Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hey, friends, this is Dick Flax and I'm joined, as I always am, by my friend and fellow conspirator, Daraka Larimer Hall. Welcome, Daraka, hello. Hello.
And I really wanted to get together with you because I know you've been thinking a lot about what's going on right now. Just in the vein of this podcast. We talking strategy all the time. And the strategy we like to talk about has to do with the electoral prospects for the left.
And suddenly there are electoral prospects for the left on a significant scale. So we've had people identified with the Democratic Socialists of America DSA winning major office in cities like Denver and Washington D.C.
and in Seattle before that and New York. Of course, we've had candidates in Democratic primaries, blue districts who won primaries from the DSA base or support who are going to be elected because they are blue districts. And quite a lot of that has been happening and of course that's led to a lot of commentary and there are not too many people better situated than you, Daraka, to reflect on these things. And I'm really eager to hear what you're saying. Why? Because you once were a full time staff member of Democratic Socialists of America when it was a much different earlier phase of its organization, but nevertheless, and you were once a official of the state Democratic Party in California as well. And so, and you are a scholar of all of these matters as well as a practitioner. So that's who you're going to play the role of now.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: No pressure there. No, no very war.
Well, because I was just, you know, also I would say you're, you are also very well place to be commenting on this. This is such an interesting moment, I think for anyone with a, a history like a historical grounding on how they try to look at politics today, you know, because we are seeing the, a renewal of a left wing in mainstream American politics that is, you know, influenced by and open to and talking about socialism and capitalism and these big questions of what kind of society and economy we want for the first time, you know, in a really long time, I mean, at least since your young adulthood, you know, it's, it's out there on the, in the actual agenda. And we have everyone from the president to, you know, every columnist, well paid, you know, well situated, very smart man like David Brooks to, you know, the angry center at the Atlantic to of course Jacobin and the Nation. And like everybody's been weighing in and talking about what it means that like a whole bunch of candidates going into the general election in addition to the already governing leaders of some of our major cities are, you know, self identified socialists, members of a socialist organization in many cases. And for the, yeah, also great swath of folks who are not, you know, socialists per se or not organized. In dsa, there's been a bunch of victories in primaries by people running with a message that's critical of the current democratic leadership that's calling for, you know, a shift away from triangulation and you know, moderate approaches to economic questions, et cetera. So yeah, it's an exciting and interesting moment and I think everyone is wrong about it.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: We'll get to that. And at one point I would say that you didn't mention, on the one hand there's this internal conflict, you might say battle for that you just described. But on the other side is the fact that people from center to left who believe in some form of democracy have to have some degree of common ground and unity to defeat the fascist rise on the right.
And so that adds to, you know, intellectually the fascination of this moment. But it's a, you know, means that people like us who want to help people understand this may have a role to play right now in, in helping people clarify their thoughts. So why are all those things wrong that you've been or why they commentaries are wrong that you've been?
