What's behind democratic socialists' historic victories in the midterms?
Historian and The New Yorker writer Jill Lepore says the DSA, once maligned, is no longer "beyond the political pale." She discusses the history of socialism in America, and its current resurgence.
By Terry Gross·36 min read
NPR
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. American socialists are having their best year since 1912. In last week's midterms, six socialists were elected to Congress, and three were elected mayor, which means New York, LA, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Ann Arbor and Providence, Rhode Island, are now led by socialists. But socialism means different things to different people. Even among American socialists, then and now, different factions have serious disagreements over what the agenda should be.
My guest, Jill Lepore, has written about the history of American socialism from the founding of the Socialist Party of America in 1901 to today's DSA, Democratic Socialists of America. Her new article in The New Yorker is titled "Can American Socialism Survive Its Success?" She's also recently written about whether the president has the power to declare war and how difficult it is to be a historian in a period when President Donald Trump is trying to rewrite American history and deleting its darker parts in schools, national parks and museums.
Lepore is a professor of American history at Harvard University, professor of law at Harvard Law School and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her books include The New York Times bestsellers "These Truths: A History Of The United States" and "We The People: A History Of The U.S. Constitution," which won a 2026 Pulitzer Prize. Her latest, "The Rise And Fall Of The Artificial State," is about how AI is affecting politics and government.
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JILL LEPORE: Hey. thanks so much for having me, Terry.
GROSS: My pleasure. Socialism means different things to different people, and there are different factions within the DSA that define socialism differently. So let's look at the national DSA and its positions, and then we'll talk about what other people in local branches of the DSA have to say. So Megan Romer, the co-chair of national DSA, was asked about the official national agenda in an interview on the "Fox News Sunday" show with Shannon Bream. So this was broadcast on July 26. So let's hear an excerpt of that interview.
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SHANNON BREAM: OK. So we're going to put up on the screen a few of the things that are part of your platform, and I want to ask you - just give me sort of a true/false on these. Abolish the Senate.
MEGAN ROMER: True.
BREAM: OK. Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them.
ROMER: Yep.
BREAM: Abolish ICE.
ROMER: Absolutely.
BREAM: Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the U.S. illegally.
ROMER: As a long-term plan, yep.
BREAM: Defund the Pentagon.
ROMER: Absolutely.
BREAM: Abolish prisons, at least in large part.
ROMER: Yeah, again, as part of a long-term program. Yeah.
BREAM: OK, so no prisons. Government or public ownership of most large corporations.
ROMER: Yeah, absolutely.
GROSS: So, Jill Lepore, that sounds very extreme.
LEPORE: Yeah, I mean, it was a notorious interview, too, and listening to the audio really comes across why. I mean, the format, the quiz, doesn't serve Megan Romer well, but it's her tone of voice and giving answers that are, you know, certifying that these are the formal positions of the platform of the DSA is quite glib. There's a little bit of kind of an edge of laughter there that I think exacerbated the perception of the extremism of the DSA.
GROSS: Do you want to explain a couple of things on that agenda that might make sense if you knew what they were about? Like, let's start with abolishing the Senate. That actually goes back a long way. And the Senate was a compromise in the Constitution.
LEPORE: Really, that's actually one of the more mainstream positions on that platform. I absolutely understand that it comes across as extreme. But there is a long tradition of calling for the abolition of the Senate, and it's not entirely a socialist position. So, you know, I was really immediately struck watching that interview how many of those items on the to-do list were on the 1912 formal platform of the Socialist Party of America, which was a political party. DSA is not a political party.
But the abolition of the Senate was a measure intended to reduce the influence of the wealthiest Americans in the progressive era, because, remember, the Senate at the time the Constitution was drafted and ratified in the 18th century and through the year 1913 was elected not by the people, but by the state legislatures. It was called the millionaires lobby. If you wanted a Senate seat, you just had to really pay off enough state legislators to vote for you.
So there had been efforts to call for a constitutional amendment instituting the direct election of the Senate by the people instead of by state legislatures dating back to the Civil War. I mean, people just really didn't like the idea that they couldn't vote for their own senators. And in the gilded age, really, it just was very, very wealthy men who were chosen by state legislatures to be in the Senate. And this measure kept passing the House, but it went to the Senate, and the Senate always struck it down 'cause these guys knew they couldn't win a popular vote. So the Senate was really quite reviled in the progressive era. So abolishing it was an extreme solution, but it was at a time when people were very seriously trying to reinvent the Senate, in any event.
