Why have so many pundits analyzing socialism’s increasing popularity missed the mark?
In the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Scott Atlas opines that baby boomers’ poor parenting is the root cause. Nate Silver drills into data at a granular level and discovers over-educated, under-employed white females at socialism’s core. Many fault public education for failing to teach about Marxism’s failures and the horrors of Soviet and Chinese communism. Others blame left-wing academics and curricula for turning universities into socialist training camps.
But while all these factors may contribute to socialism’s rise, they don’t explain its popularity.
A toxic brew of failed policies under three presidents — Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — created the political conditions for socialism to thrive. The Great Recession of 2009, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, and the federal government’s responses to each have made millennials and Generation Z more receptive to socialism than any generation since the Great Depression.
Clinton’s failed trade policies caused the Great Recession. By giving most-favored-nation trading status to China and negotiating its admission to the World Trade Organization, he created an unequal trade relationship that hollowed out America’s manufacturing base and transferred millions of jobs to China. In the process, Clinton empowered China to become a military and geopolitical rival to the United States.
The failure was bipartisan. Under President George W. Bush, influential officials such as Robert Zoellick aggressively continued to advocate trade with China even when the damage was apparent. Between December 1999 and December 2009, the American economy generated zero net new jobs.
Many of the first jobs to go were in light industry, such as the manufacturing of fasteners, textiles, furniture, toys, and other sectors employing workers likely to hold subprime mortgages. It’s no accident that the subprime mortgage crisis, which triggered the Great Recession, escalated from southern California locales close to ports of entry for Chinese goods all the way to Wall Street.
The millennials paid the price. Unemployment soared to 10.2%, but for new college graduates, the rate for those unemployed or underemployed topped 15%. Instead of leaving their parents as empty-nesters, record numbers stayed home, forestalling economic independence, marriage, and childbearing.
They were the lucky ones. Home foreclosures soared to more than 6 million households. In the hardest hit states, up to 13% of all children were evicted from their homes. The mental health cost was astronomical. Suicides in the 20-49 age group, most affected by foreclosures, increase by 39%.
The Federal Reserve responded by bailing out Wall Street instead of Main Street, spawning the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. The Obama administration spent $2 trillion on anti-recession measures, including a quarter of a trillion in direct payments to individuals. Obama also advocated free community college tuition, expanded student loan forgiveness, and expanded healthcare.
Young people can be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that government ought to be the provider of first resort for basic human needs such as housing, healthcare, and education. That was the lesson they learned from Obama’s response to the Great Recession. Modern Monetary Theory, an idea formed in the 1990s by a Wall Street trader and hedge fund investor, created the basis for a growing belief that the U.S. could create and spend money limitlessly without consequence. This made socialism seem economically plausible.
In 2010, my late friend Tony Blankley was invited to address Republican mega-donors on the most important issues facing the country. When Tony asked my advice, I said capitalism’s credibility was in trouble and urged the mega-donors to focus their efforts on producing in America, on economic education, and on defending capitalism.
Instead, they fixated on fighting the Affordable Care Act. The next six years of sluggish recovery and untrammeled trade with China cemented the social and political damage. Polarization increased until the 2016 revolt of the “deplorables” overthrew both arch-globalist Hillary Clinton and traditional Republican presidential contenders.
The robust economic recovery during Trump’s first term postponed capitalism’s day of reckoning. Then came the pandemic.
Under the spell of Dr. Anthony Fauci, first Trump and then Biden continued ill-advised lockdowns of society and shored up Americans’ finances with debt-financed government largesse. Lockdowns idled 50 million Americans. But the economic impact to individuals, families, and state and local governments was minimized by a $5 trillion blowout in federal spending, including trillions in direct payments to Americans.
After having student loan payments suspended, living rent-free without fear of eviction, getting super-sized unemployment benefits, and refundable child tax credits and free government checks for all, many Americans have experienced a version of socialism. Some like it. Why not vote for the Democratic Socialists of America to make it permanent?
If three horsemen of capitalism’s apocalypse were Clinton, Obama, and Biden, then Fauci is the fourth. His totalitarian health policy edicts, copied directly from communist China, epitomized state control of all of society.
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What Karl Marx got right is that fundamental economic conditions are the principal driving force in politics. Marx used terms such as society’s base (the means of production or economy) and its superstructure (the legal and political order), but his point applies today.
Politics may be downstream of culture, but upstream, the economy is the prime source of both. No amount of educational reform or parental influence will change that dynamic. Until America realigns its trade and economic policies to produce growth with widespread benefits for the whole society, socialism’s appeal will grow.
John B. Roberts II served in the Reagan White House and was an international political strategist and executive producer of the McLaughlin Group. He studied Marxism at Oxford University and was deeply involved in democratization projects in the former Soviet Union.