The New Yorker Radio Hour - What Are We Talking About When We Talk about Socialism?

Episode Date: February 19, 2019

With the election to the House of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, following up on the surprising Presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, socialism is on the rise, after a long decline in America. But the Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore says there is a great deal of ambiguity about what socialism even means. Americans have always danced around the term, and the actual policies advanced under the banner of socialism may look very similar to liberalism, or social democracy, or even the historical movement known as “good government.” Sanders declared that the hero of his brand of socialism is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who insisted that he was not a socialist. Lepore tells David Remnick, “The way our politics works is to discredit not the idea or the policy but the label.” Plus, the actor Richard E. Grant has just been nominated for his first Oscar, for “Can You Ever Forgive Me,” after thirty-plus years in the movies. And, as an Oscar nominee, he finally got Barbra Streisand, his all-time idol, to reply to a fan letter he sent her nearly fifty years ago. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For my whole life and probably for yours, the word socialism has been often used as a form of slander in this country, a kind of rhetorical cudgel. We are alarmed by the new calls to adopt socialism in our country. Obama care and socialism. Barack Obama is a socialist. He believes in redistributing wealth. One day, as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free.

For some on the right, any social program that used tax dollars was big government. And big government was socialism. And socialism was chairman Mao sending you to a re-education camp. That's the story. And now, what do you know? We have lawmakers in Washington who are proudly identifying themselves as socialists, democratic socialists. And they're getting a lot of people's attention.

You can be in the private sector and be a democratically socialist business. Worker cooperatives are a perfect example of that. It's not about government takeover. It's about how much do workers have a say in your business? Do you have workers on the board? When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx and Queens made her historic run for Congress recently, one of her biggest supporters was the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA. Bernie Sanders' run in 2016 was also a watershed in American politics,

and he describes himself as a Democratic socialist. Jillipur is a professor of history at Harvard and a colleague at the New Yorker. She recently wrote about the long, complicated history of socialism in America. Jill, there are polls now that show that a lot of people, particularly young people, are very open to the idea of socialism, that this is not a degraded concept at all as opposed to capitalism. What's going on now and what do you think is behind this generational shift in thinking? There are a number of things going on. One is recall that the Cold War is over. and red-scaring and red-baiting just doesn't work as effectively as it once did.

You can see that going on now and it's not really getting a lot of traction. It doesn't, I think it just doesn't really hold for younger people who didn't grow up with the Cold War and aren't, they don't associate socialism with communism. I think those have terms of become uncoupled for a younger generation. Also, the disaffection of people on the left with the Democratic Party, especially younger people, is profound. So to borrow a phrase from the world of fiction, what are we talking about when we talk about socialism now? What is the phrase, what does the word mean? It actually doesn't mean anything.

I mean, I think that is the problem. Right. So one is people conflate socialism with social democracy. And I would say they no longer conflate socialism with communism. But the historical question that this is the sort of state of the field of American historical thinking. We don't ask what people are talking about when they talk about socialism. We ask this long, exhausted historical question, why is there no socialism in the United States, which was first posed in 1906 in that explicit way and has engaged generations of political historians ever since. And one of the things they always stumble over is what do socialism even mean in the United States? And it does mean things different in the United States than it does in other parts of the world. Well, how so? So there are traditions in American political culture that other people would describe as socialistic tendencies that Americans have historically refused to call a socialist.

So we would say those are provisions of a social safety net that phrase is used all the time. In the American political tradition, people who do use the term use it to invoke a sense of common wheel, a sense of a shared social commitment. to justice for all. So three of the ideas that are currently animating the base of the Democratic Party, particularly on the left, are Medicare for All, a green New Deal, and higher taxes on the wealthy, a lot higher taxes on the wealthy. Do you see that there's a common thread between and among those proposals, and is it, in fact, socialism?

So Medicare for All and higher taxes on the wealthy have a long and August tradition in American history as policy proposals that actually have had a lot of bipartisan support. I don't think they are socialistic. I think they represent the kind of checks against kind of a heedless, reckless, unrestrained capitalism that we might be better off referring to as good government. We don't talk about good government anymore, but a lot of these proposals by people who've been brought into office historically have marched under the banner of good government.

