If there’s one thing that socialists and Republicans seem to agree on these days, it’s that there are a lot of socialist policies being proposed by Democrats these days.
“Under Nancy Pelosi’s leadership, the past 100 days of the new Congress have been jam-packed with socialist policies,” declared the Republican National Committee. At the same time, socialists such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., defend the label, declaring that if you like policies such as roads, public education, and Social Security, you too like socialism! Socialism, it seems, is all around us.
Except it isn’t, at least not in the way socialism has been defined since the ideology gripped whole nations in the 20th century.
Societies where government owns the means of production, has nationalized large swaths of industry, and actively controls nearly every aspect of the economy are blessedly few, with nations such as Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea as the final holdouts.
Yet today, the way we talk about socialism has changed, and with it, the way the term is defined in the public consciousness. Both socialists and Republicans are in a race to “define socialism down” for political aims, and in the process, we risk future generations growing up more open to the idea that socialism is a cure for what ails society.
Let’s look at the data: In 1949, the folks at Gallup asked Americans to describe what the term socialism meant to them. In that year, about four in 10 viewed socialism as government ownership of industry and control over the economy, or something similar to communism. Another third were unsure or had no opinion, and the remainder had views scattered across a wide range of different definitions.
Luckily, Gallup asked Americans the exact same question in 2018, and they found a very different understanding of the word. Today, less than a quarter of Americans view socialism as government control of the economy or something akin to communism. Instead, the bulk of Americans view socialism as either a synonym for equality, social or economic, or as a way of simply describing government benefits generally. Around one in 10 think it simply means getting along and cooperating, or that “socialism” means liberalism.
Yes, people are now slightly more positive about “socialism” in polling today than they were in the 1940s, but they also are thinking of the term in different ways. Growing warmth toward socialism does not reflect eagerness for government to seize the means of production and smash the bourgeoisie. When asked what aspects of the economy they’d prefer in the hands of government, majorities of Americans maintain that free markets are preferable to government when handling things such as the distribution of wealth, healthcare, and higher education.
So when we look at data over time about views about socialism, it’s important to realize that people are no longer necessarily endorsing government setting wages and controlling factories. Telling them that “socialists want us to be Venezuela” rings hollow, because the sort of economic system that caused Venezuela so much pain is totally divorced from the modern American’s understanding of “socialism.” Instead, socialists point to places such as Denmark, avoiding mentioning that taxes in those countries are over 50% for the middle class, and without grappling with the reality that socialist nations without robust private enterprise are historically prone to authoritarian and human tragedy.
Republicans are eager to label Democrats and their policy ideas as socialist whenever possible, and there’s some political advantage in doing so. “Socialist” remains one of the most politically toxic labels to all but some of the youngest voters; less than half of Americans could envision themselves voting for a socialist president. Moderate Democrats have sought to distance themselves from the term. While Americans across the political spectrum have concerns about whether capitalism as it is currently practiced is truly fair to the little guy, it is not the case that the socialist label is a political winner, for now.
But because of this, today’s socialists are eager to claim that every popular policy under the sun (including those that Republicans wouldn’t dare oppose) are actually brought to you by the wonders of socialism. Republicans risk playing into their hands by also trying to affix the “socialist” label to anything and everything Democrats do.
