The Democratic Socialist Movement is Vital To Address Today's Pressing Challenges

Egalitarian Decommodification and Contributive Justice Must Be Key Priorities

The newly elected Mayor of New York City, Zohran Madavi, calls himself a Democratic Socialist. So does Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senator from Vermont, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Congresswoman from New York, and at least 250 other state and local officials. The rapidly accelerating Climate-Ecosystem-Biodiversity (C-E-B) crisis, threats posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and many other serious challenges leave us no choice but to reinvent our society. Democratic Socialism offers the best hope for achieving this end.

As with any political party, many Democratic Socialists hold slightly different perspectives. At the core, however, is the belief that both the economy and society should operate democratically, with decision making and power distributed broadly among all residents, not just among big corporations and the super-rich.

One of its fundamental goals is to reduce economic inequality and ensure that everyone has the chance to contribute to society and prosper, not just white males or those with college degrees or inherited wealth.

Although most Democratic Socialists do not call for the elimination of free markets or private ownership, they see neoliberal capitalism as a system that enables those with financial assets (capital) to exploit others and the natural environment for profit. To counter this most support different types of social ownership of the means of production, such as worker coops, social wealth funds, and at times the nationalization of key large industries.

Almost all Democratic Socialists also believe the government must play a central role in providing essential services such as universal free education, healthcare, and childcare, as well as a strong social safety net though social security and other means.

Contrary to the uninformed politicized claims of the Trump Administration and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, these principles and goals underscore that Democratic Socialism is fundamentally different from communism, which is a top-down system of undemocratic authoritarian control. It is also very different from traditional socialism, which seeks to eliminate private ownership and create collective proprietorship of all means of production, distribution, and exchange.

Neither the Republican or Democratic Party Can Address Today’s Pressing Challenges

The Republican Party is now controlled by Donald Trump’s need for retribution and seeks to implement the Heritage Institute’s Project 2025 frightening extreme-right manifesto. The Democratic Party has become a party of the well-educated and lost its ability to address the economic and social struggles of people without college degrees, the working class, and rural Americans. Neither party currently has the capacity to address today’s major challenges. (It saddens me to come to this conclusion because years ago I worked closely with and voted for a number of Republicans—who would now be considered flaming liberals—and for the past 3 decades have been a strong Democrat).

Unless Democrats or Republicans quickly reinvent themselves, Democratic Socialism offers the greatest possibility of activating the transformational changes needed to address our pressing issues.

The Rapidly Accelerating Climate-Ecosystem-Biodiversity (C-E-B) Crisis

Take the C-E-B crisis. Scientists have determined that human activities have now pushed 7 of 9 key “planetary boundaries” beyond their safe levels. These are processes that, when inside their safe zones, make the Earth habitable for humans. When they exceed those safe levels, the processes can interact with each other and produce devastating impacts for people and the environment worldwide.

As described by the Stockholm University Resilience Centre, the 7 key planetary boundaries that are now in unsafe levels, and are continuing to worsen, include:

· Climate change: Despite decades of effort to reduce them, human-generated greenhouse gasses rose to record levels globally in 2024, producing hotter temperatures and more frequent, prolonged, and surprising extreme weather disasters.

· Biosphere integrity: Human activities have reduced the diversity, extent, and health of biological systems and living organisms and diminished their capacity to co-regulate the energy balance and chemical cycles on Earth.

· Land system change: Human-caused deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, and other practices have altered natural landscapes, which has disrupted biodiversity and diminished ecological functions including carbon sequestration and moisture recycling.

· Freshwater changes: Human activities have altered freshwater cycles, including rivers and soil moisture, which is impacting natural functions such as carbon sequestration and biodiversity, and producing changes in precipitation levels.

· Ocean acidification: The acidity of ocean water is increasing as it absorbs more atmospheric CO2 produced by human activities, which is harming organisms, impacting marine ecosystems, and reducing the ocean’s efficiency in acting as a carbon sink.

· Modification of biochemical flows: Industrial and agricultural processes have released elements like nitrogen and phosphorus into ecological systems that affect their ability to support life and maintain ecosystem health.

