The DSA explains socialism as it captures a political party it calls “asleep at the wheel.”
Posted by Ed Folsom, July 29, 2026.
Socialism is all the rage among Democrats young and old here in Maine these days. Within Maine’s Democratic Party the “democratic” socialists have all the energy, the vibes, and the mojo. They’ve essentially captured the party. Nationally, CNN polling tells us the DSA has a favorable/unfavorable rating of +17 among Democrats, which is 13 points higher than the +4 favorable rating Democrats give the members of their own party in Congress. Sixty-six percent of Democrats express a positive view of socialism in general, versus only 44% who view capitalism favorably.
As discussed in my recent post, here, it was members of the Democratic Socialists of America who recruited Graham Platner to the U.S. Senate race to run as a Democrat. Then, the DSA endorsed Platner’s candidacy. The Democrats have now replaced Platner with Troy Jackson. Earlier this campaign season, the DSA endorsed Troy Jackson when he ran as a primary candidate for Maine Governor. Jackson lost that primary and the Democrats recently installed him as Platner’s replacement.
Both Platner and Jackson accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. They call for “Medicare for all” and the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The DSA shares these positions with Platner and Jackson, as does self-described “democratic” socialist (though not a member of the DSA) Bernie Sanders who also endorsed Platner and now endorses Jackson.
Is socialism just all the good stuff that you like and none of the bad stuff that you don’t?
What is this socialism thing that the Democrats are so excited about in general, and what is the agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America in particular?
As to socialism generally, a core tenet, if not the core tenet, of socialism is public ownership of the means of production. Capitalism and private ownership are to be replaced by socialism and public ownership. In Marxist theory, history operates according to certain laws. Those laws dictate that capitalism is a necessary and inevitable phase in which the means of production will develop to a certain stage before capitalism’s contradictions cause the working class to awaken to their exploitation and rise up against it.
At that point, the laws of history dictate, socialism will replace capitalism. But as every Marxist who has ever endeavored to assist history along this allegedly inevitable arc could tell you, including Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, etc., socialism must be built. And building it requires rooting out all vestiges of the capitalist system. These days, they keep telling us that those include the nuclear family, religion, the male-female binary, and “heteronormativity,” all of which have been imposed on us by greedy, exploitative capitalists, solely to serve their interests.
Marxism also holds that after all traces of the capitalist system have been erased and socialism has been fully built, the state will simply wither away and die. History will have reached its end and everyone’s needs will be met through great abundance and cooperation.
“Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger. A brotherhood of man.” John Lennon (multi-millionaire entertainer)
Now you might better understand why Marx’s disciples in the Soviet Union, members of the Communist Party though they were, named their nation the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and not the Union of Soviet Communist Republics, and why they spoke of “building socialism” and of “socialism in one country” rather than of “building communism” and of “communism in one country.” In Marxist thought, socialism and its state ownership of the means of production is a stage of historical development that necessarily and inevitably must follow capitalism and precede the communist utopia.
When you hear capitalism denigrated as theft, exploitation, and oppression by people who tout socialism, and when you hear those same people denigrate the nuclear family, patriarchy, the “gender-binary,” “heteronormativity, and religion; when you hear them rail against an endlessly lengthening list of “systemic” isms that are supposedly holding us back from perfecting the human condition, you are hearing the echoes of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, et. al. – adherents of socialism, to a one.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the socialist “People’s Democracies” in Soviet times, Communist China, Communist Cuba, North Korea, and Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea are what socialism invariably looks like in power and practice, because, human nature.
I sketch this out, for those who have no idea about any of this, hoping it might provide you with needed context for what’s going on around you. Socialism is not European or Scandinavian-style social welfare statism layered on top of a heavily regulated capitalist economy – that’s the stuff of social democratic politics, not of “democratic” socialism or socialism in general.
Socialists have a built-in antipathy to capitalism. They never tire of telling you that capitalism is inherently, “systemically,” greedy, exploitative, and shot-through with “whiteness,” “white supremacy,” slavery, theft, and countless systemic isms. To correct all the alleged systemic theft and exploitation, socialists aim to confiscate the wealth and property of their capitalist enemies and to vent their own envy and hatred against them, punishing and destroying them through theft and conquest (or “colonization,” as they, themselves, like to put it).
What is it that the DSA now openly admits their “democratic” socialism stands for?
After years of obfuscating the meaning of socialism to convince the normies that it’s just plain old Scandinavian-style social welfare, the socialists at the DSA have suddenly begun admitting publicly that socialism is much more than that. As reported by the Manhattan Institute, “A majority of the [DSA’s] governing board openly identifies with Communist ideology.”
Everyone should pay attention to the DSA’s very candid admissions.
On July 14, 2026, the DSA released its updated platform: “Workers Deserve More.” In it, they tell us, “Some of [our] demands may be won under our current system, but we know complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up.” Again, they are telling us that their “complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up.” Of course, since a new society can’t be built from the ground up until the old one is reduced to ground level, the first step in reaching “complete victory” must be to destroy existing American society. This makes sense for people who say our existing society is irredeemably exploitative and obstructs our historically inevitable evolution into socialism.
Less than 2 months ago, in June of 2026, New York’s Democrats picked DSA’er Darializa Avila Chevalier as their candidate for the U.S. Congressional race in New York’s 13th District. Chevalier is a co-founder of “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” which is on record declaring that it is “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” Chevalier’s goal of eradicating Western civilization clearly furthers the DSA’s narrower goal of destroying American Society, to pave the way for a new society to be built from the ground up.
