Donald Trump says “communism is the greatest threat” facing the U.S. And democratic socialists have won a string of elections across the country. What are the differences between communism and socialism — and why are Americans talking about them now?

Guest

Sheri Berman, professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Part I 

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Lately you might have been hearing a lot of this:

(MUSIC) DONALD TRUMP [TAPE]:Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty.

MARK LEVIN: The Democrat Party has made a decision. It’s now officially a communist party.

JD VANCE: It is communism, Laura. This is not raising taxes a little bit. It’s confiscating wealth, not because we wanna make anybody’s life better, but purely out of resentment.

LEVIN: Democratic socialist, whatever that means. How can you be democratic and socialist?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Why I call myself a democratic socialist is the words of Dr. King. He said, “Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.”

MICHAEL SAVAGE: Criminalize the Democrat Socialist Party and deport them now!

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: This is not gulag socialism. This is not the Soviet Union socialism. This is like buses should be free, housing should be affordable. (MUSIC)

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: The reason that Donald Trump has to pivot from saying socialist to saying communist now is because socialism is actually quite popular.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, any time politicians or pundits suddenly start using provocative words in unison, it’s time to be skeptical. It’s time to ask, what do these concepts actually mean? And in this case, we’re talking about communism and socialism. Is there any truth to how they’re being currently used, and how and why are they being manipulated in the media now?

Well, Sheri Berman is here to help us answer those questions. She’s a professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Professor Berman, welcome to On Point.

SHERI BERMAN: Happy to be here.

CHAKRABARTI: I actually kind of want to start at the ground level. And so like any good student, I went straight to the dictionary and looked up the dictionary definition of communism, and here’s what our friends at Merriam-Webster say.

Oh, and by the way, they, they note that communism and socialism are two of their most often looked up words, which is quite interesting. But the dictionary definition, communism, definition A, “A doctrine based on revolutionary Marxist socialism and Marxism-Leninism,” B, “A totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production,” or C, “A final society, final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has actually withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably.”

Does that sound like the definition of communism to you, Professor Berman?

BERMAN: Well, those are three totally valid definitions of communism. They are both theoretical, and particularly the second is sort of empirical, sort of more focused on describing a system that actually existed, but those are all three reasonable definitions.

But to sort of get back to your original point, part of the issue with the terms “communism” and “socialism” is that they do have a variety of definitions, and they are used by a variety of people to indicate not always the same thing, making it very confusing for people who are listening to politicians or scholars or, uh, radio commentators to know often exactly what is being referred to.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, so for people right now who are listening who just really have that basic question, um, especially because the president, the vice president as you just heard, and others are so suddenly talking, uh, about communism once again.

If someone came to you and said, “Professor, please help me understand. What is communism?” How would you answer them?

BERMAN: So I think for most people communism evokes something empirical and concrete, which is I think, you know, sort of more what that second definition in your dictionary was getting at, right?

Which is I think most people think of communism, they think of the Soviet Union if they’re more than 30 years old, or they maybe think of Cuba or North Korea today. That is to say, a totalitarian system without any democracy, where the state owns the means of production, where there’s relatively or no freedom at all, where there’s not a free market.

All of these kinds of things that obviously folks like Trump and Vance are trying to evoke to scare people away from not just what are now many Democratic socialist candidates, but from the Democratic Party, because the Democratic socialist candidates are running in Democratic primaries and as Democratic candidates.

So they’re, they’re trying to make people think of these real existing systems when they look at these candidates who call themselves Democratic socialists, but not of course communists.

CHAKRABARTI: Right. So we’ll, we’ll talk about, um, about the overlap, uh, and the difference obviously between, um, socialism and communism in detail throughout the show.

But you said that when most people think of communism, what they think of are like the former Soviet Union, et cetera, totalitarian states that also own the means of production. Are they thinking of the right thing, though? Is that how you would define what communism is? Because, as I’m still looking at Merriam-Webster, it goes all the way back to basically Marxist theory, right?

BERMAN: So look, I think the reason why there are two terms, communism and socialism, is precisely to help people differentiate different times, different types rather, of political economic systems, right? So socialism is the much broader term. That means, or that rather can encompass everything from the kind of social democratic parties that are standard fare in Western Europe all the way through the kinds of systems that existed in places like the Soviet Union.

