,” Roemer observed during an interview Thursday on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. The wealthy have gotten ​“massively richer” since 1980, while real incomes of lowest wage-earners have remained flat, he said.

Roemer predicted that politics have changed enough in this country that branding an opponent as ​“socialist” to scare voters, the current key strategy of the Republican Party against the Democrats, will no longer succeed.

But when people say ​“socialism,” they can mean very different things. The majority of people calling for a shift toward socialist policy are not seeking to have the government own the means of production, Roemer noted. They’re not looking to replicate the failed model of the former Soviet Union. Rather, they’re generally seeking a dramatic widening of the welfare statement on the model of Scandinavian-style ​“social democracies” to cover health care, paid medical leave, greater regulation of corporations, and a higher minimum wage, among other policies.

Roemer welcomed that agenda — as a start to a broader, modernized form of socialism he’d like to see take root. One that would preserve privately owned small business while turning over multibillion-dollar companies to government control.

“I am what is called a market socialist. I think we have to use markets to allocate resources. But I don’t think using markets commits us to having the kind of distribution of income that we have in the United States today, where about 40 percent of the wealth is owned by the top 10 percent,” Roemer said.

In addition to ​“market,” Roemer stresses the word ​“democratic.” He called that the crucial missing ingredient in the former Soviet Union and in China.

“China accomplished something fantastic. It pulled 500 million, 600 million people out of poverty. Just fantastic. That’s a huge accomplishment,” Roemer said.

“Now what’s happening that the income inequality is getting worse. There’s growth of wealth at the top. It’s not that top 10 percent in China own 40 percent of the wealth; they own 20 percent of the wealth.

“It’s a complicated system. It’s not democratic…. That will be its downfall…. It’s lost its socialist ethos.”

A ​“sustainable” 21st-century socialism, he argued, will require ​“an ethos of cooperation. That we are in this world to try to work with other people to help us all jointly to improve our situations, our lives. We have to cooperate to do that. The major form of cooperation in which we have succeeded has been the construction of large welfare states.” Where socialism champions cooperation, he said, capitalism preaches that ​“we’re in it for ourselves. Each of us should compete with each other. The only responsibility we have is to our families. That is a very destructive ethos.”

How does that mix of cooperation, market forces, and democracy play out in specific policy?

On the environment, it means dramatic international cooperation to cut carbon emissions, Roemer said. He embraced the vision of democratic socialist U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ​“Green New Deal.” But he offered one big quibble: Its rejection of any market-based solutions. Roemer said his research has borne out what both conservative and liberal economists generally now agree is the efficacy of, say, carbon taxes, which factor in the true environmental cost of using polluting fossil fuels in goods and services; and financial incentives for companies to develop green technology. (Yale economist William Nordhaus won a 2018 Nobel prize for his research in that area.)

“I think there has to be … massive international cooperation. That goes against the usual practice of capitalists,” Roemer said. ​“But I do think markets can be used to help solve the problem.”

A soon-to-be-published paper Roemer co-authored advocates a system that sets a ceiling and a price on carbon emissions worldwide, charges it to manufacturers when they pollute, and collects the fees in an international fund that divides up the money among countries based on needs. He points to French President Emmanuel Macron’s now-scuttled gas tax hike as the wrong way to proceed: ​“He was going to jack up the prices of gasoline to have an increased carbon tax — which I support — but he didn’t say, ​‘I’m going to return the money to the people.’… Give them back a share of what was collected so that their income does not [decrease]. You can do this is such a way that people who need to drive most to get to work get back the largest share.”

Roemer also termed ​“terrible” the stand taken last month by New Haven’s Party for Socialism and Liberation in favor of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro’s anti-democratic and kleptocratic policies, he said, don’t fit a true definition of socialism.

“They tried to replace all the normal democratic municipal government with their own councils,” Roemer said. ​“It’s just a travesty what’s happened.”

Click on the video below for the full interview with John Roemer on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to take the New York Times quiz to find out if you are a socialist, at least as defined by the Democratic Socialists of America.