I escaped communism. America must not ignore the urgent warning signs

I am an immigrant from Colombia, a country that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)—a communist revolutionary group—spent half a century tearing apart. FARC murdered thousands of Colombians through sanctioned massacres, kidnappings, and terrorism, and the war FARC drove displaced over seven million Colombians, resulting in one of the largest internal displacement crises in the world. I am now a naturalized citizen of the United States, a country that millions from around the world are still trying to reach. So, I read the latest polling on American capitalism with a particular kind of alarm.

This polling is the result of a survey released by The Free Press using a method to surface the opinions people keep to themselves. The finding: just one in three Americans holds a positive view of capitalism. Not one in three Democrats. One in three Americans.

Before the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) take a victory lap, consider the rest. That same survey found that most Americans remain wary of socialism, and Gallup found that while capitalism drew 54 percent approval, free enterprise drew 81 percent and small business 95 percent, compared with 37 percent for big business. Americans have not turned against free enterprise, ownership, or entrepreneurial risk. Yet DSA candidates keep winning elections. The gap between Americans’ faith in free enterprise and the DSA’s wins is a real vulnerability, and it deserves an honest question: Why not communism?

MORE AMERICANS THAN EVER NOW HAVE A POSITIVE VIEW OF SOCIALISM, NEW POLL SAYS

An honest answer requires an important clarification. There is no meaningful difference between socialism and communism, and the founders of the movement said so without pretense. Lenin devoted chapters of The State and Revolution to expounding on Marx and what he called the first phase of communist society and its ultimate end. Socialism was never the alternative to communism. It was the on-ramp.

So why not take it? Because the record is unambiguous and is written in blood. No communist revolution has delivered the justice, equality, and prosperity it promised. 

Estimates place the death toll of communist regimes near 100 million across Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Africa, and South America. And consider one plain fact. No communist state in history has been concerned about people sneaking in. Every one of them has had to worry about people getting out, a concern that produced a heavily guarded 4,300-mile Iron Curtain across Europe built to face inward. Nations that people flee have not solved anything.

SOCIALISM WILL 'CONTROL PEOPLE' AND 'TAKE EVERYTHING AWAY' FROM AMERICA, ACCORDING TO THESE EXPATS

Yet the communist appeal is real, and pretending otherwise is foolish. Communism begins by naming a genuine pain. American capitalism is too much big-business economics with its ethos of the very large, the consolidated, and the impersonal. This makes the household, the small business, and the ordinary person willing to take a risk weaker and less important. Millions of Americans experience this as a shrinking future and a loss of control over their destiny. The communist arrives, agrees with them, and offers the oldest bargain on record: "You have nothing to lose but your chains. Workers of the world, unite!"

Communism is the opium Marx accused religion of being, and it has never once healed the pain. It has not expanded economic freedom; it has abolished it through central planning. Communism did not restore personal agency; it destroyed agency on principle because agency is precisely what a total state cannot permit.

MODERN CAPITALISM IS TURNING 250, TOO. WE NEED TO REMIND AMERICANS WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

All imposters have an element of truth, and communism is no different. What the communist gets right but then betrays is the truth that the core of economics is the human person. But the communist cannot say why. If we are only producers and consumers, then personal agency is a mere preference, not a fundamental part of our humanity, and the state may override it whenever it deems it expedient to do so.

The truth about the human person that no materialism—capitalist or communist—can say is what the Christian account of the human person defends: human beings bear the image of God. Work is therefore noble rather than a mere function. Ownership is a stewardship, not evidence of superiority. And human dignity is not for the state to grant or revoke. The dignity of the human person is divinely endowed and is protected and nurtured through economic freedom and personal agency.

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The time is short, and I write to my fellow Americans as someone who has seen where this road ends. Let’s not take the bargain the communists offer. Let’s get out of our echo chambers and get to know each other again. Let’s elect leaders who will expand economic freedom rather than administer its disappearance. And to my fellow college and university presidents: our campuses should be places where these arguments are discussed honestly, thoughtfully, and in public, with no quarter given to censorship, to violence against those with whom we disagree, or to indoctrination hiding behind academic freedom.

America remains the beacon of freedom and opportunity. Let us keep it that way.