The fight against the ideology of the Democratic Socialists of America and its current “Workers Deserve More” program is waged by people with the same principles and morality as those who fought in favor of slavery in the United States. This becomes unmistakable once the arguments used to justify the DSA platform are placed side-by-side with the arguments once used to justify slavery.
Although the two platforms are positioned from different perspectives, both arguments are morally and ethically the same:
Argument 1: These elements of society are “rights”
The DSA platform repeatedly frames healthcare, housing, education, and other goods and services as human rights that must be guaranteed at no cost to the individual. Housing is explicitly called a “human right.” Universal healthcare is to be provided with no premiums, co-pays, or deductibles. College is to be free. A 32-hour workweek is demanded with no reduction in pay or benefits. Basic needs are to be guaranteed, and the largest corporations are to be placed under public ownership and therefore under political control.
The moral premise is identical to the one once used to defend slavery: a claimed “right” to the life, labor, and property of others.
A true right is something a person possesses by virtue of existence. For a right to be a right, it must apply to everyone in the exact same way. Therefore, the right to one’s own life, liberty, and the fruits of one’s labor fit this definition. Healthcare, housing, education, and a shortened workweek with full pay do not. These are goods and services created by the time, talent, capital, and effort of specific people. To declare what other people produce as “rights” that must be delivered free of charge, is to declare that those who work and accept the risks of innovation are obligated to surrender what they produce to others, i.e. slavery.
This is no different from the historical claim that some people had a right to the unpaid labor of others. In both cases, the minority who create value are subordinated to the demands of the majority or the state that claims to speak for them. The form has changed from private ownership of human beings to collective ownership of their labor and capital through taxation, mandates, and public seizure of industry, which all require the initiation of force onto citizens so that the DSA can impose its world view and value system onto all others.
It is the same moral claim once made by those who owned human beings.
The underlying principle—that some people’s efforts exist to serve the needs of others without their full consent—remains the same.
Argument 2: Economic necessity
Defenders of slavery routinely argued that the institution was an economic necessity. Without slave labor, they claimed, the economy would collapse, inhabitants could not subsist, and society would fall into destitution and weakness.
The DSA platform and its advocates make the exact same argument. Without massive public ownership, wealth taxes, guaranteed jobs, free healthcare and housing, and a forced reduction in the workweek, the working class will suffer, inequality will destroy society, and the economy will fail the majority. The system of private ownership and voluntary exchange is presented as unsustainable and cruel; only the coercive redirection of resources and labor can prevent catastrophe.
In both cases, the claim of necessity is used to override the rights of the productive. The assertion that ‘we cannot survive without taking from them’ is treated as sufficient moral justification — exactly as it was under slavery.
Argument 3: Everyone else is doing it / It is the modern standard
One common defense of slavery was that it existed in every society and therefore must be necessary or acceptable. The pervasiveness of the practice was offered as proof of its legitimacy.
Today, advocates of the DSA platform point to other nations that have more expansive welfare states, nationalized healthcare, or greater public control of industry. The United States is described as backward for not following the same path. The fact that other countries compel their productive citizens to fund extensive entitlements is treated as evidence that America should do the same.
This remains the same immature reasoning: because others practice a form of compulsion, it must be right or inevitable. The existence of a practice elsewhere does not transform the forced appropriation of labor and capital into a moral good.
Argument 4: Certain people cannot take care of themselves
Pro-slavery arguments often claimed that those held in bondage could not manage freedom, that they would fall into destitution, crime, or chaos without the guiding structure of slavery. Extending liberty was portrayed as impractical or cruel.
The DSA framework rests on a parallel assumption: that large numbers of people cannot secure healthcare, housing, education, or adequate income through voluntary means and personal effort. Therefore, the state must compel others to provide these things. The producers are told they must surrender more of their earnings and control over their enterprises because some cannot or will not secure these goods on their own. The alternative is framed as abandonment and injustice.
In both cases, the alleged helplessness of one group is used to justify control over lives, labor, and property of another.
Applying American Principles
American Republicans fought to ultimately reject the reasoning that justified slavery because we recognized that no person has a legitimate claim to the unearned labor and ingenuity of another. A right that requires the forced service of others is not a right; it is a claim of ownership over people.
The Democratic Socialists of America platform advances the same claim in modern form. It declares healthcare, housing, education, leisure, and control of major industry to be entitlements that must be extracted from those who produce them. It seeks to place the largest corporations under public ownership. It demands that workers receive full pay for less work. It treats the earnings and capital of some as a common pool to be redistributed according to purely political decision-making.
The language has been updated. The moral logic has not. Where slavery advocates once claimed a right to the body and labor of the slave, the DSA platform claims a right to the productive capacity, capital, effort, mind, and time of the citizen and enterprise. Both rest on the premise that some people’s efforts exist primarily to satisfy the needs or desires of others, enforced by the coercive power of the state or the master. No different than slavery.
The American experiment progressed by rejecting that premise. It can and MUST do so again.
