Are socialism and Americanism compatible? Look to history.

There’s a lot of divisive rhetoric these days around socialism. On the one hand, socialism is increasingly attractive to Americans on the political left. Whereas very few mainstream or successful politicians even a decade ago would have openly espoused socialism as a legitimate political path for America, today politicians and voters (in the Democratic party, at least) are becoming more and more comfortable with describing themselves as socialist. Meanwhile, the Republican party in the U.S. has doubled down on its claims that forms of socialism are not only terrible — Donald Trump recently called it a “wrecker of nations and destroyer of societies” — but opposed to American values. Trump has contrasted the two, saying that “We believe in the American Dream, not in the socialist nightmare,” and Republican Congressman Tom Cole has argued that socialism is “fundamentally un-American,” and inherently in opposition to freedom.

This argument over whether socialism can be compatible with “American” culture and politics may seem like a new one, with the concept of socialism finally unshackled from its association with the Soviet Union, but this conversation is actually at least a century old. In the early twentieth century, a robust and growing socialist movement tried to establish itself as consistent with the values of the American heartland.

A lot of Americans aren’t familiar with the heyday of socialism in the United States, when the Socialist Party candidate for president, Eugene Debs…