A couple of weeks ago, a Republican friend informed me that Vice President Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic Party presidential candidate, had taken to quoting Karl Marx. Needless to say, I was both confused and pretty excited about this. But my heart sank as soon as I discovered his source:

Kamala Harris proposes a regime of "equity" based on a simple principle: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. This should sound familiar.pic.twitter.com/PO6vUSrJ5m

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) July 25, 2024

I barely needed to watch the video to know that the infamous liar Christopher Rufo was lying once again. There’s no need to take my word for it — just watch the video for yourself. Harris talks a lot about equity in these clips, but she never even comes close to saying, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That Rufo added the line that this “should sound familiar” makes it hard not to read it as a deliberate attempt to sucker his audience into thinking those sounds actually came out of her mouth.

Rufo, to be fair, earnestly believes that when Democrats say “equity” they really do have something like Marxism in mind. Here’s how he put it a few years ago:

Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds nonthreatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality.

Can we stop for a moment and just appreciate how kooky this conspiracy theory really is? It would be one thing to say that equity is a Marxist idea or that it was inspired by Marxism, but that’s not what Rufo is doing here. Rufo is claiming that critical race theorists actually want to do Marxism, but that they consciously decided that they won’t be able to talk anyone into it and that they needed to use their powers as “masters of language construction” (whatever that means) to come up with a clever code word for it. How does Rufo know this? Has he ever provided any direct evidence of this elaborate deception? Isn’t it legitimately disquieting that anyone treats a man who says things like this as a serious thinker?

Anyway, compare these four situations:

1. Equality of assistance: Everyone gets the same assistance in a capitalist system. So, for example, the government sends everyone a $500 check, but other than that, nothing about our economy is changed.
2. Equality of opportunity: The government tries to ensure that capitalism proceeds on a level playing field by compensating people for disadvantages they face that are unrelated to market competition. So, for example, imagine that someone cheated the welfare system out of millions of dollars by pretending they were poor and used that money to start a business. That puts everyone else at a disadvantage, so the government could try to fix that by either taking away millions from the cheater or giving millions to everyone else.
3. Equality of outcome: Everyone always has the exact same amount of money, no matter how hard they work or don’t work.
4. “To each according to their needs”: Everyone gets enough assistance to cover their needs, which may be unequal, and people may still earn unequal wealth on top of that. So, for example, if you need $500 worth of medicine every month, the government gives you $500; if I only need $20 worth of medicine, the government only gives me $20. However, we both have to work for any additional money we want in addition to that, and the government lets us earn as much as we can.

What’s really funny about all of this is that Rufo thinks Kamala Harris wants to do (4), but he is also daft and thinks that (4) is actually (3). In fact, however, Harris is arguing that instead of doing (1), we should do (2). The ridiculous thing about nongovernmental organization (NGO) “equity” speak is that it really just means “equal opportunity,” the phrase Democrats used to say when they were interested in being understood by the general public.

Kamala Harris is obviously not a Marxist. Neither, for that matter, are most people in the world of NGOs, which is why NGO folks rallied behind Hillary Clinton and then Elizabeth Warren against the socialist candidate Bernie Sanders. At best, Harris and the NGOers just want to do the old Democratic program of capitalism plus some handouts for various disadvantaged groups.

Rufo is conflating this with Marxism, first because he probably does not understand the difference between the four economic approaches I outlined above, and second because he is a cynic who constantly fearmongers about imminent Marxism so that he can sell books.