“A communist is likely to be the next mayor of New York City,” said conservative pundit Ben Shapiro in a recent episode of his podcast. Shapiro was referring to Zohran Mamdani, an American politician who served as a member of the New York State Assembly and is currently the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York.
Mamdani does not identify as a communist, but as a democratic socialist — a political party that also counts U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan among its most visible members, and has a long history in American politics.
Shapiro is one of many politicians who have recently lumped democratic socialism together with communism. Republican Representative from Tennessee, Andy Ogles, for example, wrote in an X post on June 26, “Zohran ‘little muhammad’ Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great city of New York.”
President Trump has also described Mamdani as a “communist,” adding that under his leadership, New York would become “a communistic city.” Democratic socialists, in turn, have pushed back, calling these comparisons misleading mash-up of political ideologies that, in fact, have important differences. “No, I am not,” Mamdani responded flatly to claims that he is communist, and added that such allegations “distract from what I’m fighting for.”
So who’s right? What really is democratic socialism? To understand it, we need to go through some history and sift through some definitions. Let’s get into it.
First, some numbers: According to a Pew Research study, 55% of Americans say they have a negative view of socialism, and the leading concern within this slim majority is that socialism weakens personal work ethic and causes people to be too reliant on government support. The same study also reported that a large majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents had a positive impression of capitalism and a negative view of socialism.
What critics rarely acknowledge is the wide range of theories that exist within the umbrella term of “socialism.” Traditionally socialists believed that workers should collectively own, regulate and benefit from their jobs’ facilities and resources — called “the means of production” — and share in the growth of their companies.
Many modern American socialists have backed away from this idea of collective ownership and argue that it is the responsibility of democratically elected lawmakers to regulate the financial power of the wealthiest Americans. Mamdani for his part has said, “I don’t think that we should have billionaires, because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality, and ultimately, what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country.”
Simply put, the central focus of today’s Democratic socialists is to close the increasing wealth gap in the US. To achieve this, , they argue for the use of “progressive tax rates that have been used by governments in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France and Spain, which allows for higher tax rates to apply to higher levels of income. A billionaire’s first $250,000 in income, for instance, would be taxed the same as a family that makes the same, but the next million in income earned would be taxed at a higher rate.
Today’s democratic socialists often cite the WWII-era progressive tax rate in the U.S. as evidence that these laws can help fund community and federal action without losing the country’s capitalistic identity.
Socialism’s foundational ideas can be traced even further back, though, all the way to ancient Greece, where the philosopher Plato depicted an ideal collective society in his dialogue, “The Republic.” The Enlightenment — an intellectual movement in Western Europe that spanned from the mid-1600s to the 18th century — emphasized reason and an optimistic view of human progress, inspiring the belief that problems could be solved through social reform and indirectly influencing the development of socialist thought.
Building on the intellectual tools and critical perspectives ushered in by the Enlightenment, the French Revolution helped catalyze socialism and pushed the general populace to question the legitimacy of private property, class hierarchies and unchecked wealth.
In the 19th century, amid the Industrial Revolution’s major economic and social changes, socialism continued to gain momentum in Europe, as the average worker was growing increasingly poor, while factory owners and other industrialists grew richer. Early socialist thinkers like Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, conceptualized “utopian socialism,” the first subgroup of socialist thought, which differed from those of later socialist movements.
They advocated for self-sufficient communities and a society led by experts in each field, like scientists and engineers, to optimize research and production, all to improve the lives of the working class. Their proposal to rein in capitalism and implement different social and economic systems provoked extensive debate across the world.
As utopian socialists imagined harmonious, classless communities, a more radical voice soon emerged. Karl Marx, a German political philosopher and economist, was a notable critic of utopian socialism and believed in his own form of socialism, “scientific socialism,” which set the stage for what is more commonly known today as “communism,”a system that outlaws private property ownership and seeks to create one middle class.
Socialism enjoyed a period of popularity in America in the late 19th century, when some labor activists began to champion this ideology. Some socialist politicians even won public office. The first was elected as a city councilman in 1897; another won a seat in Congress in 1910; and in 1912, Eugene Debs ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket, winning 6% of the popular vote. Thereafter, growing concern about the long-term consequences of socialist ideology — driven in part by the rise of fascism in Europe and communism in Russia — caused its support to fade from the American mainstream.
Along the way, though, popular figures in Hollywood and science — including Albert Einstein, who penned an open essay advocating for democratic socialism — were pulled into the controversy.
Now, nearly a century later, many Americans still don’t understand that communism and socialism are not the same thing. Despite the confusion, democratic socialism has been growing in popularity along with the visibility of elected officials like AOC, Rashida Talib and Bernie Sanders.
Their political movement advocates for a democratic political system alongside a socialist economy. It’s not old-world socialism or communism, they say, but rather a system that seeks to achieve socialist goals through democratic processes. Unlike many of their predecessors, they support the ownership of personal property and businesses across nearly all industries, advocating for federal control over only essential industries like utilities. As democratic socialism gains a foothold in the U.S., particularly among younger voters, parsing these differences can help voters better understand the political landscape.
