Why Mamdani’s Working Class Promises Are A Slippery Slope Toward Communism

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was recently asked whether America’s movement toward socialism could become a “slippery slope” into communism.

She laughed.

“I mean, no. I think that’s very silly,” Ocasio-Cortez responded.

But communism doesn’t have to begin with the promise of communism. It can begin with promises to make housing affordable, provide universal healthcare, make the wealthy pay their fair share, and give working Americans greater economic power.

Years before becoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani spoke at a 2021 Young Democratic Socialists of America conference, declaring that the movement’s purpose was not simply raising class consciousness, but “to win socialism.” He called for electing more socialists and identified a main objective: “The end goal of seizing the means of production.”

Mamdani acknowledged this objective lacked public support “at this very moment.” But that didn’t mean abandoning the end goal; it meant changing the approach to achieving it. He argued that socialists needed to meet people where they were on the issues, organizing and gradually building support for their more radical objective over time. 

Mamdani isn’t alone.

In an August interview with The New Yorker, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) National Co-chair Megan Romer was asked whether America’s largest corporations would remain privately owned under democratic socialism. In response, she advocated public ownership of essential industries. When asked whether she believed in owning the means of production, her answer was clear: “I do.”

Romer explained that the DSA wasn’t trying to change everything overnight, but instead wanted to shift economic power incrementally from the billionaire class to the working class. And DSA’s own platform explicitly calls for public ownership of America’s largest corporations and essential industries.

The historical connection is significant. Seizing the means of production — shifting power from capitalist owners to workers — is the central point of Marx’s communist framework. The only distinction today is the time frame. No one today is revolting overnight in the streets, as Marx believed in his time. But their political preferences are shifting. 

But there’s a critical distinction: Promising ownership to the working class doesn’t necessarily mean workers will end up exercising that power. Neither does it mean that idealistic young socialists will get the paradise they voted for. 

Cuba offers a historical example. At the beginning of Fidel Castro’s revolution, most people were on his side. Nationalization initially only targeted large foreign-owned companies before expanding to domestic businesses, leaving the state in control of most productive property. The vast majority of Cubans have suffered for decades under extreme poverty, food shortages, and political repression. Only a few at the top benefit from “seizing the means of production.”

Socialism and communism aren’t two entirely separate ideas that grew independently of one another. They share Marxist roots.

Within the Marxist-Leninist tradition, socialism was understood as an earlier stage in the development of communist society — not simply an alternative to it. Marx described lower and higher phases of communist society, a relationship Lenin later made explicit. 

These aren’t simply proposals for expanding government benefits. They overlap directly with central ideas in Marx’s communist framework.

Democratic socialism doesn’t exist in a perfectly sealed box, entirely separate from communist thought. We don’t have to wait for the overlap. We can already identify it in the ideas being discussed today.

Modern democratic socialists do not all subscribe to that progression, and many explicitly reject authoritarian communism. But their stated economic objectives can still share significant foundations with Marxist theory.

The dividing line isn’t as clear-cut as the political labels make it sound. Ideas associated with different stages of socialist and communist theory can overlap long before a society reaches anything resembling full communism.

So perhaps the question isn’t simply whether democratic socialism and communism are identical. It’s where their ideas about capitalism, private ownership, and economic power already intersect — and how far the proposed transformation is intended to go.

Before concerns over that transformation are laughed off as “silly,” their shared intellectual history deserves examination.

The question isn’t just where democratic socialism ends and communism begins. It’s how much of that dividing line has already been crossed in the ideas being proposed today. 

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Holly Jean Soto is a liberty and economics communicator dedicated to making complex economic, social, and political ideas accessible to everyday audiences. She graduated from George Mason University with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and is a Young Voices contributor.

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