But that somehow seems to what? To centrist, to bland, to constitute a rallying cry? Right. So in Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, first and foremost, has championed a Green New Deal,

and that calls for huge economic overhaul to combat climate change. When was the last time we've seen a proposal as sweeping as that? I think that LBJ's great society constituted that

scale. It had its own kind of utopianism. It had a similarly large role for the federal government. It was seen as an urgent response

to a crisis that had not been solved by other means. I would say previous to that, the establishment of the National Security State in 1948, 47, 49, around then, that wholly new apparatus for essentially prosecuting the Cold War and turning the federal government into a funder of university research and allying the government and the military in a new way, was a similar, you know,

from the right intervention of such a scale that was defended on the grounds that everything else would fall short. And that's the defense of the scope of the Green New Deal, right? Nothing else has worked, right? There have been a lot of efforts to address climate change, and we're basically doing nothing. Now, you've written about Eugene Debs in the recent issue with the New Yorker. The DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, can trace their lineage to this man.

What was Debs' brand of socialism? And he ran for president four times. Five times. Five times. Yeah. So I think Debs is actually best understood as essentially a lay Christian preacher. Rather than as a socialist, I think that his socialism drew on Christian theology. He wasn't himself a deeply pious or religious man, but the way that he and the people that

promoted him, presented him to the American public, which was a deeply Protestant public, was essentially as a Christ-like figure. He was a martyr to the cause. Going to prison twice was elemental to his story running for the fifth time for president from prison was what sort of wrote him into American myth. And there, of course, there's a lot. I mean, this is where liberation theology comes from. There is a lot in what the theory of socialism proposes

that would seem to ally well with certain understandings of Christianity. Well, what in the historical moment triggered Debs' embrace of socialism? What happened? So Debs really started out as a big, you know, party guy. He was a Democrat, but he was a big advocate of the two-party system. Debs was a fireman who shoveled coal for the locomotive. And the railroad workers were incredibly hierarchically organized, and they were paid very differentially. And the more dangerous railway work became and the less responsive the railroad companies were to demands made by workers, the more radical Debs became.

And he began to see not only that the Brotherhoods needed to consider doing things like strikes, which, Debs had long been opposed to, but they needed to form a union. So he formed the American Railway Union, which was a union of all the brotherhoods, in which all the different workers, no matter their rank within the railroad system, entered as equals. So Debs had this kind of vision of the profound equality of the railroad worker, and it isn't that railway union that becomes the socialist party. Now, Debs's background was not as somebody who was a young person who ran for Congress, but somebody who came up through the ranks of the union movement. Do you see any figures like that on the scene now?

You know, I think that Elizabeth Warren wants to call on that. That is part of her campaign autobiography as a gambit, right? That she... But with respect to Harvard professors, Jill, she's a Harvard law professor. Exactly. No, I mean, but I'm just saying like that's the closest I can get you to... I mean, there are more at the local level. but we live in a much more asymmetrical society culturally, I think, than Debs lived in. I guess I would draw a number of other decisions.

That's an interesting phrase. What does that mean in asymmetrical society? It was a piece of 19th century political mobility that someone like Debs could achieve the prominence that he achieved. Meaning that if you go through the ranks of Congress, there are very few people coming out of the working class or a union movement or anything like that and it's filled with millionaires. No? Right. Now, I'm not sure what Eugene Debs sounded like, but a young man named Bertie Sanders

wrote and produced a documentary in 1979 about him, and in it, Sanders performed some of Debs's most famous speeches. The little that I am, the little that I am hoping to be, I owe to the socialist movement. It has given me my ideas and ideals, my principles and convictions, and I would not exchange one of them for all of rights. Rockefeller's blood-stained dollars.

It has taught me how to serve, a lesson to me of priceless value. It has taught me the ecstasy in the hand clasp of a comrade. It has enabled me to hold high communion with you and made it possible for me to take my place side by side with you in the great struggle for the better day. Bernie Sanders and Eugene Debs are different many, many ways, of course, but how are they similar in their brand of politics? I think their willingness to embrace socialism

during a time when it wasn't popular to embrace socialism and when it came at a great cost, their willingness to be ostracized for that and to be on the margins of American politics. Sanders is involved in politics for a long time as a socialist mayor, really sensing himself as part of a long struggle. The basic policy positions that Debs and Sanders endorse are for that matter,

Ocasio-Cortezza are quite similar. There cannot be monopolies. There need to be higher taxes. There need to be workplace safety measures. We need to have a federal government that provides a safety net that can protect ordinary people from the ravages of unfettered capitalism. Also, Debs, like Sanders, did not understand socialism as a step toward communist. which is how many people understood socialism at the time and still do. And so in that sense, are more social, I think better understood as social Democrats, right?