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you know, obviously there's like bad faith commentary about like what it means to have an active, vociferous, successful left wing of the Democratic Party, you know, by people who just don't agree with those politics. Yeah, we'll sort of like make up reasons why it's bad for the party or bad for the country or why and, and we'll probably get into these weeds a bit. But like why dsa, the current DSA affiliated, you know, politicians and activists are, are like different than real democratic socialism or safer democratic socialism or something. And like people are finding all kinds of reasons to be upset and when it's just like whatever they don't agree with moving the party to the left, they don't agree with, you know, breaking with neoliberal orthodoxies because they agree with those things. And like that's fair enough. I just wish people would be sort of honest about it because it's a congressional election and you know, people are winning elections in places where they come from the popular sentiment of those of the districts or they, they are, they are propelled by it. And there's just like the idea that voters in, in Brooklyn or even in, in sort of suburban Bay area California where you Know where progressives have won some of these primaries like that they have to conform their messaging, their arguments, their policies, their priorities to like what the Beltway, Beltway pundits think middle America wants or is afraid of or into or whatever. It's, it's a asinine idea. So that's why that group is wrong. And then I think there are people who are still not recognizing that the people that are winning are Democrats and they're going to have to function as Democrats and be Democrats in the legislative houses that they're in and establish coalitions and you know, build relationships among other Democrats in order to move their agenda and so forth. And like then also bashing the Democrats or saying you're against the Democrats or that you're, we're just using their ballot line temporarily and then we're going to break from the Democrats. That's all incredibly unhelpful to the people that we're electing and that are going to get in there and we want to be successful. So that's why those kinds of commentaries are wrong.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: So, so the, there's, you know, to simplify matters a little bit within the, within the socialist way of thinking or practicing, there's two kinds of approaches. One is, thinks of itself as highly principled and dissenting and standing for ideas that are minority ideas and wanting to defend those ideas. And the other is the majoritarian idea that you can be as a socialist, your best chance of making change is to be part of a much broader, what amount to center left types of coalitions in which the issue is winning a majority to the greatest degree of reform of the capitalist system in people's interest that can be done.
And that's a real battle that's been going on for 150 years within the socialist movement. And probably both elements are needed in terms of various functions they might have in terms of debate and thinking and ideas coming out of the broader, you know, out of the left.
So you're saying anyone who's running for office with the intention of winning and does win, then has to think how do we govern? Not just how do we, you know, get our ideas out, but now how do we, how do those ideas fit into the actual governing situation that they're in?
And, and yet the people who are afraid of this left wing within the Democratic Party, whether they are centrist Democrats or corporate people who want to control the Democratic Party or Republicans, non, you know, never Trump or Republicans who want to find a home and they can't imagine easily finding a home In a left, leftish Democratic Party. Those are some of the kinds of people that you're saying have bad faith. And I agree with you completely. They're attacking people as if they were dangerous enemies to, to the Democratic Party or to the United States rather than simply saying, look, there's a debate over corporate power that we need to have and that's what's actually possible. Now am I making.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's dangerous. Absolutely. And it's dangerous because of that point that you raised, you know, at the, at the start, that we all also have this responsibility of stopping America's, the United States slide into authoritarianism and you know, just the, the destruction of the last vestiges of our Republican system and order.
That's a real task that's before each and every one of us, regardless of what part of the party we're in or what, what, you know, what our political philosophy is. And the center really fails us when, you know, they're willing to engage in the same rhetoric about, you know, good faith leftists like Mamdani or AOC or, or anyone else, and talks about them as if they're dangerous radicals and so forth. Because that's what Trump is saying about all of us, about everybo who, you know, isn't maga. And starting with, you know, vulnerable groups, whether it's immigrant rights activists or students here on a visa, like whoever they can, they are doing real repression against people based on their views and their politics. And so we can't be messing around with, you know, talking about our internal factional opponents as if they're enemies of the republic. With a madman in the White House, it's just not responsible.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: I saw last night, just in line with what you're saying on, on Ms. Now MS, formerly MSNs NBC, a prominent Democratic Party strategist. And he was saying, oh, the, these left people, they want to overturn the system instead of talking about people's real needs. Well, that was a complete fabrication. It's quite the opposite.
Oh yeah. And you know, people like Mamdani proudly says, I'm coming out of the socialist movement and I'm want to govern as mayor in such a way that people's real need, needs can be helped to be solved by the government that we, that we will put in office.
And he spoke about those needs very concretely. And he's not just an isolated example. That is the language that I'm hearing across the board for these electorally oriented people coming, whether they're from the DSA or some adjacent or other lefty leftish origin.
So the fabrications are range from Trump's madness, which he articulated internationally in his press conference today, that the democratic socialists are really communists, which. And all the way over to more seriously, seemingly serious objection that completely distort what is coming, what the left wing possessions tend to be.
So one way that you've discussed this, I know is, and I was fascinated by it, is he saying, but let's look at what socialism means.
