Andrew Yang Radicalized Me
By: The Ratio
Tags: Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, Politics, Andrew Yang

I am a Communist. And it’s partially because of Andrew Yang.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “How can a “Libertarian Tech Bro” influence someone to become a Communist?” I intend to answer this question; But first to understand where I’m coming from, we have to go back to before the 2020 election.

In 2016, I was 14 years old. The election was in full swing and I didn't care in the slightest about it. Memes about some gorilla named Harambe were what held my attention. The only thing about that election that I knew was that both candidates were bad, probably because of my Parents’ opinion at the time. When Donald Trump won I was surprised, but still basically apathetic. I mean why would I have been scared? I am a straight white male that is fortunate enough to be relatively well-off economically. I had nothing to be afraid of.

My opinion on Trump and his policies basically stayed the same for 3 years, “Trump is bad, but I still don’t care about politics.”

That opinion held until around September of 2019, when my girlfriend asked me who my favorite Democratic Candidate was. I didn't know how to answer, because I had no clue who any of them were. There was some old fart named Bernie Sanders, another old fart named Elizabeth Warren, some guy named Pete, a lady named Amy, etc. I was so overloaded with candidates that I sort of defaulted to who my girlfriend’s favorite was (which at the time was Tulsi Gabbard).

That is, until I discovered Andrew Yang.

Photo by Marc Klockow

I heard him speak on the H3 Podcast about giving everyone in the country $1,000 a month, no strings attached. Back then I would describe myself as moderate on economics, so naturally I thought that was crazy. But everything else he spoke about resonated with me. He sounded like a normal person, not some lifeless husk that I had come to expect from politicians, not a carnival barker like Trump. (In case you’ve only seen his goofy personality while campaigning, he comes across much different in a long-form interview.) I was skeptical that anyone could act so normal and succeed in politics, but it grabbed my attention.

My main problem with his UBI at the time was how we would pay for it, which was people’s most common reaction. After I did some research on how we could fund a UBI with a Value Added Tax, I was all in. I told my girlfriend about him, and we both joined the #YangGang.

Andrew Yang resonated with me and a lot of others because of his campaign’s goal of putting “Humanity First”. This is where the leftist influences began. A common theme of Andrew’s campaign was that Capitalism is not working for a lot of people in the US and around the world. Corporations and CEOs would rather evade taxes than pay their fair share. The idea of “Human-Centered Capitalism” (although it is an oxymoron), resonated with me at the time because I agreed that we needed to place People over Profits, but did not agree with Communism or even Socialism in the slightest.

These sorts of ideas planted the seeds of anti-capitalism in my head, and they began to grow as time went on.

One major plank of Andrew’s campaign was automation. His campaign talked about automation in the context of a capitalist economy. More and more, CEOs are eliminating jobs in order to improve productivity and increase profits. At first this began sort of a Neo-Luddite thought process in my brain, but now I believe we can fully embrace automation if we move past capitalism and profit incentive (but I digress).

I began to understand that the 1% (the bourgeoisie if you will) will do anything to win the capitalism game, even if it completely destroys us. One thing Yang explained even better than a lot of leftists is this is NOT necessarily because they don’t care about people. It’s actually worse than that: no matter how great they may be as people (though of course many are terrible), they are just cogs in a brutal machine. They are all caught in the rat race of growth capitalism, and if they slow down even for a minute someone else will just take their place.

Andrew’s book, The War on Normal People, is full of things you could consider anti-capitalist or socialist. Take some of these quotes as examples:

“Our economic system must shift to focus on bettering the lot of the average person…We shape the system. We own it, not the other way around.” “If there is a revolution, it is likely to be born out of race and identity with automation-driven economics as the underlying force… Culture wars will be proxy wars for the economic backdrop.” “We want to believe that the market will resolve most situations. In this case, the market will not resolve the problem-quite the opposite. The market is driven to reduce costs…The market doesn’t want to provide for the underemployed truck drivers or cashiers.” “Is there enough character and will and confidence and independence left to built the world and to do what is required? Is there enough empathy? Capital doesn’t care about us. We must evolve beyond relying upon it as the primary measurement of value.”

These are only just a few anti-capitalist or radical-sounding quotes I could have chosen; if you read it you’ll see what I mean.