GROSS: And the way you described it, the Senate was created in the Constitution as something for the North since the South got the three-fifths clause, and small states like Rhode Island wanted, you know, maximal representation. So if every state got two votes, Rhode Island would be equal, even though it was a small state.
LEPORE: Yeah. I mean, the compromises of 1787 really all come from two problems, which is the very different interests of the so-called free states and the slave states and of the small states and the big states. And those compromises are actually all folded into Article 5 of the Constitution, which is the amendment provision, which among other things, puts beyond the capacity of amendment, the equal suffrage of the Senate. And it also requires that no one can abolish the slave trade before 20 years are out.
So this idea that, like, you should have an amendable constitution was really important at the founding. But then there were two things that were held essentially beyond amendment because those compromises were so necessary to getting the free states and the slave states and the small states and the big states to agree on the Constitution. So the Senate was really a very decided compromise, and it was the other half of the compromise that we think of as the three-fifths clause, which grants enormous political power to the Southern states and proportionate representation.
GROSS: 'Cause every slave would count as three-fifths of a person, which is just such a shocking thing to put into a constitution.
LEPORE: Yeah. It hugely affects the politics of the first century of the nation's history, right? Like even of the first five presidents, four of them are from Virginia, 'cause Virginia has a hugely disproportionate Electoral College vote.
GROSS: So replace the presidency in the Supreme Court as we know them. What's your understanding of what national DSA means by that?
LEPORE: Again, like, those ideas were also in the 1912 platform of the Socialist Party of America. There's really just a lot of recycling of old, really quite antique socialist positions, which involve the proposition that the Supreme Court is an inherently aristocratic and vestigial - in that sense, a vestige of 18th century aristocratic ideas and can't really be reform but needs to be completely reinvented. The presidency, too, has taken on too much power.
So there's a kind of commitment to what we might think of as direct democracy, right? So that's part of democratic socialism. They want to democratize the workplace, but they also want a radically democratic form of government in which the House of Representatives is the only really representative branch of government and, therefore, should have the predominance of power. Now, that's said, Congress was always meant to be the strongest branch of government among the framers, as well.
GROSS: But using the language replace the presidency, I just sort of...
LEPORE: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Feel like the messaging could be a little better. You know?
LEPORE: (Laughter) I mean, it's a kind of interesting sort of spoiler mentality politically. I mean, when this platform was published this past summer, a lot of leading Democrats specifically denounced it. Those that didn't really just didn't want to call attention to it. And, you know, Republicans were thrilled, right? But running against socialism didn't work at all for the Republicans. I mean, it's among - nothing worked for the Republicans. But this was, among the campaigns, a kind of little Red Scare of 2026 - right? - to label your opponent a socialist - completely failed.
GROSS: And also, not all members of the DSA agree with this platform. So I'm going to play another clip, and this is Zohran Mamdani on the same show Sunday - like, "Fox News Sunday" with Shannon Bream. And he's not down with all of the things that the co-chair mentioned. So let's hear an excerpt of that interview, which was on this weekend.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY")
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: What we saw last night are candidates across the country, no matter how they describe themselves, running on policies that would transform working people's lives. James Talarico ran on universal pre-K. Annie Andrews ran on ending endless wars. Keisha Lance Bottoms ran on streamlining the production of affordable housing. Jocelyn Benson ran on a data-center moratorium. These are the kinds of things that also characterize what we've been doing right here in New York City. And yes. I'm proud to be doing so as a mayor who's a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
BREAM: OK. Get rid of borders?
MAMDANI: No.
BREAM: Get rid of SCOTUS.
MAMDANI: No.
BREAM: Get rid of jails.
MAMDANI: No.
BREAM: So do you think DSA's going to kick you out?
MAMDANI: No.
BREAM: It sounds like you're not...
MAMDANI: (Laughter).
BREAM: ...Aligned with some of the core things they really want to get done.
MAMDANI: You know, when you go into a room and there are more than one socialist in the room, you will often find disagreement in that room. And what unites members of the Democratic Socialists of America is, in many ways, what has brought people into politics over the years - a belief in the dignity of working-class people and the dignity that has to be a characteristic of their lives and an understanding that democracy, for it to be meaningful, can't just be at the ballot box. It has to be in the rest of our lives, from the workplace to every other aspect of it. And that's why I'm excited to be a member, and that's why I've been excited also to deliver for New Yorkers.
