By James Williams

The Great Irony

It is one of the biggest ironies in modern political history: Europe’s celebrated democratic-socialist nations owe much of their success to the very system they often criticize — American capitalism.

While countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Germany built generous welfare states, universal health care, and tuition-free education, they did so in a world stabilized, protected, and financed by the capitalist super-power across the Atlantic.

Put simply, Europe got to play good cop because America was willing to play global cop.


Guns and Butter: The Postwar Deal

When World War II ended, Europe was a wreck — factories flattened, currencies worthless, people starving. The United States, meanwhile, was booming. Out of that imbalance came a world-shaping partnership.

Through the Marshall Plan, America poured more than thirteen billion dollars (about $150 billion in today’s money) into Western Europe, rebuilding economies and creating fertile ground for the rise of social democracy.

At the same time, American military power through NATO became Europe’s insurance policy against Soviet expansion. Protected by American soldiers, bases, and nuclear deterrence, European nations could safely focus their budgets on social programs instead of defense.

It became an unspoken arrangement: America handled the weapons; Europe handled the welfare.

The U.S. dollar became the world’s reserve currency, American innovation drove global markets, and Europe — liberated from the costs of empire — invested in hospitals, schools, and social housing.


A Partnership That Worked

For nearly eighty years, that balance held. The American capitalist model created the growth and innovation that powered global trade. Europe’s democratic-socialist model showed how wealth could be distributed more humanely.

Without American might, Europe could not have built peace. Without European social democracy, capitalism might have eaten itself alive.

They balanced each other — one producing the wealth, the other redistributing it.


Back to the Beginning: Stalin and the Split in Socialism

Before Joseph Stalin became synonymous with dictatorship, he was part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, inspired by Marx and Engels. That early socialist movement believed in worker rights, equality, and democracy — ideals closer to modern democratic socialism than to the authoritarian communism that later emerged.

The party split into two factions: the Mensheviks, who favored gradual reform and elections, and the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and joined by Stalin, who believed in seizing power through revolution.

Stalin’s Bolshevik path crushed the democratic ideal in favor of state control and party supremacy. The result was a totalitarian system that called itself socialist but was anything but democratic.

Western Europe learned from that mistake. After World War II, it built socialism through ballots, not bullets — using democracy to humanize capitalism rather than destroy it.


The European Model

By the 1950s, Western Europe had embraced a hybrid system — capitalism with a conscience. Universal health care, free higher education, worker protections, and robust welfare systems became the foundation of a new kind of prosperity.

Parties such as the Swedish Social Democrats and Britain’s Labour Party built what Stalin never could — a socialism that coexisted with freedom.

Europe did not abolish capitalism; it tamed it. And it could afford to do so precisely because America was keeping the global wolves at bay.


The American Role

Every European welfare state quietly depends on the structure of American capitalism. The U.S. dollar underpins global finance. American markets buy European exports. U.S. military power guarantees European security. American-led trade routes and technology fuel global stability.

In short, Europe could afford to be socialist because America stayed capitalist. That is the irony at the heart of the post-war world.


Byron Donalds and the Modern Misunderstanding

During a CNN exchange, Representative Byron Donalds of Florida reacted to New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s policies with frustration that captured the conservative view:
“I can’t tell the difference! He wants government grocery stores … The truth is nobody gets a free lunch!”

Donalds’s skepticism reflects America’s deep cultural suspicion of government over-reach. But what he was reacting to was not communism; it was a twenty-first-century attempt to apply democratic socialism within a capitalist democracy, much like Europe did decades ago.


What Democratic Socialism Actually Means in the United States

Democratic socialism in the United States advocates a political democracy alongside social ownership of the means of production, aiming to meet public needs rather than private profit.

It differs from authoritarian communism by upholding civil liberties and democracy, and from social democracy by seeking to move beyond capitalism, not just reform it.

In practice, democratic socialists support workplace democracy, public or cooperative ownership of key industries, and extensive welfare programs — universal health care, tuition-free education, affordable housing, and a guaranteed living wage. They also link environmental and social justice, arguing that climate and economic reform must go hand in hand.

Zohran Mamdani and the New Face of American Democratic Socialism

Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani of Queens, a Democratic Socialists of America member, embodies that movement — pushing an agenda that would sound mainstream in Stockholm but revolutionary in New York.

Mamdani’s platform calls for public-housing expansion, rent stabilization, and creation of a Social Housing Development Agency. He advocates free public transit, a $30 minimum wage by 2030, and major tax reform to fund tuition-free CUNY and SUNY education, universal childcare, and tenant protections. He supports city-run grocery stores to address food deserts and has said, “I don’t think we should have billionaires.”

Mamdani’s platform represents democratic socialism translated into American reality — redistribution and social justice through legislation, not revolution.

His win is a statement from New Yorkers who are tired of the high cost of living and of establishment politics that have failed to improve their lives. In its own way, his movement mirrors Donald Trump’s MAGA base — different ideologies, same frustration. Both draw strength from voters who feel ignored by the political class and shut out of an economy that no longer works for them.

