“Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years,” said President Harry S. Truman in 1948. Opponents had attached it, he said, to public electricity, social security, farm price supports, the growth of unions and bank deposit insurance.
When Republicans attacked “socialism,” Truman averred, what they were really attacking was the New Deal. “Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”
As U.S. politics continues through a hot summer of advances for the Democratic Socialists of America in Democratic Party primaries, it’s as well to remember the long history of using the word to attack ideas on the left — including many policies that are nowhere near classic definitions of socialism.
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