The Miseducation of Socialism: Jacobin Founder and Former DSA Vice-Chair, Bhaskar Sunkara, Sits Down with The New York Times

When Jacobin was founded in 2010, it positioned itself as the intellectual vanguard of a revived American left. In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, Occupy Wall Street, and the subsequent surge of interest in socialist politics, its founder, Bhaskar Sunkara—who later served as vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—became one of the most visible media figures for a new generation of radicalized youth and workers. Jacobin offered crisp graphics, sharp polemics, and a clear promise: that socialism was not a quaint relic of the nineteenth century, but an urgent, necessary fight to dismantle capitalist exploitation.

Fast forward to mid-2026. Sunkara—now president of The Nation and a seasoned media executive—sat down for an extensive interview on The New York Times podcast Interesting Times with conservative columnist Ross Douthat.

The dialogue between Douthat and Sunkara was striking not for its intellectual combat, but for its cozy conciliation. Warmly addressing each other as "comrade" in jest, the right-wing Catholic commentator and the face of modern American democratic socialism found ample common ground.

For serious anti-capitalists, socialists, and the working class, this exchange was not merely disappointing—it was a diagnostic moment. It highlighted the trajectory of a movement increasingly dominated by the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), for whom "socialism" functions as a marketable brand, a set of policy whitepapers, and a mechanism for political moderation rather than a revolutionary commitment to class struggle.

The Long-Term Vision vs. The Short-Term Manager

To understand the shift in Sunkara’s public orientation, one must compare his recent statements with the foundational promises of the post-2016 socialist renaissance.

In the early days of Jacobin and Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, the core premise put forward by democratic socialists was straightforward: capitalism is fundamentally exploitative, built on class antagonism, and must be overcome through mass working-class organization, independent politics, and direct confrontation with capital.

Yet, in his sit-down with Douthat, Sunkara’s vision of anti-capitalism was deferred into a distant, almost mythic future, while his practical program for the present reduced socialism to a benign, technocratic manager of capitalist profitability.

1. Capitalist Profitability as a "Short-Term" Prerequisite

When asked point-blank by Douthat whether democratic socialism is compatible with capitalism in the long run, Sunkara acknowledged his ultimate anti-capitalist stance, but immediately pivoted to defending the necessity of capitalist profit in the present:

"In the long term, no. We're anti-capitalist... But in the short term, while we're within a capitalist economy, of course, we need firms that are profitable, that are providing employment, that are providing taxation. So I think to govern in the short term as social democrats, we need profitable firms."

Here, the foundational objective of socialism—the transfer of control over the means of production to the working class—is replaced by the requirement to preserve capitalist profitability. Sunkara openly embraced the logic of "grow and give," arguing that any social democracy requires a healthy capitalist motor to generate surplus for redistribution. When pressed on timelines, Sunkara conceded that his vision of a truly socialist society "might take centuries to enact."

For every immediate practical purpose, the horizon of "socialism" becomes the efficient, welfare-oriented administration of a market economy.

2. Unions as Market Discipline, Not Working-Class Power

In traditional socialist theory, trade unions are weapons of class struggle—instruments used by workers to withhold labor, extract wealth from bosses, and build toward industrial democracy.

In Sunkara’s framework, however, union power is reimagined through a technocratic lens as a tool for enforcing market efficiency:

"Stronger unions and forms of sectoral and centralized bargaining... will take the weakest companies in the field [and] probably make them collapse. It would enable the companies at the top of the sectors... to have some excess profits that they could then invest to maintain their market share. That's just a classic example for social democracy of something that seems like it would tank the economy: stronger unions actually being used to push the economy towards more productivity and more technology."

Rather than organizing workers to challenge capital, strong unions are framed here as a mechanism to force weak firms into bankruptcy and spur elite market leaders toward technological innovation. Socialism is presented to conservative commentators not as a threat to capital, but as a superior method for organizing market productivity.

3. Housing: Real Estate Deregulation Over Public Control

In past years, socialist campaigns championed housing as a basic human right, demanding mass public housing construction, strict rent control, and the expropriation of corporate landlords. In contrast, when outlining housing policy for Douthat, Sunkara highlighted market-friendly supply-side strategies centered around upzoning and deregulation for private developers:

"You could imagine, for example, telling landlords: 'We're going to clear the way. We're going to allow you to create this big housing development. We're going to fight against the interests of local homeowners, and you build your big piece of housing. But after 30 years, after you have a reasonable return on investment, that unit is going to have some degree of rent stabilization.'"

A framework that guarantees private developers thirty years of unrestricted market extraction before imposing modest rent stabilization is not socialist urban planning. It is standard neoliberal real estate development with a progressive label.