If anything, Mamdani’s election represents a historic milestone: Marxism, once confined to classrooms and protest rallies, has finally secured an executive seat in America — the Mayor’s Office of New York City. It is not just any job. The mayoralty of New York is one of the most powerful elected offices in the United States — larger in influence than most governorships and, in day-to-day authority, arguably more consequential than the vice presidency itself. The symbolism is unmistakable: ideas born in nineteenth-century European theory have reached the top floor of City Hall in the capital of global capitalism.


The Cost of Chasing Out the Wealth

Even popular culture has weighed in on the economic reality behind these policies. During New York’s 2025 election cycle, rapper and entrepreneur 50 Cent offered a blunt warning that resonated far beyond social media:

“I think his intentions are good, but his tax plan is gonna run the big money out of the city and if he defunds the police they are gonna purge,” Jackson wrote on Instagram the day before the election. “All Roads lead to Shreveport!”

Behind the sarcasm was a serious point. New York City’s economy depends heavily on a tiny group of high-income taxpayers. Fewer than one percent of city residents generate nearly forty percent of all personal-income-tax revenue. In 2025 that tax produced about sixteen billion dollars, making it the city’s second-largest revenue source after property tax.

If even half of New York’s millionaires moved across the Hudson to New Jersey, the city would lose an estimated $3.5 to $4 billion each year in personal-income-tax revenue alone, not counting ripple effects on sales, business, and real-estate taxes. That gap would exceed the annual budgets of several major agencies.

The consequences would be immediate and painful. Ambitious initiatives such as fare-free buses, universal childcare, or new public-housing construction would face deferral or downsizing. Operating budgets would tighten, and long-term borrowing for capital projects would become riskier and more expensive.

In short, the math behind 50 Cent’s Instagram post was right. When policymakers ignore how dependent New York’s progressive programs are on its wealthiest taxpayers, they risk undermining the very engine that pays for social progress. Democratic socialism still runs on capitalist fuel.


Foreign Policy and the Limits of Democratic Socialism

Mamdani’s moral consistency extends abroad, and that is where his ideology collides with American power. He has condemned Israeli apartheid, supported the BDS movement, and introduced legislation to restrict funding for West Bank settlements. After the October 7 attacks, he mourned losses on both sides but insisted that ending occupation and apartheid was the only road to peace.

He has said Israel’s campaign in Gaza constitutes genocide and argued that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested under International Criminal Court warrants. He has taken similar stances on Vladimir Putin, saying that if either Putin or the Israeli Prime Minister entered New York City, he would have them arrested in accordance with ICC warrants.

Such statements, while rooted in principle, would create a foreign-policy nightmare if ever enacted. Arresting world leaders on U.S. soil would ignite international crises, rupture diplomatic relations, and potentially violate federal authority — since foreign policy and international law enforcement fall under federal jurisdiction, not municipal or state authority.

He also condemned U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites as unconstitutional and destabilizing, reflecting his broader view that American interventionism fuels global conflict.

In moral terms, his consistency is admirable; in geopolitical terms, it is explosive. Enforcing such positions nationally would rupture alliances and destabilize the same global system that allowed European democratic socialism to exist. Compassion without power creates chaos.


Why Democratic Socialism Doesn’t Work for America

Democratic socialism is Marxism without the violence of revolution. It preys on the “have-nots” to resent the “haves” in order to gain power. The message changes, but the mechanism remains the same: divide by class, promise equality, and grow government control in the name of fairness.

At the end of the day, democratic socialism is not an ideology that makes sense for the United States. It may sound fair and compassionate, but it runs against the grain of what made America the leading power in the world — innovation, competition, risk, and reward.

Europe’s social democracies can afford their safety nets only because the United States carries the weight of global defense, open markets, and technological innovation. They debate welfare because America secures the world that lets them do so.

Democratic socialism needs capitalism to fund it — the same system it has attacked since the Stalin era. The irony is that every successful social democracy depends on the very market forces it claims to resist. Without the wealth that capitalism creates, there would be nothing left to redistribute.

If America ever abandoned that capitalist backbone — if the bodyguard decided he wanted to become the client he protects — both would fall. The bodyguard’s strength is what keeps the client safe; the moment he trades that strength for comfort, neither survives.

That is the paradox of modern politics. Europe’s socialism survives only because American capitalism stands behind it. If America weakens itself in pursuit of European ideals, the shield collapses — and with it, the stability of the free world.

America cannot afford to become the person it protects. It must remain the guard at the door — strong, alert, and unashamed of the power that keeps the lights on.


The Paradox That Holds the World Together

The relationship between U.S. capitalism and European socialism is not hypocrisy; it is symbiosis. One built the power, the other built the conscience.

Together, they have shaped the modern world. And as new generations of American democratic socialists push for economic justice — from Zohran Mamdani in Queens to progressives in Congress — they are testing whether a capitalist superpower can evolve without collapsing the system it created.

Because at the end of the day, Europe’s social dream survives because America keeps the lights on.