Socialism in the United States is prominent in a way it hasn’t been in decades. High-profile left-leaning politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hold up socialist policies as solutions to the ills facing the nation, from the growing political influence of the “top 1 percent” to the lack of universal health care. Meanwhile, critics, including President Trump, say socialism leads inexorably to tyranny and poverty. But the important debate is clouded by many misconceptions.
MYTH NO. 1 — Socialism is a single coherent ideology.
Socialist groups may have different names (“democratic socialists” and so on), but the distinctions between them are an illusion, columnist Jenna Ellis wrote in the Washington Examiner last year : All are “precursor[s] to full-blown Marxist-Leninist communism.” And according to an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, “All forms of socialism are the same.” Many attacks on socialism, as well as polls gauging its surprising popularity, take for granted that it’s a unified philosophy amenable to a crisp judgment.
Yet socialism has multiple meanings and interpretations, which have to be disentangled before a discussion about its merits can begin. One distinction centers on whether socialism is a system that must supplant capitalism or one that can harness the market’s immense productive capacity for progressive ends. Karl Marx, who predicted that historical forces would inevitably lead to capitalism’s demise and to government control of industry, was the most famous proponent of the first type of socialism. An impatient Vladimir Lenin argued instead that rather than waiting for history to run its course, a revolutionary vanguard should destroy capitalism.