There is something fascinating—and frankly a little unsettling—about watching a smart, articulate young person calmly explain why America needs socialism. Not because the ideas are new. Quite the opposite. They’re very, very old. Harper O’Connor’s video, A Guide to Democratic Socialists of America, is nearly half an hour of polished, thoughtful explanation of how the Democratic Socialists of America operates, what its factions believe and where the movement wants to go. O’Connor doesn’t come across as some wild-eyed revolutionary screaming into a bullhorn. That’s exactly why conservatives should pay attention. He’s intelligent. He’s likable. He’s clearly done his homework. And he appears to genuinely believe what he’s telling his audience. The screaming socialist on the street corner is easy to dismiss. The smart young socialist who can make socialism sound reasonable is a much greater threat to capitalism. And history has some things to say about the product he’s selling.
Watch It Yourself — Don’t Take My Word For It
Before we go any further, watch the video—or at least watch enough of it to understand why I’m writing this. This isn’t a conservative commentator telling you what socialists supposedly believe. O’Connor identifies himself as a DSA member and explains the movement sympathetically for an audience interested in understanding socialism. That’s important. I don’t want to build a straw man and then congratulate myself for knocking it over. Listen to the argument from someone who actually believes it. Listen to how reasonable it sounds. Then let’s talk about what happens when some of these theories leave YouTube, the classroom and the political convention and collide with something far less forgiving: history.
The Most Important Thing About This Video Is Who Made It
This isn’t Tucker Carlson explaining the Democratic Socialists of America. It isn’t a conservative think tank stitching together scary clips and adding ominous music. O’Connor describes DSA as a broad socialist organization containing reformists, Marxists, communists, anarchists and libertarian socialists. Electoral campaigns are only part of the picture. DSA chapters also engage in labor organizing, tenant organizing, direct action, political education and other efforts designed to build political power. That’s why this video is useful. We don’t have to speculate about what socialists believe when an intelligent socialist is willing to sit down for nearly half an hour and explain it to us.
This Isn’t Really a Debate Over Whether Socialism Is the Goal
One of the most revealing things about O’Connor’s presentation is what the major internal DSA arguments are not about. They’re generally not debating whether socialism is desirable. They’re debating how to get there. Should socialists work through the Democratic Party? Should they eventually leave it? Should they organize unions from the shop floor? Should they capture union leadership? Should they concentrate on elections or build alternative institutions outside government? Should capitalism be gradually transformed or ultimately replaced? Once your discussion begins with “Okay, comrades, what’s the best strategy for building socialism?” the ideological train has already left the station. The debate is increasingly about the route.
The Democratic Party May Be a Vehicle, Not the Destination
This is where conservatives—and plenty of traditional Democrats—should pay particularly close attention. O’Connor walks through competing socialist strategies toward the Democratic Party. The “dirty break” strategy essentially involves using the Democratic ballot line while building independent socialist political infrastructure for an eventual separation. The “party surrogate” approach likewise works within Democratic politics while attempting to develop a more disciplined socialist organization. “Realignment” seeks to move the Democratic Party steadily left until socialists become a dominant force within it. Then there’s the “clean break”: leave the Democrats and build an independent socialist party. Those aren’t labels invented at Fox News headquarters. They’re arguments socialists have among themselves. For some activists, the question isn’t whether the Democratic Party should move left. It’s how long the Democratic Party remains useful.
And Then There’s 2028
This isn’t merely theoretical. At DSA’s 2025 convention, the organization debated its future relationship with electoral politics and building independent socialist political power, and O’Connor’s video includes delegates discussing a push toward running a presidential candidate in 2028. That’s a long way from four kids sitting around a dorm room at 2 a.m. discovering Karl Marx between pizza deliveries. We’re talking about an organized movement discussing presidential politics, labor coalitions, candidates, political infrastructure and a long-term socialist identity. You may think they’ll fail. Maybe they will. But dismissing them isn’t a strategy.
