We, Socialists

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, July 08, 2026

 

Melat Kiros, the democratic socialist who won the Democratic nomination for a Colorado congressional seat, is a socialist. But, she assures us, you shouldn’t be put off by the s-word.

 

“We have socialism already,” she recently explained. “It’s in the roads we drive on, the schools we send our kids to, the fire stations we call upon. I’m just asking that we extend that security to our healthcare, to our housing, to our nutritional food, to our higher education so that we’re actually meeting the basic needs of everyday working families in this country.”

 

I could spend a lot of time running through why I think this is, in one aspect or another, ridiculous, wrong, dishonest, or tedious. But I’ll be brief.

 

For starters, outside of a handful of anarcho-capitalists who have never been in political power, there’s never been a capitalist country in which defenders of capitalism argued for the total private ownership of—oh, I dunno—roads. Friedrich Hayek would spit out his Viennese coffee at the suggestion that if you support the public provision and maintenance of roads, you are therefore a supporter of socialism.  

 

Roads are what economists call “public goods.” The idea that all public goods are features of socialism is simply an example of deep and profound ignorance of political theory, political practice, history, facts, economics, and common sense. But beyond that, it’s simply stupid.

 

The idea of public goods goes back a long way, but Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson is widely credited with popularizing the term. He defined them as goods “which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual’s consumption of such a good leads to no subtractions from any other individual’s consumption of that good.” The International Monetary Fund defines public goods as things—spaces, commodities, resources—that “are available to all (‘nonexcludable’) and that can be enjoyed over and over again by anyone without diminishing the benefits they deliver to others (‘nonrival’).”  

 

Check whatever source you might consult for a college term paper on public goods and socialism, and you’ll find that none of them make the connection. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wikipedia, the Economist’s Glossary of Economic Terms, and the IMF explainers on public goods do not mention the word “socialism” because socialism and public goods are different things.

 

Moreover, in America, with very few exceptions, roads aren’t built by the government. They’re paid for by the government, which is another way of saying they’re paid for by taxpayers (and drivers via the gas tax, tolls, etc.). Federal law requires that highway construction be put out for competitive bids among private contractors. If socialism means government ownership of the means of production—including the production of roads—then our roads aren’t “socialist.” I wouldn’t call them “capitalist” either, but competitive bidding puts them closer to capitalism than socialism.

 

The same goes for firehouses. Sure, many firefighters are government employees—local government employees—but the government doesn’t build the fire trucks or the firehouses. And, if we’re going to be sticklers, the majority of firefighters in America are volunteers. If you want to argue this makes them more authentically socialist in the tradition of the kibbutz (probably a problem for DSAers) or Robert Owen’s utopian socialism, knock yourself out. But you’ll sound like the kind of person who gets shushed at the library a lot.

 

The same logic applies to police departments. Sworn officers work for the government—again, mostly local governments—but they don’t build the police stations or squad cars, they don’t sew the uniforms, manufacture the guns, or forge their badges. Of course, Kiros doesn’t mention police departments because, even though by her logic they are socialist, the DSA has a great deal of animosity toward police departments. I guess the spirit of socialism doesn’t extend to the police. (Which would be a bizarre observation in virtually every socialist system ever created. I mean, who are you going to send to prohibit capitalist acts between consenting adults?)

 

I could go on, of course. The idea of making the provision of “nutritional food” a socialist endeavor is not a new idea, nor does it have a great track record given how much famine in the 20^th century can be laid at the feet of this impulse.

 

But I want to make a very different point.

 

Here comes the f-word.

 

If you think Kiros’ statement is defensible because I’m being a pedantic pinhead, that’s fine. But if that’s the case, it’s worth noting that it would be every bit as defensible if we were to replace “we have socialism already” with “we have fascism already.”

 

In Benito Mussolini’s The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, he explains that the state guarantees security and educates its citizens via the institutions it controls. The Fascist “Charter of Labor” mandated health insurance for all Italians and insurance against “involuntary unemployment.” The Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party demanded the state takeover of higher education. It also demanded a living wage: “that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood.” Oh, and here are points 11 through 18, verbatim:

 

11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

 

12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

 

13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.

 

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.

 

15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

 

16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.

 

17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

 

18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.

 

Trust me, I could do this all day.

 

My aim here is not to say that Kiros is a fascist. Nor is it to argue—as I have literally at book length—that the differences between socialism and fascism are much smaller than people generally think.

 

(Though I do believe that. Why? Because Fascism and National Socialism—capitalized or not—were variants of socialism. “You hate me today because you love me still,” Mussolini told Italian Socialists when they turned on him for supporting World War I, against the dictates of “international socialism” run out of Moscow. “Whatever happens, you won’t lose me. Twelve years of my life in the party ought to be sufficient guarantee of my socialist faith. Socialism is in my blood.” As Gregor Strasser, one of the founders of Nazism, explained, “We are socialists. We are enemies, deadly enemies, of today’s capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, its unfair wage system, its immoral way of judging the worth of human beings in terms of their wealth and their money, instead of their responsibility and their performance, and we are determined to destroy this system whatever happens!”)

 

I simply want to make a humbler observation, or two.

