Marxism has been an abject failure when it’s been tried.
Last week I wrote an admittedly provocative column about the Socialist running for New York City Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and how his ideas are silly, bound to fail and make life in New York unnecessarily hard on many people.
Southern California’s Marxists came out of the woodwork to defend Mamdani and lob personal attacks at me. But, of course, they offered little evidence that Mamdani’s ideas would work.
I wrote last week that “Socialist policies are disproven in cities daily,” meaning these policies, when implemented, do not end up accomplishing their desired objectives, whether to make things more equitable, or cheaper, or whatever.
Instead of providing compelling evidence to the contrary, one person told me that millions of people living “long, happy, healthy lives (in these cities) would disagree.”
It is a strawman argument, since they can be old, happy and healthy and still suffering under Marxist policies.
I could point to many examples of Marxists over the past 100+ years taking control of the government with revolutionary rhetoric and implementing policies that led to poverty, loss of freedom, oppression and death. I could also point to many Marxist-in-spirit policies in big American cities that are causing poverty, at a bare minimum.
Almost anticipating my response, the reader suggested these millions of people are “probably too busy thriving to bother with (the) tired Soviet-Communism-equals-Democratic-Socialism routine.”
But is it a tired argument? You’re tired of hearing it, maybe, and I’m tired of saying it. But if Marxists keep insisting upon repackaging communist ideas, I’ll keep pointing out its failures.
After all, Democratic Socialism and Soviet Communism aren’t really that different. Are the alleged Democratic Socialists seeking revolution? Are they inspired by Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto? Don’t they want to perfect society by putting a bunch of central planners in charge? Are they concerned with vague notions of equity, even if it means the loss of private property, attacks on people’s freedom of speech and religion? Sounds similar to me.
I will concede that many Democratic Socialists, including this reader, aren’t envisioning starving millions of people and publicly executing dissenters like the Soviets and others, but that was the result of Marxism, not necessarily the goal.
One reader, who was respectful and actually made a real argument, took issue with me panning Mamdani’s disdain for billionaires and my comment that billionaires are born due to “hard work, marketable ideas and some luck.”
The reader said I gave the impression that anyone can become a billionaire – which I did. Nearly everyone in America won’t become a billionaire – but anyone could. The reader made a class argument, saying that people born without the silver spoon in their mouth can’t become billionaires, but that’s simply not true.
Jay-Z, Kenneth Langone, Oprah Winfrey and Howard Schultz are all billionaires who started with little, and research suggests that 73 percent of American billionaires are “self made.”
The reader also went after CEOs, using the term interchangeably with billionaires. However, most CEOs are not billionaires. In fact, NASDAQ reports it’s rare for non-founder CEOs to be billionaires.
The reader writes: “So the fair solution to income disparity is to mandate that all corporations pay profit sharing to ALL employees. It is simply wrong that a CEO can own 4 or 5 houses, while the employees who do the actual work can’t even afford a place to live.”
The reader added that that’s not Socialism, but the idea that workers should be owners of a business just because they work there is Marxist as it gets. Furthermore, corporations do pay profit sharing to all employees in the form of a salary (though there might be other benefits as well, like performance-based bonuses and stock options).
I’m sympathetic to the reader because the reader is trying to make the point that wages overall have not kept up with the cost of living, and on that point the reader is entirely accurate. But bad government policies like rent control and excessive spending and bureaucratic laws like the California Environmental Quality Act that drive up housing construction costs are as much to blame here, if not more.
Another reader sent an annotated version of my column to me, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of my column and pretty much everything else.
“Matt, what has Marxism got to do with this election,” the reader asks.
What does Marxism have to do with the policy positions of a Socialist? The question answers itself.
The reader tried fact checking me on my claim that grocery stores are low-profit endeavors, and then linked to search results where the first one reads: “Grocery stores generally operate on very slim profit margins, typically between 1% and 3%.”
Anyway, the point of this column and the last to point out that Mamdani’s socialist ideas might sound good but they have largely been tried before and have a long history by which to judge them. It’s not a good history.
Meanwhile, principles like free markets, private property, individualism and liberty have led to the greatest period of flourishing in human history. While we always need to think of how we can help those who have been left behind, capitalism is still undefeated against Marxism (no matter what we’re calling it nowadays).
Matt Fleming is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. Follow him on X @FlemingWords
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