John B. Judis - The Socialist Awakening

PRAISE FOR

The Populist Explosion

Named one of the 6 Books to Help Understand Trumps Win by the New York Times

Named one of the Best Books of 2016 by Bloomberg

A Fareed Zakaria GPS Book of the Week

Well-written and well-researched, powerfully argued, and perfectly timed.
The Economist

In November, the fate of the Republic will turn on one question: How popular is the populism of Donald Trump? The Populist Explosion [is a] cogent and exceptionally clarifying guide to a political phenomenon that is at once elusive and, yes, explosive.
JONATHAN ALTER
New York Times Book Review

An intelligent guide to a phenomenon by no means over.
FAREED ZAKARIA
CNN

A sweeping narrativerich in historical and political argumentthat ably ties together the insurgencies on both sides of the Atlantic.
JEDEDIAH PURDY
The Nation

The Populist Explosion is far and away the most incisive examination of the central development in contemporary politics: the rise of populism on both the right and the left.
THOMAS EDSALL
New York Times

The Populist Explosion blends groundbreaking reporting with insightful scholarship in the best guide yet to the most important political phenomenon of our time.
MICHAEL LIND
author of Land of Promise

John Judis demonstrates again why he is one of Americans best political journalists. There is no wiser or better informed analysis of contemporary voter discontent on both sides of the Atlantic than The Populist Explosion.
MICHAEL KAZIN
author of The Populist Persuasion

PRAISE FOR

The Nationalist Revival

Excellent and compact book. A person of the left, Judis specializes in speaking truth to liberals, something he also did in his earlier The Populist Explosion. He thinks its important for progressives to understand why so many are drawn to Trump and the far right in Europe.
E.J. DIONNE JR.
Washington Post

John B. Judis does not see a death-match between imperial liberalism on the one hand and nationalism on the other. His book argues that elites have overreached, both in the U.S. and in Europe, in advocating large-scale immigration and trade deals and foreign interventions.
JASON WILLICK
Wall Street Journal

John B. Judis is the rare left-of-center journalist who takes our populist-nationalist moment seriously. Rather than dismiss the leaders and constituencies of the American and European movements as mere xenophobes, he offers an empathetic balls-and-strikes analysis of the socioeconomic factors that madeand continue to makesuch campaigns viable.
DANIEL KISHI
The American Conservative

The Socialist Awakening
Whats Different Now About the Left

The Socialist Awakening
Whats Different Now About the Left

John B. Judis

COLUMBIA GLOBAL REPORTS
NEW YORK

Published with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)

The Socialist Awakening:
Whats Different Now About the Left
Copyright 2020 by John B. Judis
All rights reserved

Published by Columbia Global Reports
91 Claremont Avenue, Suite 515
New York, NY 10027
globalreports.columbia.edu
facebook.com/columbiaglobalreports
@columbiaGR

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Description: New York, NY : Columbia Global Reports, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020028631 (print) | LCCN 2020028632 (ebook) | ISBN 9781734420708 (paperback) | ISBN 9781734420715 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Socialism--United States--History--21st century. | Socialism--Great Britain--History--21st century.

Classification: LCC HX86 .J83 2020 (print) | LCC HX86 (ebook) | DDC 320.53/10973--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028631

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028632

Book design by Strick&Williams
Map design by Jeffrey L. Ward
Author photograph by Miranda Sita

Printed in the United States of America

For Shelly Weintraub and Tim Reagan

CONTENTS

Introduction
Socialism Old and New

Chapter One
American Socialism from Debs to Sanders

Chapter Two
Socialism After Sanders

Chapter Three
British Socialism and Nationalism

Conclusion
Populism, Nationalism, and Socialism

Socialism Old and New

The philosopher Fredric Jameson once wrote, It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. Jameson, hardly known as a staunch defender of capitalism (hes perhaps the worlds foremost Marxist literary critic), didnt write this generations ago, but in 2003. In March 2020, as the novel coronavirus outbreak was putting millions of Americans under stay-at-home orders, and as Congress and the Federal Reserve had begun pouring trillions of dollars into the economy to soften the blow of a coming depression, Vox editor Dylan Matthews quipped: The end of the world is making it easier to imagine the end of capitalism.

The coronavirus pandemic came barely five years after the United States and Western Europe were finally recovering from the Great Recession of 2008. It has not, and will not, spell the end of the world or of capitalism, but it has put the final nail in the coffin of the laissez-faire, globalized capitalism that prevailed since the days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and that was perpetuated, wittingly or not, by their successors. The era of big government, which Bill Clinton claimed was over under his watch, is back with a vengeance; and so is the attention of politicians, if only for the time being, to the welfare of the many, not just the few.

The politics and political economy in the United States and Europe (not to mention elsewhere) are entering a new era, just as it happened in the early 1930s, after World War II, and then again in the early 1980s. In the early 1930s, faced with the breakdown of the gold-based international monetary system and of untamed capitalism at home, the countries of the West went in very different directions. The United States went toward Franklin Roosevelts New Deal; Central and Southern Europe went toward Nazism and fascism. Both alternatives, as socialist theorist Karl Polanyi described them in The Great Transformation, were attempts to use the power of government to protect the populace against the vicissitudes of the market.

The failure of market capitalism has been heightened by the threat posed by the novel coronavirus. All the weaknesses of the previous erafrom the over-reliance on global supply chains to underfunded social services; from tax avoidance by the wealthy and large corporations to the immiseration of what are known as essential workershave been laid bare. And after the threat of the virus recedes, the countries of the world will still face steep unemployment and a daunting task of economic reconstruction, along with the growing threat of climate change, that will require major public initiatives. These failures and weaknesses can be, as they were in the United States in the 1930s, the basis for a traditional leftwing alliance of the bottom and the middle of society against the very top. Or they can feed rightwing attempts to divide the middle and bottom through scapegoating.