The Smart Young Socialist Is the One Capitalism Should Worry About
And that brings us back to O’Connor. I don’t know his exact age, and I’m not going to invent one. But he presents as a young political communicator, and that’s what makes this video important. He’s not standing on a street corner screaming about revolution with a Che Guevara shirt and a megaphone. That guy isn’t much of a threat to capitalism because most Americans walk right past him. O’Connor is different. He’s intelligent, articulate, likable, organized and obviously well-read. He explains complicated socialist ideas calmly and makes them sound reasonable. And he’s not talking to an empty room. His YouTube channel has nearly 100,000 subscribers. The video we’re discussing has attracted tens of thousands of views. In other words, this young man has an audience. The smart, persuasive young socialist with nearly 100,000 subscribers is far more capable of changing minds than the screaming revolutionary with a megaphone ever will be. That’s why conservatives would be fools to dismiss him.
Why These Ideas Are Finding Young Ears
I recently explored this issue over at Conservative Counterpoint in “Capitalism’s Challenge: Why Democratic Socialism Is Winning Over Young Voters”, and conservatives need to understand something uncomfortable: some of the frustrations driving young people toward socialism are legitimate. Housing is brutally expensive. College can leave young adults buried in debt. Healthcare costs are ridiculous. Everyday expenses have climbed. Plenty of responsible twenty-somethings work hard and still wonder whether they’ll ever afford the house, children and financial security their parents achieved. Socialists didn’t create all of those problems. What they’re doing very effectively is offering young people an explanation for them—and then offering socialism as the solution. That’s where the ideological danger lies.
An Intelligent Person Can Still Reach the Wrong Conclusion
This is why simply calling young socialists stupid is itself stupid. O’Connor clearly isn’t. Intelligence doesn’t immunize anyone against ideology. Sometimes it simply makes someone exceptionally good at defending it. A bright young mind can absorb an entire intellectual framework and become remarkably skilled at explaining it without ever seriously questioning the assumptions underneath it. That’s what concerns me when I watch presentations like this. Capitalism is often judged primarily by its failures: every billionaire, every unaffordable apartment, every medical bill and every struggling family becomes evidence against the system. Socialism, meanwhile, is frequently judged by its aspirations: fairness, equality, security and dignity. Capitalism gets graded on results. Socialism gets graded on intentions. That’s one hell of a curve.
Indoctrination Doesn’t Require Someone Pounding On A Blackboard
When conservatives use the word “indoctrination,” people imagine some Marxist professor standing in front of a classroom ordering students to burn their economics textbooks before lunch. It rarely works that way. Ideas are absorbed gradually through schools, universities, social media, entertainment, political movements and increasingly sophisticated online communicators. If young people repeatedly hear capitalism described through exploitation, inequality and greed while socialism is described through community, democracy and fairness, eventually one system begins sounding immoral and the other compassionate. That doesn’t mean young socialists are stupid. Quite the opposite. An intelligent person can become extremely sophisticated at reasoning within an ideological framework while never seriously questioning the framework itself.
History Has Already Conducted Some Very Expensive Experiments
Here’s where the theoretical discussion meets an inconvenient professor named History. The Soviet Union didn’t collectivize agriculture because Stalin announced that he wanted fewer crops and starving people. Soviet leaders believed collectivization would reorganize agriculture, increase state control over food production and help finance rapid industrialization. Instead, forced collectivization, brutal procurement policies and political coercion contributed to catastrophic famine. Millions died across the Soviet Union during the famines associated with collectivization. That’s not a theoretical model. Those were human beings.
Mao Had A Great Leap Too
Then came Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward in China, another enormous attempt to accelerate economic transformation through centralized political direction. Agricultural policies were imposed from above. Labor was redirected according to political priorities. Officials facing enormous pressure exaggerated production figures. Central planners made sweeping decisions based partly on distorted information. The resulting famine became one of the worst human catastrophes of the twentieth century. The lesson isn’t that Harper O’Connor secretly wants to become Mao. Of course he doesn’t. The lesson is that concentrating enormous economic decision-making power in political institutions doesn’t eliminate human error, greed, incompetence or dishonesty. It can magnify those mistakes across an entire country.
