Karl Marx famously wrote in his 1848 Communist Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains,” and it was these unchained proletarians who elected Zohran Mamdani mayor of New York City, along with other socialists in municipal elections from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon and cities in between. But the 2025 elections did more than sweep a surprising number of socialist politicians to power. They also revealed contradictions inherent to all leftist ideologies.
One big contradiction involves affordability, a major issue in the 2025 elections, particularly in terms of housing. But proletarians voting for socialists in the hopes of achieving the dream of homeownership don’t realize they’re voting for the kind of big government that’s already putting it out of reach.
A report by Murray Weidenbaum at Washington University in St. Louis found that in three surveyed locales—Colorado, St. Louis, and New Jersey—the cost of government regulations added $1,500 to $2,500 to the price of an average house in the mid-1970s. By 2011, government mandates increased home prices by $65,224. Over the next decade, government made homes $93,870 more expensive. Socialists decry the high price of housing, but intrusive government contradicts them by burdening homebuyers with escalating regulatory costs, and socialists are not prone to surrendering government control of people’s lives.
In New York City, affordability provides an additional contradiction. When someone complains about life being too expensive, they might consider economizing or relocating to a less expensive place. But Mamdani voters do not want to economize or move; they want to continue drinking $8 lattes and living in Greenwich Village. Their belief system demands the world adapt to them rather than adapting to the world around them. It is a belief that inverts Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is foundational to the belief system of true proletarians.
Then there’s the contradiction of what constitutes a proletarian in the first place. According to Britannica, Marx characterized proletarians as “workers who were engaged in industrial production and whose chief source of income was derived from the sale of their labor power.” This definition fits every working American; if you have a job, Marx says you’re a proletarian.
This definition might apply to someone like Elon Musk, who also sells his labor to make money. But some of Musk’s labor is used to build and operate factories which employ other proletarians. What we’re left with is an ideology in which proletarians who work only for themselves are the selfless good guys, but those who work for themselves while providing employment for others are selfish members of the bourgeoisie, the enemy of proletarians. It defies logic.
History shows any form of Marxism has never worked, yet here we go again. Why are we playing a home game this time? Obama?
Delusions of Adequacy 