 

When I wrote Liberal Fascism, a common complaint was that I missed the point (or a lot of points, to be fair to my detractors). Looking at Italian fascism and German Nazism (not the same thing, by the way) as forms of political economy, they said, ignored the thing that defines such movements—imperialism, bigotry, genocide, authoritarianism, etc. I don’t think this was a fair criticism, as I acknowledged and condemned these things over and over again in the book. But I do enjoy asking statists of various stripes, “Other than the militarism, genocide, and war, what exactly is it about fascism you don’t like?”

 

Also, contrary to critics I still hear from nearly two decades after publication, I did not claim that American liberals were Nazis and fascists of the sort in power in Germany or Italy (Steve Hayward even criticized me for bending over too far backward to make this point).

 

These criticisms annoyed me for many reasons, not least because in pursuit of leveling these charges against me, many critics ignored the imperialism, bigotry, genocide, and authoritarianism of Stalinism and Maoism. Communism tended to be judged by its (allegedly) lofty intentions—equality! Liberation!—while Nazism and Italian fascism were judged by the results on the ground. Pick a criteria, and judge both systems by it.

 

In my latest LA Times column, I lamented the double standard applied to the DSA and its members compared to the GOP. The DSA is full of people who have heaped glowing praise on Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, et al. The DSA and its various “caucuses” are infested with nakedly pro-communist statements, essays, and discussions. But Democratic politicians, in and out of the DSA, and numerous mainstream journalists routinely insist that the DSA has nothing to do with communism because the DSA says they are “democratic socialists,” and democratic socialism is oh so very different from communism. (It’s amazing how, according to elite progressive opinion, you’re an idiot if you take the “socialism” in National Socialism seriously but if you don’t take the “democratic” in democratic socialism seriously, you’re also an idiot.) Democratic nominee for Congress Darializa Avila Chevalier has a deep social media trail of openly pro-communist statements. But by deleting them and saying she’s not a communist anymore, she’s off the hook.

 

Meanwhile, Republicans and right-wingers who play footsie with Nazism and Nazi language are treated as if no denials or social media scrubbing can remove the stain. No tattoo got more political cover by liberals than Graham Platner’s Totenkopf. If he had a hammer and sickle tattoo (or the Cheka’s “sword and shield” emblem), I’m not sure they would’ve even bothered. But if a Republican had some such tattoo, lord knows the left and much of the media would never let it go.

 

Now, I want to be very clear: I’m fine with that. Such stains should be indelible, absent truly demonstrable and persuasive remorse. What I have a problem with is the benefit of the doubt given to the left. Support for communism, Mao, and Stalin is disqualifying. Support for Hitler and Nazism is also disqualifying. If you want to argue the latter is more disqualifying than the former, that’s fine with me. But if you’re going to argue that stanning for Stalin and Mao isn’t disqualifying at all, we’re going to have beef. Stalin and Mao murdered a lot of people, too.

 

Vibes uber alles.

 

I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole “debate” about communism vs. fascism is suffused with culture war nonsense, in-group virtue signaling, and out-group demonization. I put “debate” in scare quotes, because outside a few comment sections and Reddit forums, there is no debate. It’s a cultural and psychological fault line and little more, especially on the internet. If I tell the denizens of right-wing podcastistan that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren’t communists, I receive only mockery and accusations of crypto-communism (and I don’t mean bitcoin). If I tell denizens of left-wing podcastistan that Donald Trump and Mike Johnson aren’t Nazis, I get mockery and accusations crypto-fascism..

 

Meanwhile closer to the center, the more “reasonable” partisans aren’t much better. If I complain about the DSA’s socialism—the admitted, open, know-nothing socialism of the Kiros variety—I get eyerolls and charges of hypocrisy because Donald Trump is taking shares in major corporations and other market-distorting interventions.

 

But I reject those charges of hypocrisy because I think Trump’s economic schemes are mostly outrageous and stupid and have never defended them. Although, I don’t think they actually qualify as socialism so much as corporatism or state capitalism—two things I oppose!—but I can’t be a hypocrite if I condemn the statism of the right while condemning the statism of the left. Not my clowns, not my circus.

 

But this is part of the problem. Either you take the definitions and policies seriously, or you don’t. People on both sides care about the vibes, not the ideas.

 

This is true of many partisan denizens closer to the center. They flit back and forth between taking the technical political economy questions seriously, depending on who they want to label extreme or ignorant. Sensible conservatives will make very sound points—points I agree with—about Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s approach to the economy, but will roll their eyes at Vice President J.D. Vance, who shares the same approach. Sensible liberals will nod when I criticize Trump or Vance but shut their eyes and cover their ears when I make the same points about Warren or Sen. Bernie Sanders.

 

I’ve said for years that writing Liberal Fascism made me more libertarian because it helped me appreciate how people have blind spots for the statism they like. Say what you will about libertarians—I’ve said a lot of it—they don’t have this problem.

 

From the libertarian perspective, the left’s socialism, corruption, and corporatism are aimed at rewarding constituencies and punishing enemy factions at the expense of the common good and liberal order. The Trumpist right’s state capitalism, corruption, and corporatism are simply aimed at rewarding different constituencies and punishing different enemies. One needn’t argue that they are morally equivalent or identical, but from the libertarian view, they’re philosophically more similar than different. And the chief similarity is their shared tendency to pretend they’re arguing for principles instead of vibes.