| WHY YOU SHOULD BE A SOCIALIST Nathan J. Robinson New York: All Points Books, December 2019 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-250-20086-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-250-20086-5 | 326pp. | HC/GSI | $27.99 | |
Nathan Robinson is the editor of Current Affairs, a magazine he started on a shoestring. His objective in this book is to explain what socialism is and is not, and to advocate its acceptance by the American electorate.
He begins this book by recounting the history of the 2016 campaign for president: a campaign in which the Democratic primary was nearly won by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist. Sanders won 23 state primaries to Hillary Clinton's 34, taking in 13 million votes to her 16 million. Sanders ran a strong campaign, proving especially magnetic to young voters. But, Robinson tells us, there is more to the story.
"Sanders' success with millennials, while unanticipated by pollsters, did not occur purely because of Sanders' political skill. It happened because a revolution had been brewing among young progressives for years, as they had steadily grown more and more alienated from the Democratic Party mainstream. Ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, young people in the United States had become increasingly radicalized. Weighed down with debt, paying through the nose for health insurance, unable to afford to have kids, and frustrated by an undemocratic political system that implements the policy preferences of rich elites, millennials were both frustrated and tired. Sanders came along at just the right moment: they had been waiting for someone to say what was on their minds—that the economic and political systems were unfair at their core and needed a drastic overhaul." – page 3 |
Sanders's victory is no isolated event. Robinson documents a number of members of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) who have recently won in local elections — and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who took the seat held by Joe Crowley, fourth-ranked Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives. It all adds up to a trend, and indicates a growing dissatisfaction with capitalism as it is currently practiced. As Robinson shows us, the right wing is not immune to this trend; conservative publications discuss Democratic hypocrisy at length, but seldom if ever mention conservatism.1
Robinson's goal in this book is to explain the advantages of socialism.
In this book, I want to convince you that everyone should join the political left and identify themselves as a democratic socialist. I want to show you, as thoroughly and persuasively as I can, that leftist politics are not just consistent and reasonable, but that elementary moral principles compel us all to be leftists and socialists. I intend to define, as clearly as possible, what I mean by words like leftism, socialism, and principles, and show you how left ideas work, why they're practical, and why the usual criticisms of them are false and/or frivolous. I also want to explain to you why why democratic socialism has been gaining currency in recent years, and look at the changes in U.S. and global politics that are driving more and more people to embrace leftism. – page 14 |
"I did not understand wealth and poverty. I saw luxury retailers offering the most ridiculous, unnecessary nonsense (Tiffany & Co. sells a $490 sterling silver protractor). I saw colossal amounts of waste, from the 150,000 tons of uneaten food Americans discard per day to the tens of millions of dollars' worth of fancy handbags that Burberry was incinerating every year to keep their products scarce and expensive. I saw people in my Florida hometown living in garish, seven-room McMansions while there weren't enough beds at the local homeless shelter. I saw people buying new phones every year and keeping the old ones in a drawer, while a few miles away, day laborers picked tomatoes, earning 45 cents for every 30-pound bucket. I saw reports of Americans being charged $5,000 by hospitals for an icepack and a bandage, or paying $1,200 a month in rent for a bunk bed. And I couldn't understand why everyone wasn't constantly outraged by all this." – Page 28 |
The roots of Robinson's outrage are no mystery. They spring from inequality grown rampant. As he puts it:
The defining feature of our age is inequality. Even economist Larry Summers, certainly no socialist, has noted that 'the world's wealthy elite are more wealthy, more knit together, more separate from their fellow citizens, and probably more powerful than ever before.' Shortly before the financial crisis, Citigroup released a report concluding these days, 'the world is dividing into two blocs—the Plutonomy and the rest,' with a small number of wealthy plutocrats 'absorb[ing] a disproportionate chunk of the economy.' " – page 52 |
There is a great deal more to say about this inequality, and it is being said.2 Robinson's outrage has a keen sarcastic edge to it, for he is young and idealistic; but I think I've said enough here to show it is justified. He does go on at great length about it, ranging over its effects on everything from wage slavery (with Amazon as poster child) to eating meat. I admit he might have pared it down some without losing impact. But this too is a reflection of his youthful idealism, which urges a thorough-going solution.
He goes on to defend socialism, a term which has lately become an all-purpose curse word for the right wing. He distinguishes it from democratic socialism, a political philosophy that is gaining adherents. He contrasts it to other philosophies. Along the way he frequently punctures right-wing pretenses — nor does he spare Democrats. He provides plenty of references to books, and in an Appendix lays out the current landscape of left-wing magazines and podcasts — and a list of 38 books including Noam Chomsky's Understanding Power and Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything — followed by, on page 266, the list of ten classics he would take to a desert island. I reproduce it here. 3
The book is well-reasoned and, aside from a smattering of grammatical errors ("alright"), is well written. It has an excellent index and endnotes. I won't call it a must-read or a keeper, but it is worth reading.
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