That&#x27;s not the reason why &quot;socialism&quot; (however you define it) didn&#x27;t take root in America.<p>There was a time when the labor movement was strong, Eugene V. Debs was a serious presidential candidate (even being pardoned by the then-POTUS Warren G. Harding over his sedition charge) and radical syndicalists like the IWW were influential.<p>These proclivities were largely staved off through sleights of hand like Wilson&#x27;s New Freedom and later the New Deal, which appeared to achieve socialistic ends, but largely through statist and corporatist means that didn&#x27;t pose much of a threat to the establishment. An interesting example is that the National Recovery Administration part of the First New Deal was originally proposed by the then-president of General Electric, Gerard Swope.