“Socialism is a scare phrase they’ve hurled at each advance the individuals have made within the final 20 years,” mentioned President Harry S. Truman in 1948. Opponents had connected it, he mentioned, to public electrical energy, social safety, farm worth helps, the expansion of unions and financial institution deposit insurance coverage.
When Republicans attacked “socialism,” Truman averred, what they had been actually attacking was the New Deal. “Socialism is their identify for nearly something that helps all of the individuals.”
As U.S. politics continues by way of a sizzling summer season of advances for the Democratic Socialists of America in Democratic Celebration primaries, it’s as effectively to recollect the lengthy historical past of utilizing the phrase to assault concepts on the left — together with many insurance policies which can be nowhere close to traditional definitions of socialism.
