By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
Sept. 8, 2026 – In the early 1980s, I attended graduate school at Brown University, where only two Soviet-born and raised students were enrolled at the time. I was from Kiev and Boris was from Odessa, both cities in the former Soviet Union. I was in the Anthropology Department and Boris was in the Math Department. Together, we were a novelty and an enigma at Brown.
At that time, the West and the Soviet Union were in the height of the Cold War, and any Soviet-like presence was placed under a microscope by U.S. authorities and the American public. Given these tense circumstances, Brown students frequently questioned me about my country of origin and upbringing, as my Eastern European accent immediately revealed my foreign identity. Fellow students often followed up with a somewhat parochial question: “Alexander, are you a Marxist?” My usual response was simply, “No, I am an anthropologist.”
Given that Brown is one of the oldest and most prestigious Ivy League universities in the nation, it was surprising to see how little these postgraduate students knew about Marxist teachings, despite sincerely embracing them. During my college years in the former Soviet Union, I was thoroughly educated and well-versed in Marxist-Leninist subjects: historical and dialectical materialism, scientific communism, scientific atheism, the history of the Communist Party, and the history of the labor movement.
On various occasions, I had to explain to my classmates that Karl Marx rejected utopian socialism in favor of what he termed “Scientific Socialism” or “Scientific Communism.” Marx argued that contemporary changes in society’s economic structure resulted from class conflicts between capitalists (the bourgeoisie) and workers (the proletariat). For Marx, social classes were defined and structured by two primary relations: work and labor, and the ownership of property and the means of production.
In fact, traditional or classical Marxist economic models and class definitions are no longer applicable to modern industrial societies. Today, social stratification and classes are no longer linked to a specific mode of production—such as factories for the proletariat or agriculture for the peasantry. Instead, they are defined by income and wealth, categorized into lower, middle, upper-middle, high, or oligarch classes regardless of occupation. Consequently, plumbers, carpenters, farmers, and educators can belong to any of these categories, depending entirely on their individual financial levels.
I also pointed out to my classmates that in his 1848 book, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx wrote: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
In other words, Marx was not seeking guidance from natural or moral laws; instead, he turned to the lessons of history and revolutionary uprisings against the ruling classes. In post-WWII America, several progressive, far-left scholars and academics advanced Marxist theory, ultimately influencing millions of Americans to engage in far-left socialist activism and neo-Marxism.
Howard Zinn (1922–2010) was a historian and professor of political science at Boston University. His approach incorporated ideas from Marxism, anarchism, and socialism. From the 1960s onward, he was a leading figure in the American civil rights and anti-war movements. He authored more than 20 books, including the provocative titles A People’s History of the United States and Declarations of Independence.
Marvin Harris (1927–2001) studied and taught at Columbia University from 1953 to 1980, serving as the chair of its anthropology department from 1966 to 1969. He conducted fieldwork in Brazil, Ecuador, Mozambique, India, and East Harlem, New York. His seminal book, Cultural Materialism, draws on Karl Marx’s theory of historical materialism. This framework posits that history is driven by struggles between social classes, which are deeply rooted in a society’s economic base.
Noam Chomsky (1928–) is an American linguist, philosopher, political scientist, and activist. He is an emeritus professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a leading figure in linguistics. He is also known for his political activism, which features sharp critiques of modern capitalism and U.S. foreign policy. He identifies as a libertarian socialist and an anarcho-syndicalist, and he belongs to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor union—a group that follows the revolutionary syndicalist theory.
What, then, is the connection between 19th-century Marxism, so-called neo-Marxism, and contemporary far-left democratic socialist activism in America? Evidently, doctrines like White Privilege, Critical Race Theory and Scientific Socialism serve as the ideological foundation for other neo-Marxist concepts, including Systemic Racism, Collective Justice, Black Lives Matter, modern Antifa, and Far-left Democratic Socialism. These doctrines assert that society is divided along racial lines, driven by conflict, struggle, warfare, and institutional advantages between white people and people of color.
This rhetoric serves to threaten opposing ideologies, political systems, and lifestyles. It relies on tactics and methods designed to implement White Privilege, Critical Race doctrines, the notion of Systemic Racism, and Far-left Democratic Socialism into our system of governance. Ultimately, it undermines our constitutional freedoms, which are rooted in the principle that all individuals are created equal.
To promote these doctrines, neo-Marxists and far-left progressives advocate for the complete dismantling of Western democracy and Capitalism—a system they view as inherently oppressive.
As my long-time and trusted friend observed in our private correspondence:
“Well, I’m afraid it may be too late to save democracy in the U.S. I’m afraid it has all gone too far down the drain already. The corruption is phenomenal, widespread, and completely out in the open now. The gullibility of the public—especially the educated elite—is equally phenomenal. If House investigations over the next two years don’t open American voters’ eyes, then it will be too late to save the country from its demise. I always knew this was coming, but I thought it would occur after my lifetime, not during it.”
On the positive note, in response to my friend and like-minded individuals, we may not succeed in saving traditional America and its Judeo–Christian values, but if we don’t try and fight for its preservation and traditional continuity then we certainly lose.
George Washington stated in his farewell address that “virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” In other words, self-governing societies depend on individual citizens to control their own behavior. This moral foundation has defined American exceptionalism from its very inception.
As prominent American sociologist Charles Murray noted in his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, “America will remain exceptional only to the extent that its people embody the same qualities that made it work for the two centuries of its existence. The founding virtues are central to that kind of citizenry.”
The author was born and raised in the former Soviet Union before settling in the U.S. in 1978. He moved to Juneau in 1986 where he taught Russian studies and Archaeology at the University of Alaska Southeast, and Social Studies Teacher at the Alyeska Central School of the Alaska Department of Education. From 1990 to 2022, he served as a director and president of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center, publishing in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology and ethnography. Find him on Amazon.com.
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One thought on “Alexander Dolitsky: Neo-Marxism and far-left Democratic Socialism are a death spiral for America”
I find it interesting that the majority of those who identify as socialists do not understand what socialism is.
A recent Harvard Caps/Harris poll found that 77% of registered voters under 25 believe their paycheck should be based on the “merit and value of their work.” Older voters hold that view in greater numbers. Under socialism merit has no place in pay. 68% percent of young voters say that one day they want to own their own home. Under socialism individuals do not own homes. 70% of young voters want to own their own business. Under socialism individuals do not own businesses. 63% see America as the land of opportunity. Under socialism there is no opportunity to improve oneself, as oneself is a part of the whole therefore there is no opportunity.
When we look at those who have won (or lost) in Democratic primaries as “Democratic Socialists” what we find, by and large, is rich kids who have never worked a day in their life. Grown children who spent too much time being overly schooled while never being educated, who demand that other see the world as they do, even though they are incapable of understanding what their worldview actually is.