Bhaskar Sunkara’s “The Socialist Manifesto” and Understanding Millennial Socialism

“What has become ‘millennial socialism’ arguably got its start in 2011, with the founding of Jacobin, a proudly left-wing magazine that was trendy, readable, and erudite.”

Introduction

If socialism was not completely dead, it was certainly comatose and on life-support in the years following 1989. Few would have predicted that socialism would come to enjoy a phoenix-like rise from the ashes in the new millennium. The new millennium was, after all, supposed to be a time when capitalism would enjoy unprecedented legitimacy as the sole surviving great ideology at Fukuyama’s proverbial “end of history.” And yet, socialism’s discovery is precisely what has happened in the 2010’s, driven largely by the enthusiasm of the younger generations. What has become “millennial socialism” arguably got its start in 2011, with the founding of Jacobin, a proudly left-wing magazine that was trendy, readable, and erudite. Jacobin’s success laid the groundwork for the founding of similarly popular outlets such as Current Affairs, as well as academic forums like Catalyst.

The success of millennial socialist intellectuals owes much to a marked tonal shift. As far back as George Orwell’s seminal 1937 work The Road to Wigan Pier, sympathetic commentators noticed that left-wing intellectuals did not really care much about their ideas reaching new audiences. Much of socialist writing was jargon-filled and labyrinth-like, and it practically required a graduate degree in Marxist theory to understand. And, if one did happen to work through it, he or she would notice the author spending much time targeting other left-wing theorists, rather than thinking about how to create a genuinely better world (a tendency Monty Python would later mock). By contrast, millennial socialists write for a mass audience, combining history and economic theory with Kanye West references. With the election of President Donald Trump and the breakdown of status quo politics, these millennial socialists have become even more ambitious, exemplified by the release of works such as Nathan J. Robinson’s (of Current Affairs) excellent book Why You Should be a Socialist, along with G.S Griffin’s Why America Needs Socialism, which was published in January. And, of course, Jacobin founder and editor Bhaskar Sunkara has made his own contribution with The Socialist Manifesto, which was published in April of last year.

What Does it Mean to Be a Millennial Socialist?

Sunkara’s book is decidedly less personal than Why You Should be a Socialist by Nathan J. Robinson. Aside from a few ruminations on what inspired him to found Jacobin, Sunkara mostly leaps right into business after the first pages of the book. He begins by considering what life is like for workers in three different settings. The first is in the contemporary United States. The second is in one of the Nordic social democracies. And, finally, Sunkara hypothesizes about what it would be like for workers in a potential future, where socialism has democratically and gradually taken hold in the United States. He acknowledges—in the process—an important truth.