Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York, (third from left) campaigns with socialist candidates (l to r) Clair Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier

Yesterday, three openly socialist political candidates won their races to be the Democrat nominee to represent their House districts.

Brad Lander, who is Jewish but has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, defeated two-term Congressman Dan Goldman in the 10th district of New York.

In the Democrat primary for the 7th district, New York Assemblywoman Claire Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to win the nomination.

In the Democrate primary for the 13th district, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a community organizer and pro-Palestinian activist, eked out a victory against five-term Congressman Adriano Epaillat, who had been the first Domincan-American elected to Congress and was chair of the Congressional Hispanic Congress. Chevalier’s victory was especially surprising.

All three socialist candidates were supported by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdami, who calls himself a Democratic Socialist. What’s the difference between a Democratic Socialist and a Socialist. The Democratic Socialist gets elected to office by the majority vote of the people. After that, he’s just a Socialist.

What is the fascination with socialism among the political left in this country, especially among young people? First of all, I think there is difficulty in the term itself. People don’t know what it means. Many young people have been indoctrinated at their colleges or universities with the idea that those who are rich came about their wealth by nefarious means. Either they exploited their workers, exploited their connections with big wigs, or cheated in some way. The bottom line is, the default position of many young people enamored of socialism is that the wealthy, especially the heads of corporations and banks, obtained their wealth by ripping off regular people. There’s only so much pie, and the rich have claimed more than their fair share. In these peoples’ minds, socialism simply makes the scale balanced. It takes from the dishonest wealth of the rich and gives it to the hard working people who can never seem to get ahead because of their race, their poverty, political pressure, or what have you. The point is: the rich cheated or stole their riches, and socialism means to make all things equal by controlling the resources of the community and dividing them up equally among the members of the society. But that is not what socialism is. Not by a long shot.

Socialism, by definition, is where the workers control the means of production and the distribution of resources. That definition has expanded to mean that the government could control both the means of production and the distribution of resources. By “government,” most pure socialists would mean a government, elected or otherwise, that in theory represents the community. So, private industry is banned, as is private property. All is controlled by a central authority that supposedly represents the entire community under the theory that, such a representative central authority could ascertain the needs of the community and address those through the means of production, and meet those needs through the equal distribution of resources once the means of production have produced those resources. Nice, huh?

Here’s the problem: it doesn’t work. Never has. Never will. Why? Because people are broken in their humanity, so the temptation to control not only the means of production and the distribution of resources, whether that central body is made up of workers or representatives of the people in government, leads to the temptation to control other aspects of peoples’ lives and, finally, virtually every aspect of peoples’ lives. The State, or the central government, or the workers union or whomever, becomes the primary relationship in every citizen’s life. Not the family, or the church, or one’s business – the State is primary. Another reason socialism doesn’t work, never has and never will, is because those who really control the means of production and the distribution of resources (ultimately, it has to come down to a small, representative group, no matter who makes up that group, because it’s impossibly for practical reasons to simply involve everyone in these decisions; the process would be stuck in the mud at all times) can never seem to keep their hands out of the piggy bank for their own benefit. So, the means of production are often – essentially, always – manipulated to benefit them, and the resources are distributed to benefit them. What this comes down to is a few people who do very well and pretty much everybody else left to starve. I don’t mean “left to starve” metaphorically. I mean literally left to starve. Well, starve or be executed. Socialism is responsible for the deaths of millions over the decades of the 20th century. There are various estimates on how many millions, depending on who’s crunching the numbers. But no one disputes that the figure is in the multi-millions.

Why have many people died under socialist regimes? Because it doesn’t take long for the ordinary people to realize that socialism doesn’t work. The means of production, being controlled by the government or by a group that theoretically represents the workers or the people, are manipulated to benefit those in control of the system. That means that basic needs, such as food, hygeine products, means of transportation, housing, etc. are not available. That means empty store shelves and bread lines. Eventually, people get tired of this and they rebel. Those in power use their power, often their control of the armed forces, to quell the rebellion, and history demonstrates that most socialist leaders have no qualms about enforcing their rule with bullets. People are killed in the streets as they protest, and others who are captured and put through kangaroo courts are executed. This explains another reason socialism doesn’t work. The people in power, in order to keep that power, need to invest an inordinate amount of the nation’s resources into maintaining a police state and the military in order to quell the inevitable rebellions so they can keep themselves in power. Hence, another reason for the empty store shelves.

