Ideological self-awareness.
I've come across a few French-born historians who defend the legacy of Maximilien "off-with-their-heads" Robespierre of French Revolution notoriety. They essentially argue:
"Hey, if you want to transition from an absolute monarchy to a democratic state and overturn a millennium's worth of social hierarchy in a brief period of time, you're going to have to crack a few eggs. That kind of change is worthwhile, but getting there isn't pretty and you're naive if you assume it can be done harmlessly."
And, while mainstream French people generally don't celebrate Robespierre, they certainly do celebrate Bastille Day and the French Revolution itself, bloody decapitations and all.
And therein lies the difference between the American far-left and the far-left in other countries. They understand the fact that achieving structural change is a gruesome business because their national historical precedents make it impossible to deny.
In other countries, political Marxists get that change isn't some clean, painless process. They generally recognize that upending society is going to have difficult short-term consequences at the very least. They anticipate hunger, lawlessness, vulnerability, and a spiked death-rate before a political revolution's reforms take effect and start making things better for everyone. They understand that revolution and pain are joined at the hip, they just believe that the final outcome will be worth the high price.
From what I've seen, American Democratic Socialists exist in one of two possible extremes. They're either oblivious concerning the reality that structural change is painful or they're Che Guevara shirt-wearing wannabes who talk a big game about dismantling the system, but actually melt in the face of legal or physical backlash. In both cases, they have a blindspot between the outcomes they seek to achieve and the price of those outcomes. They're either unaware of the price or unwilling to pay it when the chips are down.
It can be insufferable. I'm so often confronted by triumphalist socialist ideologues who embrace every radical inclination and don't, for even a single moment, stop to consider what we might lose as a nation or what pain we might experience as a society in the process of bringing such radical change to full realization.
Yes, I'm something of a libertarian ideologue. But at least I understand that the choice is always one between imperfect worlds. I've simply chosen which flawed reality I'd rather inhabit. Democratic Socialists are unwilling to make any such concession. They always present the choice as a very obvious one where the only painful option is the one where we don't embrace radical change.
I don't see any reason it needs to be this way. It's not conceding much to simply admit "I know the changes I advocate come with difficulties, maybe even serious difficulties at times, but it will be worth it in the long run." But no. They always seem to have this "the only thing we have to lose is our chains" mentality. I'd call it mass cognitive dissonance. But, really, it's hard to blame them because American history doesn't equip them with the tools to understand the consequences of radical change. We've had so few instances of radical change in this country that, realistically, we scarcely have any historical context to help us understand what it might look like.
Even our historical moments of radical change are, arguably, not radical. There are those who call the American Revolution a "conservative revolution" fought by and for wealthy people dissatisfied by their inability to accumulate even more wealth. There are those who point out that the Civil War, with its radical, slavery-terminating outcome, was won by a North that very much embraced capitalism and an industrial national vision. And myriad historians have made a career writing books demonstrating that FDR's seemingly radical policies were actually a smokescreen hiding the pragmatism and preservation at the heart of the New Deal. In these and virtually every other example of successful "radical" change in American history, preservation was always the goal, not change. At most, successful America's successful radicals embraced a few major changes for the sake of preserving America's core national and economic structures (embracing revolution to preserve wealth, embracing the end of slavery to preserve a nation, embracing government programs to avoid other actual structural changes, etc.).
That's what successful radicalism has always looked like in this country. "Success" is an important qualifier because there have been plenty of real, actual, burn-it-all-down leaders and grassroots movements in this nation's history. They've just been largely unsuccessful. Abolitionists, transcendentalists, pan-Africanists, labor unionists, anarchists, suffragettes, Gene Debs Socialists, those dang hippies in the 60s, etc. The aforementioned groups experienced no structural success and only small and highly qualified individual victories. And even those groups were often filled with "embrace change for the sake of preservation" types, not necessarily true burn-it-all-down radicals.
The point is, we've never had anything like a real Marxist revolution in this country. Nothing with radical, uprooting consequences. So our Democratic Socialists lack the historical context to fully understand the potential consequences of the changes they seek. They, thus, don't feel an obligation to contend with any historical shortcomings in their advocacy.
And that's a real pity.