And you say, did I get you wrong by saying no one actually does know quite what it means at this point. The very term is. So it is under contest within the society.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, that's right. And one of the things that's striking, it is easy enough to describe what a democratic socialist believes and you see the memes out there and all of these like sort of folk attempts to unfortunately often using AI, but to just sort of educate one another about what is democratic socialism. What's the difference between democratic socialism and social democracy, if there is one, and capital, you know, liberal capitalism or, you know, what have you or communism and you know, the, which is like an amazing just thing to live through, like having everyone suddenly talk about the thing you only used to talk about with your nerdy friends. But the, the thing that is striking about it is, you know, that it's easy to talk about what a socialist wants, what socialists believe, and much harder to talk about what socialism is as a state, as a system.
And that's always been true. That's been true back to Marx, you know, and for good reason, and for less good reason. But, you know, the good reason being that, you know, Marx wanting to go about things scientifically and politically and historically or you know, grounded in a reading of history was like, I don't know exactly what it's going to look like. We didn't. Nobody sat down and wrote a blueprint of capitalism. It developed, you know, politically and through economic change and technological change over time. For some reason he convinced himself that that period of time would be very, very short, that socialism would be developed, but still wasn't going to try to, you know, predict it like some kind of pharaoh or prophet, you know, and be able to describe like exactly what it would look like. And, and that's, that's fair enough. You know, the problem is that it, it, because it's much easier to say what it isn't.
You know, you end up sounding a little bit utopian or, or even, or vague or evasive when people reasonably ask what it is. You mean when you say that you believe in socialism rather than capitalism.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Yeah, And I think why, my personal way of understanding the very point that you're making rests on the word democratic. In other words, if you.
In my view, and I think this was the view expressed in what we called the New Left back in the 60s, it wasn't the word socialism meant things that we weren't, that were being put in practice in the Soviet, in the name of socialism in the, in the Soviet world.
And what we said was, we want to build a society in which people can have as much voice as possible in the decisions that affect their lives.
And when I, the more I thought about this over the years since, the more I realized, well, that's one way to describe the essence of what even Marx meant by socialism. It was that the things that affected you, the rules about how to live, the laws, the rules, the ways in which resources were allocated, you would have a voice in how that would be set up. And the more you give voice to people at the moment that they're actually living, the less you can predict how they're going to figure out what the best arrangements are going to be.
You see what I'm saying? Absolutely. The classic 19th century way of thinking of socialism is meant instead of private ownership or the means of production, we'd have public or government ownership of the means of production. Well, we know by now that's a much too simple way of looking at even that kind of issue.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: But it's kind of a pesky thing. It is very, yeah, even the means of distribution too. But like power in the economy is a pesky thing and control over the core logics, you could say, or like what gets valued, what doesn't, those things, you know, is kind of easy enough to predict or talk about or advocate for. Policies that give people more say in their day to day work life, or even some of the planning decisions in the companies they work for, or giving the public sector more say in that, those things and so forth. But you know, that that pesky thing of the actual, actual control over capital is, you know, sort of the, the rocks that Swedish social democracy broke against in their attempts to use pension funds to kind of end run into public ownership and then move. But, but alternately, to be honest and be fair, we've seen how disastrous and inefficient and unequal and undemocratic command economies become when you give a central government complete control over capital. So anyway, so all of that is to say that I think it's as good an explanation or as good a thread to start pulling, to start with the democracy piece and say, like, okay, well, what does a democratic economy look like? A democratic family, a democratic society, et cetera? Like, that's, to me, as a good way to talk about socialism as anything else. But the reason I think it's important that everyone listening who's learning about socialism understand how agnostic we really are is
[00:18:55] Speaker A: that
[00:18:58] Speaker B: people who speak about it with certainty and want to sort of divide the movement up or take sides in things or, you know, decide who should be in leadership and so forth, based on their certainty of what socialism must look like and does look like are people to avoid are like groups and thinkers and tendencies, so to speak, to, to avoid and to be wary of and to, yeah, be. Be a bit suspicious of because generally speaking, they're. They're taking that from, like, either some authoritarian regime and their approach to things or from a very rigid and doctrinaire reading of, you know, books that are over, that are, you know, about or over a hundred years old. And that's just, like, not a serious way to go about, you know, building a political project in 2026.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Okay, so to just step back for a second in terms of what we've been saying, a couple of points that I think could be highlighted. You said something at the outset that we didn't focus on, but I'll just highlight it that because we're talking about a congressional election where the election is divided among many districts, it is inevitable that there's going to be different kinds of popularity, district by district, different kinds of issues, very different, perhaps ideological perspective within the Democratic Party.