· Novel entities: New human-made synthetic substances released into the environment are modifying the genetics of living organisms and in other ways changing evolutionary processes and the functioning of the Earth ecosystems.

· The only 2 planetary boundaries that remain within safe levels today are stratospheric ozone and atmospheric aerosol.

The fact that 7of 9 planetary boundaries have now been breached is why I call the interacting threats we face the Climate-Ecosystem-Biodiversity (C-E-B) crisis. It is already impacting millions of people worldwide now and creating widespread mental health and psychosocial issues, and without dramatic changes will harm everyone’s physical, social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral wellbeing long in the future.

Artificial Intelligence

This, however, is by no means the only serious challenge we face. One of the most egregious threats is AI. Managed well it can provide a number of benefits such as increased efficiency, new healthcare treatments, and more. Left uncontrolled, AI is likely to create large job losses and increase economic inequality, violate privacy and socially manipulate people, increase criminal activity, produce new automated military weapons, and generate psychological harm to both children and adults.

Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, called one of the “Godfathers” of AI, left his position as vice president and engineering fellow at Google in order to “talk about the dangers of AI.” He says that one day AI will become “smarter than us,” and pose an unprecedented risk for humanity, while revealing that a part of him regrets his life’s work.

To address these and other societal threats Democratic Socialists should aggressively pursue both “egalitarian decommodification” and “contributive justice.”

Egalitarian Decommodification

As described by economist Thomas Piketty in his new book Equity is a Struggle: Bulletins from the Front Line, 2021-2025 this principle is based on the notion that certain things are essential for human health, safety, dignity, and wellbeing and should therefore be treated as public goods, not as a means of generating profit and wealth. Society’s goal should be to ensure people can maintain a socially acceptable standard of living without being dependent on participation in markets or having the ability to pay high costs.

One hundred years ago economist Karl Polanyi called a self-regulating economic system a complete construction of human imagination. The “free market” championed by neoliberal capitalists has never and will never exist. Markets cannot self-regulate. Left on their own they will frequently go to extremes that harm millions of people and the natural environment, while benefiting a few. The C-E-B crisis and uncontrolled AI illustrate this.

Polanyi used the term “decommodification” to describe what is needed to address these risks. Commodification is the process of privatizing natural resources, goods, services, and today even ideas and making them objects of trade for profit. Decommodification reverses or mitigates this process for goods and services deemed essential to sustain safe, healthy, thriving lives. Effective government is needed achieve this by establishing limits, monitoring, and enforcing safe, healthy, equitable and just activities.

The fact that 7 of 9 key planetary boundaries have now been breached, and their conditions are growing worse, underscores there is no chance of reducing the C-E-B crisis to manageable levels using today’s free market profit-focused system because it depends on never-ending resource extraction, production, material consumption, pollution and waste. Again, the failure to reduce climate-damaging emissions and ecological harm after decades of effort shows this is true.

To have any chance of preventing civilization-altering C-E-B crisis-generated impacts, energy, housing, transportation, education, healthcare, construction, and other key sectors must be swiftly decommodified. These goods and services must be disconnected from market forces and the profit motive. Some goods will also need to be banned outright such as gas, oil, and fossil fuel-based plastics. Practices that damage ecological systems or exterminate biodiversity will also need to be prohibited.

AI will also need to be thoroughly controlled to ensure that it benefits and does not harm society. This will likely require decommodifying many or all aspects of cyberspace. Most of the companies that are now reaping billions creating and promoting AI will need to be strongly regulated or, if that fails, nationalized to bring this about.

We Have Decommodified Key Aspects of Society Before

These transformations might seem impossible. However, the U.S. has in the past decommodified many aspects of society. Elements of entire sectors such as education research, energy, housing, healthcare, transportation, and other goods and services largely developed outside of the free market capitalistic profit-focused system.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, for instance, many American cities created their own publicly-owned electric utilities, and during the 1930s public energy cooperatives became common (my local power utility is one). Just over a hundred years ago free public education started to become a norm in the U.S. Free and low-cost housing became available to many in 1937, and today over 850 non-profit housing trusts and about 225 community land trusts exist. Free interstate highways came into existence in 1956, and today free transportation is growing in a number of cities.

