If you were to believe American politicians, you would think everyone in the United States absolutely hates socialism.

This past weekend, when millions of Americans flooded the streets to protest Trump in the largest single-day protests in our country’s history, House Speaker Mike Johnson attacked the crowds as “Marxist socialists.” He insisted the Democratic Party was being taken over by radical socialists (if only!). (1)

It also seems to be one of Trump’s favorite slurs—frequently denigrating socialism as the political enemy of all true Americans. Just days ago, he warned that his administration is going to “close up some of the most egregious socialist, semi-communist programs.”

But this idiotic rhetoric ignores a simple fact: the vast majority of Americans actually love socialism—we just don’t call it that.

Our government’s most popular programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration’s health service—are all socialism. All four have sky-high approval ratings and bipartisan support from the working class. All four are socialistic in nature. (2)

But support for socialism isn’t just at the federal level—it’s also a local phenomenon. Public schooling from pre-K to high school, public libraries, fire departments, and local utilities are all examples of socialism. We just don’t call it that. And all are incredibly popular.

When pollsters ask the public about expanding these programs—from Social Security to local utilities—the public overwhelmingly supports it and vigorously opposes any cuts.

So what is socialism? At its core, socialism means collective ownership and democratic control of resources for the common good—where society, rather than private profit, determines how essential services are provided and distributed. (3)

It means not doing everything for the profit of private owners or shareholders. It means not running everything as a business.

Social Security isn’t managed by competing private companies trying to extract profit—it’s a shared system where we all pay in and everyone who qualifies receives benefits. That’s socialism. It’s collectivizing a retirement pension.

The same goes for public schools. They’re funded by taxes, free for any and all to use, and run democratically by elected school boards—that’s textbook democratic socialism applied to education.

Some leftists will object: “That’s not real socialism! Socialism means workers controlling the means of production!”

They’re not entirely wrong—worker ownership of industry is indeed a form of socialism, and a crucial one. But it’s not the only form. Socialism isn’t a single rigid ideology; it’s a spectrum of approaches unified by a core principle: prioritizing human needs over private profit.

More importantly, capitalism and socialism aren’t mutually exclusive binaries locked in eternal combat. They coexist.

Right now we live in a mixed economy—capitalist in many sectors, socialist in others. Your smartphone? Capitalism. Your fire department? Socialism. The roads you drive on to get to your privately-owned job? Socialism. The hospital that might bankrupt you? Capitalism. The Medicare that might save your life? Socialism.

The question isn’t whether we have socialism—we already do. The question is: which parts of our lives should be organized around profit, and which around human dignity?

So if these programs are so popular, why don’t we call them socialism?

The answer is simple: a sustained, nearly century-long propaganda campaign by the rich to make “socialism” a dirty word.

As Heather Cox Richardson has noted, it started almost immediately after Social Security passed in 1935—a program pushed into existence by socialists, communists, and labor organizers who had spent decades demanding a safety net for workers.

The business class recognized the threat immediately. If Americans embraced socialism for retirement security, what would stop them from demanding socialism for healthcare? For housing? For democratic control of their workplaces?

So they launched a counter-offensive. In the 1930s and 40s, business lobbies funded campaigns calling Social Security “socialism” to kill it. When that failed to stop the program’s popularity, they shifted tactics during the Cold War: socialism became un-American, foreign, dangerous.

By the 1950s, McCarthyism had successfully severed the connection in the public mind between the programs people loved and the socialists who fought for them.

This sadistic propaganda campaign got a boost from an unlikely ally: the Soviet Union. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics claimed that it was both socialist and democratic—although in reality, it was neither. The ruling class gleefully accepted the former but rejected the latter, effectively conflating socialism with tyranny in the American imagination. (4)

Still, the propaganda worked. Anything becomes true if you repeat it enough. (5) Americans learned to love the fruits of socialism while being taught to hate the word itself.

We enjoy our socialized fire departments and public libraries while politicians convince us that “socialism” means authoritarianism and poverty—conveniently ignoring that we’re already living with socialism, just the limited kind that billionaires have been unable to fully destroy.

This disconnect reveals something crucial: Americans aren’t opposed to socialism. They’re opposed to the word socialism, thanks to decades of propaganda.

When you strip away the label and simply ask people whether healthcare should be a human right, whether education should be free, whether housing should be guaranteed—the answer is overwhelmingly yes.

The good news? The propaganda is losing its power. If Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani are teaching us anything, it’s that younger generations, saddled with debt and locked out of homeownership, aren’t afraid of the S-word anymore.

In fact, a March 2025 Cato Institute poll found that 62% of Americans aged 18–29 hold a favorable view of socialism—nearly 20 points higher than the general population. They’re asking the obvious question: if socialism works for roads and schools and fire departments, why not healthcare and housing?

Trump and Johnson can rail against “Marxist socialists” all they want. But every time someone’s grandmother receives her Social Security check, every time a child walks into a public library, every time firefighters save a home without checking the owner’s credit score first—that’s socialism in action.

Americans don’t hate socialism. They live it, benefit from it, and consistently vote to expand it. It’s time we started calling it what it is—and fighting for more of it.