By now, everyone knows that Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. What’s not nearly as clear is what that actually means. For voters who lived through the Cold War, the term ‘socialist’ is loaded with baggage, dating to the assassination of the Russian tsar and his family in the early 20th century and Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev’s 1960s standoff with President John F. Kennedy over missiles in Cuba. Socialism in that pop-culture shorthand is the antithesis of ‘the American way,’ or capitalism. But in reality, there’s a vast spectrum between the two systems at their most ideological: A democratic socialist might aspire to the ideals of Karl Marx. Or he might behave more like Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic president who steered the U.S. through the Great Depression with ‘New Deal’ programs that offered jobs and created a social safety net. In Europe, people who support policies like Sanders are called ‘social democrats,’ said Richard D. Wolff, professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. What they want, he said, is ‘capitalism with a human face.’ Social democrats, Wolff said, ‘soften this harsh system with its inequality by a whole host of programs, usually run by the government, that give people a better chance, better income, better housing, better education, than they would get if the government didn’t intervene and capitalism had its own way unencumbered by limits.’
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