The upsurge of openly socialist candidates in the 2026 U.S. midterm elections is causing consternation among some American voters that their beloved republic is sliding towards communism. But a brief survey of failed communist predictions shows that Americans have little cause for concern. The economic failures of communism, of course, are well known, especially since the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. But the failures of its political predictions are just as abject and just as important.

The key year for these predictions was 1848. It was the final year of the Polk administration, and the burgeoning United States was giddy with victory in its recent war with Mexico, unaware of the bloody struggle over slavery precipitated by that territorial expansion. Meanwhile, radical revolts from Sicily to Germany to France (“Do you hear the people sing?”) shook European monarchies to their very foundation.

In the midst of that turmoil, Karl Marx published the infamous “Communist Manifesto.” In it, he set forth the ideas that would form the basis for later developments in “critical theory.”

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” Marx began. “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.”

This summary of world history is wrong because it participated more in neat philosophical systems than in reality.

In his 1830 “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,” German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had set forth a dialectic theory of logic, which included three points: a fixed starting point, an opposite counterpoint, and a resulting conclusion, the outcome of the conflict (or mediation) between these two points. Later thinkers described these points as the thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis. Hegel’s ideas were soon appropriated as a theory of history, in which one social order (the thesis) faces a challenge (the antithesis), resulting in a new social order (the synthesis, which then became a new thesis).

For Marx, the “oppressor” class formed the thesis, the “oppressed” class formed the antithesis, and the “revolutionary reconstitution of society” formed the synthesis.

Marx devoted the majority of his manifesto to sketching out how his understanding of his own time fit this larger interpretation of history. He labeled his own time “the epoch of the bourgeoisie” (the old synthesis), which “has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society” (the old thesis). He then described the new battle lines between “two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie [the new thesis] and Proletariat [the new antithesis].”

Marx defined the proletariat as all laborers without property, which he said comprised a majority of souls in industrialized nations. He argued that the “gigantic means of production and of exchange” created by industrialization would ultimately overwhelm the bourgeoisie and lead to the triumph of the proletariat (in a new synthesis).

Here’s the reason for sketching out all of this arcane and relatively irrelevant thought: Marx’s theory of history required communist revolutions to succeed in the most developed nations first — where the process of industrialization, a theoretical aid to the proletariat, was furthest along.

In fact, Marx specifically sketched out communist activity in “most advanced countries,” including France, Switzerland, Poland, and Germany — but “chiefly” in Germany.

The actual history of communist advancement is the exact opposite of this theory. Communism took hold first in Russia, the least industrialized of all European powers. It then spread not through industrialized Europe, but into Asia: China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. These communist powers then exported their ideas throughout the “Third World,” but that world of the 20th century was by definition set in contrast to the industrialized, democratic West.

Why did communism develop this way? The short answer is obviously that Marx’s theory of history was wrong. There are many longer, more substantial answers, of course. But the gist of it is that Western nations staved off the appeal of communism by less radical solutions to the plight of laborers. Safety reforms, limits on working hours, wage increases, and other quality-of-life improvements helped raise the laboring poor up into a middle class, blurring the lines between Marx’s two economic classes of “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat” (hence why later critical theorists had to define the “oppressor” and “oppressed” classes by different metrics).

In many Western nations, this process of essentially co-opting the “proletariat” into the existing social order often involved co-opting some socialist policies as well. From social security pensions to food stamps to Europe’s socialized medicine, Western democracies have now embraced some of the ideas first put forth by socialists.

Later communists would see this as a step in the right direction. In his “Critique of the Gotha Program” (1875), Marx identified a “first” and “higher phase of communist society.” Later Soviet dogma would posit “the lower phase known as Socialism, and the higher phase known as Communism.”

However, our thinking need not be imprisoned by this communist theorizing. After all, the communist track record of historical predictions is not a strong one. To date, the West’s adoption of “socialism-lite” has proven to be an effective inoculation against full-blown communism, for the very simple fact that even today’s “poor” enjoy living conditions of sufficient quality to make all but the most committed ideologues think twice about throwing society into a state of revolution.

Effectively, the West has staved off communist revolution through negotiation. In a government with widespread popular representation, people of all backgrounds, professions, income brackets, and even ethnicities have a chance to express their desires and interests. By getting the buy-in of the “poorer” classes, Western societies have evaded social revolution and improved society at the same time. Communists may have exciting rhetoric, but they do not have compelling history on their side.