Socialism is a very broad term, right? It is an umbrella term. It includes a variety of different strands and a variety of different aspirations and systems, right? So I think it does make sense when we use the term communism, right, to think of it in the way that we were just discussing, right? To refer to something very specific, that is to say not just a system that is not capitalist, right?

No free markets, no private property, yada, yada. But also these kinds of systems that existed in the Soviet Union, that still exist in places like North Korea or Cuba, where you also do not have any kind of democracy either. Now, socialism, as I said, is a much broader term.  It can include a whole variety of economic arrangements, and many of those strands are indeed democratic.

So you know, again, people can use terms how they want, but insofar as there’s some value in having a term socialist and having a term communist we should think of the socialist term as encompassing a much broader tent, so to speak, and I think it makes sense to kind of use communism in this more specific way.

This is, as I said, I believe the way that Trump, Vance, and others are using it precisely to kind of get people who are listening to think, “Oh my goodness, these people advocate turning the United States into the Soviet Union or Cuba or some such kind of thing.”

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, good. That’s very helpful then. So, basically what you’re saying is that, again, as we’ll explore later, that communism is sort of a smaller subset of a broader and much more complex and longer movement of socialism, which is quite diverse and dynamic.

But that when the president or the vice president are specifically using these terms, they really do want us to think of the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, et cetera. So let’s just take a second to listen to the president himself, because on July 3rd, he was at Mount Rushmore and he gave a speech that was very much dedicated to his fear, his warning, his criticisms of communism.

DONALD TRUMP [TAPE]: Communism is a loser, and it always will be. The communist system is the opposite of the American system, and the communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We’re not gonna let it happen We like to stop a threat like that immediately and before it begins. It’s like a cancer. You got to cut it out, and you got to cut it out fast.

CHAKRABARTI: So that’s President Donald Trump on July 3rd. Now, Professor Berman, what was fascinating to me is how consistently political figures in this country, when calling out communism as a threat to the United States, how consistent their language has been.

I mean, you just heard President Trump there calling communism a cancer that you have to cut out. Well, here is J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, in 1947. He testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and here’s what he said.

J. EDGAR HOOVER [TAPE]: The Communist Party of the United States is a fifth column if there ever was one. It is far better organized than were the Nazis in occupied countries prior to their capitulation. They are seeking to weaken America, just as they did in their era of, of obstruction when they were aligned with the Nazis. Their goal is the overthrow of our government. There is no doubt as to where a real communist loyalty rests. Their allegiance is to Russia, not the United States. Communism, in reality, is not a political party. It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life. It reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic. And like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting this nation.

CHAKRABARTI: J. Edgar Hoover in 1947. Isn’t that interesting that we, that we’re still to this day, the president of the United States, talking about communism as a disease. What is it about the American and American capitalistic perspective that made communism feel like such an existential threat? And I’m, I’m gonna put aside the truly existential threat of nuclear war during the Cold War. I’m gonna put that aside from now, but as sort of an economic system, why is it so scary?

BERMAN: So, I think it’s important for us to be able to hold two thoughts in our head at the same time, right? Communism, particularly when J. Edgar Hoover was talking about it in 1947, was a real threat. It was a real threat in the sense that the Soviet Union existed. There were powerful communist parties in many European countries, West European countries. Of course, communism was about to take over and squash democracy in Eastern and Central Europe.

These communist parties in Western Europe were indeed subservient to Moscow. There was a very small communist party in the United States.It could legitimately be seen as a fifth column. It was definitely also taking orders from Moscow. Those things are true. Communism is not an economically successful system.

It is definitely not democratic as it existed at the time. Those things are all true. The question today, this is, as you said, Donald Trump in 2026, is there any legitimacy in calling the Democratic Socialists of America, much less the Democratic Party communist? That is just simply ridiculous, but it is true.

Communism was a real threat, both in the United States to a small degree insofar as there were sort of communist infiltrators, but more generally as a threat in the world to our allies. But, but the question today is it legitimate to use that term to try to frighten, to scare voters from looking at the Democratic Party?

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Berman, before we move forward and talk more about socialism specifically, I just truly love archival tape.

I love hearing history in my ears. So I just wanted to touch on two other presidents in American history who talked frequently about communism for the reasons you said earlier, because they were leading at a time where not just militarily, AKA nuclear weapons, but even in terms of political influence, communism was seen as a legitimate threat to the United States.

So here is John F. Kennedy. This is in 1960. He was then a senator and a presidential candidate, and on a television appearance, he was asked about the threat of communism to the United States.

