Part One: Beyond the Scandinavian Story
“Our goal is communism.”
—David Jenkins, Democratic Socialists of America leader
When I first heard that statement, I assumed it had been taken out of context.
After all, Christians are routinely assured that today’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is simply advocating a version of Scandinavian or Northern European social democracy: somewhat higher taxes, stronger labor protections, universal healthcare, expanded public investment, and a more generous social safety net.
One may agree or disagree with those policies, but they hardly resemble the revolutionary politics of the twentieth century.
Then I began reading.
Not conservative critiques.
Not cable news commentary.
Not campaign advertisements.
I began reading the Democratic Socialists of America’s own platform, convention documents, caucus literature, affiliated publications, and the writings of those who increasingly shape the organization’s leadership.
The deeper I read, the less David Jenkins’ statement sounded like an unfortunate rhetorical flourish.
Instead, it increasingly sounded like one of the few leaders willing to say publicly what many of the movement’s dominant factions already assume privately.
That realization prompted this essay.
Why This Matters
Readers of this blog know that I rarely write primarily about politics.
For several years I have tried instead to defend what I often call God’s Good Creation.
- Marriage.
- Family.
- The sanctity of human life.
- The meaning of the human body.
- The created distinction between male and female.
- The conviction that human beings flourish, not by inventing reality for themselves, but by gratefully receiving the created order as a gift from God.
Those concerns inevitably intersect with politics because politics increasingly attempts to redefine realities that Scripture and Christian tradition present as part of creation itself.
Politics, however, is never the starting point.
Ideas precede politics.
Worldviews shape ideas.
Theology ultimately shapes worldviews.
That is why Christians cannot evaluate political movements merely by asking whether they promise affordable housing, universal healthcare, better schools, or lower taxes.
Every political movement rests upon assumptions…
- About human nature.
- About justice.
- About authority.
- About freedom.
- About the purpose of society.
Those assumptions matter.
Perhaps they matter more than the policies themselves.
The Comfortable Story
A recent exchange with a progressive Christian friend illustrates why I believe this conversation has become necessary.
She sent me an article by Christian writer Shawn Patrick Connelly defending democratic socialism against what he regarded as unfair conservative caricatures.
He writes:
“Democratic socialism, as its current American advocates define it, keeps existing democratic institutions, elections, courts, a free press, fully intact and argues for expanding social provision within them, universal healthcare, stronger labor protections, public investment in housing and education. That’s much closer to the European social-democratic model than to anything that ran behind the Iron Curtain.”
That description is reassuring.
It is also increasingly common.
If this accurately described today’s Democratic Socialists of America, I doubt I would be writing this article.
Christians have debated the proper role of government for centuries.
Faithful believers disagree about:
- Taxation.
- Healthcare.
- Labor policy.
- Education.
- Housing.
- Immigration.
- The size of the welfare state. (See previous blog post)
Those debates are important.
But they are prudential debates.
The Church has never required Christians to embrace one particular economic system.
My concern is different.
My concern is whether Mr. Connelly’s description still accurately describes the movement currently operating under the banner of the Democratic Socialists of America.
After reading its own literature, I no longer believe that it does.
Read Their Documents
Before going any further, let me make one promise.
This essay is not an attempt to resurrect Cold War rhetoric.
Nor is it an attempt to equate today’s Democratic Socialists of America with Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
History deserves better than that.
The twentieth century witnessed horrors almost beyond comprehension.
Tens of millions perished under explicitly communist regimes.
Nothing in this essay should trivialize those atrocities through careless historical comparison.
But there is an equal and opposite error.
We sometimes become so determined to avoid exaggeration that we fail to recognize genuine ideological change when it occurs.
Political movements should be evaluated, not primarily by the reassuring language they use when appealing to the general public, but by the ideas they teach, the goals they publish, and the convictions of those who increasingly lead them.
That is what I have attempted to do.
Whenever possible, I have relied upon the
- DSA’s own documents.
- Its own platforms.
- Its own convention materials.
