America’s New Proletarians

Karl Marx famously wrote in his 1848 Communist Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains,” and it was these unchained proletarians who elected Zohran Mamdani mayor of New York City, along with other socialists in municipal elections from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon and cities in between. But the 2025 elections did more than sweep a surprising number of socialist politicians to power. They also revealed contradictions inherent to all leftist ideologies. 

One big contradiction involves affordability, a major issue in the 2025 elections, particularly in terms of housing. But proletarians voting for socialists in the hopes of achieving the dream of homeownership don’t realize they’re voting for the kind of big government that’s already putting it out of reach. 

A report by Murray Weidenbaum at Washington University in St. Louis found that in three surveyed locales—Colorado, St. Louis, and New Jersey—the cost of government regulations added $1,500 to $2,500 to the price of an average house in the mid-1970s. By 2011, government mandates increased home prices by $65,224. Over the next decade, government made homes $93,870 more expensive. Socialists decry the high price of housing, but intrusive government contradicts them by burdening homebuyers with escalating regulatory costs, and socialists are not prone to surrendering government control of people’s lives.

In New York City, affordability provides an additional contradiction. When someone complains about life being too expensive, they might consider economizing or relocating to a less expensive place. But Mamdani voters do not want to economize or move; they want to continue drinking $8 lattes and living in Greenwich Village. Their belief system demands the world adapt to them rather than adapting to the world around them. It is a belief that inverts Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is foundational to the belief system of true proletarians. 

Then there’s the contradiction of what constitutes a proletarian in the first place. According to Britannica, Marx characterized proletarians as “workers who were engaged in industrial production and whose chief source of income was derived from the sale of their labor power.” This definition fits every working American; if you have a job, Marx says you’re a proletarian. 

This definition might apply to someone like Elon Musk, who also sells his labor to make money. But some of Musk’s labor is used to build and operate factories which employ other proletarians. What we’re left with is an ideology in which proletarians who work only for themselves are the selfless good guys, but those who work for themselves while providing employment for others are selfish members of the bourgeoisie, the enemy of proletarians. It defies logic. 

Marx did not envision a knowledge economy, computerized electric vehicles, or much else that constitutes the exponentially improved life we live today, so it’s not unreasonable to think that after 175 years, Marxism might be discarded simply for being woefully out of date. But one enduring aspect of Marxism is victimhood, which attends all leftist ideologies. 

Twenty-five hundred years ago, proletarians lived lives that were genuinely nasty, brutish and short. The Latin word proletarius described the lowest class of society in ancient Rome: people who were ignorant, impoverished, and considered by the state as good for nothing more than breeding the next generation of Roman legionaries.

A few thousand years later, life was marginally better for the proletarians of Marx’s day. They worked in dangerous conditions for wages so low they guaranteed perpetual poverty. Contrast this with today’s American proletarians who, deceived into believing they are victims, are among the most educated, most affluent, most pro-abortion people on Earth. Proletarians never had it so good, and it’s a contradiction of both history and ideology. Marx didn’t contemplate a working class comprised of well-fed women with graduate degrees in gender studies. 

In a very literal way, the attempted implementation of socialism in America reflects the oft-repeated definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Socialism has a perfect record of failure wherever and whenever it’s been tried, prompting some theorists to claim social conditions just haven’t been right in the past, but they are now, so it’ll work this time. In truth, the only way socialism works is by force. That’s why East Germany had to build a wall to keep people from escaping it.

Perhaps contradiction is too kind a word. The socialism peddled today is predicated on a system of organized lying and demands leaders who are skilled at telling convincing lies. Mamdani, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are just a few of those possessing the confidence, expressiveness, physical attractiveness and other traits required of a good liar. They personify the deceit necessary to camouflage the contradictions of their deeply flawed ideology.

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Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Scott Hogenson.

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