Idoubt that Joe Cantafio considers himself a socialist. But I think that he and hundreds of other workers at General Motors’ Tonawanda engine plant—and hundreds more who are coming to it—are testament to the rightness of the government bailout.

Cantafio, a UAW Local 774 rep, was among the officials who stepped to the podium Tuesday. For the second time in two months, GM announced that a major engine line is coming to the plant. The deal secures 300 job and adds 415 others. New life has been breathed into a place that two years ago was on life support. In a region where good economic news is nearly as rare as Stanley Cups, it is cause for celebration.

There are a lot of reasons for the Tonawanda turnaround, most of them involving union and management years ago facing reality and choosing change over extinction.

But I do not think salvation would have been possible unless Washington last year decided that the U. S. auto industry—and all of the jobs and families connected to it—should not be allowed to die. GM got a $52 billion bailout as it went through a 40-day bankruptcy. If you believed what you heard on right-wing talk radio, the spirit of Leon Trotsky had entered the body of Barack Obama. The joke was that GM stood for “Government Motors.”

Last week, the automaker repaid its $6.7 billion loan, and the government would get the rest back from selling its GM stock. Now comes GM’s investment of $400 million in the Tonawanda plant, on top of February’s $425 million show of faith. The chickens did not just come home to roost. They laid eggs, and the eggs are hatching.

“The loans kept us alive,” said Cantafio, who has 31 years at the plant. “That investment turned out to be a really smart move. I don’t see how anyone could second-guess it at this point.”

Granted, years of bad labor deals and poor management and, consequently, crummy cars—take my Chevy Vega . . . please!—put the Big Three automakers in a huge hole. They have largely responded with better vehicles, saner management and workers who have sacrificed for survival—such as the thirdshifters in Tonawanda who, among other things, now work on weekends. Even so, after the 2008 economic crash, GM needed a helping hand, and there is little doubt that the federal bailout, along with the end of the aura of infallibility of Toyota, paved the road to revival.

All of which hugely matters around here. The Tonawanda plant was nearly a hollow shell, down from 4,300 workers 20 years ago to a skeleton crew of barely 700. The fear last year was that even those jobs would disappear.

“About a year ago, we had to walk more than 70 employees out of this plant,” said plant manager Steve Finch. “All of us, myself included, did not know what the future held, whether we would even have jobs.”

The place is not just surviving, but recovering. The transfusion from Washington got GM off its deathbed. A healthy GM is good news for the Tonawanda plant—and for a community desperate for decent-wage jobs.

“Manufacturing,” state development head Dennis Mullen declared, “is not dead.”

Maybe I am socialist dupe, but I do not see recession-era government bailouts as the sign of Armageddon. From Social Security to Medicare to tax write-offs for homeowners on mortgage interest, “socialism” has long been a way in America of sanding down the rough edges of raw capitalism. Unless you are nostalgic for the era of robber barons, child labor and sweatshops, I cannot see a problem with that.

Not only did the auto bailout work, it worked in our backyard. Roll over, Rush Limbaugh, and tell Glenn Beck the news.