And that, I take it, that means that you're agreeing with those who say the Democratic Party has to be a big tent. Even if you're a left, if you're part, an active leader or active in the left wing, you have to acknowledge that. That in some districts there's going to be people who much more, quote, unquote, moderate or centrist on a lot of issues than you are in your district. And that that's part of what we have to construct if we're going to have a majority in the Congress and in the country. That's. That's one thing you, you were, I think, indicating at the beginning. Yeah.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Though I would, I would just add it's not as if I'm saying we have to accept that as a permanent status quo.
Like, I'm all ears. If people have candidates, strategies, arguments, organizing programs, you know, like what Jonathan Schmucker's written about and has talked about, like I'm all for ways to make every district one that a left wing candidate can win in and to do that work. But I think that's like slow, difficult work because you're up against national ideological headwinds, cultural headwinds, racism, xenophobia, tradition, partisanship, all of these things like flipping districts for the long run and like making them, turning them not just red to blue in an election, but like, you know, blue to red in the other sense. But, you know, or like, yeah, you know, making them truly left wing districts is like a whole other can of whoop ass that we should be serious about. And I think often people in thinking about politics, you know, they, they just sort of want to, they want a shortcut and think that, you know, if we just fixed one of those things, the perfect candidate or the perfect argument or something that like every district could be won by equally progressive or left wing candidates. And that's just not empirically true.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Well, the more that the left wing or the differences are defined in so to speak, cultural terms, the more those divisions are going to be manifest. But are there left wing positions that in fact could unify even, you know, especially in working class communities that could unify across those cultural issues? Isn't that what's happening? I'm take Talarico in Texas. This guy is from a cultural point of view, kind of a perfect Democratic candidate because he's a former seminarian, still very Christian in his, in the best meaning of that morally.
But he's very anti corporate pop, you know, concerned about social justice as a central theme, attacks the Republican Party for being completely in the, in the pocket of greedy corporate interests, all of that. So he's not coming from a moderate position with respect to, let's say class and economic issues. He, he's quite.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: But he isn't on air issues, huh?
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And he doesn't throw people under the bus either. It doesn't say as far as I know. He doesn't say, well, we don't need any justice for, for trans people. He doesn't, he, he takes the opposite kind of view.
Am I right? I mean, is that your sense of it someone. So I'm saying even in a state like Texas, which we think of as Reddit, is quite red Republican. He has got a good chance of being elected on the basis of a, that kind of synthesis and a lot.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And also that his opponent is like the. Just.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Yeah. The worst.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Created in a vat of evil.
I don't know. I mean, I mean he seems great. I like Talarico I hope he wins.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: And well, my point is not so much about him is the fact that one answer to the problem of difference across different geographical and all these other sectoral things is to think that there may be issues, given the state of the economy.
The way it's being articulated now is affordability is an issue, unites people.
Well, affordability really is just the shorthand for what we might have called class kind of issues.
Not simply prices, it's the fact that, that workingclass people can't afford the price of housing anymore. That's not, not an affordability issue alone. It's a wage issue. It's a monopoly issue in terms of a lot of the goods of society being priced because they are, because of the control of small numbers of power centers over those sectors, if I'm making any sense. So do we see a lot of that happening that makes you feel promising?
