In a recent Veterans Day speech, Donald Trump leaned into some of his favorite Red Scare rhetoric: “We will root out the communists, Marxists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” The words came months after Trump announced a plan for a vicious immigration crackdown that would include an ideological screening to keep socialists and other radicals from entering the country.

Trump’s hysteria serves as a salutary reminder: socialism is still the Right’s favorite hobbyhorse, the thing it most loves to hate. And it’s not hard to understand why right-wing warriors like Trump keep going back to that well; after all, socialism is usually framed as the opposite of that most hallowed American value, freedom.

Admittedly, French Marxist philosopher Étienne Balibar is an unlikely candidate to change their minds. Still, for decades, the famous coauthor of Reading Capital has encouraged socialists to reclaim freedom and democracy as their rightful inheritance and go one step beyond: the survival of the socialist project, he insists, depends on redefining what those ideas actually mean in the present.