{"id":49112,"date":"2026-07-10T12:47:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T19:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=49112"},"modified":"2026-07-10T12:47:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T19:47:49","slug":"the-un-mysterious-case-of-the-socialist-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/07\/10\/the-un-mysterious-case-of-the-socialist-surge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Un-Mysterious Case of the Socialist Surge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MEYERSON ON TAP<\/strong> (Prospect.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution is hiding in plain view.<\/em>It was one of those steam-bath D.C. days where your shoes start to sweat. I was behind my desk reading Marx\u2019s\u00a0The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte<\/em>\u00a0and wondering why he had to rewrite the thing 17 times, when she slinked into the office. She\u2019d clearly gone to the Lauren Bacall School of Slink, but her eyes were wild with alarm.
\u201cSit down,\u201d I began, \u201cand tell me all about it.\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s the pundits,\u201d she husked, huskily. \u201cThey\u2019re all over the map when they try to explain why there are so many\u201d\u2014she paused here to collect her thought\u2014\u201csocialists.\u201d
\u201cThey say some foreign power is paying them,\u201d she continued, pulling out a\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>op-ed from her lip gloss bag. \u201cThey say they were seduced by Marxist professors. They say this is what happens when we let billionaires get taxed or Lee Greenwood doesn\u2019t get a lifetime Grammy.\u201d
\u201cPfoo,\u201d I replied. I walked to my bookcase, picked out Werner Sombart\u2019s 1906 tome\u00a0Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?<\/em>\u00a0and gently threw it at her. \u201cCheck out Sombart,\u201d I said. \u201cIn America, he said, socialism runs aground on the reefs of roast beef and apple pie.\u201d
\u201cHe was a vegetarian?\u201d she asked. \u201cNo,\u201d I replied. \u201cHe said American mass prosperity\u2014relative to Europe\u2019s, anyway\u2014negated the need for socialism. But he didn\u2019t address what would happen if broadly shared prosperity up and left.\u201d
\u201cWhere did it go?\u201d she asked.
\u201cIt got a super-luxe first-class ticket,\u201d I answered. \u201cWealth and income and political power climbed their way up to the very top of the totem pole. What your precious pundits don\u2019t seem to remember is that the number of American socialists and communists ballooned during the Depression. We\u2019ve been here before, babe.\u201d
\u201cAs much as now?\u201d she asked.
\u201cNo, again. So long as they ran on third-party tickets, they couldn\u2019t win squat. And the commies only started picking up members when Stalin told them to make nice with Roosevelt. In 1934, they\u2019d called him a fascist. In 1936, when Uncle Joe changed his mind, FDR became the commies\u2019 superhero. Real good commies had this thing for amnesia. Helped to forget what you\u2019d said a couple months earlier.\u201d
\u201cThen this guy Harrington\u2014this was in the \u201970s\u2014said that the commies had been smart to go to work with unions and the Democrats, but they should have been open about who they were. That\u2019s what socialists should do, he said. Third-party candidacies had their place, but that place usually wasn\u2019t America. And when Bernie Sanders and AOC and this Zohran character validated that, it gave socialists some running room. They could grow.\u201d<\/td><\/tr>
<\/a><\/td><\/tr>
\u201cSo socialism surged when Mike Harrington was saying this?\u201d she asked.
\u201cWell, no,\u201d I responded. \u201cI was a member of DSOC and DSA when they formed in the \u201970s and early \u201980s. But we hadn\u2019t gone plutocratic yet. The banks hadn\u2019t taken over the economy then, the big boys weren\u2019t offshoring our smelters and our shoes yet, rich people still were paying taxes, there were barely any billionaires \u2026\u201d
\u201cNo billionaires,\u201d she gasped. \u201cHow can there be an America without billionaires?\u201d
\u201cBelieve it, babe. And we were happier then. So DSOC and DSA chugged along with just a handful of members. There were still lefty kids and some oldsters who could sing Spanish Civil War songs, but they didn\u2019t register that capitalism was beginning to be let out of its cage and money would begin trickling upward. Then zooming upward.\u201d
\u201cSocialism is catching on now,\u201d I continued, \u201cbecause Americans can see that capitalism just isn\u2019t working for them. There\u2019s a poll<\/u><\/a> in today\u2019s Wall Street Journal<\/em> that shows that a majority of Americans say capitalism isn\u2019t working well. That\u2019s up from about a third a decade ago. When an -ism isn\u2019t cutting it, people may conclude it\u2019s time for a different -ism.\u201d
\u201cBut why socialism?\u201d she squeaked.
\u201cWhy not Rosicrucianism,\u201d I came back with. \u201cBecause socialists aren\u2019t afraid to tax billionaires to provide affordable child care. Because Rosicrucianism and Theosophism are still formulating their position on that.\u201d
\u201cSo it\u2019s not foreign powers?\u201d she queried. \u201cIt\u2019s not Marxist critical studies professors?\u201d
\u201cMoscow gold is gone,\u201d I said. \u201cMarxist critical studies professors we shall always have with us, but they\u2019ve been around since the \u201970s with no real-world effect until Lehman went blooey and only the rich really got bailed out.\u201d
\u201cI think I get it,\u201d she said, getting up and making for the door. \u201cGotta run.\u201d
\u201cHey,\u201d I posited. \u201cYou free tonight?\u201d She made the kind of face I make when eating my Aunt Freida\u2019s goulash. \u201cWell, how about I stay on the case for you?\u201d I countered. \u201cMy retainer is just 50 bucks \u2026\u201d
\u201cRetainer?\u201d she asked with studied incredulity. \u201cAre you kidding? Like I can do 50 smackers?\u201d
\u201cBut \u2026\u201d I began.
\u201cForget it, Mr. Historically Accurate Economic Determinist,\u201d she spat out, slamming the door. \u201cIt\u2019s the economy, stupid.\u201d<\/td><\/tr>
\"\"Harold Meyerson<\/strong>
Editor at Large<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MEYERSON ON TAP (Prospect.org) The solution is hiding in plain view.It was one of those steam-bath D.C. days where your shoes start to sweat. I was behind my desk reading Marx\u2019s\u00a0The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte\u00a0and wondering why he had to rewrite the thing 17 times, when she slinked into… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1968],"tags":[1636],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49113,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49112\/revisions\/49113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}