Like they don't believe that the state should be making all the decisions, that there is a role for the free market. Well, what's interesting to me is when Sanders gave a speech in the last go-round of the presidential campaign, right? I think it was 2014 or 15. He gave a speech about socialism. I mean, he would answer questions along the way, but he gave a speech about this. And when it came to the climactic moment and he talked about who his model was,

it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who always, always insisted that he was not a socialist and that he was a liberal. How does that square? Yeah, I think we're back at the part of the conversation where the terms are unhelpful because the way our politics works is to discredit not the idea or the proposal but the label? Well, I guess so much so that at the State of the Union address, Trump gets up and basically tries to make the dividing line socialism. In other words, we are, meaning the Trump Republican Party, we are who we are, and the rest of them are socialists.

That's the way he was trying to divide it up. We will never be a socialist country. That is the old move, right? Like that is the mid-20th century move, early 20th century move. I think what we're seeing is that that kind of shakes loose in a different way. I mean, think about those 1930s of FDR, right? Remember when Wendell Wilkie ran for president in 1940, he ran as a Republican. He was a liberal.

He famously says, anyone who's not a socialist at the age of 20 has no heart. And anyone who's still a socialist at the age of 30 has no head. And that's how he defends himself from the charge, but he doesn't reject socialism. I mean, he actually just, he says he gives this sort of famous speech in which he says, I am a liberal. Here's what liberalism means. And what it means is socialism. And that's why Bernie Sanders can point to FDR in that same way. The label becomes toxic, but the ideas carry forward.

And you've written recently that there is, quote, a certain timidity to the new socialism. What do you mean by that? Timit, how? I don't think the specific policy proposals. Certainly the Green New Deal has some extraordinarily ambitious proposals, and I think many people find them to be ridiculously ambitious in that regard. But I'm not sure that structurally anyone is calling out what are some of our gravest problems. Because I don't actually think that they call out the sort of data monopoly.

You mean the Facebook-Google problem? The Facebook, Google, Amazon problem. I don't think, I think that they, that would be alienating to their younger supporters. I mean, that's why I guess just to return to sort of Deb starting out at the age of 14 working on a train for 50 cents a day. And then coming to unionize workers who work for trains, there is no figure here who started out essentially indentured to Facebook and who has come to see that our problems lie with these massive data firms. It's so interesting to think of that. The idea that the next politically transformative figure would be someone who's a disaffected data worker at Facebook or Google. But those corporations are our railroads, right?

And the railroad and the internet are quite similar, right, structurally, in very meaningful ways. In terms of the degree to which the federal government gave the railroads a pass, like didn't tax them, gave them land for nothing. Like they just, here, you want to transform the country? We're going to help you do that. And that is essentially the pass that Amazon has from the federal government, too. And maybe I'm missing it, but I don't see these people having that conversation. They want to reach out to their voters on Facebook. They want to tweet at them.

They want to send them their T-shirts by Amazon. And they want them to be excited about doing some social media event with them. Jill Lippoor, thank you so much. Thanks, David. You can find Jill Lippor's article, Eugene V. Debs, and the Endurance of Socialism at New Yorker.com. and Jill recently published a new history of the U.S., a terrific book called These Truths. I'm David Remnick. You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

We hear constantly these days about driverless cars and how they'll change the world for better or for worse. Teague Hregison Boyle, Tom Boyle, recently read a short story on our podcast, The Writer's Voice, and it's about a very close relationship between a woman and her vehicle, to whom she's given the nickname Carly. The car says this to her. Cindy, listen, I know you've got to get over to 1133 Hollister by 2 p.m. For your meeting with Rose Taylor of Taylor Levine and Rodriguez, LLP. But did you hear that Labours is having a 30% off sale?

And remember, they carry the complete Picard line you like, in particular, that cute cross-body bag in fuchsia you had. your eye on last week. They have two left in stock. They're moving along at just over the speed limit, which is what she's programmed the car to do. Try to squeeze every minute out of the day, but at the same time wary of breaking the law. She glances at her phone. It's a quarter past one, and she really wasn't planning on making any other stops, aside from maybe picking up a sandwich to eat in the car. But as soon as Carly, that's what she calls her operating system, mentions the sale. She's envisioning the transaction.

In and out, that's all it'll take. Because she looked at the purse last week before ultimately deciding they wanted too much for it. In and out, that's all. And Carly will wait for her at the curb. I see you're looking at your phone. I'm just wondering if we'll have enough time. As long as you don't dawdle, you know what you want, don't you?

