No True Socialist

Every so often, socialists get hit with one of the laziest, most unserious arguments imaginable:

“if you’re really a socialist, why do you participate in capitalism?”

You bought a house.

You own a car.

You earn money.

You exist.

Checkmate.

But this isn’t an argument. It’s an ad hominem distraction—a way to attack the person instead of engaging with what they’re saying about the world we live in.

Rather than responding to critiques of exploitation, inequality, wage labor, or wealth concentration, critics pivot to lifestyle policing. The message isn’t “your analysis is wrong.” It’s “your existence disqualifies you.”

That’s not serious debate. That’s avoidance.

Humans Consume. Full Stop.

At the most basic level—biological, material, unavoidable—humans consume. We always have. We always will. We take in resources, transform them, and leave waste behind. That’s not capitalism. That’s biology.

What is socially constructed is how that consumption is organized.

Capitalism didn’t invent consumption. It organized consumption around private ownership, profit extraction, wage labor, and the endless accumulation of wealth for the sake of continued consumption. That’s the system we inherited. None of us voted for it. None of us opted into it. We were born into it.

So yes—if I want to live in the world as it currently exists, I must engage with capitalism. I must earn money. I must pay rent. I must buy food. I must participate in markets that dominate every aspect of social life.

Calling that hypocrisy is not an argument. It’s a refusal to acknowledge material reality.

“Socialists Shouldn’t Own Things” is an Ad Hominem, not a Critique.

When someone says a socialist shouldn’t own property, earn money, or buy things, they are not critiquing socialism.

They are attacking the character and behavior of the speaker to avoid engaging with the substance of the critique being made. That is the textbook definition of an ad hominem fallacy.

Instead of answering questions like:

• Why is wealth increasingly concentrated?

• Why do wages stagnate while productivity rises?

• Why is housing treated as an investment instead of a human necessity?

• Why does the system require permanent underclasses to function?

The conversation is derailed into:

• “well, you own a phone.”

• “you bought a house.”

• “you’re not poor enough to speak.”

This is not accidental. It’s a deliberate deflection.

If critics can reframe socialism as a personal purity test rather than a structural critique, they never have to defend capitalism itself. The system escapes scrutiny, and the individual becomes the target.

“Just Don’t Participate” is not a Serious Proposal

Let’s take the argument at face value for a moment.

If socialists shouldn’t engage with capitalism, what exactly are they supposed to do?

Not sell their labor?

Not earn income?

Not acquire housing?

Not participate in markets that control access to food, transportation, healthcare, and communication?

Fine. Then answer the obvious question:

How does anyone survive under capitalism without engaging in capitalism?

For the working class, there is exactly one way to acquire money: selling time and labor to someone who owns capital. That’s not ideology. That’s how the system is structured.

There is no mass, parallel economic system people can simply opt into. There is no realistic, large-scale way to live outside capitalism while capitalism controls land, resources, employment, and distribution.

Demanding that socialists disengage from capitalism is not revolutionary. It demands self-imposed material deprivation as proof of moral sincerity.

Engagement is not Endorsement.

Here’s the part critics seem fundamentally incapable of understanding: You can exist within a system, benefit from it, and still recognize that it is deeply flawed—even abhorrent.

Those positions are not mutually exclusive.

You can watch a movie and still criticize it.

You can live in a country and still oppose its policies.

You can work under capitalism and still argue that it is exploitative, alienating, and unsustainable.

Living in capitalism is different from defending capitalism. Survival is not consent.

Socialism is a Transition—not a Lifestyle Brand

Another point critics routinely ignore socialism is not a personal aesthetic or a consumer identity. It is a transitional economic framework that emerges from capitalism.

Socialism requires capitalism to exist first. Capitalism creates the material conditions—industrial capacity, socialized labor, and global production that make socialism possible at all.

If capitalism didn’t exist, socialism wouldn’t be necessary.

Which means socialists will necessarily live under capitalism. They will work in it. They will navigate it. They will, at times, succeed within it.

Expecting socialists to somehow float above the system they are critiquing is not principled. It’s magical thinking.

Why This Argument Exists at all.

The “you participate in capitalism” argument persists because it’s useful.

It allows people to:

• Avoid defending capitalism on its merits.

• Ignore systemic critiques by focusing on individual behavior.

• Reframe political analysis as moral hypocrisy.

• Shut down discussion without engaging with evidence.

It’s easier to accuse someone of inconsistency than to explain why billionaires exist, why housing should be commodified, or why wages fail to keep up with productivity.

That’s why the argument is repeated. Not because it’s strong—but because it’s convenient.

Final Thought

I can live in this system.

I can survive in it.

I can even, at times, benefit from it.

And I can still recognize that it is exploitative, unequal, ecologically destructive, and structurally incapable of prioritizing human well-being.

Pointing at my participation does not invalidate my critique.

It only proves that capitalism leaves no real alternative—and that fact alone is worth interrogating.