INTERVIEWER [TAPE]: Senator Kennedy, on another subject, communism is so often described as an ideology or a belief that exists somewhere other than in the United States. Let me ask you, sir, just how serious a threat to our national security are these communist subversive activities in the United States today?

JOHN F. KENNEDY: Well, I think they’re serious. I think it’s a matter that we should continue to, uh, give, uh, great care and attention to. We should support, uh, the laws which the United States has passed in order to protect us from, uh, those who would destroy us from within. We should sustain, uh, the Department of Justice in its efforts, and the FBI, and we should be continually alert. I think if the United States is maintaining a strong society here in the United States, I think that we can meet any internal threat. The major threat is external and will continue.

CHAKRABARTI: So that’s John F. Kennedy in 1960 when he was a senator, and obviously President Kennedy spoke frequently about communism when he was in the White House. Let’s move forward to the other great president who possibly put the most lasting label on Soviet communism in U.S. history. He’s the one who came up with the phrase the evil empire, and of course I’m talking about former President Ronald Reagan. That “evil empire” phrase, by the way, came in 1983. Here he is talking about the Soviet Union in a speech he gave to the British Parliament in June of 1982.

RONALD REAGAN [TAPE]: Well, this is precisely our mission today, to preserve freedom as well as peace. It may not be easy to see, but I believe we live now at a turning point.

In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxist Leninism, the Soviet Union.

It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the ’50s and is less than half of what it was then.

CHAKRABARTI: Former President Ronald Reagan in 1982.

Okay, so Professor Berman, if communism should be defined as, um, as you said, what we, what we know from, uh, real communist systems in, in history as a totalitarian single party system of government where there is state control of, they call it the means of production, but even beyond that of, of multiple types of industries.

It’s virulently anti-capitalist, anti-free market, anti-private property. So with that as being a definition of communism, what is the broader definition of socialism? Or can we even put a definition on it since it’s kind of changed and morphed over a couple of centuries?

BERMAN: So that’s a great question, and as I said earlier, socialism really is an extraordinarily broad term. So it is very hard, much harder I think than with communism, to pin down. So as I mentioned there are a wide  number of many… There are many social democratic parties in Western Europe. These parties are not anti-capitalist in the sense that they do not wanna eliminate private property. They do not want the state to take over means of production.

But they see themselves as falling under the socialist umbrella. Similarly, contemporary democratic socialists in America, while they are extremely critical of capitalism, and some of them, if you take the DSA’s national program seriously, do hope for a world  without capitalism claim to be committed to democracy. Indeed, they claim that the democracy that they advocate is a fuller, more complete democracy than we have in the United States because they do not believe democracy can truly exist alongside capitalism. So socialism, you really have to think, or rather think a little bit deeper or dig a little bit deeper because that term can mean a whole variety of things.

Like I said, it can mean democratic socialism in the United States, it can mean social democracy in Western Europe, and it can even include, you know, sort of historically Marxists and others. So that term requires a little bit more fine-tuning.

CHAKRABARTI: So let’s do that. Fine-tune it for us.

BERMAN: So like I said, I would say in the contemporary situation, the two most important reference for American voters, right? First and foremost would be the Democratic Socialists of America, who have come back onto the political scene in the last decade or so. And this is a kind of hodgepodge of people, some of whom are more radical, some of whom really want something that resembles, as I said, what exists in many West European countries under social democratic systems.

That is to say, systems with stronger social safety nets, stronger public provision of some basic goods, healthcare, housing. They want a capitalist system, but one that is smoothed around the edges, that is much more redistributive, that is much more supportive of public provision and welfare states.

That is one wing of the sort of DSA, and that also hearkens back in the United States to an earlier era when people used to talk about something called sewer socialism, which our mayor here in New York talks about quite frequently as well. That is to say, government working to improve the lives of citizens on a sort of daily quotidian basis, right?

CHAKRABARTIL Let me just jump in here if I can, actually, you know, I think I might have interrupted you right when you were going to… and you were anticipating what my question was beginning to be.  So go ahead.

BERMAN: But within the Democratic Socialists of America, at least as far as their kind of national program is concerned, there is a tension, and this is a tension that has always existed not only within this movement, but within the socialist movement more generally, right? Which is, how much are we focused on daily reforms, living within the capitalist system, but making it more just, more equitable, more humane, versus working towards a world where capitalism does not exist, although, again, in the democratic socialist vision, with a democratic political order alongside that withering away of a capitalist economic order?

