Marxists go to great lengths to conceal their dogma, and given Marxism’s unmatched record of human and economic misery, who can blame them? The Colorado teachers who just issued a manifesto condemning capitalism is a case in point: they tell us what they hate but not what they embrace.

The manifesto was approved by the state’s largest teachers union, the Colorado Education Association (CEA), which bills itself as the “voice of 39,000 educators” and is thus not a small outfit. It read as follows:

John Ransom, a national political journalist for the Lion, reported that an original resolution was even stronger, calling for action. That earlier version said that “the only way to fully address” all the ills imputed to free markets “is to dismantle capitalism and replace it with a new, equitable economic system.”

See what the teachers did? They got rid of the predicate! Exactly the opposite of what Mrs. Johnson said back in second grade. And they did that to hide their desire to smash capitalism and replace it with something else.

But they needn’t have, as the only real alternative to capitalism in a modern society such as Colorado is a command economy, collectivism — or the Marxist option. The CEA teachers are Marxists — at least, the ones who voted for that mumbo-jumbo of a statement. And if their curious writing style weren’t enough to convince mothers in the Centennial State to yank their young charges out of the public school system, the economic illiteracy that will surely be taught to them should just about do it.

The Corporate Finance Institute lists four ways to organize an economy. The first is “traditional,” which applies only to primitive places “where economic activity is predominantly farming/traditional income generating activities.”

The following two are obvious: a free market economy, where individuals and other private entities make decisions and have great power, and a command economy, where the state owns everything, makes all the decisions, and has a monopoly on power. The third one is a mixed economy, which contains elements of capitalism and collectivism.

Now, obviously, a sophisticated state such as Colorado cannot envisage a traditional economy (though, if these teachers have their way, Coloradans might soon be reduced to bartering), and given how heinous they think capitalism is, they’d want no part of a mixed economy. The U.S. (which includes Colorado) is already a mixed economy, so that’s what the teachers were attacking.

So why not just dust off Karl Marx’s 1848 manifesto, openly embrace communism, and sign off with “you have nothing to lose but your chains?" Because despite what you may hear, Marxism and communism still carry a stigma in the good ole U.S.A.

According to a Heartland Institute/Rasmussen poll , when asked, “Which is better – a free-market economic system or socialism?” 75% of respondents picked the former, while 11% answered “socialism.”

And it’s clear why: you tell the average American that you want to take away his property, give it to the government, and that the latter will henceforth make all decisions for him, and few outside a college town will vote for you. Indeed, Second Amendment solutions may result.

So it’s rare to see someone such as Tim Hernandez, a Colorado teacher with the American Federation of Teachers, who admitted in a speech in 2021 that he sought a “forceful cultural revolution” in the classroom. Not only did Hernandez admit he was a Marxist, but he also added that there were many in his union. Tellingly, the union refused to comment.

It’s better to just attack capitalism, and remain mum about the alternative you offer. That’s what the critical race theory trainer Robin DiAngelo did when she told the New York Times in 2020, “Capitalism is so bound up with racism. I avoid critiquing capitalism — I don’t need to give people reasons to dismiss me. But capitalism is dependent on inequality, on an underclass. If the model is profit over everything else, you’re not going to look at your policies to see what is most racially equitable.”

Notice what she said about her fear of being dismissed.

Ibram X. Kendi, another anti-racism trainer, does the same thing when he writes , “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism.”

This is, indeed, the approach many adherents of critical race theory take. It’s what one of its main architects, the University of Hawaii’s Mari Matsuda, was doing when she wrote wistfully in 1987, “Fundamental change is required to attain a just society, and by a utopian conception of a world more communal and less hierarchical than the one we know now.”

But just what exactly is this communal utopia? Does it have a name?

Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the author of BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution .