During this week’s Sunday Special episode, famed author and communism expert Paul Kengor speaks to Daily Wire Emeritus Ben Shapiro about what true communism is and how Marxist theory is embedded into the current Democrat Party in the U.S.
Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College, has written more than a dozen books, including “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, the Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor” and several other best-sellers about former President Ronald Reagan. Notably, Kengor’s book “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” inspired the 2024 film “Reagan.”
“I want to call a Marxist a Marxist, only if we’re dealing with a legitimate Marxist,” Kengor said, before diving into the Marxist “superstructure” of “oppressed versus oppressor.”
“You find your two groups to pit against each other,” he said. “Classical Marxism, this was based on economics and class. It was a proletariat/bourgeoisie. There, you had your oppressor and oppressed.”
Current politics from the Left largely focuses on “cultural” Marxism, the author said. “With race-based Marxism, it’s black versus white; with gender Marxism, male versus female.”
“Oftentimes, the people who are doing that, have no idea that they’re even part of that general Marxist superstructure,” Kengor said. “So if you say to them, ‘You know, that’s a form of cultural Marxism or race-based Marxism, they’ll scoff. And maybe they should scoff, because they don’t even know what they’re doing.”
That point brought Kengor to Vice President Kamala Harris. In her case, “she might be coming more from that general superstructure on issues of race, gender, culture,” he said. “But I’d stay away from saying at a national debate that she’s a Marxist, unless you can really defend it and explain it.”
Kengor did add, though, that former President Donald Trump was likely correct when he called Harris’ father a Marxist.
“I think Trump was right about Kamala’s father,” he said. “Based on his writings, and I’ve read in some of his journal articles – he was in the economic department at Stanford University – and from what I could tell, he was a Marxist.”
“I don’t know if [Harris] even has read Karl Marx,” he said. “She probably is not what we would call a ‘classical Marxist’ – probably hasn’t read the communist Manifesto.”
Shapiro made the point that calling Harris a communist “actually waters down what Marxism is, and makes it more palatable for the masses, because people go, ‘Okay, well, if Kamala Harris is a Marxist, that doesn’t seem that bad. I mean, we’re not talking about the Soviet Union, we’re not talking about Cuba, we’re not talking about Venezuela. We’re talking about a lady who’s hobnobbing with tech CEOs and wants government interventionism in the economy and more redistribution [of wealth].”
However, later in the show, Shapiro and Kengor discussed how full-scale Communism doesn’t happen overnight, but in gradual steps.
“‘All we need is just one more restriction, all we need is one more set of regulations, all we need is just a little more control’ – and it’s always just a little more control,” Shapiro outlined.
Kengor said that at the very least, mainstream Democrats are in favor of the ‘administrative state’ and noted of a famous quote from President Reagan in his “Time for Choosing” speech: “The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.”
Kengor also gave Shapiro a one-sentence definition of communism, which he said is right from the Communist Manifesto: “The entire communist theory may be summed up in the single sentence, ‘abolition of private property.’ That’s the starting point – it’s a war on private property.”
“That goes against the Judeo-Christian foundation, the Old Testament, New Testament,” Kengor said. “Thou shalt not steal – the Ten Commandments; that implies that you have the right to property.”
During the lengthy sit-down, Shapiro and Kengor also discussed Sen. Bernie Sanders, former President Barack Obama, and much more on Reagan.
WATCH the full ‘Sunday Special’ episode with Paul Kengor HERE