GROSS: That was Mamdani on "Fox News Sunday" with Shannon Bream. Mamdani's style and his points of view - that's what's really catching on, not the national DSA's platform. So what does that say to you?
LEPORE: Yeah. I think - and there are a number of candidates who, I think, would consider themselves democratic socialists and would be comfortable with that term who are not members of the DSA, specifically because there are elements of the platform that they don't support. So I do think it can mean many things to many people, but what's most interesting is that it no longer means you're beyond the political pale. Right?
You can run as a democratic socialist in the United States, and you can win mayors' offices, right? We saw that. And it's not just Mamdani - right? - the mayor of LA, the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can espouse positions that are strongly advocated by the DSA, like Medicare for All, you know, that Bernie Sanders has been campaigning on or a data-center moratorium. And you can win office. I mean, two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for All, right? Like, we really need Medicare for All.
And it used to be really effective to say that's a socialist position. Therefore, it's off the table. Right? That's the campaign against Harry Truman's national health insurance program in the 1940s and early 1950s. That was destroyed by a campaign consultant company that was hired to depict national healthcare programs as socialized medicine. And even, you know, thinking back to the kind of Hillary Clinton healthcare or the protests against the Affordable Care Act, right? Those were tarred and were less capacious than they might have been because it was easy to attack them as forms of socialism. As we look at the election results from 2026, I think that move might not work anymore.
GROSS: And as Mamdani pointed out, put a group of socialists in a room together. They might all disagree with each other. And there's a long history of that.
LEPORE: Yeah. I spent a lot of time reading the proceedings of the 1912 Socialist Party of America National Convention, which was held in Indianapolis that year. And it really is, like - if you were a screenwriter, you would be thrilled because it would just require very little work to have a vivid illustration of the point that, you know, if you have two socialists in a room, you're going to have at least three political opinions. They argue over the rules for the first day, and it's meaningless. It's just - there's a real love of oratory and a kind of disagreeableness and a kind of commitment to dissent that's really foundational - right? - to being a socialist. But that means that there's not a lot of go-along-to-get-along at the political convention.
GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jill Lepore. She's a professor of American history and a law professor at Harvard University. We're talking about her new piece in The New Yorker, where she's a staff writer. It's titled "Can American Socialism Survive Its Success?" We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Harvard professor and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore. Her new piece in The New Yorker is about the Democratic Socialists of America and about the history of socialism in America. It's titled "Can American Socialism Survive Its Success?"
So let's just look for a second at some of the things Zohran Mamdani promised that he's making at least incremental change on. He has pushed for universal daycare, and he's delivering that to some New Yorkers. Not all of them, but it's a work in progress. His goal is to add a tax on very expensive second homes when the owner lives out of state and doesn't live in that second home and doesn't rent it either. He lost in court. That was overturned. Now there's a couple of other lawsuits he's facing on that.
His plan to have city-owned discount grocery stores is running into obstacles. We'll see how that goes. He's succeeded in filling a lot of potholes, which is no small thing, whether you drive, bicycle or are a pedestrian. And these are all very popular. Well, I'm not sure about the second homes. I don't know how popular that is. But he is moving forward.
LEPORE: And he himself remains very popular. I mean, it's a really important part of Mamdani's success, the - his charm and charisma and his youth, right? I mean, I think a number of different polls this fall found that among 18- to 34-year-olds, about 50% have a favorable view of socialism. That's a big part of Mamdani's support and of the support of candidates endorsing positions affiliated with democratic socialism around the country.
And I think local governance is the place where, historically, socialism has worked the best. I mean, he - Mamdani has a lot of challenges he's going to face. But mayors' offices have been places where - I mean, just think about Sanders, right? He came to political power when he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont. And he was an unbelievably successful mayor of Burlington, Vermont. I mean, it was a really struggling city, and his initiatives were very much in the Mamdani style. I mean, it was a very market-forward kind of socialism that Sanders advanced and really ushered in a spirit of civic renewal.
GROSS: And one more thing about Bernie Sanders. Wouldn't you say he's the person who put this new wave of socialism on the map?
LEPORE: Yeah. I mean, the DSA was founded in 1982, and, you know, it kind of limped along. It's like, did - have you heard about the DSA before maybe a couple years ago? It's with Sanders' campaign in, you know, 2015, 2016, that continued to draw members to the DSA and continued to draw support for socialism in the United States across the Trump years because, you know, socialism does best in the United States in - when we are not enjoying shared prosperity. There's been a lot of economic growth, but real wages have been stagnant or have fallen. And income inequality is higher than it has ever been in the recorded quantitative history of income inequality. So it's not surprising, right? The worse things get in terms of a very unshared prosperity, the likelier socialism is to thrive.
