THE SOCIALIST AWAKENINGWhat’s Different Now About the LeftBy John B. Judis“Henry James once said that being an American is a complex fate,” the critic Irving Howe wrote in “Socialism and America” (1985), one of the most penetrating essay collections on the subject. “We American socialists could add ‘He didn’t know the half of it.’”The word “socialist,” which signifies deep egalitarian commitments, was encumbered in the 20th century by many disasters done in its name, particularly Stalinism. After all, he added, ”yearning for a better mode of life … will reappear.”Is that tomorrow now? Anti-socialist bluster riddled the 2020 Republican convention, even though the Democratic Socialists of America, the country’s largest socialist group, refused to endorse Joe Biden against Donald Trump (Sanders did the opposite). In “The Socialist Awakening,” the journalist John B. Judis proposes that a new socialism is emerging among the young and educated.

Source: New York Times September 29, 2020 09:00 UTC