AMERICANS DON'T KNOW SH*T ABOUT SOCIALISM

Last week, I republished Marianne Thorn’s piece about what Americans get wrong when they call Denmark socialist. This conversation is a follow-up to that piece—and a chance to go deeper.

Americans throw the word socialism around without understanding what it means. For more than a century, socialism—and, after the Bolshevik Revolution, communism—have been used to scare Americans away from reforms that challenge concentrated wealth and corporate power. Republicans have made that fear a political weapon for generations, from attacks on the New Deal to Ronald Reagan’s racist mythology of the “welfare queen” and right up to Donald Trump today.

But it isn’t only Republicans. Centrist Democrats have used the same weapon against progressives. Robert Reich recently wrote about Third Way, a powerful centrist Democratic organization with deep ties to Wall Street and corporate money, now preparing a $15 million campaign to discredit democratic socialism and defeat progressive candidates.

Which tells you something about who benefits when Americans are taught to be afraid of the word socialism.

For generations, the words socialism and welfare have been used to make Americans fear government, resent one another, and believe that helping other people somehow threatens their own freedom.

But welfare means something entirely different in Denmark.

In this wonderful conversation, Marianne and I talk about the freedom—and the peace—that come from living in a community of citizens who know they will not be financially destroyed if they get sick, lose a job, raise a child, or grow old. Education and healthcare are not privileges reserved for those who can afford them. No child should go to bed hungry. People understand that their well-being is bound up with the well-being of everyone around them.

We also talk about what Americans misunderstand when they call Denmark socialist, how we have been conditioned to think of ourselves as consumers rather than citizens, and why the Danish idea of welfare may embody the Christian values American politicians so loudly claim as their own.

Marianne has also written a follow-up to the piece I republished last week, using some of the questions from our conversation to go more deeply into what life in Denmark actually looks like—not from a think tank or a political argument, but, as she puts it, “from a kitchen table.” You can read her follow-up here.

Marianne is terrific, and this is a conversation Americans desperately need to watch.

My deepest thanks to Marianne Thorn for this generous, thoughtful, and urgently important conversation—and for helping us understand what life can look like when a society treats healthcare, education, food, and basic security not as privileges, but as responsibilities citizens share with one another.

And thank you for watching. If this conversation helped you understand what socialism is—and isn’t—or helped you see welfare, or even freedom, differently, please share it with someone who needs to hear what Marianne has to say.

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