Socialism Is Good, Actually Is Seen on a Table During an Election Night Party Held by the Los Angeles Chapter of the Democratic Socialists

| Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times via Democratic socialists keep winning primary elections, and Democratic voters are trending in the same direction: Recent polling suggests that a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults now identify as democratic socialists. Most recently, Abdul El-Sayed, who does not identify as a democratic socialist but was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and supports policies like Medicare-for-all, won a fiercely fought Democratic Senate primary in Michigan. As democratic socialists gain ground in Democratic politics, President Donald Trump and Republicans have attempted to conflate democratic socialism with communism (though allegations of “communism” are hardly new territory for Trump). At the same time, recent reporting has pointed out that, in fact, there are some members within the Democratic Socialists of America who openly identify as communists.

To help us understand what communism actually is and its history in the United States, Today Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Maurice Isserman, a history professor at Hamilton College. Isserman has written extensively about the history of communism in the United States, including in his latest book is Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism. Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.

There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. Define communism for me. Communism began as a split off from the socialist movement.

It was inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. And it is in favor of a total transformation of capitalist society with the government — the state — owning and operating what communists would call the means of production: factories, transportation, and so forth. It also believes in one-party rule. So for 75 years or so, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed no competing parties to exist within that country.

There have been communists in the United States of America before. What is their history in this country? The American Communist Party was founded in 1919, right after the First World War.

And it was, again, inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. It seemed to point to a way out. The Bolsheviks came to power, remained in power.

And so communists or would-be communists in the United States, in Europe, elsewhere said, "Well, if they can do it, we can do it too. So an American Communist Party was founded in 1919 — small, isolated, mostly immigrants, but it gained strength in the course of the 1930s during the Great Depression. Why did they gain strength during the Great Depression?

Because capitalism seemed to be failing and communism seemed to be the wave of the future. The other factor leading to the increase in communist influence was that fascism was rising in Italy, in the 1920s, in Germany, in the early 1930s. And it seemed as if there was a stark choice facing the world: either fascism or communism. And many people in the 1930s said, "Well, let's support the communists to beat back the threat of fascism.

Did elected communists get anything done in the United States? Well, there were very few elected communists. In the 1940s, there were two communist members of the New York City Council, but that was about it in terms of open communists being elected to office.

Their influence was seen more behind the scenes in the labor movement, in organizing the big new industrial unions of the 1930s, and organizing so-called front groups, anti-fascist groups, anti-racist groups, and so forth. And the party was never huge.