Democratic Socialism & Communism
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie claims that “democratic socialists aren’t communists.”
IN FACT, the policies and rhetoric of democratic socialists accord in striking detail with Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the Soviet Constitution, and the Law of the Soviet State. Here are the specifics:
- The Communist Manifesto calls for winning “the battle of democracy” so that government controls all “communication,” “property,” “transport,” “factories,” “credit,” and “agriculture.”
- And the Soviet Constitution states that the “economic foundation of the USSR” is the “socialist system of economy” in which “private ownership of the means and instruments of production” is abolished except for the “small private economy of individual peasants and handicraftsmen.”
- Likewise, prominent democratic socialists like Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders have called for using “democracy” to “seize the means of production,” including “banks and major industries,” “gigantic” energy companies like “Exxon,” “drug companies,” and the “largest AI companies.”
- Likewise, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Platform calls for government to seize ownership of the “largest corporations and essential industries” and thereby turn “food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation” into “common goods and utilities.”
- The Soviet Constitution praises the “overthrow of the landlords and capitalists” and declares that “the bulk of the dwelling houses in the cities and industrial localities, are state property.”
- Likewise, the DSA Platform says that no one will pay a “mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right.”
- Likewise, Mamdani has called for “moving away from the status quo in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market and toward a future where we guarantee high quality housing to all as a human right.”
- The Communist Manifesto says that socialism will lead to a day when “class distinctions have disappeared,” but to achieve this, the “working class” must first become the “ruling class.”
- Likewise, the DSA Platform aspires to a “classless society,” but it also calls for the “working class to govern” while ironically stating that people will be “free to spend your time how you like without worrying about cost or dreading going back to work.”
- The Soviet Constitution guarantees the “right to employment.”
- Likewise, the DSA Platform calls for a “federal jobs guarantee.”
- The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “the reduction of the working day to seven hours.”
- Likewise, the DSA Platform and Sanders call for a “32 hour work week.”
- The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “medical” care, and the Law of the Soviet State affirms that the “socialist state affords all toilers the right” to “free medical aid.”
- Likewise, Sanders has stated dozens of times that “healthcare” is a “right” and demanded “Medicare for All — not some, or a few, or most” but “ALL.”
- Likewise, Mamdani has written that “we need to abolish private insurance, institute single-payer & nationalize the medical supply chain immediately.”
- The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “pre-maternity and maternity leave with full pay.
- Likewise, the DSA Platform promises “paid family leave for all workers,” and Sanders wants government to provide workers with “at least twelve weeks of paid family and medical leave” “after a new birth, to care for a sick loved one, or if they themselves are ill.”
- The Soviet Constitution guarantees “a wide network” of “nurseries and kindergartens.”
- Likewise, Sanders has called for “universal childcare and pre-kindergarten,” and Mamdani says he “will implement free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years.”
- The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “education,” including “higher education” that is “free of charge.”
- Likewise, the DSA Platform promises “free, quality public education” through “college,” including “all medical education and training.”
- Likewise, Sanders says that “public education for all” should be a “right,” including “college.”
- The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “annual vacations with full pay.”
- Likewise, Sanders wants government to “guarantee all workers” “paid vacation.”
- The Communist Manifesto declares that “socialism” will create a world where “the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.”
- Likewise, the DSA Platform promises a “world without war.”
- The Law of the Soviet State scorns the U.S. system of checks and balances on the power of government as “bourgeois democracy” and claims that “Soviet democracy and the Soviet state are a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.”
- Likewise, the DSA Platform calls for replacing the “President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
- The Law of the Soviet State declares that the USSR “annihilated the capitalist system of economy” that “exploited” the “formerly poverty-stricken” masses, even though the living standard of the “Soviet people was roughly one third that of the United States.”
- Likewise, the DSA Platform calls for the “end of capitalism” and promises a “world” without “poverty,” even though people in capitalist countries have far lower poverty rates and dramatically higher living standards than people in socialist nations.
- A 1973 Library of Congress report documents that the “acquisition and possession of firearms in the Soviet Union are subject to severe restrictions and limitations imposed by the State.”
- Likewise, Mamdani stated in 2022, “We need to ban all guns.”
- Mamdani and Sanders reject the label “communist” and differentiate themselves as “democratic socialists,” but the founders of the Soviet Union called themselves “Social Democrats,” and the Law of the Soviet State refers to the Soviet Union as a “socialist democracy” more than 40 times.
- The Communist Manifesto closes with the words, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”
- Likewise, the 2021 DSA Convention “reaffirms and rededicates DSA to the ‘Workers and the World, Unite!’”
