Left Behind
I found a lot to agree with in fellow historian Matthew Karp’s column exploring the reasons for Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election [“Expect More Bulldozings,” Easy Chair, February]. As Karp suggests, the economic disaffection of working-class voters certainly had a lot to do with it, although I wouldn’t discount the role of Trump’s exploitation of nativism, racism, and misogyny in determining the outcome.
As a founding (and former) member of the Democratic Socialists of America, I was particularly interested in Karp’s comments on the marginal involvement of the organized left in the election. As he notes, “the mass base of the Sanders left [was] reduced to little more than a fractional protest movement.” “Does anyone,” he writes, “believe that a presidential campaign run by today’s Democratic Socialists of America could have come close to beating Trump?”
Well, I don’t, but it’s not the fault of Sanders (who is not a member of the DSA), nor that of another prominent elected socialist, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who is). Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are models of pragmatic radicalism, representing what the late DSA founder Michael Harrington used to call “the left wing of the possible.” Both are advocates of enlightened (and possible) social programs (Medicare for All, the Green New Deal), and both made clear their differences with the Biden Administration on specific issues (particularly the war in Gaza). But both also understood the threat that Trump’s reelection posed to American democracy, and resolutely backed the Democratic presidential candidate (first Biden, then Harris). For this, they were denounced as traitors by some of the current leaders of the DSA (a narrow majority of whom are self-identified Marxist-Leninists). In the words of one of the DSA’s main caucuses: “AOC and Bernie Sanders have abandoned the working class to exploitation and the Palestinian people to genocide.”
Democratic socialism, as represented by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, remains relevant to the future of American politics. The kindergarten Leninism espoused by the DSA’s current leadership does not.
Maurice Isserman
Professor of History, Hamilton College
Clinton, N.Y.
Warp and WEF
As a Swiss citizen and the author of two books about globalization, I was delighted to read Caitlín Doherty’s dispatch from Davos [“At the Summit,” Letter from Switzerland, February]. Like Doherty, I, too, have struggled to gain access to the event, in spite of my relevant affiliations (and a few pleading emails).
I wrote pages and pages of talking points on the state of globalization for the OECD and Reuters when I was a research assistant in 2009 and 2012. For all the rumors of globalization’s demise, it sounds as though not much has changed. Globalization is neither dead nor dying, but merely changing form and taking on more overtly nationalist characteristics. Although it may be shedding a few pretenses along the way, there’s nothing to celebrate here.
Doherty’s description of the confab reminded me of my time at Expo 2020 Dubai—a misnomer, since, because of COVID-19, it actually opened in 2021. The Expo was the twenty-first-century answer to the old World’s Fairs, in which countries would hawk their wares in national pavilions. Much like those fairs, the Expo promised flying cars (this time courtesy of Uber), but the pretense of scientific innovation had taken a back seat to what was really on offer: tourism, tax breaks, and investment opportunities. The site of the event—part of a brand-new neighborhood called Expo City Dubai—would itself become a special economic zone, and national booths were supplemented by corporate ones, including a pavilion by the conglomerate Dubai World. As the networking event that it was, the Expo was said to have replaced Davos that year, with fewer COVID restrictions, a warmer climate, and a bigger airport. As Doherty points out, the Gulf States will continue to serve this function, not least because there is no pesky democracy (direct or otherwise) to get in the way.
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Brooklyn, N.Y.
In Doherty’s otherwise commendable and witty takedown of life at Davos, she refers to the novelist Ben Okri as a “literary brownnoser.” I happen to know that this is an unfair characterization. Decades ago, when I began my journalistic career working on the Londoner’s Diary column at the Evening Standard, most of the literary elite would run a mile from gossip columnists, for obvious reasons. Okri would not only talk to us; he would submit poems to the section about the issues of the day. To describe him as somehow representative of the elite therefore strikes me as wide of the mark. He always made time for the humble hack as well as the most self-important editor.
Tom Teodorczuk
Bronxville, N.Y.
Doherty does a good job identifying the shortcomings and failures of the World Economic Forum, but her calling Bono a “mediocrity” reflects (although in a different way) the same elitism that she is criticizing.
Ron Rizzo
Concord, Calif.
Correction
The February Readings section incorrectly stated that Hanif Abdurraqib’s forthcoming poetry collection, I’m Always Looking Up and You’re Jumping, will be published by Penguin. The book will be published by Random House. We regret the error.