GROSS: And just to be clear, Bernie Sanders is not a member of the DSA, but he does define himself as a socialist.
LEPORE: Absolutely.
GROSS: So let's go back to the early years of the 20th century and compare what socialism in America was then. The Socialist Party of America was founded in - was it 1901?
LEPORE: Yep. So there had been people who called themselves socialists before that, certainly. A lot of the sort of 19th-century utopians, like the Oneidans and these - you know, these various, like, utopian communities considered themselves to be socialists - right? - sort of just in opposition to the capitalism that emerged from the Industrial Revolution. And they aligned themselves with a spirit of communalism in American life, right? And, like, even going back to the Puritans - right? - and the - kind of the Christian commonwealth, the notion that we live together in community and in the interests of our commonwealth.
So there was a kind of - sort of, like, a Thoreauvian spirit of socialism. But socialism in its kind of recognizable form doesn't emerge in American political discourse until the 1890s. You know, we're at the kind of height of the Gilded Age, where there - you know, robber barons and the trusts and the oligarchs are controlling the American economy. They have outsized political power. Campaigns to advance the interests of workers are being put forward by the labor movement, you know, and calling for strikes.
And that's where Eugene Victor Debs, who's from Terre Haute, Indiana, and is the head of the Railway Union, the most important union in the United States - he comes out of that tradition. But Debs, who goes on to be the most important leader of socialism in the United States, was not a socialist until 1897, right? He was a member of the Democratic Party. He was opposed to socialism.
And he is imprisoned in the 1890s after calling for a strike against the railway company owned by George Pullman. Pullman had slashed workers' wages after the Panic of 1893. Debs calls for a strike. He's put in prison, essentially for his role in organizing a strike. While he's in prison, this Milwaukee socialist named Victor Berger brings him a copy of Marx's "Das Kapital." And even then he doesn't become a socialist. He still, you know, believes in the Democratic Party as the best way to advance the interests of working people.
But after the election of 1896, which is famously corrupt - moneyed interests are thought to have really been behind the election of William McKinley - Debs announces that he has become a socialist. And then a few years later, he and Victor Berger co-found the Socialist Party of America.
GROSS: And Berger was elected to Congress - the first socialist elected to Congress - in 1910. And one of the things he promised was one of the things we talked about earlier, which is abolishing the Senate. What did abolishing the Senate mean back when it was part of the agenda of the American Socialist Party?
LEPORE: It was one of many proposed solutions to the disproportionate power of the Senate. Every political party had a position that involved making some change to the Senate, and the socialist position was, let's just take it down. But the other parties wanted constitutional change for the Senate too. They were calling for direct election of the Senate.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Jill Lepore. She's a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her new piece is about the Democratic Socialists of America. It's titled "Can America's Socialism Survive Its Success?" We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jill Lepore. We're talking about her latest piece in The New Yorker titled "Can American Socialism Survive Its Success?" It's about the Democratic Socialists of America and the history of socialism in the U.S. DSA candidates won mayorships and at least six congressional seats in the midterms. Jill Lepore is an American history and law professor at Harvard. She is the author of several books, including "We The People: A History Of The U.S. Constitution," which won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in History, and her latest book, "The Rise And Fall Of The Artificial State."
So I'm going to run through some other parts of the socialist platform in the early 1900s in America. And some of it will sound, you know, kind of radical. And some of it - a lot of it is stuff we take for granted now. So OK. Collective ownership of railroads, telegraph lines, mines, forests, oil wells, banks and the currency system - that we don't have.
LEPORE: We didn't get that.
GROSS: Didn't get that. Labor - shorter days, shorter work week, no more than 5 1/2 days in the work week, a minimum wage, old-age pensions, workers' and unemployment insurance and abolition of child labor. Check, check and check.
LEPORE: Yeah. And those were positions that the Democratic Party took on, right? It was the Democratic Party that came to power in 1912, not, ultimately, the socialists. And the Democratic Party instituted a lot of those things. Not all of them right away. A lot of those are New Deal measures. It took quite a time. 1912 was socialism's last best year because all of its agenda got kind of taken over by the Democratic Party.
