According to surveys, American youth are quite supportive of socialism, preferring it to our current political system:

It’s no coincidence that today’s youth know more about TikTok trends than about the gulags of the Soviet Union or the starvation in Mao’s China. Schools have stopped teaching the harsh truths about socialism’s brutal legacy. Instead, they focus on sanitized stories about “equity,” “social justice,” and “collective good,” often blending them with moral superiority and “safe spaces” for those who are easily offended.

This isn’t just a failure of the education system; it’s a deliberate ideological project. Young people aren’t truly being educated. Instead, they’re being indoctrinated to believe that capitalism is the problem, not the answer.

But when these people are asked what socialism means they show that they have no understanding about it. Clearly, they’re hearing the “sizzle” of socialism but not what it really implies.

This article in one in a series examines claims about how socialism would improve America. Each article examines a promise, and contrasts it with the reality that shows the hollowness of that promise.

Claim: Socialism means fairness in society

A lot of people think that they’re being oppressed by “the man,” that society is run only for the benefit of rich white people. To these people, socialism promises a society filled with compassion and equity for all. With it they’ll lose their chains of being a wage slave, and finally start living their true human potential.

Here is how the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) voices this complaint about an unfair society:

Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.

Can we simply vote their candidates into office and implement their programs? Not quite. Their programs become possible only by abandoning our current society, with its laws and customs, and embracing their shiny new socialism! From a DSA article about socialist tactics:

Achieving this diversity and opportunity necessitates a fundamental restructuring of our socioeconomic order. While the freedoms that exist under democratic capitalism are gains of popular struggle to be cherished, democratic socialists argue that the values of liberal democracy can only be fulfilled when the economy as well as the government is democratically controlled.

By “democracy” socialists mean some sort of council implemented after the Constitution has been shredded. But socialists have strange visions of fairness. Here is what they really have in mind.

Reality: Instead of justice, we’ll get favoritism and infighting

Socialists love to publish their justifications for revolution. Merely modifying laws isn’t good enough for them. It ALL must go.

Democratic socialists believe that the individuality of each human being can only be developed in a society embodying the values of liberty, equality, and solidarity.
…
We do not imagine that all institutional relations would wither away under socialism, but we do believe that the basic contours of society must be democratically constructed by the free deliberation of its members.

Socialists – note that “democratic socialists” are merely socialists with a new business card – promise to reshape society to develop our individuality, by way of “democratically constructed” processes. However, their real reshaping is introducing “class warfare.” This means arbitrary “classes” of people fighting other classes to gain a greater share of rights, privilege, and resources.

The outcome of classifying ourselves is to dehumanize society, transferring our focus from individuals onto arbitrary categories of people groupings. Socialists don’t bring us together, but instead fracture society into tribalism.

More reality: From property ownership to no ownership

So much of your life revolves around your home and possessions. But give up hope that your life will be largely unchanged. Because with socialism, nobody is supposed to own things.

Socialists therefore argue that private corporate property is not only wrong, but also nonsensical. Wealth is a social creation and should be controlled by society as a whole.

Your socialist masters care about private “corporate” property, but also care about your “personal” property. Hence “wealth taxes,” which quickly eat away everything you have. If they can take what billionaires own, just because, then why should you be exempt? It’s only a matter of time until they notice your things and, in the name of “wealth should be controlled by society,” come to take them away.

Depressing reality: From citizens to slaves

With socialism you’ll finally have the freedom to become who you were meant to be – an artist, an inventor, and so on. Well, maybe not so fast.

Of course, socialists must take seriously objections that there would be a need for expertise (say, for surgeons and engineers) and job specialization under socialism. The division of labor might well be eroded by the rotation of menial tasks, frequent sabbaticals, job retraining, shortening the workweek, and increasing the creativity of “leisure” activity.

But however we organize the division of labor—the structure of careers and life opportunities—it should be decided democratically and not by the accident of chance or of opportunities conferred or denied by one’s class position.

This declaration is a claim upon your person. You’ll be assigned your job. Your career won’t be determined through your ambition but by bureaucracy. To be blunt, you’ve become a slave of the state. So much for having a real voice, or for having fairness in society.

There are many ways that socialism truly is slavery, as explained in this Federalist Society article:

Slavery/socialism exists wherever there is abject dependence on those who mete out your survival. It embraces Maoist-style social credit systems whereby your right to subsistence depends upon your compliance with the regime’s demands. It cultivates widespread ignorance about our heritage of freedom. It rejects ideals of virtue and the nuclear family, preferring that people live in isolation, immorality, and distrust of others.

And in 1949 General Eisenhower spoke of the “security” of socialism:

If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They’ll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.

Conclusion

With socialism you really don’t have voice in society, or the freedom to pursue your dreams. According to Senator Bernie Sanders, you shouldn’t even dream of having a choice of deodorants. The “warmth of collectivism” doesn’t care about your dreams.

Socialists will promise anything – and regularly do – to get you to trust them. But their own words convicts them of deceit. Considering their focus on reaching children in the schools, to teach them the glories of Marxism, God rightly judges them for leading the little ones astray (Matthew 18:6).