The negative portrayal of socialism has deep roots, and it isn’t really about the ideas themselves so much as the stories that have been told about them.

For more than a century, powerful interests have framed socialism as something to be feared, often because it challenges the concentration of wealth and asks hard questions about fairness, community, and economic justice. During the Cold War those fears hardened; western governments, media, and cultural institutions painted anything associated with collective provision as a slippery slope towards authoritarianism. That legacy still lingers, long after the geopolitical context has changed.

There’s also a tendency in public debate to flatten socialism into its worst historical examples. Instead of seeing it as a broad tradition with democratic, ethical, and community-centred strands, people often hear the word and think immediately of failed states or heavy-handed regimes. It’s easier to caricature than to explore nuance, and outrage always travels further than careful explanation.

At the same time modern politics rewards simple binaries. Calls for stronger public services, fair wages, or shared responsibility get bundled together as “socialism”, then dismissed as unrealistic or dangerous, even though many of these ideas already sit quietly at the heart of everyday life: the NHS, public libraries, state education, and the principle that no one should be left behind.

In truth socialism is portrayed pejoratively because it threatens comfortable assumptions. It asks us to look again at how we live together, who benefits, and who’s forgotten, inviting a conversation about compassion, community, and the common good.

It’s easy to imagine the ancient world as hard, unforgiving, and uninterested in the wellbeing of ordinary people, yet the Romans quietly remind us that societies have always wrestled with how to care for those who’re vulnerable. They didn’t have anything like a modern welfare state, but they did understand that a city, and an empire, couldn’t hold together unless people had enough to live on. That sense of shared responsibility feels surprisingly familiar.

In Rome, the annona – the state grain supply – became a lifeline. Huge quantities of grain were shipped in from across the empire and distributed free or at subsidised prices to the city’s poorer citizens. Taxes, rents, and provincial revenues made it possible. It wasn’t simply largesse; it was a recognition that a hungry population breeds unrest, while a fed population can breathe, hope, and build.

Later, under Trajan, the alimenta scheme offered support for orphaned and poor children in Italy. Money from taxes and state-managed loans funded regular payments to help them grow, learn, and thrive. It wasn’t universal, and it certainly wasn’t perfect, but there was a quiet moral thread running through it: children matter, and society can’t flourish if they’re left behind.

Even the emperors’ occasional cash gifts, debt relief, or employment through public works carried the same message. However self-interested those acts were, they revealed an understanding that prosperity isn’t just an individual pursuit; it’s something held in common, something tended and shared.

When you look at it this way, the Romans weren’t just building roads and aqueducts. They were experimenting with the idea that a community should look after its people – an idea that still shapes the choices we make today.