America's loudest democratic socialists have a problem: Many of them are too rich. Hasan Piker, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and an entire class of young socialist influencers are all extremely wealthy. Yet even though their wealth was acquired through a capitalist system they see as immoral, they give very little of it away.
If you truly believed your wealth was immorally acquired, you'd make every effort to return it to those it was taken from. Instead, their movement is a jealous one — more about anger at those who have more than about helping those who have less.
Excess wealth is fundamentally incompatible with socialism. Karl Marx argued wealth is generated by the exploitation of others' labor: Workers
spend part of the day working for themselves, and after that point are working for someone else's benefit.
"He creates surplus-value which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing," Marx wrote.
In his view – and by extension the socialist one – the profit that capitalists skim off the top is exploitation.
So why do so many established democratic socialist politicians live lives of luxury? Sanders, known for demonizing the "one percent," owns three homes.
"Now how did I get the money?" the senator said in a 2024 interview. "I wrote two best-selling books, including this book on capitalism, and I make, I don't know, $175,000 a year, and that's more or less how I became the zillionaire that I am."
Warren has a net worth in the ballpark of $10 million – much of it from book sales – and donates only a fraction of that to charity each year.
America's loudest proponents of socialism don't put their money where their mouth is
Sanders and Warren may want to brush past their wealth, but their lifestyle is among the most lavish an American can have and, more important, fundamentally anti-socialist. While they rail against millionaires and billionaires, they and their fellow millionaires have plenty of excess capital that, according to their worldview, ought to be redistributed downward. Worse, their wealth is built on others' labor. Somebody has to write the speeches and books and distribute them.
Defenders of the movement will wave this away. After all, isn't their wealth just a drop in the bucket? But their ideology holds excess wealth as more than unfortunate; it's morally indefensible, rooted in exploitation. If you acquired something stolen, you'd do everything in your power to return it to its rightful owner.
The young insurgent socialists are no better. Piker, a nepo baby, wears four-figure designer clothing, owns a $3 million Los Angeles home and drives a $200,000 Porsche.
While Sanders and Warren brush past their wealth, Piker makes it impossible to miss — all while streaming live on Twitch to preach that the rich and capitalists are the enemy.
His obsession with luxury goods is just as gaudy as President Donald Trump's obsession with gold. The difference is Trump doesn't claim excess capital is inherently immoral.
Echoing Marx, Piker told The New York Times, "If you steal from the poor, you become rich. ... Wage theft is the most consequential amount of theft that takes place in the United States."
Piker comes from a wealthy family, so he hasn't had to do much exploiting to attain his status. But are his cameramen, editors and other employees getting their fair share of his channel's profits? Yet his rhetoric about wealthy individuals is more extreme than that of other prominent socialists. He has even said that certain capitalists should be killed for refusing to make personal sacrifices for his preferred policies.
Ironically, part of the reason socialists demand that the government redistribute wealth through compulsion is that many of them can't imagine doing so willingly. Their taste differs from Trump's; their underlying motivations don't.
The internet is full of similar influencers. "Socialist socialites" spend their time critiquing conservatives' modest fashion while wearing designer clothing themselves. There's already a term for this archetype – "champagne socialist" – for activists who love everything high society has to offer, from luxury goods to luxury politics.
While figureheads of the insurgent socialist movement, namely Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, dress almost comically plain compared with their influencer supporters, they still ride the energy of this class to power their campaigns. El-Sayed spent hours before Election Day at an upscale pool party with Piker and other influencers.
Socialism is a jealous movement. Hasan Piker isn't helping.
Marx claimed excess wealth is unjust, and democratic socialists believe the answer is redistribution. But why the middle man? Sanders and other wealthy socialists could redistribute their own wealth downward if they truly cared about the poor.
The unfortunate truth is that nobody thinks they aren't paying their fair share – the problem always comes from those above them, never from people at their own level. When I say socialism is a jealous movement, I don't mean every young person who calls themself a socialist does so for selfish reasons. But there is a contingent who are simply envious of those richer than they are.
This is the crowd Piker appeals to. His home and car make him hypocritical enough, but how he dresses tells us more about who he is. The point of expensive clothes, especially those covered in luxury labels, is to be a status symbol, to outwardly convey wealth. Piker and these other socialist socialites aren't just unashamed of their wealth. They want you to know they have it, and you don't.
Sanders and Piker have little in common, but both are wealthy enough to help people in need. Instead, they spend it on houses, clothes and jewelry, while championing the confiscation of wealth of those richer than themselves.
Society could improve if this class opened their wallets, but they hide behind the excuse that their wealth is just a drop in the bucket compared to what the billionaires have. If you believe something you own was unjustly acquired, you shouldn't wait for the government to force you to return it. Their movement isn't about helping those poorer than them but instead about punishing those who are wealthier.
One part of socialism's struggle to win working-class voters is this champagne socialism. Socialist candidates have struggled with voters who didn't attend college: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won just 40% of them, El-Sayed dominated college towns but faltered elsewhere, and former gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong lost lower-education areas of Wisconsin by 10 percentage points or more.
Working-class people see through the "benevolent rich guy" schtick better than rich people think. They notice the demagoguery always points upward, never inward. What this style of activism appeals to is the young and terminally online.
Dace Potas, a law student, is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY. Follow him on X: @DacePotas
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hasan Piker's luxury lifestyle isn't what Marx had in mind | Opinion
