Thanks to the recent election of Zohran Mamdani as the City of New York’s ‘socialist’ mayor, there have been increasing alarms warning of a rise in ‘socialism’s popularity’ among a majority of America’s young people. However, this may be an overstatement.
While it is fair to say that there has been a rise in the number of socialist politicians getting elected, to attribute these electoral wins to any love of socialism is simply misguided. Why? Because the average ‘socialist voter’ has no concept of socialism, either in terms of its definition or in terms of its horrific history. They are voting ‘against’ something, not for it.
Socialism, as an understandable or relatable concept, has little or no relevance to most voters’ daily concerns and lives. To them, socialism is just some nebulous label that politicians use to belittle one another (even though they may all behave the same and pursue the same socialist policies).
In practice, socialism is the political application of the philosophy of egalitarianism. Socialist ‘equality’ does not mean ‘equality before and under the law’ – it means equity: the ‘equality’ of results. It means that those who work hard, take risks, and produce the goods, services, and products upon which a society’s survival depends, must be punished to the degree of their success, while those who do not fit into the productive class (for whatever reason) are to be rewarded by sharing in the products they had no part in creating. Continue reading »
