There has been a lot of analysis and commentary about last month’s presidential debate, regarding everything from the ABC moderators’ selective fact-checking to Harris’s statement that she is a gun owner to Trump’s reference to reports that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating dogs and cats. Also remarkable was Trump’s assertion that “[Harris] is a Marxist. Everyone knows she’s a Marxist. Her father is a Marxist professor in economics. And he educated her well.”
But perhaps the most significant — and almost universally overlooked — aspect of the debate was something that did not happen: Kamala Harris did not deny that she’s a Marxist. Moreover, she still has not denied she is a Marxist.
Many commentators have taken pains to deny this, such as by arguing that Harris’s plan is not sufficiently socialistic to be Marxist. Others have appealed to Communist Party disavowals of Harris, distancing Harris from her father’s views or tried to refute the claim that Harris’s father was a genuine Marxist. But Harris herself has yet even to address Trump’s accusation.
First, Harris has repeatedly emphasized equity, which is code for treating people unequally in order to achieve equal economic outcomes. For example, in a 2021 White House speech Harris urged that we must be “truly committed to the principles of equity in every way that we as government and as a society can enforce those important principles.” And in her 2022 comments on relief for Hurricane Ian victims, Harris advocated “giving resources based on equity understanding.” The concept of equity provides a clear rationale for wealth redistribution and hearkens to the Marxist dictum “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.” This is why Liz Cheney remarked that Harris “sounds just like Karl Marx.” And, as some have pointed out, the norm of equity actually contradicts the norm of equality, as it is essentially a mandate to discriminate — a practical consequence of Marxism that has tragically played out repeatedly over the last century.
Secondly, Harris’s endorsements of capitalism are consistently qualified in a socialist direction. For example in a 2021 Forbes interview, she said capitalism even in its best form makes the “false assumption” that everyone starts in the same place “particularly when we take into account race and gender.” She then adds that we must consider these disparities when allowing for economic competition. This, of course, constitutes a virtual blank check in terms of socialistic controls to compensate for such disparities in order to create equal outcomes. This is consistent with Marxist thought, which says that class struggle leads to exploitation and oppression in a capitalistic context — injustices which can only be redressed through socialistic management of the economy.
Speaking of which, Harris has vowed to implement price controls should she become President, and this is itself a clear signal of a socialist economic agenda. Specifically, she has proposed a federal ban on grocery “price gouging,” capping prices of insulin and other prescription drugs, and generally lowering health care costs. And she promises to give $25,000 to first-time homebuyers. All told, the Harris plan would dole out over $1.5 trillion in government handouts. This is indicative of a philosophy of federal micromanagement of the economy — an approach very much consistent with Marxist methods. And it is an approach that cannot remain piecemeal but necessarily becomes systemic, as specified market controls create unintended market effects that must then be addressed through further market controls, and so on down the slippery slope to wholesale socialism.