July 17, 2025
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who identifies himself as a Democratic Socialist, won the Democratic primary and could become the political leader of the nation’s largest city.
Mamdani’s platform includes promises to freeze rent, build affordable housing, provide free bus transportation, supply free child care for working mothers, establish city-owned grocery stores with more affordable food and products, provide new parents with a collection of essential goods and resources without charge for their newborn child, lower health care costs and raise the minimum wage to $30 by 2030, ensure women of reproductive rights and see that everyone receives health care and preserve NYC as a sanctuary city – and that is just the beginning of the mayoral candidate’s pledge to the residents of New York City.
The candidate’s assurances sound compassionate and even representative of the kind of provisions made for the disadvantaged in the New Testament church when the early Christians were “selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 4:32).
However, this wonderful story of Christian unity and compassion has taken on a distinctly political tone in the last few centuries. There is no way that anyone can point to the generosity of the first-century Christians to justify expanding the welfare state and introducing unfair graduated tax rates in our increasingly complex and irreligious society.
In his book, The Case for Socialism, Alan Maass explains, “Socialism is based on the idea that we should use the vast resources of society to meet people’s needs. It seems so obvious – if people are hungry, they should be fed; if people are homeless, we should build homes for them; if people are sick, the best medical care should be available to them.
“A socialist society would take the immense wealth of the rich and use it to meet the basic needs of all society. The money wasted on weapons could be used to end poverty, homelessness, and all other forms of scarcity.”
It sounds so benevolent, so reasonable, but there are some inherent problems that accompany the sociopolitical philosophy of socialism.
First, socialism takes a very large government to meet all the benevolent causes identified by a socialist agenda, and the larger the government, the greater the bureaucracy. Whether it is true or not, there is a prevailing sense that government is synonymous with inefficiency and waste, and the greater the bureaucracy, the greater the problems.
President Clinton wanted to restructure the federal bureaucracy so that it “works better and costs less.” President Reagan repeatedly charged that big government was the problem, not the solution. And we are all familiar with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet and Russian author and dissident who helped raise global awareness of the political repression in the Soviet Union, argued that socialism, regardless of its form, relies on coercion to be implemented and considered it a system of bureaucratic greed, corruption, and compulsion.
Second, socialism destroys initiative. While socialism may seem altruistic, it actually handicaps achievers and rewards laziness. It penalizes innovation and productivity. Those who are proponents of this ideology speak of the principles of “equality” and “justice,” seemingly ideas we all should support, but the socialist’s definition of equality is not equality of opportunities, but an equality of outcomes. Socialism is justly criticized for potentially diminishing individual initiative by reducing or eliminating the link between effort and reward.
Third, socialism hinders human thriving and prosperity. It was originally thought that socialism would contribute to its adherents' comfortable living and provide time for them to pursue their personal interests, but it inevitably led not to freedom and flourishing, but to oppression, poverty, and death.
Winston Churchill wisely stated, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Fourth, socialism is rooted in a godless ideology. When Solzhenitsyn addressed the problems of socialism in his 1983 Templeton speech, he said, that the principal trait of the entire twentieth century was that "men have forgotten God.” So, when an exiled prisoner of conscience from communist Russia had the opportunity to make one great statement before the nations of the free West, he offered no words of celebration but rather a rebuke and a warning: “Men have forgotten God: that is why all this has happened.”
Fifth, socialism has been a failed ideology. It has been tried and found wanting. John Locke explained that people are gifted and equipped to use their talents and training to acquire and use property because all people are equally free and endowed with certain inalienable rights, one of which is “the means of acquiring and possessing property.” Therefore, for government to forcibly assume and dispose of a man’s property is to abuse justice by violating his natural right to acquire and use property.
We have seen what happens when socialism on steroids (communism) becomes the philosophy of regimes like Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler, and the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin. It is a failed political system.
David Koyzis, in his message, “How Socialism Suppresses Society,” at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary states that socialism posits an alternative redemptive story to what we find in the Scriptures.
He declares, “The Bible is a grand narrative that tells the whole world’s story, beginning with creation and moving on through the fall into sin, the redemption in Jesus Christ and culminating in the final consummation of the Kingdom of God at his return.
“By contrast, socialism’s redemptive narrative bypasses Jesus Christ and offers its own way to salvation. We ourselves will bring about all the blessings of God’s promised kingdom, but on our own terms.”
So, socialism is antithetical and not compatible with Christianity.
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J. Gerald Harris is a retired pastor and journalist who served as editor of The Christian Index for nearly two decades. You can reach him at gharris@loveliftedmehigher.org.
