Meet the Democratic Socialists of America, Part One

Seven years ago, on Nov. 15, 2019, in association with the Claremont Institute, the Institute of World Politics, and the Victims of Communism Foundation, the Imprimatur Group organized a pair of public debates between four members of the Democratic Socialists of America -- at that time, a political movement that few had heard of -- and a group of four prominent conservative thinkers. Intially dismissed as a fringe movement, the DSA today can boast of electing the current mayor of the city of New York, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, and may well see another of its candidates, Nithya Raman, elected mayor Los Angeles on Tuesday. They are not so easily disregarded anymore.

The first debate, presented here, was on the resolution, Resolved: That Socialism/Communism Remains a Viable Economic, Social, and Political System, Which Has Just Not Yet Been Properly Implemented. Arguing for the affirmative were Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor of Jacobin magazine, publisher of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.; Eric Blanc, a correspondent for Jacobin magazine, a writer for the Nation and the Guardian, a former high school teacher and then-doctoral student at NYU, and the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics.

In the negative were Marek Chodakiewicz, a professor of history at the Institute of World Politics, and the author of a number of books, including Intermarium: The Land Between the Black and Baltic Seas (2012), a depiction of the Eastern Borderlands of the West on the rim of the former Soviet Union, and On the Right and Left (2013), an intellectual history of modern ideologies. Ronald Radosh is professor emeritus of history at the City University of New York (CUNY); a fellow at The Hudson Institute; and the other author of Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left and The Rosenberg File.

The second debate, which we will present tomorrow, was on the resolution, Resolved: That Socialism/Communism, having failed repeatedly in the 20th century at the economic level, now seeks to achieve its social goals via Cultural Marxism. I moderated both panels and also gave a brief presentation about Communism in East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Our series rounds out with interviews of several of the participants, including Sunkara, Radosh, Michael Anton, Nicole Aschoff, and Mike Gonzalez, as well as an interview with Dr. John Lenczowski, the founder of IWP and currently its chancellor. The entire program was carried live by Fox Nation, and will be available in its entirety at the conclusion of this series.