“But Jimmy, That’s Not Democratic Socialism”
Fair objection. Modern members of the Democratic Socialists of America are not Stalin or Mao, and pretending they are would weaken the argument. Most advocate elections, civil liberties and democratic participation. Democratic socialism is not identical to Soviet communism. But that doesn’t make the historical lessons irrelevant. The fundamental question remains: how much economic power should political institutions possess? What happens as government or politically controlled institutions gain increasing authority over investment, production, property and the allocation of resources? What happens when the planners are wrong? What mechanism tells them they’re wrong? And most importantly, what happens when ordinary citizens disagree with the plan?
Capitalism’s Great Advantage Isn’t That Capitalists Are Smarter
Capitalism is messy because people are messy. Entrepreneurs make stupid decisions. CEOs become arrogant. Investors blow money. Companies build products nobody wants. Restaurants serve terrible food. Here’s the difference: in a functioning competitive market, failure sends a message. Customers disappear. Investors lose money. Companies go bankrupt. Competitors take their place. Prices, profits and losses transmit information constantly. Capitalism doesn’t require businessmen to be geniuses. It creates mechanisms that punish a lot of bad decisions. Centralized economic planning doesn’t make bad decisions disappear. It risks giving bad decisions government authority.
And Please Stop Calling Scandinavia Socialist
Eventually this conversation always reaches Denmark, Sweden, Norway or Finland. “See, Jimmy? Socialism works!” Except the modern Nordic countries have private businesses, private property, competitive markets, entrepreneurs and major multinational corporations. They combine market economies with large welfare states and substantial taxation. That’s a legitimate political model to debate. Conservatives can argue about the size of those welfare states until the fjords freeze over. But a capitalist economy with a huge social safety net isn’t the same thing as political control over production. If the best evidence that socialism works is a collection of successful market economies, capitalism may be doing considerably more work in your example than you realize.
Then There’s “Degrowth”
O’Connor also explains an argument on the socialist left between Green New Deal-style economic investment and something called “degrowth.” Degrowth challenges the assumption that constantly increasing production and GDP should remain a primary economic objective and calls for reducing what advocates consider unnecessary production and consumption. To his credit, O’Connor expresses skepticism about how politically attractive telling people to accept “less” would be. Ya think? There’s your campaign slogan: Vote Socialist — Your Kids Can Have Less Than You Did! Somewhere Ronald Reagan just spit out his coffee. Economic growth isn’t merely rich guys buying bigger boats. Growth helps produce new medicines, technologies, housing, transportation, food production and opportunities that previous generations couldn’t imagine.
Some DSA Factions Go Considerably Further
O’Connor’s tour of the DSA caucuses is where things get particularly interesting. DSA contains organized factions with significantly different ideas about elections, labor, Marxism, revolutionary change and political institutions. They include groups such as Bread & Roses, Communist Caucus, Emerge, Groundwork, the Libertarian Socialist Caucus and Marxist Unity Group. Not every DSA member believes everything advocated by every caucus, and it’s important to say that clearly. But Americans should understand what is actually being debated inside the movement. These aren’t simply arguments over whether the top income-tax rate should be 35 or 39 percent.
When The Constitution Becomes The Problem
One of the more radical currents discussed in O’Connor’s video is Marxist Unity Group, which he describes as seeking to replace America’s existing constitutional order with a democratic socialist republic and abolish institutions it believes restrict majoritarian democracy—including the Senate, Electoral College, Supreme Court and independent presidency. Again, that’s O’Connor explaining a faction within his own movement, not Jimmy Parker putting words into somebody’s mouth. And there’s a lesson here. America’s constitutional structure deliberately fragments political power. The Founders considered that a feature, not a software bug. When your political program keeps running into constitutional restraints, perhaps the answer isn’t automatically to remove all the restraints.
Good Intentions Are Not An Economic System
I don’t doubt that many young democratic socialists sincerely want people to have better lives. O’Connor certainly doesn’t come across as someone hoping Americans become poorer. That’s precisely the point. Political movements nearly always describe themselves through intentions: fairness, equality, justice, dignity and solidarity. But intentions and outcomes aren’t the same thing. The question isn’t whether affordable housing sounds compassionate. Of course it does. The question is which policies actually create more affordable housing. The question isn’t whether affordable healthcare is good. Of course it is. The question is how you deliver it without creating new shortages, bureaucracy or unsustainable costs. Politics becomes dangerous when noble intentions are treated as evidence that policies will necessarily produce noble results.