It's not as if you haven't already picked it out. You told me so yourself. And here... Carly loops in a recording of their conversation from the previous week, and Cindy listens to her. own voice saying, I love it, just love it. And it matched my new heels perfectly. Okay, she says, thinking she'll forego the sandwich. But we have to make it quick. I'm showing no traffic and no obstructions of any kind. Good, she says. Good. And leans back in the seat

and closes her eyes. T.C. Boyle reading from his short story, asleep at the wheel. You can hear the whole thing on our podcast, the writer's voice. This has been a very good year for the actor Richard E. Grant. He's no newcomer to the movies. He's already been in films by Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman. He's performed alongside Merrill Streep, so there's not much more you can ask for in a career. But this year, Richard E. Grant had what might be called his star turn in a film called, Can You Ever Forgive Me? He plays a flamboyne grifter named Jack, who befriends the troubled writer turned Forger, played by Melissa McCarthy.

It's Jack Hawk. Last time I saw you, thank you. We were both pleasantly pissed at some horrible book party. Am I right? It's slowly flooding back to me. You're friends with Julius. Steinberg? Yeah.

She's not an agent anymore. She died. She did? Jesus, that's young. Maybe she didn't die. Maybe she just moved back to the suburbs. I was confused those two. That's right.

She got married and had twins. Better do you have died. Indeed. Grant was nominated for an Oscar, his first in three decades, in the movies. Visiting New York recently, though, he was the star-struck one. The New Yorker's Rachel Syme tagged along with him on a sightseeing tour of a very particular kind. Richard E. Grant loves Barbara Streisand. Don't tell me not to live, just sit and pudder.

Life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter. Don't bring around a cloud to rain. He grew up in Swaziland, which is officially now known as Swatini and is a tiny country between South Africa and Mozambique. His father worked for the British government there. When Richard was about 12, his family took a trip to Europe. And the only movie that was in playing in Rome when we were in Rome that hadn't been dealt.

It was a movie called Funny Girl. Of course. Then subsequently, I had seen What's Up Doc when she, looked just unbelievable. And I was at full hormonal storm at that point. And so that's, you know, that was my fixation and obsession. And you wrote her a letter. I wrote her a letter when I was 14.

Dear Barbara Streisand, I sincerely hope this reaches you personally. You don't know me yet, but I'm writing to offer you an idea. Like many other Streisand megafans, Richard didn't get a response to his fan letter. But unlike so many other Streisand megafans, Richard grew up to be an Oscar nominee. And when you're nominated for an Oscar, people start to pay a lot of attention to you, including, as it turns out, Barbara Streisand. And my daughter called and she said,

Dad, Barbara Streisand has tweeted you. And I went, what, what, what? And she and... Okay, here's the deal. Richard had tweeted out the text of his fan letter. And miraculously, 47 years later, Barbara replied. And then I said, she tweeted a reply.

Are you saying, are you pranking me? And I got quite angry. I said, you're pranking me? No, no, no, no, you can't mess with me like this. It's too important. Here's what she wrote. Dear Richard, what a wonderful letter you wrote me when you were 14. And look at you now.

You're terrific in your latest movie with Melissa. Congratulations and love Barbara. I just lost it. People, people who need people. Richard happened to be in New York last week, and he said he wanted to visit the places that meant the most to his beloved Barbara Streisand. Oh, we're in Brooklyn.

Yeah. We started our tour in the Flatbush neighborhood, where Barbara grew up. Are you interested in origin stories of people? Yes, because... Yes, because... Yeah, that's why I'm obsessively read, published diaries and autobiographies and biographies.

I can remember when my wife came to Swaziland to visit for the first time when our daughter was six years old, and she said, I now know who you are. You know, we'd been together for eight years, but until you see where the person has actually come from and the smells that they've grown up with and the landscape, I think that really informs you. So now I am in actual...

Streisand land. So it's like, yep. Well, now you'll know. This is where you started, and this is what you, at that time, escaped from. Specifically, Barbara escaped from a drab-brick housing complex on Newkirk Avenue and Flatbush. It looks like a kind of prison.

Yeah, what does it make you think about? The contrast between here and living in Pointeuna Malibu could not be more extreme. You know, Is this where she lived and when you opened the window, you just looked onto a brick wall? I think so, yeah. I think she probably had an air shaft. And now she's worth half a billion or more and counting.

You did good, girl. I love that. Richard loves a lot of things. And he loves them with unbridled enthusiasm. It's one of the best things about Richard. He has no chill. He loves being an actor. He loves being an Oscar nominee.

