There is a massive gap in American political literacy.
We have allowed the definition of “radical” to drift so far to the right that it now encompasses policies that are effectively just common sense. We call it “far-left” to suggest that a government should negotiate drug prices. We call it “socialism” to suggest that workers should have paid time off to care for their newborns. We call it “tyranny” to suggest that a society might be safer if we kept weapons of war out of the hands of civilians.
But in the grand sweep of history and political theory, these ideas are not radical. They are boring. They are the status quo in Berlin, in Tokyo, in Ottawa, and in London. They represent the center-left consensus of the modern world: social democracy. They seek to humanize capitalism, to smooth its sharpest edges, and to ensure that the market does not devour the people it is meant to serve.
This is what the American Right has been fighting against for decades. They have been fighting against normalcy. They have been fighting against the baseline expectation of a functioning society.
But in their zeal to demonize everything to the left of Ronald Reagan, they have completely lost sight of what the actual, bona fide Radical Left looks like. They have spent so long screaming “Marxist” at people who just want a public option that they have forgotten what actual Marxism entails.
There is a difference between regulating an engine and tearing it out of the car. The “radicalism” the Right fears is just engine maintenance. The Real Radical Left does not want to fix the machine. It wants to dismantle it.
Let us be clear about what the actual Left proposes when it stops trying to be polite, stops trying to be electable, and stops trying to save capitalism from itself.
The Real Radical Left is not interested in reforming the police. It is interested in abolishing them. It does not view law enforcement as a neutral force that has gone astray. It views the police as the violent arm of the state, designed to enforce racial hierarchies and protect private property over human life. The goal is not better training or body cameras. The goal is defunding, disarming, and ending the carceral state entirely.
The Real Radical Left is not interested in lowering drug prices. It is interested in seizing the patents. It believes that medicine is a human right, not a commodity to be traded for profit. If a pharmaceutical company holds the patent for a life-saving drug, the actual Left believes the government has a moral obligation to ignore that patent, manufacture the drug generically immediately, and provide it at cost. If that bankrupts the company, so be it. Public health overrides private profit.
The Real Radical Left is not interested in raising taxes on the wealthy. It is interested in the confiscation of assets. It does not believe that a society where billionaires exist while children go hungry is simply “unfair.” It believes it is theft. The goal is not a bigger slice of the pie. The goal is breaking the bakery. They support capping personal wealth, seizing hoarded resources, and democratizing the means of production so that the workers who build the products actually own them.
The Real Radical Left is not interested in ending foreign wars. It is interested in ending the Empire. It does not view the United States as a “global policeman” that has lost its way. It views the United States as the primary source of global instability. The actual Left calls for the dissolution of NATO. It calls for the closure of U.S. military bases worldwide. It calls for the cancellation of all IMF and World Bank debts that strangle the Global South. It seeks to end the era of American imperialism, not manage it.
The Real Radical Left is not interested in a pathway to citizenship for immigrants. It is interested in the abolition of borders. It views national boundaries as artificial constructs designed to keep labor cheap and the poor desperate. It argues that if capital can move freely across borders to chase the lowest wage, then human beings should have the freedom to move as they please to survive.
This is the “Radical Left.”
This is what happens when you push people to the edge. This is what happens when you tell them that basic decency is impossible. When you tell them that “normal” is “radical,” they stop striving for normal. They start striving for revolution.
The American Right has spent forty years screaming “Socialist” at anyone who wants a public park or a living wage. They have spent so long demonizing the word that they have forgotten what the monster actually looks like. They are fighting against European-style social democracy, which is capitalism with a human face.
But the Real Radical Left has no human face for capitalism. It sees capitalism as a system that requires exploitation, war, and ecological collapse to function. It does not want to save it. It wants to end it.
So, go ahead. Keep calling “normal” “radical.” Keep telling the public that paid maternity leave is the end of the world. Keep telling them that public healthcare is a Soviet plot. Keep telling them that negotiating drug prices is tyranny.
Eventually, the public is going to realize you are lying to them. They are going to realize that the “radical” things they are being offered are actually just common sense. And once they realize that the “radical” boogeyman is actually just a shadow puppet, they might just go looking for the real thing.
And when they do, you won’t be arguing with Bernie Sanders. You’ll be arguing with history itself. Be careful what you wish for.
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