“Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it’s more socialism the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lot of stuff, it’s communism.” -Richard Wolff

Everyone has heard of socialism and socialists. How could they not have? America is practically overrun with them. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris. Except, that’s not really how that works. The American public has long been misled about what exactly socialism is, and it’s symptomatic of the greater lack of political literacy in America. This is an issue I hope to alleviate, both by explaining what socialism really is—and what supposed American socialists aren’t.

The first, and most important, part of dispelling these myths is simply explaining, at its simplest, what socialism is. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy asserts in a “more modest” attempt to define “a vast number of views and theories” that socialism is an economic system in which the means of production, such as “natural resources, tools, and the spaces [workers] employ to yield goods and services,” are controlled by the workers (Gilabert et al.). More simply, the means of production are the resources that produce goods, e.g. factories, large-scale farms, power plants, mines, and more. Of course, how these means are controlled by said workers is a subject of vociferous internal debate between socialists and has been for some time. As far back as 1920, Vladimir Lenin responded to a pamphlet released by the “local group in Frankfurt am Main,” which proclaimed that “a Workers’ Union, based on factory organisations, should be the rallying point for all revolutionary elements” (the local group in Frankfurt am Main) (Lenin, Chapter 5, Paragraph 3). Lenin retorts in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder that “classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is clear and simple” (Lenin, Chapter 5, Paragraph 7). One may note not only the distinction between their views—union and party, bottom-up and top-down—but the vitriol with which Lenin regards his German counterparts. It is no wonder that socialism is so misrepresented when its tenets are so harshly disagreed upon. Of course, there are certainly many positions on which almost all socialists agree. One fundamental precept agreed upon by most socialists is the abolition of private property, an assertion brought to the forefront of socialist discussion by Karl Marx in the 1840s. Marx posited this in his manuscript, Private Property and Communism, going so far as to declare that “the supersession of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes” (Marx, Part 3, Chapter 2, Paragraph 31). However, to properly examine this belief, we need to clarify something: 

Private property, to a communist, is not your shoes or toothbrush, or even your house. Those things are called personal  property and under socialism and under communism they continue to belong to workers in much the same manner as they do now.

When Marxists speak of private property under capitalism, it refers to the tools of production that should be owned by all of society, such as factories, lands, stores, mines and all those things that are gifts of nature or are built by many people over many centuries, but are now being monopolized by a few (Workers World 1).

Workers World, the newspaper organ of the Workers World Party (an offshoot of the Socialist Workers Party, itself an offshoot of the Communist Party USA, which formed as a result of a split with the Socialist Party of America, which in turn formed as a merger of the Social Democratic Party of America—itself a split from the Social Democracy of America—and breakaway elements of the Socialist Labor Party—yes, the sectionalism was that bad—) asserts in layman’s terms that any accusations of intent to take one’s personal belongings is an attempt to fearmonger over theft of goods.

It should be clear to anyone that these are not the positions of any mainstream politician, regardless of whether they claim to be or are accused of being socialist. The most well known of these figures, Bernie Sanders, has long been nebulous about what exactly he means when he says he’s socialist. Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder, editor, and publisher of Jacobin, America’s most prominent socialist publication, says that Bernie’s so-called socialism “is more reminiscent of former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, a fellow social democrat, than the Bolshevik-sympathizing Debs” (Sunkara). For reference, Eugene V. Debs was likely the most prominent socialist politician in American history, running several times for president. Not only does Sunkara state this from his own perspective, but he elaborates that even party men like Howard Dean can see it, too, pointing out what Howard Dean said on Meet the Press in 2005—“He is basically a liberal Democrat. . . . The bottom line is that Bernie Sanders votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time” (Sunkara). This is further confirmed by a project produced by FiveThirtyEight, a political institute operated by ABC News. According to this project, which cites the House, the Senate, and the White House Office of Management and Budget, Bernie Sanders voted alongside President Biden and the Democrats’ legislative agenda 90.9% of the time from 2021 to 2023 (Wiederkehr et al.). Thomas Alan Schwartz, a Vanderbilt University professor in political science, asserts that those in favor of the federal government and welfare, particularly Democrats, have been labeled as socialists since as far back as the 1930s, for policies as popular as Social Security. Even among those who label themselves Democratic Socialists, “their vision is more aligned with Scandinavian nations such as Denmark and Sweden where universal health care and a wide range of social benefits — and higher taxes — are the norm, but capitalism still prevails” (Naylor).

It’s truly a shock to think that positions so different can be conflated so easily. Thankfully, you don’t need to be an expert to figure these sorts of things out—a healthy dose of skepticism and some short research online can help to clear up most domestic political issues, though some may certainly require more advanced study than others. All you have to remember is simply to follow the age-old mantra, “don’t believe everything you read.”

Works Cited

Gilabert, Pablo, and Martin O’Neill. “Socialism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 25 May 2024, plato.stanford.edu/entries/socialism/. 

Lenin, Vladimir. ““Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder.” www.marxists.org, 1999, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch05.htm. 

Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” www.marxists.org, 2000, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm#44CC6

Naylor, Brian. “Republicans Blast Democrats As Socialists. Here’s What Socialism Is.” National Public Radio, 25 August 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/08/25/905895428/republicans-blast-democrats-as-socialists-heres-what-socialism-is 

“Private Property.” Worker’s World, https://www.workers.org/private-property/

Sunkara, Bhaskar. “Bernie Sanders for President.” Jacobin, 1 May 2015, https://jacobin.com/2015/05/bernie-sanders-president-vermont-socialist/

Wiederkehr, Anna and Bycoffe, Aaron. “Does Your Member Of Congress Vote With Or Against Biden?.” FiveThirtyEight, 3 January 2023, https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/