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Well, here's what I see is that overall the Democratic Party is making gains in polls and predictions for the midterms and that the, you know, issues that people are very upset with Trump and the Republicans on top of those are economic issues and their failure to do anything about it and, or anything helpful to working class people.
You know, so I think that that's an issue that any candidate running anywhere that's competitive like, needs to be talking about and paying attention to or they're going to eat their shirt, you know, that that's what's going on out there. But then everybody has different ideas about what the solutions are to that problem or even like how to define the problem and think about it. And that's where the ideology comes in. That's where conservatives who are pissed off about affordability, you know, they're looking for a candidate who's going to come in and kick out more undocumented people because that's why there's an affordability problem.
And that's what addressing affordability looks like or sounds like to them. And so if, if we sort of step away from the map, look at the map as a whole, I mean, it's undeniable that the, the districts where, or the, the communities and areas and voting blocs and coalitions that are putting progressive, that are like helping progressives beat moderate Democrats in primaries, those are very diverse areas where the working class is not by any means monocultural. It's places where there's lots of young or at least there's some population that is left leaning to begin with, either because of age or level of education or something. I can't say this is 100% of the districts where this happened, but certainly most of them, they're mostly, I think, as I said, candidates of color. So this process of booting out the tired centrist dogma of leading the Democratic Party is not coming from rural areas, the heartland white working class voters fed up with it or whatever. It's coming from the Obama coalition, it's coming from the woke centers of America.
And that says something. I think it says that to really put the all of the pieces together of being, you know, supportive of immigrant rights and dignity and also being, you know, an attractive candidate for college educated women.
So you signal that you give a shit and care about gender inequality, choice, things like that, and are talking tough about economic inequality and the oligarchs and affordability and so forth. Like that's the combination that is winning and is like moving the party forward. It's not some thing from the heartland of like tough talking anti boss white guys who don't give a shit about trans people or immigrants. And to the extent that we've been debating on the left like what's the path to moving forward, I think that the woke side is one like just demonstrably we're still waiting for that thing to happen out in the heartland and, and you know, God bless him, but you know, Graham Platner. Yikes.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Well that, that's a very sad and you know, I think sad it's not just that he, people are condemning him with you know, some justice for.
But there's a tragedy about maybe his whole life story if you really listen to him, as well as how the tragedy being that he was, he's articulating what a lot of people really were hoping could be said, you know, in political leadership and maybe that mess. And he, he himself seems to think when in his good days that it's not dependent on him. The message is there that the movement is growing around those kind of ideas.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: So we don't, we have limited time right now and we, we, we'll have to schedule some additional conversation. But what would you say to people who are electorally oriented on the left, they need to be most watchful about and concerned about what, what are the pitfalls or dangers that worry you in as we go forward?
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Well, one thing that is a peculiar obsession of mine, and I'm pretty pessimistic about it, is the proliferation of ranked choice voting which I think a lot of progressives are sort of putting their hopes into and I think can be a pitfall, like can really shoot Us in the foot.
And the reasons for it are a little bit arcane. But the simplest way to describe it is that what's good for our side are systems in which we can have a contest over who should be a Democratic nominee. We can win that contest, and then the whole apparatus of the Democratic Party comes behind those candidates, and then they win.
That's what's good for. That's what's the playbook that's happening all over the country that's working is that.
And a system in which, in the final count, Democrats can still be all over the map supporting different candidates, and voters can split their vote between Democrats and Republicans. That opens up the space for the party to not be in the business of holding anyone accountable, because anybody is the candidate. And it opens up a big incentive for candidates to talk to both Democrats and Republicans through the whole campaign, the primary and the general. That's a candidate who's running to the center. And so one of my fears is that in order to solve one problem, vote splitting, that people feel bad about holding their nose and voting for the lesser of two evils, we're going to open up a far, far, far, far bigger problem that will dilute the electoral power of.
