Speaking of Words
By MICHAEL FERBER
A spectre is haunting the Democratic Party, the spectre of “socialism.” Hundreds of elected officials around the country have called themselves “socialists” recently and got elected anyway, including a Senator from Vermont, several members of Congress, and the mayor of New York.
Most of them are members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a group founded in 1982 with only a few thousand members but now with some 120,000. Over twenty city councils around the US now have at least one DSA member sitting on them. In this electoral season several hundred have run for office, with a majority winning their primaries, including Angie Nixon, who defeated her much-better-funded opponent by 12% in the Florida primary for US Senate.
Needless to say, the Republicans are shouting about a “socialist threat,” even a “communist threat,” sounding much like those who hated Franklin Roosevelt ninety years ago, or like the McCarthyites of the 1950s who thought the Communists had taken over the State Department, but even some establishment Democrats are now sounding the alarm.
On September 1 this year the House of Representatives voted 220 to 192 on largely party lines to condemn “socialism in all its forms.” Chris Pappas voted no, Maggie Goodlander voted present. Until recently “socialism” had negative meanings to so many Americans that if you didn’t like a policy you could effectively blacken it by calling it socialist, and you wouldn’t need to pass a resolution like this. But the latest polls show “socialism” is more attractive than “capitalism” to a majority of young people and to a majority of Democrats, as the 192 negative votes attest. So just labeling something “socialist” or “socialism” is no longer a very effective weapon. The idea is on the table and under debate. But what on earth do the words mean?
One of the reasons for their negative charge is that the two most powerful totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century claimed them. The full name of the USSR was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the ideology of the German government for twelve years was that of the National Socialist German Workers Party. (Nazi is short for the first word, Nationalsozialistische.) These regimes chose “socialist” in part because it had a favorable resonance in many European countries, but other parties who called themselves socialist resented the appropriation of their good name. They believed that socialism was compatible with democracy, and was indeed the logical extension of it; Shaw called it “the economic side of the democratic ideal.” It did not entail the loss of personal freedom, unless it was the “freedom” to drill for oil on common land or the like. These socialists were often the first to oppose the totalitarians.
The stupefying preamble to the Congressional resolution collapsed all versions of “socialism” into one: “Whereas socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has, time and time again, collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and repressive dictatorships . . .” You don’t need to be a socialist to see that whoever wrote this, a man from Colorado named Crank, knows nothing of history.
The oldest use of “socialism” in English (1801) is now obsolete, for it meant a theory of society based on the “social contract” of Rousseau or Locke. In the 1830s it emerged in a more or less modern sense (along with socialisme in French), but it took its place alongside many other terms: “associationism,” “co-operativism,” “mutualism,” and “radicalism,” to name a few. There was much debate about specifics, such as whether the state, or workers’ unions, or local communities should own the means of production; how much property an individual may keep “private”; the rights of women; and the means by which socialist measures may be brought about.
By the end of the nineteenth century there were disputes with, and about, “communism,” which seemed more radical, more primitive, than socialism, something like the brotherhood of Jesus’ followers, who “had all things in common” (Acts 4.32). Communism, of course, came to be associated with the Soviet Union (USSR) and its international network of parties, parties that played the game of electoral politics but looked forward to taking power through a general strike or another sort of revolution, led by a “vanguard” of party members. Socialists by and large believed in elections and parliamentary politics but did not rule out workers’ strikes under some circumstances. The parties they formed sometimes had “democracy” in their names, such as the Social Democratic Parties of Germany and Sweden, and the Democratic Socialists of America. The norm now among such parties is to work by democratic and non-violent means to institute various measures such as a national health system (voted into existence in Britain in 1945), government ownership or oversight of railways or oil production, or rules about child labor, work hours, maternity/paternity leave, and public day-care centers.
As the word itself suggests, “socialism” at its most abstract places “society” at the center of its politics, as opposed to, say, the egoism of Ayn Rand or the individualism of Neo-Liberals, both of whom consider any restrictions on capitalism in the name of social welfare to be a step on the road to serfdom. When asked about “society,” Margaret Thatcher famously said, “There is no such thing.”
With “socialism” so various and ambiguous in meaning, it makes a good term of abuse. I think it can be shown that every reform proposed or passed since the Progressive Movement of the 1890s was branded as socialist if it in any way impinged on the “rights” of capitalists to do whatever they want. Try to ban child labor in factories or shorten the work week to five days and you will be accused of socialism. A graduated income tax, with rising brackets for rising incomes, or indeed any income tax, will be denounced as socialism. Everything passed by Congress in the 1930s, including Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act, indeed the whole “New Deal,” these were socialist. You can still expect to meet this cloudy weaponized word if you advocate free kindergartens, better public transportation, better salaries for public-school teachers, rent control, more public parks, recycling, solar energy—you name it.
I wish a little semantic hygiene could make a difference in the political sphere, but those attacking “socialism” have no interest in clarifying what they mean by it. We seem to be stuck fighting in the murk. But something has changed drastically. Whatever it means, nearly half the House of Representatives in 2026 have refused to condemn it “in all its forms.” That would be astonishing news at any other time in American history.
I am happy to hear from readers with questions or comments: mferber@unh.edu.
Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.