Consider the contrast with the free market. In a free market, what products are produced is not determined by a small cohort of government officials, but by the needs of the people. If people need milk, but a business produces lemonade, the people are not going to purchase the lemonade, and the business will go broke and falter. The businessman who listens to the people, ascertains their needs, and focuses his business on meeting those needs, will prosper. The price of products is also controlled by the free market. If there are plenty of a particular item, and not many people want that item, the price will go down in an effort to sell the item. But if lots of people want a particular product and there are not many of that item, then the price will go up because some people will likely still be willing to pay the price if they really want the item. Price controls are a way governments, or universal agreement, keeps prices from going “too” high or “too” low (whatever that means), while still allowing those who produce the item to make a profit and mitigating the risk of a crash in the production of that item. So, the government pays farmers to produce only so much wheat, so the price of wheat will not bottom out, which would cause fewer farmers to want to produce wheat and, eventually, cause a shortage in wheat. At the same time, universal agreement controls the price of diamonds by controlling how many diamonds are on the market at any one time. Diamonds are thought to be rare, but they’re really not. The number of diamonds available on the market is limited by the diamond industry to create a false scarcity, thus increasing the price of any given diamond. Some people still want diamonds, so they’re willing to pay the higher price, even though most people know by now that the price is artificially elevated by controlling the number of diamonds on the market.

When the market is allowed to determine what items are produced, then the people rarely go without basic needs because those basic needs are always in demand. But when a small cohort of socialist demogogues determine which products will be produced, they often focus on those that will benefit them, leaving the people without many of their basic needs. Venezuela offers a case study in how one of the wealthiest countries in the world in the 1950s became a place where ordinary citizens had to do without basic needs, and many fled the country because of these shortages, and also because of the oppressive response of the socialist regime to the demands of the people. Still, socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders will insist that socialism had nothing to do with Venezuela’s downfall. Sanders wants us to look at the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, as examples of the success of socialism. But the Scandinavian countries are not socialist economies. They are capitalist economies with some of the freest economic systems in the world. Yes, they have mitigated their capitalism in some respects to fit the genuine needs of the people, just as almost every capitalist system has. Few capitalist countries practice laissez faire capitalism.

The prospect that NYC will soon have a socialist mayor and four socialist members in the House of Representatives (don’t forget AOC!) is stunning and scary. I suspect many of those who voted socialist did so because they figure the government will now provide services for which they will not have to pay. What makes them think so? Honestly, I’ve no idea, other than a lack of understanding of how these systems work. Mamdani’s chant of “tax the rich!” only goes so far for two reasons: first, if the government taxed the rich out of every dollar they possess, it still wouldn’t be enough to meet the needs and the wants of the citizens, so the government is going to have to decide which wants it will meet and which wants it won’t, resulting in competing wants of various identity groups. For instance, there was a luxery apartment complex that was planned and started in Harlam, then abandoned. The partly-finished building has stood there for years. In 2024, the city announced that they were going to finish the building and use it to house illegal immigrants who were flooding New York. Eric Adams, mayor of NYC at the time, reversed that decision and decided instead to finish the building and use it as temporary housing for homeless native New Yorkers because the pushback he received from residents of the neighborhood was massive. When there’s been a homeless crisis for decades in NYC, why would the city use its resources to finish an abandoned apartment building to house illegal immigrants who only arrived yesterday? Native New Yorkers in the neighborhood felt that the city was prioritizing illegal immigrants over native New York homeless. And, they were right! So, they protested, and the project was re-purposed to house the homeless. That’s only one example. There would be multiple examples of such when people realize that resources are limited, even when taxing every dollar from every rich person. The second thing that would result from taxing the rich, and is already happening, is a mass exodus of rich people from NYC, leaving behind a tax desert that will not be able to meet either the wants or the needs of the citizens. Ron Tsur, in an article for i24 News’ “Hebrew Channel” in early May, wrote: “the exodus of millionaires and investments from New York began a long time ago. According to data from the Citizens Budget Commission, New York’s share of American millionaires dropped from 12.7% in 2010 to 8.7% in 2022. This decline is equivalent to the loss of more than $13 billion in potential tax revenue. In 2023 alone, New York lost $10.7 billion net due to interstate migration—the second highest figure in the U.S. after California. Over 15,500 high-income taxpayers left New York City and its five boroughs between May 2024 and October 2025, with all the movement going to states with no income tax.” Mamdani’s policies, while not inspiring the initial exodus of the wealthy, will do nothing to stop it and may quicken the pace.

Of course, Mamdani can’t even do much of what his plan requires without the support of the New York legislature in Albany and the governor, Kathy Hochul. Ms. Hochul is likely not interested in Mamdani’s plan to tax the rich because she’s too busy begging wealthy business owners to return to New York state from Florida after stating that they should “jump on a bus and leave for Florida,” if they wanted to, because New York didn’t need or want them. So, many left. Now, Hochul is begging them to come back because she found out that, wanting them or not wanting them mattering little, the state needs their taxes.

And, yet, the voters of New York are choosing socialism. It boggles the mind. After years of being told that the rich gained their wealth by dishonest means, cheating the poor and exploiting resources, and that there was only so much pie available and the rich were taking most of it (can’t we bake more pies?), and that the reason you only have one loaf of bread to feed your family of six is because The Man has nine loaves to feed his family of three and he isn’t sharing – after all these years of indoctrination, the people have finally acted on those false notions and have voted in socialists who promise to transform your life by taking back the money the rich man took from you and spending it on your needs and wants. The best part? You won’t have to spend a dime! The rich will pay for it all!

One can only imagine the economic and social horror that is about to be unleashed on New York City in the next few years. Lord, have mercy!

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.