Because some of the changes they seek MIGHT BE worth it. Yea, I said it. Change isn't always a bad thing and those who push the envelope play a crucial role in every society. Every society needs people who open our eyes to new possibilities just as it needs skeptical souls like me who stop us from making the worst decisions.
Hard as it may be to admit, we benefit from a vibrant, educated, and ideologically polished liberal class. We need their input.
But it's hard to take the suggestions of the liberal class seriously when their ideas are detached from any acknowledgment of consequence.
The average person intuitively understands that change requires sacrifice. So when Democratic Socialists propose drastic change but provide no sense of the sacrifices we'll have to make to accomplish such change, well, then they come off like prosperity gospel televangelists. Which means that some people will absolutely drink the kool-aid and come back for seconds. But most people will remain reasonably wary of such triumphalist ideology.
It's too bad that American Democratic Socialists seem to assume that any acknowledgment of negative consequence weakens their advocacy. Because the opposite is true.
You want an example of someone who communicated far-left radical ideas the right way? You have to leave our shores. Check out George Orwell.
I've read 1984 several times since 8th grade, but I just recently got around to reading Animal Farm. This succinct, gut-wrenching tale is not the libertarian propaganda I was promised. In fact, I'd say anyone who weaponizes Animal Farm to promote libertarianism or free-market capitalism is utterly disconnected from the book's heart.
This is not the work of a condescending man, snickering at the inevitable collapse of Marxist ideology and its subsequent transition into Stalinist dictatorship. This is the work of a man deeply HEARTBROKEN by the way Marxist ideology played out in Russia. It's the dour lamentation of a Marxist true believer who screams his disappointment from every page. That's the soul of Animal Farm.
But the reason he is a good communicator of far-left ideas is because he doesn't sugar-coat the consequences of structural change.
Early in the book, the animals drive the evil, exploitative capitalist of an owner off of the farm and establish a new order founded on animal equality. But their lives aren't immediately better. In addition to the hunger and organizational problems that make life on the farm difficult, the animals swear off clothes, beds, alcohol, and other such bourgeoisie comforts. They end up doing more work than they did under the farmer's rule. One of the horses asks if she'll be fed sugar cubes (the way the farmer used to feed her as a treat). Snowball, the first and more brilliant leader, straight up tells her that she'll never get sugar cubes again because, though they might have tasted sweet, they were really just another way that the farmer controlled her. The horse subsequently fled, choosing enslavement on another capitalist farm to freedom on Animal Farm.
Orwell doesn't try to ensnare the reader with leftist prosperity gospel methods. He simply makes an honest case that the rewards of Marxism outweigh the many hardships.
Though the animals work longer hours, they reap the reward of knowing that their labor belongs to themselves and their comrades and will ultimately service the community. Their labor doesn't belong to some greedy capitalist who exploits them to enable his extravagant lifestyle while they're given only basic livelihood and hollow trinkets like sugar cubes in return. Though they will never have the finer things like clothes, beds, and alcohol, they will have the dignity and security provided by a class-less, equitable society. Though they may struggle temporarily with food shortages and poor living conditions, they can still rest easy knowing that things will get better eventually and future generations of animals will benefit from their struggle to build a new world from the ground up.
It's a beautiful idea and a touching story.
Shoot, I'm a die-hard, free-market, bleeding-heart libertarian AND EVEN I find Orwell's portrayal of communism appealing. At least before it gets corrupted by greedy, self-serving bureaucrats like Napoleon who ultimately pervert communism into yet another form of exploitation, indistinguishable from capitalism.
But the point is, a hardcore liberal like Orwell was able to present an appealing vision of his ideology and emphasize the tragedy of its downfall to a staunch libertarian like me exactly BECAUSE he presented it in a fair way. He didn't deny the pain and difficulty of drastic, structural change. Instead, he left everything out in the open and made the bold and persuasive argument that Marxist, structural change was worth it, despite the painful transition.
Structural change is painful. But is it worth it?
That's always the question.
But we can't even get to that question in the United States because our far-left is unwilling or unable to concede the point that such change in inherently difficult. Thus, the average American remains unconvinced that we need major change because they are given no sense of what they'll be asked to sacrifice or if it will be worth that sacrifice in the long run.
That's one of the reasons we stagnate in this country while others make innovative changes. Because their liberal classes present balanced arguments that are stronger overall because they acknowledgment potential downsides.