Reform or Revolution?

Western liberalism is in decline, challenged by rising authoritarianism on the Right and the Left. Since January 2025, Trumpism is generally perceived as the greater threat by American liberals, but the political power of the progressive Left is moving beyond its traditional redoubts in the media and academe. And for the time being, liberals are struggling to mount a coherent response.

By “liberals,” I mean those—from the Reaganite Right to the social-democratic Left—who value the basic institutions of Western society: electoral government, a free press and academy, an independent judiciary, separation of church and state, private property, and a market-based economy with a safety net. The progressive Left, on the other hand, sees these institutions as obstacles to be overcome or destroyed in pursuit of a revolutionary agenda designed to completely reorder American society. As former New York Times opinion writer Pamela Paul argued in 2023:

In an increasingly prominent version of the progressive vision, capitalism isn’t something to be regulated or balanced, but is itself the problem. White supremacy doesn’t describe an extremist fringe of racists and antisemites, but is instead the inherent character of the nation.

And once one gives up on capitalism and the virtues of liberal institutions, assaults on equality under the law, basic property rights, and free speech inevitably follow. As two German conservatives have noted, today’s progressives embrace a “political ideology that questions the foundations of pluralism and democracy,” and favour a post-national “politics of identity and minority entitlements.”

This assault on capitalism and markets may yet be critical to the ascendency of progressives as a growing share of popular opinion shifts in their favour. According to a 2020 Edelman report, “56 percent of respondents [in 28 countries surveyed] agreed that capitalism ‘is doing more harm than good in its current form.’” More than four-in-five worry about job loss, particularly from automation. Rising inequality and a more general fear of downward mobility have boosted US support for expanded government and greater income redistribution, with a majority under forty strongly in favour of limiting wealth.

This is no longer just a call for reforming the existing system. Even in the US, a majority of young people are embracing socialism as a superior economic model. A recent survey of Europe found that “fewer than six in ten young Europeans believe that democracy is the best form of government. One in five say they would support authoritarian rule under certain circumstances. And only 6% believe their political system functions well.” According to political scientist Yascha Mounk, “signs of democratic deconsolidation in the United States and many other liberal democracies are now similar to those in Venezuela before its crisis.”

The Old Left and Progressive Violence

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) favour a mass-mobilisation model of politics, inspired by historical examples like that of Chile’s Salvador Allende, and this approach seems to be bearing electoral fruit. In New York, DSA member Zohran Mamdani looks likely to win the race for New York City’s mayoralty in November. Mamdani is the latest in a line of likeminded figures to rise to power in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Oakland (possibly soon to be joined by Minneapolis and Seattle). These politicians reject liberalism and capitalism in favour of a massive tax on the “aristocracy,” intrusive rent controls, city-owned grocery stores, free transit, and radically higher minimum wages, policies that are likely to deepen rather than alleviate America’s economic woes.

The late Michael Harrington, who was something of a personal mentor to me, co-founded the DSA. He embraced the reformist, fiercely anti-communist socialism pioneered in the last century by the likes of Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein in Germany. In the US, this tradition informed the politics of men like Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas as well as a group of pragmatic mayors known as “sewer socialists,” most notably in Milwaukee. Mike’s true passion was helping the poor and the working class—a reflection of his early embrace of Catholic values (as a young man, he joined the Catholic Worker movement, although he later became an atheist).

But modern progressivism, the late historian Fred Siegel noted, is a more elitist movement, the roots of which can be traced to Bismarckian Germany and Wilsonian America. Progressives hope to see a “revolt against the masses,” and in the West, arguments justifying elite control have come naturally to radical intellectuals: “Who else but intellectuals,” asked sociologist C. Wright Mills, “are capable of discerning the role in history of explicit history-making decisions?” Such hierarchical notions would probably not have appealed to politicians of the postwar Left like Clement Attlee, Australia’s John Curtin, New York’s Fiorello LaGuardia, California’s Pat Brown, or Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey.

Mamdani and the growing coterie of elected progressives are not looking to replicate the democratic socialism of Harrington and Debs. Nor are they looking to replicate the Swedish social-democratic model, which draws its wealth from a vibrant market economy. The models embraced by the DSA and other progressives celebrate the kind of Third World Marxist radicalism once epitomised by Kwame Nkrumah (from whom Mamdani got his middle name), Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez. Today, this manifests in support for Palestinian terrorism and increasingly naked expressions of raw antisemitism that would have horrified Mike Harrington were he alive to see it.

Mahmood Mamdani Wants to Dismantle America

Zohran Mamdani’s father Mahmood is a postnationalist who advocates the dissolution of all nation states, which he views as intrinsically violent and unjust.

QuilletteJohn Aziz

As support for liberalism wanes, support for political violence is being normalised on the Left and the Right, particularly among the young. A recent report found that nearly a third of all Americans—and 56 percent of those left-of-centre—told pollsters that the assassination of President Donald Trump would be at least “somewhat justified.” Almost as many feel the same way about Elon Musk. A growing online culture has made a folk hero of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating healthcare executive Brian Thompson.

In this Bolshevik worldview, no compromise with the enemy is possible, a grave reversal of normal politics that is also increasingly evident on large parts of the MAGA Right. Remarkably, many progressives and even mainstream Democrats have been reluctant to denounce the violence of modern street-fighting groups like Antifa. NPR’s political correspondent Mara Liasson even compared them to the troops who stormed the Normandy beaches.