Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “says that all young people want to be socialists.”
Frances Fox Piven, a political scientist and a former D.S.A. board member, told me that, while these terms are fuzzier than they once were, "socialism," in the practical politics of the young, describes above all a disgust with widening inequality. "When people say they are ‘socialists,’ they are reacting against unrestrained capitalism," she said. "I don’t know that it has much meaning beyond that. There are volumes written about the historical, theoretical work by socialists and their critics, but I don’t think that that’s what’s moving these young people. They are moved by the idea of an economic system that is tempered, constrained, and restrained by democratic values. There were a lot of debates in the seventies and eighties between Maoists and theoretical socialists, some of whom were a little crazy. That has nothing to do with what’s happening now." Michael Kazin, a co-editor of Dissent and a D.S.A. member, agreed: "The radical left’s major influence in American history is to push liberals, progressives, to the left. And that is going to be the impact. I don’t believe we are going to have a socialist transformation of America in my lifetime."