Whether they admit it or not, most Democrat leaders are Marxists, and they justify their resistance to Trump’s reforms on the basis of Marxist ideas. They oppose renewing and expanding the Trump tax cuts because those cuts, they believe, benefit the rich over the poor. Elizabeth Warren and others on the left support a wealth tax — the seizure of a percentage of total assets of affluent Americans. Their proposals for taxing unrealized capital gains, for a minimum tax on the rich, and other new taxes all assume that affluent Americans have grown rich on the backs of the poor. It is exactly what Karl Marx meant when he wrote in The Communist Manifesto of “the exploitation of the laborer … [who] is set upon by … the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.”
In theory, Marxism seizes wealth from the rich and transfers it to workers. In reality, in every case where Marxism has actually been tried, wealth and the means to produce it are controlled by the State, not the workers. The only winners under Marxism are those who run the State, and never in 200 years has there been a Marxist ruler who shared wealth on an equal basis with the poor or who willingly returned power to the common people. Democrats resist Trump’s reforms because he aims to expose the lie of Marxism: the fraudulent idea that Democrat programs for the poor have done the poor any good. Instead, they have enriched Democrat leaders themselves and the enormous cohort of bureaucrats, academics, media, and others on the left.
The left’s resistance has turned violent, with firebombing of Tesla dealerships, death threats, assassination attempts, and violent protests at several universities. Very few Democrats have wholeheartedly condemned this violence, and some have urged the public to continue it.
Why is the left so violently opposed to Trump’s policies? Why did Democrats immediately turn to resistance instead of cooperation?
It is because Trump is shifting the nation’s thinking away from Marxism. Trump often speaks of restoring the American Dream, as he did on April 2 in his Rose Garden speech on tariffs. The American Dream is an idea that goes back to our nation’s founding, with Jefferson’s defense of the rights “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” an idea echoed by Presidents Jackson, Coolidge, and Reagan. When President Trump spoke of making America wealthy again, he was repeating a quintessential conservative idea: that America is a providential society blessed with unlimited resources and that opportunity is a God-given right. That idea flies in the face of Marxism, and Democrats have chosen Marxism over the American Dream.
Democrats have always opposed Republican presidents. They opposed Reagan, but even that opposition was not as heated as it is now. When Democrats raised paddles with the word “Resist” during Trump’s address to Congress, they revealed what they were about. They were not taking issue with particular policies that might be debated and left to compromise; they resist Trump on the more general ground that he is unapologetic in his defense of American capitalism.
Democrats claim to care about the poor, but they did not stand to honor the ordinary Americans whom Trump invited to his congressional address. They sat with their arms folded across their chests and raised their little paddles as a sign of resistance. It made them look silly and weak.
It’s crucial to understand that left-wing resistance is based on the fear that Trump, by his success, will actually restore our nation’s faith in free-market economics. Democrats have been leading America on a long march toward socialism for more than a century and they refuse to give it up. Wilson instituted the personal income tax in 1913; FDR created an alphabet soup of agencies, supposedly to assist the poor; LBJ expanded those bureaucracies, including Medicare and Medicaid; Jimmy Carter added Title IX; Clinton attempted socialized medicine and “welfare without work” until he was reined in by voters at the polls; Obama and Biden picked up where Clinton failed.
None of those Democrats had a whole lot to say about the American Dream because that dream is based on the opportunity that capitalism affords the poor. Democrat resistance has always failed to recognize that capitalism is a better pathway to wealth than government handouts. Eighteen percent of U.S. households are millionaires; the vast majority of these millionaires, somewhere between 80 and 90 percent, are self-made, and it would be hard to believe that many of them were created by the kind of government programs that Bernie Sanders and AOC believe in and want to expand.
The reality is that Democrats are Marxists because they want government to control almost all wealth. When asked how much more the wealthy should pay, Democrats do not respond. As a start, Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax would collect two to three percent each year of the total wealth of those with more than $50 million in assets — but like all new taxes, the wealth tax would start small and eventually apply to everyone. There is no limit to what Democrats would confiscate — perhaps even 100 percent of private wealth. This is the very definition of communism.
Unlike Trump’s subtle and transparent supply-side economic policies, the left’s “economic policy,” if you can call it that, does not focus on investing more capital and producing more goods. It consists of nothing more than stealing existing capital and distributing it to political clients in return for votes. It is no more subtle than what Lenin did when he seized the means of production, including agricultural production and private property, and condemned the rich to poverty and starvation.
Ordinary Americans realize how dangerous and immoral Marxism is. They recognize that taxation, beyond a basic level necessary for national defense and other essential and constitutional functions, is wrong. They also know that new forms of taxation meant to apply only to the rich will eventually apply to themselves, as did the personal income tax, which initially applied to only a few citizens.
Why has the left so uniformly fallen into the mode of resistance? Why is there almost no effort to negotiate or compromise? It’s because, by way of his commitment to America First, Trump undermines their Marxist agenda. America First equates with individual opportunity and personal freedom — not exactly the hallmarks of communism. Liberals dream of global egalitarianism, with Americans no better off than Ugandans and with the state controlling most of the property and capital — and Trump stands in their way.
The success of Trump’s policies will put a stop to Marxism in America, at least for a while, just as the success of Reagan’s two terms set communism back on its heels until a new generation of socialists that included Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren stepped up and pretended that communism could do no harm. From the left’s point of view, Trump must not be allowed to succeed even if the country fails. “Resist” is the byword on the left because Trump’s success, and the success of America, will put the final nail in the coffin of Marxism.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture.
Image via Max Pixel.
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