On June 24th, the specter of Socialism was once again thrust onto the American political scene with the victory of Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City. It was a surprise, upset victory over Andrew Cuomo, New York’s former Governor.
Mamdani is an out-and-out Socialist who, like most Socialists, is promising freebies to everyone but the rich. It was the biggest Socialist political upset since another Socialist, U. S. Senator Bernie Sanders, won the New Hampshire Democratic primary for President in February of 2020. In both cases, support from those under 30 years of age was a key factor.
The Rise and Fall of Socialism in America
The Socialist Party of America was founded in 1901. It received support from trade unionists, progressive social reformers, populist farmers, and various immigrant groups. But it never did well at the polls, particularly in presidential elections. Its staunch opposition to American involvement in World War I resulted in a large number of defections.
The best showing ever for a Socialist ticket was in 1912, when their candidate, Eugene Debs, received 901,551 total votes, or 6% of the popular vote. In 1920, Debs ran again, this time from prison, and received 913,693 votes, 3.4% of the total.
Socialism rebounded in the 1930s during the Great Depression under the leadership of Norman Thomas. However, President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, which introduced America to Welfare-Statism, prevented Socialism from gathering much steam. Later, the party’s opposition to American involvement in World War II cost it much of its support.
The party stopped running presidential candidates after 1956 when its nominee won fewer than 6,000 votes. The party decided, instead, to focus its efforts on educational programs. In the early 1970s, the party splintered into three main groups, and the original party changed its name to Social Democrats, USA.
The Resurrection of Socialism in America
It was therefore startling to most people when Newsweek magazine proclaimed on the cover of its February 6, 2009, issue that “We Are All Socialists Now.” As proof, the magazine pointed to the fact that the U.S. government had already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. The writer of the cover article then asserted, “Whether we want to admit it or not… the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.”
How can this resurrection of Socialism be explained? It relates to the rapid secularization and paganization of American society in recent years, especially since the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. During that campaign, Obama made a promise “to spread the wealth around.”
When critics said that this remark displayed Obama’s Socialist leanings, Obama justified it by citing Scripture: “My Bible tells me there is nothing wrong with helping other people. That we want to treat others like we want to be treated. That I am my brother’s keeper, and I am my sister’s keeper. I believe that.”
Socialism always flourishes in a secular society. And the reason is simple. Here’s how Robert Knight of the American Civil Rights Union has explained it: “… Socialism goes hand in hand with abandoning God and worshiping the idol of an ever-growing government.”
Bernie Sanders promised that government would become the National Nanny by providing every need. He promised free college, free health care, and another $10 trillion in federal spending. When considering such reckless promises, Robert Knight asked, “What’s not to like if you view government as an ATM machine for all your needs?” Or, to put it another way, “Who needs God when government will supply everyone’s needs at someone else’s expense?”
Likewise, today, Mamdani is promising free buses, free child care, a rent freeze, a $30 dollar an hour minimum wage, and city-owned grocery stores, among other hand-outs.
The Competing Systems
There are really only two types of social organization — collectivism and individualism. In the 20th Century, collectivism took many forms, such as Socialism, Fascism, Nazism, Welfare-Statism, and Communism. The alternative system, and the only one compatible with individualism and freedom, is Capitalism.
Collectivist systems like Socialism rely on state power to forcibly redistribute wealth. These systems amount to legalized theft. C. Bradley Thompson, who is Executive Director of the Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism, has summarized Socialism brilliantly as a ruling system that “uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.”
Defenders of Socialism always try to present themselves as compassionate people who care for the underprivileged. They characterize Capitalism as a dog-eat-dog system that produces inequities, with great disparities between the rich and the poor. Thompson has responded to these arguments with this observation: “Simply put, Socialism rewards sloth and penalizes hard work, while Capitalism rewards hard work and penalizes sloth.” The Bible says, “… if anyone is not willing to work, neither let him eat” (2 Thess. 3:10).
The Need for Common Sense
The young people today who are swarming to Socialists like Mamdani, Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are a spiritually bankrupt generation who view government as God. They are also a greedy generation that pants after “free stuff.”
Further, they are obviously ignorant of economics and are hard-up for common sense, for one of the facts of life is that there are no free meals. Thus, if the government gives you a “free” education, you will spend the rest of your life paying exorbitant, confiscatory taxes to cover the cost of that education and the “free” educations of those who follow you. I guess the problem with common sense is that it is not very common anymore.
Considering Scripture
Some liberal Christian spokesmen have tried to defend Socialism on the grounds that the early Church in Jerusalem practiced Socialism as described in Acts 2:44-45: “And all those who had believed were together, and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.”
Yes, the early Christians, who were severely persecuted, banded together in communal groups to help defend and support each other, but that is a far cry from Socialism. The key here is that they shared their goods of their own free will. No one forced them to do so. They were practicing benevolence, not Socialism.
In like manner, today, I give a lot of my income to many ministries, churches, and social welfare organizations that provide food, clothing, and even lodging to poor people. But I do so willingly as an expression of my love of Jesus. No one forces me to do so.
Again, the Socialists utilize the power of the State to force people to give to others through policies that result in a forced redistribution of income. And that is theft, pure and simple. Their desire is to make people dependent on the State because such dependence, in turn, will provide the Socialists with ever greater power over people’s lives.
One interesting thing in this regard that I have noticed over the years is that when Socialist politicians are forced to reveal their income tax returns, they never show any significant donations to help the poor. No, these “compassionate” liberals want to help the poor with your money and mine—not theirs.
Insights About Socialism
When Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media mogul, gave a speech about the virtues of Capitalism, he made a very insightful comment about Socialism: “Socialism is a form of feudalism. The Lord is the State and the Aristocracy which rises up around the State . . . The serfs are the same people who have always been serfs throughout history. Socialism doesn’t save anyone from working for the company store. Government just becomes the company store.”
Winston Churchill always had a pithy way of presenting profound ideas in brief statements. Here’s what he had to say about Socialism as compared to Capitalism: “The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
Margaret Thatcher, a former Prime Minister of England, put it this way: “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Thomas Sowell, renowned economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, summed up his informed view of Socialism with these words: “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you’ve earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”
An anonymous keeper of a blog called “War on Socialism,” had this to say about the morality of Socialism: “Socialism is immoral at its core [because] it requires an acceptance that the government owns you, that when the rubber hits the road, you are simply a number, and that if you are more productive than most other people, you will be replaced as a cash cow to be milked for what some group of Statists consider ‘The Common Good.'”
History attests to the fact that people are always willing to surrender their freedoms for the promise of security. That is exactly what Socialism does. Remember philosopher George Santayana’s warning: “Those who do not remember the past are destined to repeat it.” Beware!
Benjamin Franklin is quoted as having once said, “Those who would give up their freedoms for security, deserve neither.”