Photo by Marc Klockow

After Andrew dropped out of the 2020 race, I was back to being politically homeless. No other candidate had that same energy or grabbed my attention like Andrew had. Many Yang Gang went back to Bernie’s campaign, but back then I was scared of socialism and thought Bernie had no clue what he was talking about. I ended up voting for Tulsi, though I regret it now that I understand how reactionary her views are.

Then COVID-19 hit. The economy was in turmoil, I was layed off from my job for a bit. Cases steadily rose. Those summer months were some of the most confusing and eye-opening months of my life.

I saw the things Andrew talked about happening even faster than I (or he) had thought. Jobs being replaced as a result of remote work and automation. The rich gaining tens of billions of dollars throughout the crisis, while the average person had a harder and harder time making rent. I began to see things in a different light: capitalism will never be “Human-Centered”. Capitalism as a system is inherently exploitive, and by design it will always have a few big winners riding on the rest of our backs.

I was still skeptical of socialism (and definitely still scared of communism) but I began to research Bernie Sanders, Medicare for All, The Green New Deal, and other social democratic ideas.

As the pandemic raged on, Andrew was out there helping people. Providing cash relief, lobbying for stimulus checks (the only Democrat to call Nancy Pelosi out on this), and even advocating for a general strike at one point. He was still my hero, and even still is in some ways.

The murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests pushed me further left than I ever thought I would be. Seeing peaceful protestors beat in the streets made me angry, and I found myself silently celebrating while the Minneapolis Police Precinct burned to the ground. I did some catching up on history, and came to see that the police are not our friends and never have been.

I began researching anarchism, and fully embraced socialism. Andrew was still a big influence on me because of those little nuggets of anti-capitalist truth he had fed me, but I started to branch out from him. I read The Communist Manifesto and that huge wall of text known as Capital. I read Conquest of Bread, State and Revolution, Mutual Aid, and other works of communist theory. I had finally found a vision of society that made sense.

Hopefully you can see now how Andrew Yang radicalized me and many others. As a result of his normal guy persona, I started paying attention to politics and current events. As a result of his compelling criticisms of capitalism, I became convinced that we were headed for disaster without a huge intervention. As a result of his “Human-Centered” politics (who could argue with that?), I had slowly become comfortable with socialist and even communist ideas. From there it was just a matter of connecting the dots, and realizing that even Yang’s ideas weren’t big enough to solve the problems we face. I had gone from a typical commie-hating American to a full-blown Communist.

I now believe in the abolition of currency and the state. I believe workers should own the means of production. I believe in a revolution. The bourgeoisie will not give up their power willingly, and we cannot simply reform capitalism. We have to dismantle and replace it completely. That is the only way we can have a truly Human-Centered Economy.

Now I will say that Andrew Yang is not by any means immune to criticism. He has horrible views on Israel/Palestine, policing, certain social issues and a whole lot more. As of the writing of this article, Andrew is currently running for mayor of NYC. Throughout the course of his run, he has repeatedly leaned to the right to pander to specific voting blocks within the city. I do not think this is a good strategy, since it’s his progressive and even somewhat leftist views that inspire so much enthusiasm.

But he is certainly not a conservative, or a libertarian. Andrew is more pragmatic than ideological, which gets a lot of people angry because of all the boxes he doesn’t check. But he is genuinely sympathetic to left ideas, as we have most recently seen in the mayor’s race from progressives who looked past the caricature (Ron Kim and Carlos Menchaca have both pushed his platform left, including full decriminalization of sex work and a vacant land tax).

Leftist movements cannot ignore him or his supporters. We have to pick them up and teach them. We cannot ignore the movement for Universal Basic Income.

Some of us like to condemn UBI as a band-aid on the festering wound of capitalism, saying it will just prolong our misery. And in some ways you are right. But it can also be a great teaching tool if used correctly.

(Funny, but Andrew himself says this about trying to save capitalism with philanthropy. I agree with his diagnosis, but I think the only solution is communism.)

Excerpt from The War on Normal People

UBI cannot fix the problems of capitalism. But we can’t count on people to figure this out on their own: we must show them. Let’s not see Andrew Yang’s movement as a competitor to be crushed, but instead as an opportunity for the Left to capture a whole new audience.

Communism puts Humanity First. I am glad to have arrived here, and I can thank Andrew for that.