Definitions matter. Take the definition of socialism, a Cold War scare word, but enjoying a rise in popularity stateside. Voters in New York City chose a socialist mayor. In response, socialist candidates for Congress from across the U.S. are running for office and threatening the Democratic Party establishment.

Support for socialism and socialist politicians from Gen Z and Millenials is a factor in this political transition. A recent headline reads: “Nearly half of younger Americans view democratic socialism positively, according to a CNBC Generation Lab poll of 18- to 34-year-olds.” That’s eye-catching, given America’s anti-communist history, though socialism was widely popular in the nation before the Bolshevik Revolution.

Meanwhile, it is reasonable to think about Americans’ understanding of socialism in 2026. The context is dissatisfaction with capitalism. Here is one take, a certain flavor of dissatisfaction, that I will look at from The Dispatch of October 15.

Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute frets about 2025, “the year America went (kinda) socialist.” He points to the federal government’s ownership stakes in private-sector companies. Mr. Lincicome writes: “The government’s ownership stakes raise serious problems that have already begun to materialize: capital misallocation, politicized business decisions, preferential treatment, state coercion, corruption, and more.”

Over 10 months, he continues, “Uncle Sam’s equity portfolio has now grown to cover 35 deals across the steel, critical minerals, semiconductors, quantum computing, nuclear power, rocket motor, and crude oil industries, using a variety of laws and agencies to acquire the stakes. Even more deals are likely on the way—including ones, such as the new Andruil submarine arrangement announced last week, that give Washington a stake in certain projects instead of entire companies.”

What shouldn’t surprise us is this. Government intervention into business and commerce is nothing new. One could make a case that Mr. Lincicome is delivering more of a description of fascism than socialism.

One example from recent American history is instructive. When the housing-price bubble burst and birthed the Great Recession, the federal government stepped up to bail out the Big Banks, the perpetrators of the economic collapse. Then President Obama bailed out Wall St. and sold out Main St.

His hope and change became more of the same. That approach opened the door to Main St. dissatisfaction and two terms of President Trump. Meanwhile, his decision to attack Iran, and impose tariffs, or consumption taxes on foreign imports, are increasing inflation, a general rise in prices. Price hikes are exceeding wage growth, resulting in an affordability, or cost-of-living, crisis.

We return to Mr. Lincicome. He defines socialism with a focus on the legal justification for equity-based transactions (one in June 2025 versus 35 currently) under the president. On one hand, that is a dramatic increase, an average of two per month. On the other hand, framing the legal dimension of government intervention as socialism is unhelpful to understanding the totality of the “S” word.

On that note, Lincicome sidesteps a vital dimension of socialism. That is social control of the economy. What prevails today is corporate control; an employer dictatorship on the job is a case in point. Socialism is the inverse, or opposite, of that top-down control.

The current capitalist status quo, legal and political, favors employers over employees on the job. Power relations in the workplace have become heavily tilted on the side of employers. To this end, U.S. corporations have decreased labor union membership in the private sector (where most people work) from 16.8 percent in 1983 to roughly 5.9 percent in 2025, resulting in worsening standards of wage-earning, e.g., precarious employment.

A 2026 definition of socialism, therefore, should via politics and policies, address the current imbalances between employees and employers in the workplace. A socialist path forward, in brief, supports employees on the job, and all that relationship means for decision-making over investment, production and distribution. At a minimum, such an approach would improve current labor conditions and standards.

Workplace relations are central to socialism. Socialism of the past has fallen prey to workplace imbalances between employers and employees. In The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: The Conductor and the Conducted, the late Michael A. Lebowitz (Monthly Review Press, 2012) explored workplace relations during the era of the former Soviet Union. He unpacks the weaknesses of a vanguard party that knows what is best for the laboring majority, while advancing a vision of 21st century socialism.

In another book, The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now Lebowitz (Monthly Review Press, 2015), Lebowitz lauds Venezuela’s community councils as vital components of a “socialist triangle” that the late President Hugo Chavez articulated from 2006-11. The three interrelated parts are: social ownership, social production workers organize, and satisfaction of social needs. Against that backdrop, a conversation about an American socialism that puts the needs of working people first is long overdue.

There’s no better location to focus on than the workplace. That’s where working people, the majority, spend a third of their lives. Those whose daily labor makes our world should be at the center of the transition, developing a socialism in deeds and words.