Abstract
Some socialists criticize Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, taking issue with the senator’s nationalism, vague presentation of socialism and revolution, and seeming preoccupation with class at the expense of attention to racism. This article draws from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theorization of populism to depict Sanders’s campaign as a legitimately socialist project. Laclau and Mouffe claim that left populism may evolve into socialism under certain conditions. One may expect Sanders’s populism to empower previously uncommitted people to make socialist demands.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.29.09
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Abraham, Judson C.
(2020)
"The 2016 Bernie Sanders Campaign: American Socialist Populism,"
disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 29, Article 10.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.29.09
Available at:
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol29/iss1/10
