Discredited ideologies rarely disappear all at once. They usually shed their language before they surrender their instincts.
After World War II, fascist successor movements in Italy would later recast themselves as national conservatives. In the 1970s, Western communist parties adopted “Eurocommunism,” distancing themselves from Moscow while retaining ambitions for radical socialist transformation. More recently, France’s National Front became National Rally, exchanging a notorious label for a respectable one while preserving much of its nationalist core.
Not every rebrand is fraudulent. Some movements genuinely moderate. But a new name is not proof of a new program. The test is where power moves.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM IS A LIE — IT’S JUST COMMUNISM WITH BETTER BRANDING
Apply that test to the American Left today, and the vocabulary gives it away. Nationalization becomes public stewardship. Central planning becomes coordination. Censorship becomes safety. Redistribution becomes equity. Political control of capital becomes stakeholder accountability. State dependency becomes economic security. Each pair describes the same transfer: decision-making power moving from private hands to political ones. Only the words change.
That’s why not all communists are Communists. The rebrand isn’t a cover story for people secretly holding a party card — that’s the conspiracy theory version of what is happening. It’s the wrong one. It’s more simply ideological laundering: the same program, run through cleaner language until the label no longer sticks. The capital-C Communist belonged to a party, carried a card, and defended specific historical projects that would bring with them shortages, prison camps, and walls built to keep citizens from escaping their government. Not surprisingly, that brand tests poorly today. Today’s functional communist rejects the word while keeping the program. At most, they’ll quote Karl Marx.
American politics is becoming a game of hide-and-seek. In safe progressive districts, politicians will wear the “democratic socialist” label as a badge of authenticity. In tougher races, candidates will push the same programs and call themselves progressives, populists, or, with real chutzpah, capitalists who understand capitalism better than its defenders do. Abdul el Sayed calls himself a capitalist opposed to monopolies. He isn’t a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. But he shares its coalition, accepts its support, and advances its agenda. The question isn’t what he calls himself. It’s what remains of capitalism once his version of it is enacted.
Far-left politicians can call themselves capitalists because private companies would still exist under their systems, at least at first. But the existence of corporations does not establish the existence of capitalism. What matters is who sets prices, directs investment, allocates credit, determines how property may be used, decides who may enter a market, chooses which economic outcomes will be allowed to stand — not whether a corporation continues to exist on paper. If firms keep nominal ownership and liability while the state dictates their conduct, capitalism survives as a legal shell. Arguably a more insidious one than outright ownership: The entrepreneur keeps the risk and the blame, the government gets the power and a permanent scapegoat.
California’s Proposition 40 is the clearest test case. California’s economy tops $4 trillion — the fourth-largest on Earth, if it were a country. Prop 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of anyone who was a California billionaire on Jan. 1. That’s not a tax on income, profit, or the sale of an asset. It’s a redistribution of property, decided by the state, from the people who own it.
History shows how such “one-time” and “targeted” measures stick and spread. In 1898, Congress imposed a “temporary” war tax on long-distance calls. It was repealed, revived for World War I, repealed again, revived again — and a version of it kept riding phone bills for over a century, until Congress finally killed it in 2006. In 1969, a fix meant to catch 155 wealthy tax dodgers became the Alternative Minimum Tax. By 2015, it was hitting some 4.5 million taxpayers, most of them nowhere near wealthy.
Picture Germany, Japan, or the United Kingdom holding a national vote to seize 5% of every billionaire’s net worth in one shot. Nobody would file that under tax policy. We’d call it wealth expropriation. Prop 40 is audacious enough to date liability before the vote itself.
This is what the rebrand will look like up close. Nobody will issue a nationalization order. No official will show up to take title to anything. The owner will still hold the shares, still vote them, still eat the liability if a company tanks — the state will just skim 5% off the top. Then 10%. Then 15%. Call it a “billionaire tax,” and it sounds like routine code. Call it a “one-time emergency contribution,” and confiscation sounds temporary, even kind. The question underneath doesn’t change: Does property belong to its owner, or is it permanently available for political reassignment?
The modern communist agenda won’t seize factories. It will govern through mandates, subsidies, licensing, politicized credit, administrative pricing, and “emergency measures” — property will remain nominally private while its use, financing, and pricing will be increasingly directed from above. Forget the hammer and sickle. What you’ll actually get is control over what gets produced, where investment flows, who’s allowed to participate — and who gets penalized and punished.
The state need not seize the factory if it can determine what the factory produces, how it operates, whom it hires, where it invests, what profits it gets to keep, and which political objectives it must serve. Legal title remains private. Effective control does not.
The DSA is candid about the destination: replace capitalism, collectivize the major sectors, and get there by democratic means. But most of its actual power will come from politicians in its wider coalition who will accept its support and share its program while rejecting its label — and whose most “principled” opposition will amount to withholding an endorsement, which is a bit like trying to discipline a toddler without ever saying no — only by withholding praise.
Societies can and should undertake common projects, regulate genuine harms, and provide for citizens who cannot provide for themselves. Not every government action is communist. But refusing to recognize collectivist mechanics unless their advocates arrive wearing red stars is lazier still.
For all the talk of workers, workers gain no power. Power flows instead to those who control the subsidies and public-private partnerships: administrators, consultants, regulated monopolies — the professional class claiming to speak for labor. This is not power transferred to workers. It is power transferred to apparatchiks. When working Americans reject the agenda? The DSA explanation is ready: the workers have been duped, victims of false consciousness.
THERE ARE NO SOCIALISTS IN POWER — ONLY PERSONAL CAPITALISTS
Collectivism didn’t disappear when its symbols became embarrassing. Its advocates have just learned better public relations. The absence of the word communism tells us very little, because power has never required accurate labeling.
Call it “democratic socialism,” public stewardship, stakeholder capitalism, or economic justice. Dress confiscation up as contribution, control as coordination, dependency as security. When ownership survives only as liability while control passes to political institutions, the label is a distraction. It is communism without Communists.
Todd L. Pittinsky is a professor at Stony Brook University.