CHAKRABARTI: So yes, that is exactly the direction I wanted to go in, because I want to focus specifically on this one sort of sub-question, that when I hear you say that Democratic socialists really see government as a tool for creating a more equitable society both economically and socially, they want government to do more good directly for people.

I hear that, but I also hear every single party in the United States of America making that same claim. So that is not really a distinguishing factor for me. The question is how? How do they want to bring about this vision of a better America? And so that’s why I just want to focus for a moment on this, the issue of the, quote, unquote, “means of production,” because it comes up over and over again.

And as far as I understand, this goes back to Marxism, but the means of production are basically… We’re not talking about human labor, but land, natural resources, factories, machinery, tools, industries, that are used to create goods and services. Is that a fair definition?

BERMAN: Sure. That absolutely is a fair definition, and like I said, there’s really this tension within DSA, right?

So if you look at what people on the ground, the mayors, the local councilors, et cetera, are doing, they really are trying to go further than a standard Democratic candidate would in putting in place more public provision of social services, housing, free buses,  the kinds of things that Mamdani has talked about in New York City, and also improving or expanding the welfare state, right?

So Democratic socialists like to say, “Well, we already have socialism in the U.S. in the form of things like Social Security and Medicare. What we want do is kind of expand those types of programs and initiatives further than the Democratic Party would.” That said, if you look at the national program, right?

And you listen sometimes to candidates who have been affiliated with or associated with DSA, like Bernie Sanders, their ultimate goal is something more than that, quote, unquote, “sort of sewer socialism or social democratic model,” right? They do aspire to a world where capitalism does not exist.

So that tension is there, right? But on the ground, what these folks have really done is really try to push the Democratic Party to what another very important Democratic socialist leader, Michael Harrington, said was the left wing of the possible, right? That is to say, push the Democrats further to the left on these kinds of economic issues than they would go without that kind of pressure.

CHAKRABARTI: Right, because that’s an initial step. If your ultimate goal is something as you know, different in the United States as state control or collective control of various industries, you can’t just jump to that. That’s a quantum leap. There’s a spectrum you have to travel through to get there.

But, you’re exactly right about this tension in the Democratic Socialist Party of America, because I’m looking right at their mission. It’s right on their website. It says, “We want a democracy that creates space for all of us to flourish, not just survive, and we want to quote, ‘collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.'”

And in fact, you mentioned Mayor Mamdani there in New York City. He hasn’t said specifically recently, beyond his sewer socialism talk that you mentioned, but he hasn’t talked about the means of production recently. But back in 2021, and when he was recently elected as a state assemblyman in New York, Mamdani spoke spoke at the Young Democratic Socialists of America conference over Zoom, and here is a little bit of what he said.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI [TAPE]:When we start to accumulate power, when we start to elect individuals such as myself and my other slate mates into local office, it is very critical for all of us to remember what it is that we are fighting for, and to remember that our agenda is an agenda that must not be dictated by calculus, but by conviction.

And what I mean by that is that the many things that we believe, some of them are already popular in this moment right now, right? If we’re talking about the cancellation of student debt, Medicare for All. But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s BDS, right? Or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support. And what I want to say is that it is critical that in the way that we organize, that we do not leave any one issue for the other.

CHAKRABARTI: So that was now New York City Mayor Mamdani, just back in 2021, saying pretty clearly he sees an end goal as being, quote, “seizing the means of production.” So I’m wondering, in that sense, when people cast a critical eye on the DSA, Professor Berman, they’re not necessarily wrong, right?

I mean, government ownership or collective ownership of major industry in this country would be a radically different economic model than we have now.

BERMAN: So that is certainly true. And again, you were quoting before from the DSA’s national program,

CHAKRABARTI: Right

BERMAN: -not so much the New York City or the local chapters, right?

And it goes even beyond that, right? It’s not just that they want an end to capitalism, although they favor more collective worker ownership than state ownership. You know, I’m not sure it’s worth getting into that distinction, but it is one. They also have this kind of Marxist view of taking your kids to school in the morning, writing poetry in the afternoon.

I mean, it really is quite radical. But the question is for someone like Mamdani, he is a mayor. He is not going to be collectivizing the means of production. What he has within his power to do is the sort of sewer socialism improvements that a lot of people in New York seem to be quite eager to have him pursue.