GROSS: So let me continue with things that were on the socialist platform in the early 1900s. Women's suffrage - check. Elimination of the Senate - no. Elimination of the presidential veto on the Electoral College - well, people are still pushing for elimination of the Electoral College, to just have a popular vote instead. So that's still an issue that's very alive, and there's a lot of discussion now about doing that through the states.
LEPORE: Right - the National Popular Vote Compact.
GROSS: Yeah. You want to just speak to that for a moment - what that would be?
LEPORE: The National Popular Vote Compact involves the states pledging to have their Electoral College votes represent the popular vote - the popular vote across the country. So to abolish the Electoral College, you need to amend the Constitution. It's very difficult to amend the Constitution. It's arguably impossible. But you could, in a de facto sense, abolish the Electoral College if you just agreed - if enough states agreed that they would honor the national popular vote. There's a real question whether that's constitutional. I bet that it hasn't been tested yet.
GROSS: And the pact would only go into effect if there were enough votes to elect the president that these states had majority votes in favor of.
LEPORE: Right. And with the Democratic trifectas in states where now Democrats hold the governor's office and both houses of state legislatures, it seems like there are enough Democratic votes to make this happen.
GROSS: So do you think socialists in the early 1900s were pleased that the Democrats managed to pass a lot of the socialist agenda, or were they concerned that it was the Democrats who did it and it wasn't the Socialist Party that could take credit for it?
LEPORE: Well, I'm sure there are many different opinions among socialists. This is always the case. So they were happy with legislative reforms that they had been calling for. But remember, they were calling for a revolution against capitalism, right? They were calling for an entirely different economic arrangement of society. And in a way, meeting these smaller legislative goals took away from their larger agenda - right? - made it impossible to realize what they thought was destiny, right? That - they thought that America was the best home for a socialist revolution. They believed it was in the spirit of the founding of the United States that it was its destiny to become a socialist country.
GROSS: And what would that have meant if it became a socialist country?
LEPORE: You know, would have meant a planned economy - economy planned by the state. It would have meant state ownership of infrastructure like railroads and mines in particular. Less so of major corporations, although that was certainly called for in the socialist platform. But, you know, it might have, in practice, meant something much more like the kind of socialism we see in Western European countries that are kind of full social welfare states.
GROSS: So the DSA was founded in 1982 by Michael Harrington. Can you describe who he was?
LEPORE: Yeah. Michael Harrington was a young activist in the 1950s. He took a vow of poverty when he joined Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker Movement. He became a Marxist in 1952 - was a leader of the Young Socialists. And he really became famous in the early 1960s after he released a book called "The Other America," which is a profile of poverty in America at a time when, you know, people were sort of celebrating the United States living through an age of affluence. What Harrington wanted to do was call attention to the poverty that was unseen.
And his book got a huge boost after the New Yorker writer Dwight McDonald wrote a piece in The New Yorker called "The Invisible Poor." It was the longest book review the New Yorker had ever published. It was really long. It's 13,000 words. It's quite a brilliant piece, and it caught the attention of the Kennedy administration and set in motion what became, under Johnson, the War on Poverty.
GROSS: So Michael Harrington had been a member of the Socialist Party. And then in 1968, he became the leader of it, but he didn't think it needed to be a separate party. And so he left the party in '72, and then what?
LEPORE: And then he founded - oh gosh. Maybe it's called the Democratic Socialist Organization or - like, it's like the People's Republic of Judea from "Monty Python." Like...
GROSS: Yeah. And it was called - and it was known as DSOC.
LEPORE: Yeah. There are all these splinter organizations. He becomes the head of a splinter organization because his position is, there doesn't need to be a party - that being a party no longer works for socialism in the United States. His position is, like, we just need to exert our influence on the Democratic Party. Kind of, in a way, looking back to that moment of socialism's peak power in 1912 to say, actually, they got a lot of what they wanted by staking out these positions and kind of forcing the Democratic Party to attend to them. And that's really what the DSA has tried to do all these years since the 1980s.
GROSS: You know, emphasized by so many of the socialist candidates and socialist activists and Democrats, as well, is helping the working class survive, buy groceries, feed their children, get an education, you know, pay for college, afford healthcare. And I think the working class is getting redefined. When you say workers or working class, it used to mean, like, factory workers, miners. Now we're talking about, like, layoffs in the tech industry, healthcare workers, people working in the entertainment industry, like hairdressers, makeup artists. So many of them were laid off. I mean, there's so many people who are living with wages that it's hard to support a family on. Do you think the working class is being totally redefined?