Of the left.
So that's something that worries me, and it's kind of niche, but that's sort of my brand.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Well, it is your brand. And what. One thing that you contributed to my understanding over the years we've been conversing and that you stand for is the idea that a strong.
We have a.
We have a party system still. And even though there's so much cracking and crumbling in Europe as well as in this country, your hope is that parties can be built that are majoritarian and that are the focus of people's. It's a. They're real vehicles for people's agendas and for people's hopes in terms of political change.
And when you have systems of voting that dilute the party, that's what worries you.
Yeah, that's my interpretation of Daraka ism. And it's rooted in Scandinavia, your. Your deep experience there. And of course, what you've come to recognize that, you know, they're real. I mean, we haven't gotten into all the intricacies of problems in this particular episode, but there are.
And so leaving hanging.
And we'll come back soon, I hope, if we have a chance, the two of us, to get together again soon. That'll be good.
So one hanging thing, as you alluded to, which I think worth a lot of Discussion is, are there candidates coming out of the white working class background with a progressive potential? And what does that look like?
What are the contradictions that seem to be there between those kind of candidates and the more woke candidates that we're used to as being left wing? That's an issue, interesting issue. And the election may determine some answers to that or, or some guidelines to that. But anyway, that seems worth discussing. Another is, is it worth discussing? I don't know. What's the difference between democratic socialism as a ideological framework and social democracy?
That seems to be an argument that's very fascinating to everyone in academia who's interested in these things. Is it a real political thing? Maybe. So that may lead us to further want to talk about internal DSA things if we want to.
We certainly have some audience within dsa, I think, on our, who pay attention to what we're trying to do on the podcast. So these are issues, I'm just throwing them out for future discussion and for people to think about is. Do you agree?
[00:34:38] Speaker B: Sounds great to me. And one thing I, I would, I, I like we should talk about both of those things. Um, one thing I would just throw out for people to start imagining and, and, and you know, trying to build is, you know, what does a Democratic Party in which democratic socialists are the majority look like? Like, what do we change about it and what do we transform about it and what do we get rid of in a scenario in which we're the majority side and like, say, our moderate opponents or, or rivals or whatever are the minority?
How do we keep the tent up? I think those are interesting questions, but more importantly, that's the work that we should start getting to, is both building that majority and also, you know, thinking very specifically about what our agenda is for a new Democratic party in which our politics isn't, you know, a maligned minority, but the functioning majority.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: And of course, the final and big question that people like us have to face globally is how do we overcome the resistance to what we stand for on the part of the corporate interests who feel, who are rightly, rightly feel threatened by what we are trying to advance? That's a big issue in California right now, I think, a hidden issue. But it's coming to the issue of corporate power.
I've been waiting much of my political life for that to be a central issue in American politics. Maybe there's a chance that it is going to be and is coming to be.
How do we fight that? Because I think that's the rock under which social democracy in Europe has broken is the inability to. To really effectively overcome corporate resistance to what they want to do. Anyway, that's enough for today because I know you got things to do with that are important in your human life. And we'll be back soon, I hope, right?
[00:36:45] Speaker B: We will.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: It's summertime.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: More to come.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: Summertime. What else do we have to do? But exactly.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: Cheddar summer series where we solve everything.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: We will s by the end of the summer. That's a goal. Okay. We will have solved all of these questions by the end of the summer. That's our purpose. All right, Take care, Daka and friends and everyone listening. Everyone listening. Take care.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:37:24] Speaker C: What kind of country would this be?
If there's a job for everyone who needs one?
What kind of country would this be?
What kind of country would this be?
If there's a home for everyone who needs one?
What kind of country would this be?
What happened to the country I took such pride in?
People look out for each other in my neighborhood and all those hard working faces with all of the races pulling together for the common good what kind of country would this be?
With good and plenty spread on every table?
What kind of country would this be?
[00:39:02] Speaker A: Sam.