He loves this particular kind of sea salt that he carries around with him everywhere he goes in a cloth bag. And Barbara might be the thing he loves the most. So, as you can imagine, it can get kind of intense. I would like, I tell you what I like, I'm interrupting you, I would like a 12-foot sculpture in my garden of her nose. That's what I would like. But, you know, saying out loud to you, It's, this is, this is the musings of insanity.

Would it surprise you if you learned that there were people that were as obsessed with you as you are with Barbara Streisand? No, that's not possible. I know that's not possible. I'm sure there are. No, no, there are not. I tell you what. Our next stop is Barbara's high school, Erasmus Hall. So here we are.

This is it. Richard, I kid you not, fell to his knees. and kissed the sidewalk in front of the high school. He makes me try to go inside the high school with him, and a police officer stops us almost immediately by the metal detector. Hey, man, full tight, all right? I'll be right with you guys. I don't think that Richard knows how New York public schools work.

Richard, can I ask you a question? What was your high school experience like? I was at school with Nassar Mandela's daughters. Did school plays with them? because many political dissidents from South Africa sent their school to Swazland because of multiracial tolerance more than anything else. And that's about how long it took for us to be escorted from the building. Well, that's better than I thought we'd do, actually.

Is it? It's hard just to walk into a school. You know, I'm amazed that there's no, there's no plaque or there's no, there's no acknowledgement. They all seem to know she went there. Yeah. For our next stop, we, like Barbara, left Flatbush behind and headed for Times Square right into the heart of the theater district. Who is the Pipp Will Passat? So now we're going to the Winter Garden.

I mean, you're having an emotional season, yes? I mean, you're an Oscar nominated. I'm almost 62. I've never had nominations. I've never been awarded anything. So it's, it is an astonishment when this glut of attention, glutt is not the right word, I know, gallop of attention. I mean, I went into the Apple store yesterday when I just landed to go and buy something.

And four people offered to help me. I had four people just come up to me and say, hey, congratulations on it, you know, your nomination. What can we do for you? So, that's... was sweet for the moment that it lasted. That seems like the ideal level of fame. It's not crazy, but you get really good service at the Apple store.

I know it's like, if I put this in Cinderella terms, the coach turns into a pumpkin on Monday the 25th of February when the Oscars are done and dusted. The age that I am, the kind of parts that I get offered, it's, I have no delusion, I'm not seeing the blues about it, it's just, I have no delusions, that essentially changes. Yeah. My point is, I'm enjoying the ride because I know that it's a finite, finite experience.

Here we are, Winter Garden Theatre. We snuck into the back of the theatre. Every time I've gone to your, I've come here because I know that this is like, you know, If you put this in religious terms, this is the cathedral where the person that I have faithfully followed, did I show him look at? Can you imagine what it would be like? Yeah, well, I heard, I listened to the recording this morning just before I came here of the finale of the final night when she broke the fourth wall as it were and said, I'm going to sing my man in honor of Fanny Bryce. And the audience just goes completely insane at the end of it. And it was recorded in here.

And it's a bootleg recording. But she did. You're a true fan. You have the bootlegs. See, Barbara said you're a true fan. You are a true fan. Oh, yeah. Oh, my man.

I love him. Life is a just despair. Dear Barbara Streisand, I sincerely hope this reaches you personally. You don't know me yet, but I'm writing to offer you. for you an idea you might like to consider. My name is Richard, and I live in a small African kingdom called Swaziland in Southeast Africa.

Since seeing Funny Girl, we, my family, that is, and I have been very big fans. I've followed your career avidly. We have all your records. I am 14 years old. I read in the paper that you were feeling very tired and pressurized by your fame and failed romance with Mr. Ryan O'Neill. I would like to offer you a two-week holiday or longer at our house. which is very beautiful with a pool

and a magnificent view of the Esalweeney Valley, which the Swazi people called Valley of Heaven. I think you will agree when you see it. Here you can rest. No one will trouble you, and I assure you you will not be mobbed in the street as your films only show in the one cinema we have for three days. So not that many people will know who you are.

So no chance of being mobbed. Please consider this respite seriously. You will always be welcome. It was very sincerely. and in anticipation of a hasty reply, which came 47 years later, Richard. Oscar nominee Richard E. Grant, on Broadway, with the New Yorker's Rachel Sun. What if you do, win? Never going to happen.

That's it for our show this week, and if you're not following us on Twitter, you really should. We'll keep you posted on everything that's going on here at New Yorker Radio. I'm David Remnick. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. Our team includes Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Calalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix,

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