Last weekend I attended the 2016 Socialism Conference here in Chicago. This four day event featured more than 100 panel discussions on topics ranging from the state of the Chinese economy, to Marxist critical theory, Donald Trump and Right-wing populism, social movements, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and the political economy of birth and death. This is the second year in a row that I have attended this event. As I did last year, I found the conference to be intellectually stimulating and the speakers, for the most part, quite compelling.

While wandering about the conference, I thought about the irony (hypocrisy?) that is a group of Marxists conducting a four day meeting over the July 4th weekend where they discuss “revolution” and social change in a building complex named for an American isolationist and newspaper tycoon and owned by a multi-billion dollar corporation.

I was also annoyed and more than a bit angered by how too many people do not understand the difference between making a speech and asking a question. Of course, this is ultimately the moderator’s fault. It is their job to clamp down on the mix of egotistic grandstanding, social anxiety, and rudeness that drives some attendees to become confused, thinking that it is they who should be the focus of attention, as opposed to the invited guest panelists, and presumed experts on the topic being discussed.

I also meditated on how Bernie Sanders, as a Democratic Socialist, shares many of the concerns and worries as the organizers of the Socialism 2016. However, Bernie Sanders is not a Marxist; he is an old school Social Democrat. For many of the attendees at Socialism 2016, Sanders is not radical enough. He is an impostor and a fraud whose criticisms of casino capitalism (and the solutions he proposes to fix it) are insufficient. Predictably, many conservatives would lump Sanders and Marxists together as one and the same thing—even though such a conclusion would represent a fundamental error of inference.

And like Sanders, Barack Obama was not spared criticism. The excellent scholars on the Black Politics After Obama panel offered a devastating analysis of the “hope and change” promised by the United States’ first black president Barack Obama and how his two terms in office have done little to improve the life chances of African-Americans.

Moreover, while the election of Obama was a type of symbolic victory in the long Black Freedom Struggle, the African-American community, by most measures, is doing worse of in 2016 than they were when he took office. Black Americans (and others) need to confront this inconvenient and unpleasant truth even while we may have great affection for Barack Obama, the person.

These are impressions and feelings. They are important. But as a social scientist, I almost always find myself compelled back to the data, the hard facts, which can help us to separate what we feel from what we know empirically.

As I left the conference on Sunday, my thoughts kept returning to recent public opinion polls and other research which suggests that in the aftermath of the Great Recession, almost unprecedented wealth and income inequality, and the resurgence of Left-wing populism in the form of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and Occupy Wall Street, that a good number of Americans seem amenable to socialism.

On this question, The Washington Post reports:

In a recent YouGov survey, respondents were asked whether they had a “favorable or unfavorable opinion” of socialism and of capitalism…As you can see, overall, 52 percent expressed a favorable view of capitalism, compared with 29 percent for socialism. Republicans, those in families earning more than $100,000, and people age 65-plus had an especially high regard for capitalism compared with socialism, but respondents in almost every demographic category demonstrated the same preference to some degree. There were just two exceptions to this pattern: Democrats rated socialism and capitalism equally positively (both at 42 percent favorability). And respondents younger than 30 were the only group that rated socialism more favorably than capitalism (43 percent vs. 32 percent, respectively)…

These divides were amplified by generational differences:

Just 34 percent of respondents age 65 and older said they would be willing to vote for a socialist, compared with about twice that level among respondents younger than 30. This Gallup question is of course about willingness to vote for a certain kind of candidate, rather than preferences in voting for that kind of candidate vs. another.

To interpret these polls properly they must be placed within a larger political context. Unlike Western Europeans, the American public has long been described by political scientists as “non-ideological”. While extreme party and political polarization exists in the United States at present, most voters do not hold values that cohere neatly within a narrow definition of political ideology. For example, conservatives may say they want a “smaller government” but also want to keep their social security and other benefits. Moreover, when respondents report that they support “socialism” such language may mean different things to different people depending on their levels of political knowledge.

In addition, voters may support policies that involve a more robust social safety net, protections for unions, and a higher minimum wage, but may not necessarily locate such goals relative to a broader political value system that fits neatly within a conservative-liberal dichotomy or continuum.

But ultimately, the socialism I heard discussed at the Socialism 2016 conference is, in many ways, not the “socialism” that a growing number of Americans—in particular young people—want for their country.

I would suggest that what they are giving voice to in their support of “socialism” is a yearning for a fairer, more equal, and just society. The American people want a sense of hope in what feels like an era of hopelessness for their economic futures, those of their children, and communities at large. These desires for economic justice and opportunity are driving the populist wave in the United States (and around the world)—on both the Left and the Right.

In an era where the twin regimes of neoliberalism and the culture of cruelty dominate the United States, this political vision is “radical” even while being soundly within the best parts of the American political tradition.

The notion that the United States government and other elites had a responsibility to protect, grow, and nurture the (white) middle class was central to the policies of a series of American presidents from the pre World War 2 years, to the beginning of the Cold War, and ending in the late 1960s. Of course, initiatives such as the New Deal, and later the G.I. Bill and FHA/VA home mortgage programs were imperfect: for example, they discriminated against African-Americans and other non-whites and helped to buttress Jim and Jane Crow. Nevertheless, they provided a vision of a government where positive freedom and positive liberty were facilitated by economic opportunity and uplift for a good part of the (white) American public.

The New Deal could have been the beginning of an even grander project. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Economic Bill of Rights” would have strengthened the social safety net while helping to protect the human dignity and economic security of the American people. To accomplish such a goal, Roosevelt’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights included the following principles:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

These types of policy initiatives were the product of post-World War 2 American prosperity and a very specific arrangement of economics and international power that heavily subsidized the country’s economy and its workers. This past cannot be recreated.

While the power of the neoliberal regime may feel omnipresent there are in fact opportunities for resistance both locally and nationally. The Bernie Sanders campaign is one such site of contestation. The Black Lives Matter movement is another space where people are standing up against power. The successful efforts in states such as California to raise the minimum wage and to provide guaranteed time off are acts of resistance against gangster capitalism as well.

A politics of hope is insufficient. It must be mated with organizing and educating the public about how 1) there are many forms of capitalism and 2) that capitalism, consumerism, and democracy are not necessarily synonymous or interchangeable with one another.

When the American people say that they want “Socialism” what they really mean is a true “We the People” democracy, one that serves all of us equally and not just the 1 percent and other plutocrats.