But it does raise the question on the national level for voters more generally about what these people are doing today and what they wanna do tomorrow may be two very different things. I will stress again that what these folks do also claim to be committed to is political democracy.

That is very, very different than the communists we talked about before, Marxist-Leninists. It’s worth discussing with them, pressing them on what precisely that would mean, but these are people who claim to be committed to democracy. That was one of the sort of founding principles indeed of DSA, which was opposed to communist parties precisely because of their acceptance of non-democratic regimes across the globe at the time of the founding of DSA.

CHAKRABARTI: And the founding of DSA, are you talking about in the nineteen eighties when there was the merger between two other sort of major socialists?

BERMAN: Correct. Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Can you talk a little bit about that?

BERMAN: So DSA was founded in the early eighties. We don’t have to necessarily go through all of the history, but it was founded again as an organization that was both committed to pushing, as I said before, using Michael Harrington’s phrase, the founder or one of the most important founders, the left wing of the possible within the U.S., but it was also founded because it very much wanted to prioritize, make clear its commitment to small “D” democracy.

That is to say, it did not wanna be tarred with the brush of communism. Again, to get back to the earlier parts of the segment with quotes by folks like J. Edgar Hoover, they did not support the totalitarian regimes that existed in places like the Soviet Union, and they wanted to make clear that they were looking for a kind of third way between those kinds of regimes and the much more, sort of capitalist, unequal systems that they saw in the United States and elsewhere.

CHAKRABARTI: When we say capitalist, I’m glad you mentioned that because I do want to, I would suggest that what we’re talking about is the American form of capitalism, right? Because the other sort of democratic socialist nations that people often think of, let’s say, Northern European nations, are also democratic and also capitalist.

But it’s how some of the wealth from those capitalist systems are distributed and those social safety nets, that’s the difference.

BERMAN: That’s correct. I mean, and if you’re old enough to remember Sanders’ 2016 campaign, for example, he would often invoke  Denmark or the Scandinavian countries, and that is a social democratic system.

That is not a socialist system. They are capitalist, but with much stronger welfare states, public provision of services, and things like that.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So the language is so, so important here.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: And so we thought it’s time to step back and just kind of really understand the truth of these terms, and therefore, how and why they’re being used the way they are now. So, Professor Berman, I want to talk a little bit more about the long history of socialism and socialist parties in the United States.

So here’s another little trip in the time machine. You’re about to hear Norman Thomas. He ran for president of the United States six times on the Socialist ticket. Here’s part of a speech he gave to the Wisconsin Socialist Party around 1942.

NORMAN THOMAS [TAPE]: Can we decide intelligently what kind and degree of collectivism are necessary for the good of the people? Can we decide intelligently how democratically we can control these processes for the common good? That’s what socialists care about. The new social order toward which I fear we drift will probably have large traces of special privilege and of the old power of private finance corporations, but in general, it’ll be dominated by the government, by the dictatorial state. Oh, we won’t call it fascist, not we. We’ll have another name for it. We’ll probably call it democracy and cross our fingers while we say it.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s Norman Thomas in 1942. So, Professor Berman, let’s go even further back because, it seems to me that the, the most notable, or one of the most notable names in the history of American socialism is, of course, Eugene Debs, the trade unionist and socialist presidential candidate in the early 20th century.

What was it that was happening in America at the time that actually made the Socialist Party quite a force in the earliest years and decades of the 20th century?

BERMAN: Well, this was a time, of course, before the New Deal, and it was a time, therefore, that capitalism was much rougher around the edges than it was after the New Deal.

So we had immense amounts of repression, both private and state-supported, against labor and unions more specifically. This was a time without a welfare state. This was a time without significant government regulation. And so it was just simply a much harsher form of economy that people lived under.

And so there were many, many people who really suffered under this system. And this, of course, gave rise to immense amount support for a movement as the socialist movement was, both in the United States and in other parts of the world, that said, “Look, this cannot go on. This is an unjust, unfair system, and we need one that works for the benefit of the wide majority of citizens rather than enriching an elite few.”

So the, the system that existed at the time was so much harsher, so much more unequal, that it’s not surprising that you had support for socialist parties. That kind of support was much greater in Europe, even than in the United States for a whole variety of reasons, but it stemmed from real problems, real grievances, and real inequities.

CHAKRABARTI: How much did Debs or other prominent American socialists at the time take their cues, say, from Leninism in Russia?