LEPORE: Yeah. I think there's a very self-conscious policy initiative of the DSA and of democratic socialists more broadly, right? If you work for a living, you're a member of the working class, seems to be the definition. And I think - again, like, I think that's really worked for them in this election because people are left behind, like so many of those people, right?
Like, you're a nurse. You went to school for a lot of years. You're a professional. And yet your schedule is determined by some algorithm that means you can't take night classes to improve your practice. You can't bring your kids to daycare 'cause you can't afford to have daycare. Someone in your family has to take care of your children so that you can work. You can't save for your kids' college education. In any case, you couldn't afford it. You have to hold an extra job just to meet your housing expenses. Like, that's different, right? That's a very different economy. Like, the socialist critique of the state of American capitalism is spot on. People are really suffering. The cost-of-living stuff - it's not just the Iran war, right? An economy that is designed around the interests of corporations has not served the American people well.
GROSS: And then there's the tariffs, also. And people can't afford gas. I think I neglected to mention that, which is very important.
LEPORE: Yeah. And I think it is also important that the leadership on behalf of, like, calling for a data-center moratorium is something that's come out from democratic socialists, right? That's a - an AOC and Bernie Sanders campaign issue and has been. And that's meaningful to voters.
GROSS: So your article in The New Yorker - and I should mention The New Yorker usually has, like, two or three separate titles, depending on whether...
LEPORE: (Laughter).
GROSS: ...It's online or in the magazine.
LEPORE: It's like the Socialist Party. They have many opinions.
GROSS: (Laughter).
LEPORE: Yeah.
GROSS: So one of the titles is "Can American Socialism Survive Its Success?" What are your thoughts about that?
LEPORE: I don't know that the DSA will survive its success. I can't really speak to the health of that organization. But I do think support for agenda items that are advocated by democratic socialists is at an all-time high. I think people are desperate for Medicare for All. I think people are desperate for a data-center moratorium. Even the Green New Deal, as tarred as it is by the right - I think it has a lot of support. We'll see that support continue to come out.
So it's success of a different kind. I don't know that they're going to - we're going to see a lot more DSA members elected to office. I don't think that's really the measure of the success of democratic socialism either. I think, as in 1912, the measure of the success ought to be - are some of the proposals that are put forward by these people ones that are supported by large numbers of Americans, insofar as they're likely to actually achieve their implementation?
GROSS: We need to take another break. My guest is Jill Lepore, professor of American history and a law professor at Harvard University. We're talking about her new piece in The New Yorker, where she's a staff writer. It's titled "Can American Socialism Survive Its Success?" We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Harvard professor and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore. Her latest article is about the Democratic Socialists of America. It's called "Can American Socialism Survive Its Success?"
One of the promises of socialism in the early 1900s was that reforms of, like, fewer working hours, a higher wage, would leave more time for leisure. And you could have a leisurely meal with families. You can go to the park. You can shop for food and have the time to do all that. The DSA's 2026 platform imagines a postcapitalism day where you could spend a day. You take your children to school. You do errands. You see a doctor. You play sports, have a nice meal with family or friends. Maybe you go to the movies or to a park. Those are similar promises. But you write - and this is so interesting - that it's the same promise being made by leaders of AI. Would you make the comparison?
LEPORE: Honestly, this kind of blows me away and terrifies me at the same time. I mean, you read the DSA platform, and this is a kind of - it's like a tic of socialists, right? Like, imagine a day without capitalism. Like, Marx did this in 1845, and so everybody must do it. Like, oh, wouldn't it be great? You could read Russian novels. You know, you could make homemade pizza. But you hear that from Sam Altman and Elon Musk all the time, right? They propose that there'll be really no need to do any work. And so there'll be a universal basic income. Or Altman calls for a universal basic compute, where everybody owns part of the means of production, 'cause you'll kind of own some compute power. And you could spend your day, you know, walking your dog and, you know, doing finger painting with your kids and making homemade pizza.
And it's really freaky to me that the visions converge, right? A kind of socialist utopianism converges with a techno-utopianism. You know, it kind of just has to do with a couple different forces - right? - like a planned economy, which, when you think about it, is much more likely in an AI-driven state where, like, you can have a very efficiently planned economy, and the idea that the best thing is to not have to work. And you go back to 1912 - those socialists were fighting for, like, let's at least have half a day off, right? Like, they were fighting for a 5 1/2-day workweek, right? A day and a half at most, right? The labor movement fought for the weekend. But we're talking about something different with the AI vision, which is never working.