4. Electoral "Moderation" and the Hard Reality of Taxes

Perhaps most revealing was Sunkara's defense of socialists holding electoral office. Pointing to DSA-backed figures, Sunkara argued that the actual experience of holding municipal power naturally strips away radical demands:

"In practice, the experience of governance, of competing in elections is a moderating force on a lot of these issues."

Rather than viewing electoral platforms as tools to agitate and build independent working-class power, Sunkara celebrated "moderation" as a natural outcome of governance.

Furthermore, when pressed on how a expanded welfare state would actually be financed, Sunkara abandoned the populist promise that "taxing billionaires" would solve every fiscal problem. He admitted frankly that middle-class and professional-class workers would have to pay significantly higher taxes, arguing that socialists must win the public over to the idea of a net-positive "social wage" (where public benefits outweigh tax increases).

PMC Branding vs. Working-Class Politics

This shift from systemic confrontation to insider pragmatism is not an isolated personal failing; it is the structural output of a movement dominated by the Professional Managerial Class (PMC).

Coined by Barbara and John Ehrenreich, the PMC refers to a stratum of wage-earners—journalists, academics, non-profit staff, political strategists, and tech workers—who possess significant cultural capital and occupy roles that mediate, organize, and manage the working class on behalf of capital and the state.

Dimension	Working-Class Anti-Capitalism	PMC "Brand" Socialism
Core Goal	Class power & ending exploitation	Policy tweaks & benevolent administration
Primary Method	Workplace organizing & rank-and-file strikes	Media platforms, podcasts, & electoral deals
View of Capital	Direct conflict over ownership	Collaboration for mutual profitability
View of the State	An instrument of class rule to be transformed	A neutral machine to be managed efficiently
Cultural Stance	Material universalism & class unity	Cultural signaling & policy whitepapers
Horizon	Immediate, urgent transformation	Centurial promises while managing the present

The Subcultural Brand

For the PMC, "socialism" easily degrades into a distinct subcultural identity and career path. It becomes an aesthetic expressed through podcast subscriptions, tote bags, editorial mastheads, and curated media discourse.

Because PMC professionals do not experience production from the position of exploited shop-floor labor, their relationship to socialism is intellectual and institutional. They use radical rhetoric to carve out cultural influence, build media subscriber bases, and secure staff positions within the broader apparatus of progressive politics.

When socialism is reduced to a brand:

• Class struggle is replaced by policy whitepapers tailored to fit within acceptable legislative boundaries.

• Anti-imperialism is diluted into electoral calculus, where foreign policy stances serve as generational markers to differentiate progressive primary challengers from older establishment figures.

• Independent working-class politics is surrendered to preserve access within major-party coalitions.

Rewriting History and Rejecting Class Pessimism

During the interview, Sunkara also addressed cultural politics and the origins of contemporary socialist activist culture. Notably, Sunkara pushed back against the narrative that America is an "irredeemably racist" country, pointing to the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the election of Barack Obama as evidence of popular progress.

Instead, Sunkara placed the blame for elite cultural division on centrist Democrats, arguing that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign deliberately weaponized identity politics to undermine Bernie Sanders' class-universalist economic program.

Yet, while Sunkara correctly identified how liberal elites used identitarian rhetoric to derail a class-first agenda, his alternative path forwards relies on electoral candidates adopting localized cultural branding (such as Dan Osborne’s populist campaign in Nebraska) rather than organizing deep, independent workplace organizations that can unite workers across cultural lines around shared material interests.

Reclaiming Socialism

If the working class is to build a movement capable of confronting capital, it must distinguish between genuine anti-capitalism and the professionalized, media-friendly reformism showcased on The New York Times.

Real socialism cannot be an endless deferral of anti-capitalism to a distant century, nor can it be a bargain with real estate developers and corporate firms.

What Authentic Working-Class Anti-Capitalism Demands

1. Class Independence: Refusing to subordinate working-class demands to the electoral needs of establishment parties or the requirement of capitalist profitability.

2. Workplace and Rank-and-File Power: Building autonomous shop-floor organizations capable of withholding labor, rather than relying exclusively on non-profit campaigns and legislative deals.

3. Uncompromising Material Demands: Demanding immediate public housing, universal healthcare, and direct workplace control, rather than 30-year tax-break compromises for private developers.

4. Clarity of Purpose: Recognizing that socialism is not a lifestyle brand, a media niche, or a long-term management strategy for capitalism, but an existential struggle against an economic system built on exploitation and war.

The polite consensus displayed between conservative commentators and high-profile socialist media executives reflects the priorities of a comfortable political class. As economic insecurity deepens for millions of workers, socialism must be rescued from those who use it as a brand—and restored as a militant, uncompromising tool for human emancipation.