“Socialism” is considered a dirty word in the United States. Being a hard-working, “free market” capitalist is a part of our national mythology. But it wasn’t always this way. The socialist movement used to be quite strong in the early 20th century. There was even a socialist candidate for president—Eugene V. Debs—who captured 6 percent of the vote in a four-way race in the 1912 presidential election. However, by the early 1920s, an all-out assault on socialists conducted by President Woodrow Wilson had successfully weakened the movement. Since then, people have associated socialism with the Soviet Union and government programs.
Despite this, socialism seems to be slowly making a comeback. Bernie Sanders is the first self-styled democratic socialist in the Senate, and a recent poll indicates that a higher percentage of young people have a more positive opinion of socialism than capitalism.
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