- Its own affiliated publications.
- Its own caucuses.
- Its own leaders.
I encourage readers—especially my progressive Christian friends—to read the original sources for themselves.
Do not trust me.
Do not trust Fox News.
Do not trust MS NOW.
Read the documents.
Then decide.
DSA Documents
My argument rises or falls on whether these documents say what I claim they say.
A Different Conversation Than Most Americans Realize
One discovery surprised me more than any other.
Most Americans—including many Christians—continue assuming the principal debate surrounding democratic socialism concerns economics.
- Capitalism versus socialism.
- Markets versus government.
- Private ownership versus public ownership.
Those questions certainly remain important.
But they are no longer the primary debate taking place inside today’s Democratic Socialists of America.
Increasingly, the debate concerns something else entirely.
It is no longer whether socialism should replace capitalism.
It is what kind of socialism should replace capitalism—and how revolutionary the movement should become.
That is a profoundly different conversation.
And it becomes obvious almost immediately once one begins reading the literature produced by the organization’s own caucuses.
Most Americans have never heard of organizations such as the Marxist Unity Group, Reform & Revolution, Red Star, Bread & Roses, or Socialist Majority.
Yet these organizations increasingly shape leadership elections, convention resolutions, ideological strategy, and the future direction of the Democratic Socialists of America.
More surprising still, they speak with remarkable candor.
Unlike political campaign literature written for the general public, these documents are written largely for fellow socialists.
The intended audience is not suburban swing voters.
It is committed activists.
As a result, the language becomes refreshingly honest.
Or perhaps alarmingly honest.
One caucus openly describes itself as a “revolutionary Marxist caucus.”
Another proudly traces its intellectual heritage to Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolshevik tradition.1At its core, Bolshevism refers to the ideology and program of the Bolsheviks, which advocated violent overthrow of capitalism(1). But to really understand what that meant in practice, you need to know the historical context: Lenin led the Bolsheviks, a revolutionary faction that broke away from the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ party in 1903, and they seized power in a nearly bloodless coup in November 1917(2).
What made Bolshevism distinctive wasn’t just its revolutionary goals—it was Lenin’s conviction about how revolution would happen. Lenin believed workers lacked the understanding to recognize their own interests, so they needed guidance from a disciplined “vanguard” party of revolutionaries(2). This wasn’t spontaneous uprising; it was revolution imposed from above by a committed minority.
In practice, Bolshevism became something far more totalizing than a simple economic system. It aimed to reshape the entire person through ideology, with the totality of human life as its scope, accomplished through centralized and highly organized power(3). Under Stalin, this evolved into Stalinism—notorious for totalitarianism, widespread terror, and the cult of personality surrounding Stalin as an infallible leader(2).
Interestingly, Bolshevism represents a state-centric approach to achieving social unity, grounded in what bureaucrats defined as historical necessity—essentially a rationalist interpretation of Russian communal traditions. So while it began as a response to genuine social injustice, the system that emerged became something radically different from its original ideals.
(1) Inc Merriam-Webster, in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2003).
(2) COMPTON’S ENCYCLOPEDIA, s.v. “Communism.” (Copyright 2015 Encyclopaedia Britannica)
(3) Emil Brunner, “A Fresh Appraisal: The Cleveland Report on Red China,” Christianity Today (Washington, D.C.: Christianity Today, 1960), 4:15:604.
Another argues that socialists should work toward overthrowing the capitalist state.
Another calls for building a mass socialist party capable of fundamentally transforming American political life.
These are not descriptions authored by political conservatives.
These are self-descriptions.
That distinction matters.
Because it changes the question Christians ought to ask.
The question is no longer whether Scandinavian-style social democracy is compatible with Christian political thought.
The question is whether Christians have accurately understood the movement that increasingly calls itself democratic socialist.
I am no longer convinced that many of us have.
And once I began reading those internal documents, I found myself asking a different question altogether:
Who, exactly, is steering the Democratic Socialists of America today?
That is where the story becomes considerably more interesting.
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