The "S" word: a short history of an American tradition--socialism

Abstract

Campaigning against Barack Obama in 2008, Sarah Palin warned, Now is no time to experiment with socialism,A while Missouri congressmember Todd Akin told a McCain rally, This campaign is about one thing. It's a referendum on socialism.A One of the most popular ongoing features on Glenn Beck's daily radio program is called America's March to Socialism.A John Nichols, a leading political reporter in the US, here offers his unapologetic retort to the return of red-baiting in American political life-arguing that socialism has a long, proud American history. Tom Paine was enamoured of early socialists, Horace Greeley employed Karl Marx as a correspondent, and Helen Keller was an avowed socialist. Moreover, we owe many basic American institutions, like the Social Security system, to the ideas and efforts of American socialists. Recent polls show that Americans, especially young Americans, are more open to socialism and alternatives to capitalism than in decades. Indeed, as The New Yorker put it, There hasn't been so much talk of socialism in an American election since 1920, when Eugene Victor Debs, candidate of the Socialist Party, made his fifth run for president from a cell in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.A This short, irreverent book gives Americans back a crucial part of their history and makes a forthright case for socialist ideas today.