Conservatives Need To Admit Something Too
Here’s where my fellow conservatives may become uncomfortable. We can’t point to the Dow Jones Industrial Average and tell a 27-year-old who can’t afford a starter home that everything is wonderful. If capitalism is going to survive politically, capitalism needs to work for ordinary people. That’s the argument I made in my earlier Conservative Counterpoint examination of democratic socialism’s growing influence. Conservatives need answers for housing affordability, healthcare, education, government debt and barriers to entrepreneurship. “Socialism failed” is historically important, but it isn’t a complete political program. If young Americans believe the current economic system gives them no path upward, somebody else will happily offer them another system.
The Conservative Answer Has To Be Better Than “No”
We should be championing housing construction and regulatory reform that expands supply. We should make starting businesses easier rather than burying entrepreneurs in licenses, permits and paperwork. We should expand vocational education, apprenticeships and alternatives to spending $150,000 on a four-year degree that may never pay for itself. Healthcare needs genuine price transparency and competition. Government should stop protecting entrenched businesses from new competitors. Capitalism works best when people can actually participate in it—not when politically connected companies use government to protect themselves from competition and then conservatives are expected to defend the arrangement as “free enterprise.”
Don’t Mock Harper O’Connor — Listen To Him
That’s ultimately why I wanted you to see the video. The easy article would make fun of the kid. I’m not interested in doing that. Take him seriously. Listen to how he explains socialism. Listen to how the ideas are packaged. Listen to how sophisticated the movement has become. And remember that he’s built a YouTube audience approaching 100,000 subscribers. This isn’t somebody muttering Marxist theory to six friends in a basement. People are listening. O’Connor represents a much greater ideological challenge to capitalism than the screaming radical with the megaphone because communicators like him can persuade intelligent young Americans that socialism isn’t radical at all. They can make it sound compassionate, democratic, modern and reasonable. If conservatives answer that with memes and insults, we deserve to lose the argument.
Conservatives Better Learn How To Explain Liberty Again
We need to explain why property rights matter. Why competition matters. Why decentralized economic decisions matter. Why profits and losses communicate information. Why constitutional restraints protect minorities from temporary majorities. Why concentrating political and economic power in the same institutions has repeatedly produced unintended—and sometimes horrifying—consequences. And then we need to connect those principles to the problems young Americans actually face. Harper O’Connor can spend nearly half an hour teaching young people how socialism works. Can conservatives spend half an hour explaining why liberty works?
They’re Telling Us What They Want — Believe Them
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from A Guide to Democratic Socialists of America is how unnecessary speculation becomes once you listen to socialists themselves. They’re debating presidential campaigns, labor organization, political parties, capitalism, economic growth, constitutional structures and competing strategies for building socialist power. Not every DSA member wants the same thing. Not every democratic socialist wants a revolution. But this is clearly much bigger than Medicare for All and free college. They’re building an ideological movement. They’re educating young people. They’re developing political infrastructure. And they’re thinking about the future. Conservatives should do them the courtesy of taking them seriously.
History Gets The Last Word
Young people should question the system they inherited. That’s healthy. They should challenge conservatives too. But questioning capitalism while treating socialism as unexplored territory is historical amnesia. Humanity has repeatedly experimented with putting greater economic power into political hands. Sometimes the results were merely inefficient. Sometimes they became oppressive. Sometimes they were catastrophic. The names change. The slogans improve. The presentation gets slicker. Today the revolutionary pamphlet has become a beautifully edited YouTube video delivered by an intelligent young man with nearly 100,000 subscribers who sincerely believes he’s describing a better future. That’s precisely why conservatives need to pay attention. The most dangerous salesman isn’t the one screaming at you from the sidewalk. It’s the smart, likable one who convinces you that you’ve finally found a brand-new product—when history has already left millions of reviews.
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JIMMY