One of the most useful tools in the Derechology framework I am creating is the falsifiability test.
In short, it asks a simple but powerful question: Are the load-bearing assumptions of your moral or political system provably false? If the system leans on an assumption that collapses under empirical reality, then the entire moral architecture built on top of it becomes unstable - no matter how noble the intent.
Let’s apply this to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The DSA is essentially Marxist at its core, and it dresses it up to make it more palatable for voters. But it is not hard to find that much of DSA’s rhetoric, inherited from Marxist frameworks, rests on a foundational binary as seen in a 2016 strategy document:
The fundamental social relationship in capitalism is between the worker and the capitalist (employee and employer), and the exploitation of workers by capitalists is the primary source of profitability within the capitalist system.
Similarly, in a 2024 statement:
Elites—the capitalist class,... live through exploiting working-class labor and extracting rent from us... The solution is for working-class people to take political power for ourselves.
These statements as well as many others position the working class as virtuous victims and the capitalist class as exploitative oppressors. That’s not just a structural description. It’s a moral determinacy claim: the system treats structural position as the defining moral feature of a person or group.
But a little thought shows that the working world isn't binary. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics counts tens of millions of people who are managers - but not at the top tier of executives. Meaning that they are both managers and workers at the same time.
Socialists have come up with with bizarre and contradictory ways to deal with this reality. Sometimes they treat them as workers, sometimes as the capitalist elites, some create a new category called "professional management classes" and others claim that no such class exists.
But they also ignore, or try to explain away, that there are plenty of companies where workers are treated fairly and are happy. There are managers who genuinely advocate for their teams. There are people who began their careers on the factory floor and ended up as C-suite executives - not because they betrayed their class, but because they grew, led, and adapted.
It’s not that there aren’t real structural barriers; of course there are. But refusing to acknowledge the permeability of class boundaries renders the binary assumption empirically false and morally dangerous. The attempts to patch the problem by coming up with new theories and sub-theories to account for reality - when in fact, it is reality that discredits the theories.
A false assumption discredits a philosophy that depends on it.
But there is another implicit assumption that todays' socialists rely on - how they define the oppressed class. Perhaps this is because they realize that the current economy is not based on factory workers and the 19th century facts of worker oppression and horrible conditions simply does not translate to office workers or even Walmart warehouses. So now they try to include minorities or immigrants to shore up their support - along with a healthy dose of propaganda.
But by doing this, the socialists are again ignoring reality. There are as many obstacles to success as there are people. Disability, geography, language ability, personality traits, and many others are all challenges people have. By choosing some people as the officially oppressed, they are marginalizing others, enforcing the very inequality that they claim to be against.
Socialism intends to replace political leaders with workers who presumably understand their struggles. Now, let's look at New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. His entire experience as a "worker" was a few years working as a foreclosure prevention and housing counselor in Queens, helping low-income homeowners. I don't know if he was working for a non-profit or a government agency, but either way, he does not have any experience at all working for an oppressive capitalist who exploits workers for profit.
So what qualifications does he have, as a socialist, to lead a city when he knows nothing about the exploitation of workers? The entire point of socialism is to have workers become the leaders, not self-declared socialists. Electing non-workers as political leaders betrays the entire point of socialism.
Even worse, let's look at his campaign. He had hundreds of campaign workers under him being paid. Which means, by socialist definition, Mamdani was one of the capitalist elite exploiting his workers to gain his own selfish goals! Arguably, he has more experience as a leader of an organization than as a worker in any real sense.
Marxism demands revolution. The DSA has to publicly modify the philosophy to fit in a democracy. But it has not come up with a consistent alternative, so it is all about electing not workers, but socialists who are LARPing as oppressed workers.
The result is an inconsistent, immoral mess that cannot articulate a real positive vision.
The requirement for justice is real. But reducing moral agency to class cosplay collapses under reality. A system that refuses to see people as complex agents will always betray them - even those whom it claims to represent.
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