During Tuesday’s heated presidential debate, former President Donald Trump insisted that Kamala Harris, the current vice president and Democratic presidential candidate, was a “Marxist.”
Referring to Harris, the Republican presidential nominee said: “She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father is a Marxist professor in economics, and he taught her well.”
Trump previously dubbed Harris “Comrade Kamala” on social media and insisted his opponent is “a communist” during a recent podcast interview with former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan.
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event in Greensboro, North Carolina, on September 12. A leading Communist Party USA official rejected former President Donald Trump’s claims that Harris is a “Marxist” or “communist.”
JIM WATSON/AFP/GETTY
However, speaking to Newsweek, Joe Sims, co-chairman of the Communist Party USA, strongly refuted the claim that Harris or other leading Democrats are Marxists.
“We don’t see anything in the platform or statements of the current or former Democratic Party standard bearers—Biden, Obama, Harris, etc., that indicate they are Marxist,” Sims said. “What we do see is the standard GOP charge of ‘socialism’ used by Mitch McConnell, Trump et al. going all the way back to Joe McCarthy. No surprise here!
“Again, we’ve seen this script before—overt racism, alongside vague allegations of ‘Marxism’ deployed to divide and divert working-class people from uniting and bettering our situation.
“Donald Trump’s red-baiting and racism are old and tired divide-and-conquer devices. Trump used both last night. But the American people know better. It didn’t work against Obama and it won’t work now.”
Newsweek contacted representatives of the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment.
The term “Marxist” refers to followers of German philosopher and political activist Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.
Marx forecast that tensions he saw as inherent to capitalist societies would inevitably lead to workers revolutions, after which the economy would be brought under collective control on behalf of the working class.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Marxism as “a theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society.”
Marxists seized power in Russia during the October 1917 revolution, overthrowing Czar Nicholas II and establishing the Soviet Union, which became a major force in world politics prior to its collapse in 1991.
Critics hold Marxism responsible for some of the deadliest catastrophes in human history, including the Soviet famine of 1930-1933 and the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-61.
The Communist Party USA is critical of both the Republican and Democratic parties on its official website. A report on the party’s 32nd national convention, published in June, says: “We are fighting a fascist danger at home and genocide against Gaza abroad. To defeat the danger at home, we’ve got to defeat the war abroad. Let’s make it plain: Biden’s Israel policy must be defeated today, so that Trump and MAGA can be defeated tomorrow!”
A flash poll conducted by CNN found that 63 percent of those who watched Tuesday’s debate believed Harris was the victor, against 37 percent for Trump.
Following the debate, Harris’ odds of winning the election improved with 25 bookmakers, with several restoring her as the favorite.
