A new survey is raising alarms about how Americans feel toward capitalism, and the warning is coming from someone who says she has seen what the alternative looks like up close. A naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated from Colombia writes that only one in three Americans now holds a positive view of capitalism, according to a survey from The Free Press that used methods designed to draw out opinions people don’t usually share openly.
The writer, who grew up in a country torn apart for decades by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, says the finding troubles her deeply. FARC, a communist revolutionary group, waged war for roughly fifty years, carrying out massacres, kidnappings and acts of terrorism that killed thousands and displaced more than seven million Colombians, making it one of the largest internal displacement crises in the world.
But the picture isn’t as simple as capitalism losing favor across the board. The same survey found most Americans remain wary of socialism, and separate Gallup polling cited in the piece shows capitalism drawing 54 percent approval while free enterprise scores 81 percent and small business a striking 95 percent. Big business, by contrast, draws only 37 percent approval. In other words, Americans haven’t soured on ownership, entrepreneurship or taking a risk to build something — they’ve soured on something else.
Socialism as an “on-ramp”
The writer argues there is no meaningful line between socialism and communism, pointing to Lenin’s own writing in “The State and Revolution,” where he describes socialism as the first phase of communist society. In her view, socialism was never offered as an alternative to communism — it was always meant to lead there.
She argues the historical record settles the question of whether that path is worth taking. She cites estimates placing the death toll of communist regimes near 100 million people across Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Africa and South America. She also points to the roughly 4,300-mile Iron Curtain built across Europe — a barrier constructed not to keep outsiders from getting in, but to stop people from leaving.
Why the appeal persists anyway
Despite that record, the writer says the pull of communist ideas is real and shouldn’t be dismissed. She argues American capitalism today leans too heavily toward big, consolidated and impersonal business interests, leaving households, small businesses and individual risk-takers feeling squeezed and less in control of their futures. Communism, she writes, moves in on that frustration, agrees with it, and offers what she calls the oldest bargain on record — quoting Marx’s line, “You have nothing to lose but your chains. Workers of the world, unite!”
Her response is that communism never actually resolves the pain it identifies. Rather than expanding economic freedom, she argues, it replaces it with central planning, and rather than restoring people’s sense of control over their own lives, it eliminates it, because personal agency is incompatible with total state control.
The piece closes with a direct appeal to readers and to college and university leaders: to elect leaders who expand economic freedom instead of winding it down, to step outside ideological echo chambers, and to ensure campuses remain places where these debates can happen openly — without censorship, violence toward opposing views, or indoctrination disguised as academic freedom.
