What is democratic socialism, and where is it headed?

Democratic socialism is an idea with a rich manifold history in Europe and a slight electoral history in the United States—until recently. A new generation of American voters, one that does not remember the Cold War but is steeped in the severe inequalities of neoliberal capitalism, has brushed aside the assumption that democratic socialism is impossibly un-American. Many young Americans flatly demand the same universal health care, free higher education, and solidarity wages that are commonplace in Europe.

“Democratic socialism” has become the favored shorthand for what is missing in the United States: the recognition that all citizens have rights to not just liberty but also economic well-being and a healthy ecosystem. This concept of democratic socialism is long-standing; it is also one among others. Its resurgence has brought up old questions about what democratic socialism should be.

Bernie Sanders spent decades calling for economic justice which he referred to as democratic socialism. Then his 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination played an outsized role in renewing democratic socialism as a political option. But what is Sanders’s particular understanding of democratic socialism? Mainstream journalists have been oddly incurious about this question. They routinely recycle a 2015 statement in which he named Denmark, an advanced welfare state with a mixed economy, as his model of a democratic socialist society—and clarified that he doesn’t believe in government ownership. Often this reference gets buttressed with a quote from Paul Krugman, Noam Chomsky, or another expert or pundit to the effect that Sanders is therefore a good social democrat but not really a democratic socialist.