In all honesty, today's so-called "democratic socialists" ("Demsocs" in Orwellian newspeak) are not communists — yet.  In the American states, where progressivism is trying to soft-sell socialism to the masses as the next big thing, they are focusing only on the "give" side of the "give and take" aspect of the various iterations of collectivist ideology.

Democratic socialists at 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstration.
Photo credit: David Shankbone.

Rather than engage in the foment of a violent, transformative revolution, the "Demsocs" are trying to buy their way into America using other people's money — promising to literally make everything free, as if funding were always limitless.  Although some, like Bernie Sanders, are softly using the word "revolution," we are beginning to hear the call for the violent variations now — as when newly elected Candi CdeBaca, the Demsoc Denver city councilwoman, noted she is ready to implement communism "by any means necessary."

Lucky for America, so far, the "revolution" has been televised and just means spending the states and the nation into bankruptcy.

But there is no yin without yang, no up without down, no debits without credits.  There will always be two sides of the ledger that must balance, and there truly is no such thing as a free lunch.  When voluntary taxation runs its course, coercive confiscation follows.  When voluntary participation ends, forced participation is guaranteed.  Socialists always believe that their programs are just so darned good that they must be made mandatory.

In The Road to Serfdom (1944), F.A. Hayek noted:

[D]emocratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable but that to strive for it produces something utterly different — the very destruction of freedom itself. As has been aptly said: "What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."

Marx believed that the natural progression was for economic systems to move from capitalism to socialism, then to communism.  He saw his philosophy, Marxism, as the necessary bridge between socialism and full, global communism, but Marx was honest about this transformation.  He openly advocated for the elimination of the family, private property, and individual freedom in any form of collectivism.  The state must always be the alpha and omega.

No, what the snake oil salesmen and carnival barkers of "democratic socialism" are doing today is perhaps even more insidious than an outright revolution.  What they are selling to a gullible public today is the shiny side of a tarnished coin, the bright, shiny, new and improved side of collectivism as they deceptively hide its dark flip side.

But there are two sides to every coin.  One simply cannot give without taking; free stuff always costs somebody; leaders cannot take control without followers relinquishing it.

It isn't clear that modern socialists even know what they are because they have always been sold the "all-you-can-eat buffet" side of collectivism without an awareness that sooner or later, even "all you can eat" has a limit, and the bill will come due at the end of the meal.  They simply ignore the violence that necessarily must be done to individuals and their freedoms to keep the party going.  Hayek succinctly expressed it again in TRTS:

A further point should be made here: Collectivism means the end of truth. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the ends selected by those in control; it is essential that the people should come to regard these ends as their own. This is brought about by propaganda and by complete control of all sources of information.

Sanders, de Blasio, Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and all the other "democratic socialists" are blissfully unaware they are the same as a perverted pedophile handing out candy from the back of a white, rusty, beat up 1975 Ford Econoline van: the bad things happen only after the candy is accepted and America gets in the van.