Since 2016, the idea of socialism as a viable and desirable goal has been on the agenda in American politics for the first time in a century. Until very recently, living American socialists had no experience tackling the question of how the working-class movement might wield state power. For that matter, socialists today lack firsthand experience with any mass working-class movement at all

Earlier generations of American socialists had a bigger impact on the labor movement than they did on elections; even during American socialism’s nadir in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, small socialist groups made important and outsized contributions to labor, antiwar, and social movement organizing. But until very recently, they were swimming against the tide of history.

This history means socialists in the United States need to look elsewhere for insights into how to wield the power of the democratic capitalist state that we now could enter, via Sanders. Perhaps the most useful case study: Salvador Allende’s presidency in Chile from 1970–73.