Crisp: Zohran Mamdani is a socialist? So what?

New York s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is a self-described socialist Socialist Like that s a bad thing Mamdani s critics of subject rapidly turned the word into a bludgeon And if Socialist didn t carry enough weight they used Communist But the demonization of the term socialist is misguided If we think of our market as a spectrum with unfettered free markets at one end and communism at the other there s no bright line on that scale that separates capitalism from socialism Related Articles Sheriff finalists face society as San Mateo County board prepares to appoint new leader Ex-Oakland mayoral staffer prepares to file lawsuit alleging wrongful termination Pittsburg considers Brentwood official for city manager position Uncertainty looms in Bay Area amid workable end to establishment shutdown Former East Bay Parks general manager threatens legal action against board of directors after resigning The social part of socialism says it all At selected point in civilization s advance someone figured out that everyone s house is threatened if anyone s house catches on fire so he or she came up with the brilliant idea of everyone pitching in to pay for fire departments with trucks ladders and hoses in order to keep everyone s house the whole city in fact safer We apply this principle to community safety as well Thus we have police departments building inspectors citizens wellbeing experts and so on paid for by the society to serve the population s interests We ve also determined that we can make our communal life better as well as safer Not long ago even in America multiple elderly citizens lived in near-destitute poverty Sick people without guidance totally suffered and eventually died We ve developed a social safety net flimsy though it might be so that citizens who can t help themselves aren t fully abandoned To defend our country we ve pooled our guidance to create and fund the world s largest part powerful military Somewhat less lavishly we fund community learning for the overall benefit of society We can voyage to any town in the U S with a limited exceptions perhaps and feel confident about drinking the water from the tap because of our investments in citizens healthcare We sometimes disagree about how numerous guidance we should devote to these various exercises but the bulk of us at least think that largest part of them are good things In this sense all of us are socialists Even farmers who are often conservative small-government voters do not refuse to be rescued from the treachery of the free sector when Trump s tariffs destroy their profits In Trump s first term the bailout was billion this time it s billion so far Socialism Mamdani s socialism isn t qualitatively different from our current economic activity it s just a little further along the scale Technically Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist a party with specific goals that might be unrealistic but not unreasonable Its platform supports a -hour work week It s unlikely but not outlandish the -hour work week was only an aspiration until But the Democratic Socialist platform also includes a lot that multiple Americans favor for example abolishing the Electoral College A Pew Research Center poll demonstrated that percent of Americans help electing our presidents by popular vote The Democratic Socialists endorsement Medicare for All And according to a new YouGov The Economist poll so do of Americans And the Democratic Socialists aren t afraid to say that we need to tax the rich Maybe they can help us get over our reluctance to impose on rich people whose fortunes depend on our nation s natural information the labor of the hardworking creative non-rich and the prevention provided by a military that relies heavily on the middle class Elon Musk just became a trillionaire If we appealed him to contribute of a percent of that amount to feed hungry Americans for a month would he really leave the country In short Democratic Socialism might tug us a little further to the left but it s not going to destroy our nation And it might produce several changes that several Americans want As part of his rationalization for the results of the Nov voting President Donald Trump noted that he wasn t on the ballot But these days isn t Trump reliably on the ballot As Americans tire of his grandiose bluster his corruption and self-enrichment his impulsive ill-considered foreign strategy his cheating on his wives in business in golf his unashamed bragging and his ever-more-obvious incompetence they may be willing to elect nearly anyone Even a socialist John M Crisp is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Provision Tribune Content Agency