In fact, Thomas Piketty says about a quarter of the U.S. economy became non-market and profit based in the 20th century. However, neoliberal capitalists blocked further progress. Today, the other three quarters of the economy remains dominated by free market, neoliberal capitalist practices, and the commodification of almost everything. The C-E-B crisis and uncontrolled AI are just two threatening consequences.

To address these threats Democratic Socialists must make egalitarian decommodification of the goods and services that drive them a fundamental goal. Every level of government and every community should do so as well.

The policies needed to accomplish this are too extensive to list here. However, as was the case for two decades after WWII, one will be a very progressive tax systems that impose 80-90% tax rates on those with huge incomes and high taxes on corporations as well. Mechanisms to block tax avoidance by big firms and the uber rich will be also essential. As Thomas Picketty said, this will end the humongous salaries now given to corporate and Wall Street executives and free up money for people to obtain middle and lower-income salaries.

High progressive taxes will also provide the funds needed to decommodify the U.S. energy system, which should rapidly be completely disconnected from the profit motive of fossil fuel corporations. The revenue from the taxes will also fund essential public services such as housing, transportation, and healthcare, and the upskilling and reskilling of people to work and thrive in a more egalitarian economy.

Contributive Justice

Democratic Socialists will need to link egalitarian decommodification with “contributive justice.” This principle has been refined by political philosopher Michael Sandel in his book The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good and his excellent free online class. It is based on the belief that a person’s quality of life and well-being is largely determined by the meaningful contributions they make to their community and society.

Fairness thus requires that everyone-- including low-income and working-class people, and those without significant skills or a political voice--has an opportunity to contribute what they can towards a common purpose. This requires Democratic Socialists to create the “social infrastructure” in communities that can be called a Transformational Resilience Coordinating Network (TRCN) that allows people to develop supportive relationships, make a positive contribution, and ensure that their contributions are valued and incorporated into the community without discrimination. The success of this social infrastructure, in turn, requires actively engaging all residents in different types of age and culturally-appropriate prosocial activities.

Individuals with wealth and other forms of economic or political power today typically trumpet their own desires and ideas and ignore or silence those without those attributes. This has caused many individuals, groups, and communities to feel left-behind, angry, and resentful. The desire for revenge that naturally results has created dangerous social and political polarization. It has also led many people to support Donald Trump because he seems to “speak to them” even as his actions and policies show disinterest in them and their plight.

Democratic Socialists must directly address these conditions by acknowledging those who have been left behind and fully engaging them in practical activities that allow them to contribute what they can to society. This can range from seeking their views about how to decommodify goods and services they rely on, and improve their community, to using whatever skills they have to bring those conditions to fruition. The type of activities they engage in can be slowly scaled up to include other contributions that build self-respect and enhances reciprocity in their community.

The real-world application of contributive justice also requires those with power--especially political leaders, business executives, and other community leaders--to visibly sacrifice their own needs and desires for the good of the public. Rather than using their power to enrich themselves while ignoring the needs of regular people (as Trump and his cohorts are a doing), Democratic Socialist leaders should show everyone, especially those left-behind, that they are committed to addressing their issues. This requires forgoing opportunities for personal gain and instead serving the public by implementing egalitarian decommodification and other policies that increase economic and social equality, safety, health, and wellbeing.

Success Requires New Political Coalitions and Powerful Communication Strategies

Enacting policies that advance egalitarian decommodification and contributive justice will require Democratic Socialists to build coalitions with many different individuals, organizations, and sectors. This should include working-class and rural citizens, as well as groups involved with education, healthcare, childcare, energy, transportation, construction, faith and spirituality, and many others.

Success will also require communicating their goals, and the achievements of the movement, in ways that resonate with most Americans. Good storytelling will be essential to accomplish this.

In addition, it will be important for Democratic Socialists to prepare their coalitions with communications tools and other methods to push back against efforts by Trump and his neofascist corporate and billionaire accomplices to label them as communist and crush the movement.

The many threats we face today requires transformation of numerous aspects of society. With both the Democratic and Republican parties showing little ability to address today’s challenges, Democratic Socialism now offers the best chance of bringing this about. I encourage readers to learn about and engage in this important movement.