The first and most important contribution of American Democratic Socialism is to highlight the inherent diversity of the movement throughout its history. Dorrien doesn’t shy away from the fact that many American socialists were morally culpable in the prejudices of their time. Eugene Debs gets a lot of credit as a charismatic figure who pushed the movement forward. But Dorrien points out that he had a bad habit of ignoring how racism operated independently of class oppression, and how many in the early socialist movement held bigoted views. Michael Harrington, an important socialist intellectual, is applauded for bringing attention to the plight of America’s poor. But Dorrien notes how he long struggled to understand the emotional register of feminist language. Dorrien also highlights the vital contributions of long marginalized identity and ideological groups to American democratic socialism at all levels, which testifies to its intellectual, political, and activist diversity. This includes figures from W.E.B Du Bois to Martin Luther King Jr., Nancy Fraser, and the women of color “Squad” members who are the face of progressivism today. Overall, the book should be the final stake in the heart of accusations that American socialism, past or present, is nothing but a bunch of white male “Bernie Bro” types who want better wages and pensions for people who look like them.
For the most part, Dorrien applauds this diversity as a sign of democratic socialism’s broad appeal and integrity, but he rightly stresses how it has and does pose intellectual and organizational challenges. As an academic, I empathize with Dorrien’s description of the heated battles between the “old” and “cultural” left that broke out in the 1990s and have been waged ever since. “Old” left intellectuals held that American progressives had resigned themselves to accepting the worst kinds of neoliberal capitalist exploitation and environmental degradation as long as there were more CEOs of color. Meanwhile, cultural leftists focused on demanding inclusion and liberal rights insisted that old-school Marxist and revolutionary materialists hadn’t achieved anything of note for decades next to the real advances obtained for women, people of color, and queer individuals that were spearheaded by rainbow coalitions and politics. This calcified into an enduring fault line amongst American progressives that has only recently been softened. Political diversity is a strength, but it is also something that requires constant dialogue and empathy to avoid becoming factionalism.