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Got big weekend plans of working through the proofs of "The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World." @mikejbeggs @BenBurgis penguinrandomhouse.com/books/790853/t…
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Bhaskar Sunkara
7K posts
Bhaskar Sunkara
@sunraysunray
President @thenation, founding editor @jacobin, member @demsocialists
🇺🇸 Katılım Nisan 2009
3.1K Takip Edilen90.3K Takipçiler
@mtaibbi @MichaelMarcou19 No, I didn't. I'm explicitly a market socialist! And in response I've explained what property in the commanding heights would be state-owned and what would be the domain of worker cooperatives.
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@MichaelMarcou19 He said if you’re even considering a fair society that “still has markets,” you’re not egalitarian enough. And in response he hasn’t said that anyone can own anything.
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So your solution is for no one to own anything?
Bhaskar Sunkara@sunraysunray
The difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is worth discussing. But if you're an egalitarian who thinks having society divided between people who own productive resources and people who have to work for them, then I'd argue you're not egalitarian enough!
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Bhaskar Sunkara retweetledi
@enoughformethx @dlondonwortel Baby steps. All publicity is good publicity. People forget how much NYT used to cover DSA--sometimes daily!
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@BorgesCarpenti @mtaibbi Many will and should go under. We should want less efficient firms to give away to new firms or the expansion of more efficient existing ones.
And you can still do ex post redistribution if society thinks inequality has gone too far.
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@sunraysunray @mtaibbi Worker cooperatives just kick the can down the road. What happens when some go under? How do you avoid tiers of worker privilege quickly evolving that make a mockery of the idea of “ownership?”
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Transitioning beyond capitalism must be a conscious democratic choice. In a new system, if you don't want to join a cooperative, you can be self-employed or work in the public sector—but you just wouldn't be able to hire others to work for you as a private owner.
People wouldn't just be entitled to wages, they'd be entitled to some degree of democratic voice in the workplace, and a dividend of firm profits.
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@sunraysunray @mtaibbi And what if I don’t want to work in a cooperative? What if I want to work for myself? What if I want to hire people and they want to work for me because they get substantially more than working for a co-op?
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@rgr8house @mtaibbi Market dynamics would still dictate these things in the commodity producing society. But with a much higher floor/safety net.
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@sunraysunray @mtaibbi Who gets to decide what is fair material compensation? Who gets to decide what labor is worth? What happens to people who dissent from the decisions made by people with such authority?
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So the state owning “natural monopolies” makes it egalitarian enough. Would people own their own ideas and inventions? Their homes?
Bhaskar Sunkara@sunraysunray
@mtaibbi The solution is to socialize production. State planning of natural monopolies, not too dissimilar to social democracies today, and then a competitive market economy in a commodity sector built around worker cooperatives.
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@HeavyNutrino @mtaibbi Your toothbrush or your single-family home is personal property; the workplace you own that produces goods and/or services is private property.
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@sunraysunray @mtaibbi Okay what's difference between personal and private property. Give me an example of something that is one and not the other.
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Lol okay I’ll read that.
Bhaskar Sunkara@sunraysunray
@mtaibbi Happy to email or mail a galley of my forthcoming book on these topics. Broadly, there's a difference between personal and private property, and workers collectively controlling their workplaces gives people, more, not less, of the fruits of their labor. amazon.com/Blueprint-Soci…
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@mtaibbi Of course, any society needs limits on state intervention and room for individual initiative and reward. But we don't live in one today that actually affords most people either fair material compensation or a real voice in their workplaces.
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@mtaibbi Happy to email or mail a galley of my forthcoming book on these topics.
Broadly, there's a difference between personal and private property, and workers collectively controlling their workplaces gives people, more, not less, of the fruits of their labor. amazon.com/Blueprint-Soci…
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Socialism is not uncontroversial. But its basic contours – in the old-school mode of planned economies, visions of market socialism like my own, or less far-reaching models of social democracy, are pretty well-known. Could Taibbi really be ignorant of all this?
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
So your solution is for no one to own anything?
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Bhaskar Sunkara retweetledi
Practically, too, so much of Kenworthy's argument focuses on the persistence of social democracy due to high welfare spending. But if you think qualitative soc dem advance halted in the '70s, you have to ask why. And capitalist control over investment is a good answer.
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The difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is worth discussing.
But if you're an egalitarian who thinks having society divided between people who own productive resources and people who have to work for them, then I'd argue you're not egalitarian enough!
Andy Masley@AndyMasley
If I could have people read one book on my politics to understand me it might be this pretty unassuming short book on why social democratic capitalism is preferable to democratic socialism. Starts with a lot of the same assumptions socialists make and walks through how the optimal way to get a fair society still involves markets + redistribution as opposed to democratizing the means of production etc. Written without any hyperbole or jargon.
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Now here's something that doesn't fit the usual narrative: @ZohranKMamdani is significantly more popular than Netanyahu among Jewish-Americans.
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There's decades of experience of socialist orgs navigating Qs of engaging in coalitions w non-socialists, administrating bourgeois state, participating in elections & existing unions. In that context, it's easy to map a left, center, right to DSA. I just disagree with the left.
Stephanie Fox@smfox
Friendly reminder that there is no “DSA left vs DSA right”. Rather, there is a fight between people who believe in mass politics vs those who believe in purity politics. We will not build socialism without mass politics!
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@jonathanchait @RossBarkan (The first famous example of entryism, Trotskyists in France, definitely shared many of the core aims of the Socialist Party and didn't want to wreck the organization. But they wanted to win over individual workers and influence its directions from within. This isn't even that.)
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@jonathanchait @RossBarkan This definition is somewhat wrong. But even as defined there's no tightly organized groups infiltrating, there are unorganized people politicized in isolation & then forming caucuses once in the org that have various degree of sway, but still haven't changed DSA's core character.
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How the Democratic Socialists of America drove away the socialists who believe in democracy theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/…
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@jonathanchait @RossBarkan It really doesn't fit the definition of entryism by any stretch. What organization is doing a French turn within DSA? It's been quite the opposite, DSA's presence eating away at the base of other socialist orgs to the point that they've often outright dissolved.
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@RossBarkan @sunraysunray It's unquestionably fallen prey to entryism, you just think it doesn't matter.
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