Capitalism vs. Socialism: Coleman Hughes and Bhaskar Sunkara Debate

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Bhaskar Sunkara has been a socialist since he was 17 years old and, as he told me in our recent conversation, he thinks he’ll stick with it until he dies. The founding editor of Jacobin, the most important socialist magazine in America, former vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, and current president of The Nation, Bhaskar has been a prominent voice on the American left for the past 15 years.

Based on my own research and observation, I consider capitalism the economic system that produces the best results for human progress. As I see it: Poverty is bad, and whichever system reliably gets rid of poverty the quickest is the one I favor. There’s just an overwhelming amount of evidence that free markets directly lead to abundance.

But I’m sure Bhaskar thinks poverty is bad, too. So I wanted to sit down with him to understand the strongest case for socialism. We discussed the logic and limits of rent control, whether there’s a problem with billionaires, whether socialism could ever work beyond theory, and if there’s any difference between socialism and democratic socialism as we use those terms today.

And while I disagreed with him on plenty, we also found surprising common ground—from the need for more housing to the importance of good schools—as we wrestled with what it might take to make this country better.