BERMAN: So this is a huge debate. Really, we had a sort of American form of socialism, right? There were absolutely, to get back to earlier conversations, folks in the United States who, particularly after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, were sympathetic both to the Soviet Union and to the form of communism that existed there.

But for the most part, socialists in the U.S. claimed to be committed to democracy. We already had a democratic system or something resembling a democratic system in the United States, and so it was really foolish to oppose that simply because it was supported and by many and wanted to be expanded by many as well.

Debs was not a communist. He was not a Leninist. He wanted an end to capitalism over time, but he was not someone who wanted to turn the United States into the Soviet Union after 1917. An end to capitalism over time, though.

CHAKRABARTI: I’m still struggling a little in understanding what that actually meant in the minds of people like Debs because what system then would replace it? Economically, the limit that I have is that the only other strictly non-capitalist systems that I can imagine are, well, communism, as we talked about before, or feudalism, monarchies.

I don’t know. Right. None of them look very attractive.

BERMAN: But this is the same critique or the same question, rather, one could pose to a contemporary Democratic socialist like Mamdani. You are absolutely right. There is no non-capitalist and democratic system that has ever existed.

So the question for Democratic socialists today would have to be twofold, right? One, what, what exactly does your non-capitalist system look like? They’re very vague on that. And two, how would you ensure that that was in fact compatible with democracy? Because historically, those two things have not been compatible, right?

Because when you give the state that much power, when you take away economic resources from people, that is to say, when you don’t allow them to have their own sources of power and income economically, then you really are creating, at the very least, severe challenges for democracy. So this is a perennial question for those on the left who wanna combine a world without capitalism but remain committed to democracy.

It is both empirically never existed, and theoretically, it’s hard to imagine how that could be combined. So those are questions one could have asked Debs. Those are questions one could ask the Mamdani whose clip you played just, um, you know, a few moments ago.

CHAKRABARTIL So let’s listen to a little bit more of another prominent American socialist from history who actually served as the mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin from April of 1948 all the way to April 1960.

This is Frank Zeidler, and here’s part of his 1948 inaugural speech as mayor.

FRANK ZEIDLER [TAPE]: I propose to offer vigorous leadership and action with only one purpose, the public welfare. I invite the cooperation of the Common Council in all objectives that will bring a better life for all citizens. I invite the cooperation of all existing organizations, civic, business, labor, women, industrial, church, welfare, fraternal, and other organized groups of citizens. We must remind ourselves that democracy is government for the people and by the people.

CHAKRABARTI: So that’s Frank Zeidler, former mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1948. Now, you said something really interesting earlier about how there’s a difference between social democracies and democratic socialism or socialists, and that got me thinking.

We’ll talk about the difference in a second, but that got me thinking that in terms of the person who may have been most influential in righting the imbalance of, you know, the 1920s and ’30s. My mind of course goes to FDR, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who came from the very wealthiest classes of the United States, and I don’t think would have called himself a socialist.

But here’s a little bit of what he said on the third anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act. So here he is. Here’s President Roosevelt in August of 1938.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT [TAPE]: Because it has become increasingly difficult for individuals to build their own security single-handed, government must now step in and help them lay the foundation stones, just as government in the past has helped lay the foundation of business and industry. We must face the fact that in this country, we have a rich man’s security and a poor man’s security, and that the government owes equal obligations to both.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938. So Professor Berman, what do you think about that? I think I’m most taken by what the, the Roosevelt said there at the end, that government actually has an equal obligation both to the poor and to the rich. That’s not exactly something that we hear from Democratic socialists today.

BERMAN: So I think it’s really important to recognize that Roosevelt saw himself as saving capitalism, right? Right? He understood that it was under immense strain as a result of the Great Depression and the backlash to that and he wanted to create a system that showed people that democratic capitalism could, to go back to his words, that could be good, provide security, not only just for the wealthy, but for all American citizens.

And so what he put in place was a wide variety of government programs that were designed to help those who were suffering, that designed to help those who were unemployed, but within a capitalist system, right? So his idea was that the democratic state could and should use its powers to make sure not only that capitalism worked well, but worked to the benefit of all citizens.

That is a social democratic type of approach rather than a socialist approach, insofar as the distinction there is that Roosevelt had no desire to eventually over time eliminate the capitalist system. He wanted to make it function better, and by better he meant both productive and able to deliver benefits not just to the few, but to the many.

