I didn’t know I was a socialist until Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign. I knew I was repulsed by exploitation and oppression, and I even understood that capitalism perpetuated much of the injustice I saw around me. But I had never even once considered the possibility that I myself was a socialist. No one had ever asked.

It was Bernie Sanders, eventually, who asked. He asked: Why should you tolerate a system that privileges the profit-making activities of a tiny minority over the humanity of the vast majority? He asked: Are you willing to fight for someone you don’t know? He asked: Which side are you on?

These questions cut right to the core of what it means to even have a society: what we believe to be the purpose of the institutions we’ve erected to facilitate our coexistence, on whose terms they do and should operate, and to what ends. These are the questions that have always animated the socialist movement.