How many times do they need to come right out and tell you what they’re up to before you believe them?
Chevalier has the endorsement of New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, also a DSA’er. As I have pointed out before, Mamdani is on record reminding fellow DSA’ers at a DSA winter conference several years ago of the importance of staying focused on “the end goal of seizing the means of production.”
Now, the DSA have come right out and told everyone, in their newly revised platform statement that they are fighting for “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.” And how do you suppose the public would acquire ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries? Think Sandinistas.
How, specifically, does the DSA plan on destroying American Society so they can build a new society from the ground up?
How does the DSA plan to level American society to the ground in preparation for, as they put it, “draft[ing] a new constitution, and creat[ing] a democratic socialist republic?”
For one thing, they clearly intend to capture political offices in the existing system by running as Democrats. And although 66% of Democrats give the DSA a positive rating, the DSA are not so fond of the Democratic Party, other than as a means they can use to accomplish the DSA’s ends.
In their new platform, the DSA tell us:
“The Republicans are in on it, the Democratic Party is asleep at the wheel, and both are funded by the same criminal class of billionaires and war profiteers” (my emphasis).
Clearly, in letting the DSA take over the party, the Democratic Party establishment has shown us that it’s asleep at the wheel. It’s also clear that the DSA doesn’t think much of the Democratic Party.
Beyond getting its members installed in political office by hacking Democratic Party primaries, what else does the DSA plan to do to destroy American Society? According to their revised platform, they “fight” to:
- “fully abolish[ ] the police and prison system,”
- “grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status…and end visa caps and quotas.” In other words, make the U.S. border wide open to everyone in the world, while they “ABOLISH ICE…End ICE detention and deportations;”
- “Defund the Department of War. End all foreign wars and close overseas military bases.” That is: Ending U.S. military/defense capabilities, making us fully vulnerable to foreign enemies;
- “Extend full voting rights to all permanent U.S. residents.” In other words, allow non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections;
- “Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.” That is: Abolish the Senate and expand a single house of representatives into some new sort of legislative chamber selected by ranked-choice voting. This would probably make it easier for a Central Committee to wield absolute control. This goes along with their plan to…
- “Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
These moves would go a long way toward destroying American society, but as a way of crushing the American economy in particular, the DSA also fights for:
- “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.” In other words, seizing the means of production/nationalizing industry;
- “a 32 hour work week with full pay and benefits, and a living minimum wage.” Because that’s how the socialist government of the “classless society” will roll after it seizes the means of production;
- “universal healthcare at no cost to individuals, including complete access to reproductive and gender-affirming care” with “all medical education and training public and free.” Because nobody will have to pay for anything. Everything will be “public and free.” As for bills, the DSA tell us: “Speaking of bills: you don’t really have them anymore. You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord;” and
- “Housing is a human right.” And not only is housing a human right, but “comfortable housing is a human right.” Imagine that. Who will be responsible for violating this human right if my housing ever somehow becomes uncomfortable? It must be the people who would be responsible for supplying me with this human right to begin with. Does that include you?
But if comfortable housing is a human right, how come a comfortable amount of food isn’t?
If comfortable housing is a human right, how can a comfortable amount of food not be a human right too? Yet the DSA’s platform doesn’t call food a human right. Instead, it says that, in its classless socialist society, “Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.”
That would make food legitimately subject to rationing, along with education, energy, medicine and transportation, if the publicly owned means of production fail to produce enough for everyone’s needs and comforts.
But a human right is a human right, and a shortage of comfortable housing would be a human rights violation. So, while socialist-style bread lines, gas lines, years-long waiting lists for medical procedures, etc., would be acceptable, a shortage of comfortable housing would require that heads would have to roll among those responsible for the violation, wouldn’t it?
Food was a “common good” in the USSR in 1932-33, during the Holodomor, too. That didn’t stop roughly 4,000,000 Ukrainians from starving to death when the Soviet Socialists allocated Ukrainian grain elsewhere and shot any collectivized, starving Ukrainian peasants they caught trying to steal a few grains of those common goods. The heads of those responsible for the deaths did not roll.
Mao and his Chinese Communist Party (socialist, all) made food a common good, too. They collectivized farming, to produce this common good, during the Great Leap Forward, but the result was a famine in 1959-61 in which an estimated 35-55 million people starved to death. Does this history of starvation under the building of socialism help explain the DSA’s decision not to declare food a human right?
Seriously, who buys what the DSA and its socialist comrades and fellow travelers are selling?
Here’s how the DSA’s platform describes the nature of work, and a day off from work, in their classless socialist utopia:
“Imagine taking a day off from work in a future without capitalism. It might not feel as badly needed as it does now. You enjoy your work; it’s interesting to you, and you’re well trained for it. You work as much as you are able and no more than needed, and you would control your own labor and see it going to good use. It’s not just a job to pay the bills.”
Yes, you poor, poor babies; in socialism, Mamapppa State is going to swaddle you and fulfill you. And then Mamapappa State is going to decide how much you’re able to work and how much you need to work, because, “From each according to ability, to each according to needs.”
So be careful not to take more than you need or provide less than you are able, because, as the Soviet Socialists put it in the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: In socialism, work is a duty, and “He shall not eat who does not work.” (See Art. 2, Ch. 5, point 8, here).
There’s nothing new or hip about this socialism or “democratic” socialism stuff, or the death, destruction, and misery it invariably brings. In fact, suckers, it’s older than dirt.