That is much more akin to the kinds of systems and aspirations that exist in West European, for example, social democratic parties than it is, for example, to the kinds of things that someone like Mamdani in the little clip that you played earlier or other democratic socialists aspire towards, which is they’re willing to accept the reforms today, but they claim, at the very least, that their aspiration is over time to eliminate or replace the capitalist system.

I would guess, however, just let me say one last thing, that within DSA there are people who really are more social democrats than socialists, but right now this movement is kind of a tent for everyone who just really is frustrated with the Democratic Party and would like to see it move left on economic and other issues.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, point well taken. And actually, I was just gonna follow up on that, because this, this is what you said earlier, that there’s this difference between, social democrats or social democratic parties, as we see in Europe, and especially Northern Europe, and the democratic socialists here in the United States.

I guess what I’m wondering, and I’m not questioning you, I’m just sort of asking this question out loud, which I suppose by definition is my job. But,  we’re seeing democratic socialists in the United States now gaining some momentum, I mean, at least in some pretty deep blue parts of this country. If indeed they want to effectively advance their vision, I just wonder why not move towards more of a social democratic way of seeing the world, AKA, saving capitalism or using capitalism for good?

Wouldn’t that be more effective? Because, you know, when you look under the hood at the policies that we see in social democratic countries, yes, you know, the money has to come from taxes, but those policies are wildly popular. They’re also wildly popular here in the United States, even if we can’t get them passed. Do you see what I mean?

BERMAN: So I absolutely see what you mean, and I think there’s an important distinction between what the DSA has on its website as its kind of official program and what the aspirations are of both its members and more broadly the people who vote for it. I would be willing to guess, that the people who are voting for it are not voting for the abolition of capitalism even over time.

What they’re voting for is a system that is more humane, that is more just, that provides more security, that helps people across the spectrum, working class people, educated people who do not have jobs that enable them to kind of pay for homes and support a growing family. I think what most voters probably want is something closer to the social democratic vision of the United States than the let’s get away from capitalism even over time that some of the more activist members do.

But that is a kind of tension that will have to be resolved over time if DSA folks become more and more powerful within the Democratic Party because then they will have to decide what exactly do we want to do? Do we wanna do what’s possible, or do we wanna try to hold out for more radical reforms that we may not be able to get today at all?

There are other issues obviously that are going to characterize DSA. They are very gung ho on the Israel-Gaza issue, and that’s also probably going to create tensions both within the party and between the party and its voters. But, these are things that as a movement grows, it inevitably will have to deal with.

What exactly do you mean? What exactly are you gonna prioritize? What kinds of reforms are you willing to support over the short to medium term?

CHAKRABARTI: Let’s listen to one more, in terms of the current faces of a democratic socialism in this country, democratic socialist Chris Rabb won a recent primary election, the Democratic primary election, in Pennsylvania’s third congressional district, and Rabb told CBS back in May that democratic socialists want systemic change.

CHRIS RABB [TAPE]: We have to overhaul entire structures that do not benefit the Epstein class, but in fact benefit average people in ways that have not really been the case really ever. And the things that have been most meaningful, that have been embraced by most Americans, are in fact socialist in nature, whether it’s Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. These are all socialist things that in a pure free enterprise system, capitalist system, would not exist.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s democratic socialist Chris Rabb, who won the Democratic primary, uh, in Pennsylvania’s third congressional district. So Professor Berman, we just have about a minute or so left, and I wanna take this back to where we began.

By the way, thank you for this really, uh, enlightening explanation of what socialism and communism are. But the president recently has really ratcheted up the volume on his fear-mongering around communism in the United States. And ‘m not asking you to read the president’s mind, but read the politics of the moment.

Is it because these DSA candidates have caught onto something, this general profound distress amongst many millions of Americans that does mirror what we saw in the Gilded Age?

BERMAN: So yes, I mean, he is trying to scare people away from the Democratic Party by saying that they are about to be taken over by a bunch of communists.

That said, there is very widespread support for the kinds of things Rabb talked about in the sense of Social Security, Medicare. Even JD Vance, right, and some others within the Republican Party claim to favor a worker-forward economic policy, shifting the Republican Party towards more worker-friendly policies.

This is a tension within the Republican coalition, but it is also a tension within the Democratic coalition. How far should they go?

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Well, I would also imagine that Democratic socialists say they do not like the Democratic Party, but that’s for another day.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.