When I was growing up in the 1990s, people’s attitudes toward socialism tended to range from quaint bemusement to direct hostility. Socialists were either peddling a nice-sounding but ultimately unrealistic doctrine or they were apologists for one of the twentieth century’s most murderous ideologies.

Socialism has since enjoyed a Phoenix-like rebirth in many countries — including in the United States, of all places — with a large and growing number of people under forty identifying with or expressing positive views about socialism. The ideology’s resurgent popularity has brought with it the ghost of doctrinal conflicts past, as even self-identified socialists struggle to define what they mean by the label and how it aligns with other movements across the political spectrum.

For some hard-liners, any socialism that doesn’t unapologetically defend the Soviet Union isn’t worth the name. For others, socialism is just another word for the Nordic states. Democratic socialists like myself support many of the political rights guaranteed in liberal democracies (freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc.), but feel they need to be complemented by economic rights, some form of social ownership, and workplace democracy.