GROSS: Yeah. Why is the AI vision of how you're going to get your leisure time becoming more dystopian to so many people?
LEPORE: Because it's not about choice and because there is, you know what people describe as the purpose problem, right? It'd be nice to not have to - you know, that nurse who has three jobs on top of regular nursing hours? It'd be nice to not have that. But what if all the nurses are robots and nobody nurses anymore? What are you doing with your day? I think people find that mind-numbing. And even just thinking about the crisis of mathematicians, right? We're like, well, these math problems have been solved by AI. What - these mathematicians having kind of a crisis of meaningless- and purposelessness. I see that with my college students. Like, a lot of things that they're training to do, they feel like machines are going to be able to do better or already can do better. What's their meaning and purpose in life? And that has actually always been a kind of crisis around socialism as well.
But I think it kind of goes way back, this sort of fantasy that the great thing would be if no one had anything to do and machines could do it all for us. That was - like, that was a lot of socialist vision of the 19-teens. It was also a vision in the 1930s, of an alternative to socialism called technocracy, which was led by Elon Musk's grandfather, Joshua Haldeman. He was the national chairmen of the thing called Technocracy Incorporated in the 1930s. And he proposed getting rid of the nation state and democracy and banks and elections and prices and work and everybody would live in a technate. It's not that different from a kind of weird socialist vision.
GROSS: The thing I wonder about, too, sure you'll have plenty of leisure time if AI is doing everything. How are you going to have an income if you don't have a job?
LEPORE: It will be provided - in a socialist vision - by the state. It would be provided - in the Musk vision - by corporations, right? That's what the universal, you know, there'd be - I've written a whole book about what I call the artificial state, right? It's not really. A nation state, it's not a democracy, it's not liberal. It's just a world in which there are six big corporations, AI corporations, that are responsible for all production, and for not working, you are paid to live. The plan for universal income has been, certainly in the vision of someone like Musk or someone like Altman, is that it is a hedge against revolution. If you don't pay people to not work and there is no work, they will revolt against the political system in which they are trapped. So if you don't want a revolution, you have to advocate for universal basic income. Terry, I have to say, I find this dystopian in the extreme, but that is actually the vision.
GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you here. My guest is Jill Lepore, a professor of American history and a law professor at Harvard. We're talking about her new piece in The New Yorker, where she's a staff writer. It's titled "Can American Socialism Survive It's Success?" We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARY LOU WILLIAMS' "A GRAND NITE FOR SWINGING")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Harvard professor and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore. Her latest article is about the Democratic Socialists of America. It's called "Can American Socialism Survive It's Success?"
Has Trump's attempts to rewrite and, in some instances, censor history, affected you personally? Affected books of yours that were maybe taught in schools or in school libraries or in public libraries? Has it affected your invitations to speak at schools or at other places?
LEPORE: Yeah, it has. But to be clear, like, I'm not on the front lines of that. You know, K-12 public school teachers deal with that all the time, and they have very little power to fight back against it. So do libraries, public librarians. So yeah, I've experienced it. Like, my book "These Truths" is also a textbook edition. And in states where you have to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, if you don't make that change to your textbook, either it won't be adopted or you have to sticker it and put in a sticker that covers up Gulf of Mexico with Gulf of America. So I've contended with that. Last year, I went to speak in Boise, Idaho, this wonderful event where all the kids who are taking history classes across the whole city were going to be bussed to the biggest school, and it was going to be on a tour of like 9,000 kids, and I was going to give a lecture on the history of the Constitution.
And I guess some parents got wind of that and thought that that constituted liberal indoctrination and said their kids couldn't be required to go. So it was an audience of kids who had decided that they wanted to go, so it was kind of an opt-in. I'd really not experienced that before. I found that fascinating. I mean, I talked about it with the kids 'cause I was like, this is a - how does this happen? It has been a fearsome, fearsome moment, and I really do think that the world of the incredibly important work of public education, public librarianship, museum curatorship has lost a lot of talent. I know a lot of people who have quit their jobs, gone into a different profession. It's really tough to be in a classroom where kids have been told by their parents to report something that, you know, looks, I guess, red to them in the sense of communist red, not Republican red. It's very much like the campaigns in the 1930s, where - again in the 1950s, where young people disguised themselves as students and went into college classrooms and reported on professors.
