In light of recent developments in New York City, specifically on the recent primary elections and the emergence of self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as a potential mayoral candidate, as well as the increasingly aggressive public engagement of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in their tour around the United States, and the fact that AOC’s chances of becoming the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee have doubled within one week, it has become clear to me that socialist rhetoric is gaining momentum in American political discourse.
This trend is further reflected in survey data from the Pew Research Center, which shows that approximately 36 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 now view socialism positively. In response to these developments, it is imperative to contribute to the proper education and clarification of what these socialists are actually advocating for, or even what true socialism truly advocates for.
Friedrich von Hayek, Nobel laureate and one of the most influential economists and political philosophers of the 20th century, once remarked, “If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.”
Building on his erudition, I would add: If socialists understood socialism, they wouldn’t be socialists.
The true definition of socialism is a social and economic doctrine that advocates for public, rather than private, ownership or control of property and natural resources—the means of production. It is both a political and economic system in which the means of production are owned and controlled collectively by the community or the state, rather than by private individuals. In other words, in practice, the means of production are controlled by a minority political elite.
Now, no matter whether an economic system is capitalist, socialist, or any other, it is important to note that the system itself is not a utopia or an end in and of itself, but a means to an end. Economic systems ration scarce resources, goods, and services, and each one does this through either a private or a social decision-making process, but only individuals can truly make decisions. Modern money economies operate on prices which reflect the value assigned by either individuals or groups, as well as supply and demand. However, who gets to decide what is supplied and what is demanded differs across these systems. Socialism claims that shared ownership will foster broader participation, leading to everyone sharing in the benefits. Although this is impossible, it remains the foundational argument.
Many socialists have bypassed the foundational principle of collective ownership of production and have instead jumped straight to demands for ownership or redistribution of the output of production. Production is seemingly taken for granted. This conceptual shortcut makes socialism seem like a dream economic system by avoiding what socialism really is.
Therefore, although many public and political arguments are made in the name of socialism, what is often advocated for is not true socialism. In reality, the debate has rarely centered on collective ownership of the means of production—such as the factories, tools, land, and capital that make production possible—but instead on ownership or control of the outputs of production (goods and services).
Simply put, many self-identified socialists are less interested in owning the means of production and more interested in claiming entitlement to what is currently being produced or the production that someone else already owns.
Hellbound and Down 