Minneapolis Communists Want Your Property and a 20-Hour Workweek

There’s something almost quaint about watching someone in a sweater that says “Communism Will Win” explain how they plan to seize your business and cut your workweek to 20 hours without reducing your pay. It’s like watching a historical reenactment, except nobody told these folks the show ended badly the first time around.

Owen Phernetton, a member of the Revolutionary Communists of America, stood at the edge of a Minneapolis demonstration recently, newspaper in hand, outlining a vision that would make even Bernie Sanders raise an eyebrow. We’re talking full-scale revolution here. Not reform, not progressive taxation, but actual seizure of factories, mines, and businesses to place them under collective control. The kind of stuff that turned breadbaskets into bread lines throughout the twentieth century.

Here’s what should alarm anyone paying attention. These aren’t fringe characters shouting from street corners anymore. They’re embedding themselves within mainstream protest movements, the ones advertised as worker rights rallies or immigrant advocacy events. You show up thinking you’re supporting fair wages, and suddenly you’re marching alongside people distributing copies of The Communist. It’s ideological bait-and-switch, and it’s becoming standard operating procedure.

The proposals themselves read like a greatest hits album of economic disasters. Rent capped at a fraction of worker income regardless of market realities. Wealth confiscated from billionaires to fund government healthcare, education, and housing. A 20-hour workweek that somehow maintains current pay levels while boosting productivity. When pressed on that last point, Phernetton claimed productivity would actually increase under planned economy control. Right. Because central planning has such a stellar track record of efficiency.

You know what’s remarkable? The sheer confidence with which these activists dismiss basic economic reality. Phernetton insists the working class would control all productivity under their system, as if saying the words makes it workable. Never mind that every attempt at this model has resulted in shortages, stagnation, and the kind of poverty that makes our current system look like paradise. Venezuela tried this recently. How’s that working out?

Andy Koch from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization echoed similar themes, arguing the country runs for billionaires by billionaires. There’s a kernel of legitimate frustration there about crony capitalism and regulatory capture. But the solution isn’t burning down the entire system that created more prosperity than any other in human history. It’s fixing the corruption, not replacing markets with committees.

The irony gets thick when Koch admits he’d welcome donations from billionaires to fund his supposedly pro-worker movement. So wealth is evil and must be expropriated, unless it’s being donated to your cause, in which case it’s fine? The logical inconsistency would be funny if these ideas weren’t gaining traction among younger Americans who never lived through the Cold War.

What we’re witnessing is the normalization of revolutionary rhetoric within spaces that used to be occupied by traditional liberal causes. The May Day demonstration in Minneapolis wasn’t billed as a communist rally. It was framed around immigrant and worker rights, issues that attract broad support. But woven throughout were activists pushing for fundamental overthrow of private property and free markets.

This matters because ideas have consequences. When revolutionary communism gets laundered through sympathetic protest movements, it reaches people who might never pick up a copy of The Communist on their own. It creates the impression that these positions represent legitimate points on the political spectrum rather than repeatedly failed experiments in human misery.

The American system isn’t perfect. Income inequality deserves attention. Corporate monopolies need breaking up. Workers deserve fair treatment and dignity. But the answer isn’t replacing imperfect freedom with perfect tyranny. Because that’s what collective ownership actually means when you strip away the utopian language. It means bureaucrats controlling your labor, your property, your choices.

These activists are building what Phernetton calls “a party of professional class fighters” who’ve concluded capitalism requires revolution. They’re serious, organized, and increasingly visible. The question is whether the rest of us are paying attention. Because the last thing America needs is another generation learning why socialism fails by experiencing it firsthand rather than reading about it in history books.