GROSS: You write that last year, the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute published the results of a nationwide study that found that, quote, "teachers now approach subjects like elections, the economy or Civil Rights with caution, if at all," and also that more than three out of four civics teachers surveyed reported having censored themselves out of fear of pushback or controversy. More than one in three had removed or altered lesson plans, and more than one in four had considered quitting, and you wrote, so have I. What do you mean? What have you considered quitting?
LEPORE: You know, it's not what you expect when you go into the world of teaching that - certainly at a university level, that you'll encounter struggles over what you should be teaching, what you're allowed to teach. And I think, you know, to be fair, a lot of this pressure has come from the other side, as well. I mean, in the height of kind of the George Floyd moment, you know, which is a really important moment of racial reckoning in the United States but was also kind of a crazy time, you know, I had students who would say - I assigned the Dred Scott decision, the infamous Supreme Court decision from 1857 that ultimately leads to the Civil War that declares that Black people can never be citizens of the United States. I had student who wouldn't read the assigned reading. They just wouldn't read Dred Scott.
There were faculty at my own institution who were required to apologize to their students for this, that and the other thing. And there was, you know, a huge right-wing campaign to call attention to that as a kind of left-wing McCarthyism, which was then followed by right-wing McCarthyism - right? - these tremendous persecution of school teachers around the country for doing things like teaching the history of immigration, for teaching about slavery and segregation. So there's just been a really tremendous amount of vengeance in the supervision of education in this country. And I really hope that we are past that and that we are in a new moment.
GROSS: And you mentioned that you thought if you assign reading about Dred Scott that some of your students would refuse to read it. Why?
LEPORE: It's a very racist opinion, and they would say that it would cause them harm. Well, you know, we're not reading historical documents for the pleasure they give us. I mean, we often find pleasure in them. But even in the introduction to that book, I say, you know, the reason that I spent so much time quoting from primary documents and the way that I write history is that people should be allowed to speak for themselves in the historical record. And sometimes they say beautiful, soaring, hallowed things. You know, the Gettysburg Address - we need to really listen to that and appreciate the beauty of the prose, the poetry of it. And sometimes they say hideous things, and Dred Scott opinion is one of them.
And it doesn't serve anybody's interests for us to shield ourselves from positions that we disagree with. It doesn't empower us. It doesn't improve our analytical skills. It narrows our understanding of the world. It impedes our ability to counter arguments with which we disagree. Like, everything about refusing to do a course reading is crazy to me and in complete defiance of the objective of a liberal arts education.
GROSS: So have you really considered quitting teaching?
LEPORE: Yeah, I have. I think about it a lot.
GROSS: Because of what we've been talking about, because of all the conflict?
LEPORE: Yeah, yeah. You know, and again, like, let me be clear. I have the best job. Like, I'm very - I have, like, this blessed job. Like, I have nothing to complain about. But both my parents were public school teachers, and I saw them go through a lot of agony. We were living in Massachusetts during the busing debates in the 1970s. Public school teachers bear a lot of the burden of polarized political issues. And I just think our concern should be how to help support public school teachers, not, like, whether I - what my own views about teaching are definitely beside the point.
But we have really imperiled the profession of public school teaching in this country by treating it so cavalierly and by legislators just, you know, offering up decrees about what can and cannot be taught and by supporting a kind of parents' rights mentality that allows for moral crusades against public school districts. I think it's incredibly destructive of civil society, and so far from attacking public schools, we should be holding them up as the guardians of our democracy.
GROSS: Well, Jill Lepore, I really appreciate your approach to writing about history and how it helps us understand the present. So thank you for that. I know, in addition to teaching, you write so well in the New Yorker, and I really appreciate those pieces. Thanks for being on our show today.
LEPORE: Oh, thanks so much. It's really an honor, Terry.
GROSS: Jill Lepore's article, "Can American Socialism Survive Its Success?" is published in the current issue of the New Yorker. Her latest book, "The Rise And Fall Of The Artificial State," is about how AI and data are changing politics and government.
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, our guest will be Steve Buscemi. His breakout role was in Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" as Mr. Pink, a smart-mouth criminal who, among other things, didn't believe in tipping.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "RESERVOIR DOGS")
STEVE BUSCEMI: (As Mr. Pink) If they really put forth the effort, I'll give them something extra, but, I mean, this tipping automatically, it's for the birds.
GROSS: Since then, Buscemi's acted in more than a hundred movies and TV shows. He now appears in two new films, "Wild Horse Nine" and "The Only Living Pickpocket In New York." I hope you'll join us.
FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
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