We recently had the painful experience of watching Cornel West on Tucker Carlson Tonight justifying democratic socialism, which is not new to America (it is the New Deal, it is the four freedoms, it is even the Tennessee Valley Authority). Carlson claimed socialism has never worked. He pointed out Venezuela; the country doesn’t have toilet paper. Let’s put aside the fact that Venezuela’s situation is not dissimilar to the one we find in North Dakota (a state hit hard by the collapse of oil prices just before the Iran deal), and wonder why West had so much difficulty speaking the truth about social democracy. Overall, facts have mattered little in the field of heterodox economics. And so any exchange with capitalist apologists will not get you far. You must always begin on their terms, which means you have to say why capitalism has not failed. But it actually has; and it has adopted a lot of socialism to keep alive, to keep going. The presence of Social Security, which even Bush failed to undermine, is clear evidence of this fact. The US has a deep and long engagement with social democracy. The impressive thing is that our socialist institutions (for example, the 30-year mortgage that made suburbs and America’s massive white middle class possible) are not seen as such.
What is it that Cornel West should have done when he was asked about democratic socialism? A simple SNL type stuntโplaced a beatbox on the desk, and blasted ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” a pop product of peak Scandinavian social democracy. If you can hear and feel the obvious joy in that chart-topping Swedish tune, you will finally understand the meaning of this type of socialism. (And there are many types of socialism, not just oneโthe same is true for capitalism.) A progressive tax system, universal health care, the near absence of homelessness, meaningful class mobility. It’s time to dance. “Feel the beat from the tambourine, oh yeah/ You can dance/ You can jive/ Having the time of your life./ Ooh, see that girl/ Watch that scene/ Dig in the dancing queen.” This is a joy erupted by social democracy. It’s not about work. Labor. Clocking in and out. There’s little joy in that. It’s about the moment you can dance and never come down because the whole society is always there for you. Everyone says: “You go girl!”
This is democratic socialism in essence. This is all that it could hope for. And it’s not in the future. It is not an idea or vision. It has been with us for a very long time. Think of the reformist movements that abolished child labor (kids can play!), that established public education (school derives from the Greek word, ฯฯฮฟฮปฮฎ (scholฤ), for “leisure”), that reduced working hours, that gave you time to be you: the dancing queen. There was a little of this in Saturday Night Fever, but with ABBA, it’s not an escape from the world of work. No, work is a break from being the dancing queen.
Working-class joy. This is all that we mean. We all become dancing queens. And we love it. Do you think we could even enjoy the World Cup if the capitalists had their miserly, cash-clutching way? No. It would not happen. Capitalists did not give us the weekend. Socialists did. And it’s time we started stating these achievements clearly, instead of bumbling with the Carlson’s of the world. He thinks standing to the flag is patriotic. But go back only 150 years, and you find capitalists like him and the GOP fighting to not give working people free time to watch any thing off the clock. Why do we find this so hard to explain to the Carlsons and the public?
To explain socialism in any other way is to get entangled in debates that are actually traps. We want a society that is more equitable because we want to dance and improve our moves.
