Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont drew awareness to the ideology with his 2016 presidential bid. In the years since, other politicians—including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York—who have called themselves democratic socialists have emerged on the national stage. And the past year has seen several self-identified democratic socialists prevail in key local races, with Zohran Mamdani winning the New York City mayoral race in November, and Janeese Lewis George claiming victory in the Democratic primary race for Washington, D.C.’s next mayor this week.
But depending on who you talk to, they might define “democratic socialism” differently.
So what exactly does it mean to be a democratic socialist? TIME spoke to experts to unpack the term.
“What we want to do is extend democracy to our workplace and our housing and society at large, sort of deciding the ways our cities run, our jobs run, our housing runs, as opposed to right now, we think we’re in sort of a dictatorship of capital—the big corporations kind of make the decisions about everything, really,” says Megan Romer, the co-chair of the DSA.
Farinella says that democratic socialism also isn’t the kind of social democracy seen in Scandinavian countries, which reject authoritarianism and, in his words, “combine free market capitalism with high taxes” to fund social programs such as health care and education. Democratic socialists, meanwhile, don’t support capitalism (though some self-described democratic socialists have suggested that it is possible for democratic socialism and capitalism to exist together).
“The democratic socialists in the United States want to shift political and economic power away from corporations and ultimately move beyond a capitalistic system, which they view as inherently unfair and exploitive,” he says. “They want to replace capitalism with an economy driven by social need rather than by profit motive, and they want to do this with workers and ordinary citizens making decisions about how to deploy resources—not having government make the decisions about how to deploy resources.”
How does it differ from the mainstream Democratic party?
Democratic socialists tend to support policies to the left of mainstream Democratic politicians.
Some of those policies are in line with those backed by moderate Democrats. But others may not align with the views of many in the party; for instance, on its website, the DSA says it wants to “allow workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment without restrictive immigration controls,” as well as “provide access to jobs, labor rights, and social services to all immigrants.” While the Democratic party has vocally criticized the Trump Administration’s hardline immigration policy, some of the DSA’s views on immigration may fall to the left of the more moderate Democrats.
“To a lot of Americans, democratic socialism is a nonstarter because of the preconceived negative notions they have about what socialism is and their notions may or may not be actually descriptive of what the democratic socialists in the United States are talking about,” Farinella says.
“At a time when people are feeling left behind and feeling that the economy is structured in such a way as not being equitable and not being fair, they’re going to be interested in exploring other systems,” he says. “There are plenty of people who think the system is not working for them, and so they are looking elsewhere for a system that they might feel is more just and equitable and would give them a better shot at economic success.”
-Philip Wang contributed reporting.
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