Return of the Socialist Bogeyman!

Like all cultures throughout history, America has produced political narratives to solidify essential principles within our society. These values are the reason for our existence and the rationalization of our actions. The idea of the American Dream for instance represents the promise of a capitalist system, while narratives of the Constitution and the ‘Founding Fathers’ serve as the foundation for the promotion of democracy and individual liberty. And Manifest Destiny justifies our foreign-policy from the Monroe Doctrine to “America First” as we continue to dominate the international system. But there has also been one consistent narrative regarding threats to the existence of the United States, socialism.

The development of American democracy and capitalism has always been shadowed by the ‘specter of socialism’. Socialism and its focus on the creation of equality through state-managed economic redistribution has been in a tug-of-war with capitalism’s focus on free trade and its associated inequalities since before America’s independence. America has borrowed from socialism to reduce the worst of capitalism’s side effects, while simultaneously using it as the ultimate bogeyman and threat to our way of life. In the 1920s this tension was represented by expansion of civic organizations versus efforts to destroy unions and the labor movement. In the 1950s it was the Civil Rights Movement versus McCarthyism in America’s struggle with a real external threat from communism, and a perceived internal threat from its close cousin socialism. And today it is “Medicare for all” and the New Green Deal versus Trump conservatism that marks the ongoing political contest between socialism and capitalism in America.