Socialism thrives on short memories

Why young people are blind to socialism’s truths

A specter is haunting the United States — the specter of socialism. On Nov. 4, 2025, the biggest city in the country elected a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as mayor. While DSA-backed Omar Fateh lost his bid for the mayoralty of Minneapolis, all four DSA-endorsed candidates for the Minneapolis City Council won their elections.

“In recent years in Minneapolis,” the Star Tribune’s Deena Winter reported in July, “the DSA has gone from a fringe group to a major insurgent wing of the [DFL] party.” Besides “the three members on Minneapolis City Council, two DSA members are on the St. Paul council…[and 15] DSA members have been elected statewide, the group said, including two on the Duluth City Council.”

This isn’t your grandfather’s DFL. When left-wing extremists took control of the party in 1946, Hubert Humphrey fought them, wresting back control in 1948. There is no such resistance now. What changed?

For one, people’s understanding of what socialism is. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary offers:

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

2a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property.

b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.

3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

Dictionary.com defines it as:

1: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government.

My old copy of the Penguin Dictionary of Politics says:

At its simplest, the core meaning of socialism is that it is a politicoeconomic system where the state controls, either through planning or more directly, and may legally own, the basic means of production.

These definitions are strikingly consistent.

When Gallup asked Americans, “Will you tell me what your understanding of the term ‘socialism’ is?” in 1949, the leading answer with 34 percent was: “Government ownership or control, government ownership of utilities, everything controlled by the government, state control of business.” This is close to the dictionary definition. But when Gallup asked Americans “What is your understanding of the term ‘socialism’?” in 2018, the leading response, with 23 percent, was: “Equality — equal standing for everybody, all equal in rights, equal in distribution.”

Sometime between 1949 and 2018, people’s understanding of the term socialism drifted away from its actual meaning. Instead of a definition rooted in the means by which socialism would achieve its ends — extensive government ownership and control of the economy — people adopted a definition rooted in the ends, skipping over the question of how these are to be attained.

This was probably a recent development. Until 1991, large parts of the world were operating under systems of extensive government ownership and control of the economy — textbook socialism — and it was a historic disaster. To call yourself a socialist in the 1990s was to stamp yourself across the head with the word “IDIOT” in six-inch-high letters.

But that was then. I was nine years old when the Berlin Wall fell, 11 when the Soviet Union went into the dustbin of history, and I turned 45 this year. Nobody younger than me will remember socialism as a reality, and that is 39 percent of the American electorate. A YouGov poll from November found that, among 18–29-year-olds, capitalism only beat socialism by four points (33-29) on the question “Which is the better economic system?” but this edge grew as you moved up through the age cohorts: 10 points among 30–44-year-olds, 40 points among 45–64-year-olds, and 48 points among those over 60. That jump at the age you must be to remember socialism in action is striking. The more likely you are to remember socialism, the less favorable your view of it is likely to be. Education has failed to substitute for experience.

Maybe we need a refresher, and maybe New York will join Minneapolis in illustrating what not to do. In action, socialism cannot hide itself behind a definition based on aims but must come clean about its means, and these will doom it to failure, as they always have. The lesson will come at a great expense, but perhaps it is necessary. “That’s the reason they’re called lessons,” the Gryphon remarks in “Alice in Wonderland”: “because they lessen from day to day.”