Recently, I wrote about people struggling to survive in an economic system that often places profit above humanity. The poor and working class help sustain that system, yet, are treated as expendable by banks and financial institutions when they fall into financial difficulty.
Economic hardship can also create fertile ground for political movements that offer simple explanations for complex problems. Leaders may blame an ethnic minority, immigrants, bankers or another perceived enemy instead of confronting the economic conditions, policy failures and structural inequalities contributing to people’s suffering.
Today, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has placed economic inequality at the centre of his agenda. He proposes to tax the wealthy more heavily, make essential goods more affordable, expand access to education, freeze rents for rent-stabilised apartments and strengthen protections for tenants.
Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist, yet some political opponents label him a communist.
But what is he attempting to achieve? His agenda seeks to make housing, childcare, transportation and essential goods more affordable for ordinary citizens. Whether these proposals will succeed remains to be seen. They must be judged by their feasibility, funding and results, rather than dismissed simply because of ideological labels.
We have heard grand promises from both Democrats and Republicans. Too often, ordinary people continue to struggle with empty wallets, rising living costs and insecure housing. Scepticism is therefore understandable. But so is the demand for a fairer system.
Mamdani has also faced criticism touching on his race and Muslim faith. His experience raises a broader question: why are those who challenge established economic interests sometimes portrayed as threats rather than participants in a legitimate debate about social justice?
Karl Marx famously described religion as the “opium of the people,” arguing that it could help people endure suffering without confronting its causes. Yet, religion has also inspired movements that challenge injustice and defend the poor.
Martin Luther King Jr, for example, increasingly linked the struggle against racism with economic inequality and militarism. His Poor People’s Campaign sought greater economic security for disadvantaged Americans. Although the full circumstances and motives surrounding his assassination remain subjects of historical discussion, his economic activism demonstrated that the struggle for civil rights could not be separated from the struggle for economic justice.
A similar tension emerged in Latin America through liberation theology, which developed during the 1960s. Theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez argued that Christian faith must confront poverty and oppression in the present world, rather than focusing exclusively on salvation in the afterlife.
Óscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who denounced repression and violence, was assassinated while celebrating Mass in 1980. Leonardo Boff explored the relationship between Christianity, social injustice and political power. Some liberation theologians challenged economic arrangements that benefited wealthy landowners, powerful business interests and foreign corporations. Their ideas also attracted scrutiny from political and religious authorities. In 1986, the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence published a report titled Liberation Theology: Religion, Reform, and Revolution, reflecting American intelligence concerns about the movement’s relationship with communism.
This history illustrates how demands for social change can become entangled in ideological struggles. However, advocating economic reform or defending the poor does not automatically make someone a communist.
On October 18, 2025, Pope Leo XIV addressed Italy’s National Anti-Usury Council, condemning exploitative lending and its consequences for vulnerable families. He warned that financial arrangements presented as assistance can become suffocating burdens, pushing people deeper into debt and despair.
In his apostolic exhortation Dilexi te, the Pope also challenges indifference to poverty and the dehumanisation of people by the pursuit of profit. His concern is not merely about financial transactions; it is about the dignity of people whose suffering can become invisible in the pursuit of wealth.
Pope Leo’s criticism of concentrated wealth, exploitation and unjust financial practices overlaps with social-democratic concerns. Poverty cannot always be explained as a failure of individual effort, nor can charity alone correct every injustice. The fairness of the economic system itself must be examined.
The question is not whether every proposal made by Mamdani or any other political leader is correct. It is whether we can debate economic justice honestly without resorting to demonisation. When people challenge systems that leave families hungry, indebted and insecure, we should examine their arguments rather than automatically condemn their motives.
A society reveals its values not simply through the wealth it creates, but through how it treats those with the least power.
Ultimately, the test of an economic system is not how much wealth it accumulates at the top, but whether it allows ordinary people to live with dignity.
