What is socialism? A perplexing question for some, apparently.
“I don’t know what the term means anymore,” Yale Law School graduate and Vice President JD Vance told a reporter recently. “I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports.”
As critics have pointed out, the vice president is probably forced to concoct a convenient, although nonsensical, definition of socialism because his own economic ideas lean strongly in that direction. But it’s more than that.
By conflating “globalism” with “socialism” — another word, like “neoconservative,” “democracy,” “neoliberalism,” etc., that’s been gutted of any useful meaning — the vice president can treat free trade as a left-wing idea.
Vance, of course, knows the definition of socialism. Only a few weeks ago, his defenders worked themselves into a pedantic frenzy pushing back against the notion that his welfare plan for poor moms was socialistic.
Socialism is when the state controls the means of production. If there is an “American political context” to socialism, it’s the belief that the government is the best vehicle for distributing and controlling economic activity.
For leftists, that might be the Green New Deal or Medicare for All, plans that nationalize significant chunks of the economy, abolish or control private companies, and hand the state control over your choices. For the right-wing populists, it’s “industrial policy,” the belief that redirecting economic activity and propping up dying manufacturing sectors will help the “working class” or other deserving people and reverse the decline of our culture.
Vice President JD Vance speaks during a rally at Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, N.C., Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (Kent Nishimura/Pool Photo via AP)
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Vice President JD Vance speaks during a rally at Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, N.C., Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (Kent Nishimura/Pool Photo via AP)
Governments have been nationalizing industries since governments have existed. In virtually every instance, the state takes power under the auspices of a national emergency. And Trump II has taken more stakes in more companies than perhaps any administration ever.
Now, to be fair, technically most of these policies lean more fascist than socialist. In truth, there’s little difference between the progressive and populist economic outlooks, save that the latter drapes a flag over its statism.
Whatever socialism means to you, it is popular with young people. In a new CNBC Generation Lab poll nearly half of younger Americans view democratic socialism positively. Nearly 80% of 18- to 34-year-olds said they have a negative view of the American economy — still the wealthiest economy the average person has ever known.
“My warning to my fellow Republicans,” Vance said not long ago, “would be if we don’t get this right, don’t blame young people for being sympathetic to socialism. We’ve got to blame ourselves.”
No, I don’t blame myself. I blame grievance-peddling demagogues of populist movements who keep telling young people they’re living on the precipice of destitution in the waning days of a failed state simply because life isn’t always ideal.
Young people today, like young people in every era, have legitimate reasons to be concerned about their future. Rather than leading them away from the most destructive economic belief system that’s ever existed and convincing them they have agency and opportunities, the vice president and his allies spend their time blaming greedy Wall Street “barons” and other boogeymen.
“You don’t stop socialism by throwing slogans at people about the free market,” Vance, who might rely on more strawmen than Barack Obama, says. “As much as I love the free market, you stop socialism by making people’s lives better. And that’s what we’re trying to do every single day.”
First off, there’s no evidence that Vance loves free markets (though, who knows, maybe his definition of capitalism “no trans athletes in girls’ sports.”) There is, on the other hand, tons of evidence he intends to roll back 40 years of free-market prosperity and bring his party back to the era of big government Republicanism.
Mere slogans, incidentally, are still preferable to socialist intrusions into our economy. But it’s funny to hear populists grousing about demagoguery. Anyway, fans of free enterprise have a few centuries’ worth of hard evidence that their ideas create the most prosperity for the largest group of people. Because of that, it’s likely that most Republican voters still have a distaste for socialist policy, not only as a catch-all phrase for all things leftism, but as a specific economic tendency. These bitter clingers function under the notion that they live in something resembling a meritocracy where economic freedom matters.
Vance says that “socialism is about prioritizing workers,” mocking critics who call themselves socialists but do not do enough for the proletariat. This strongly suggests he has no real problem with redistributive economics — he just doesn’t think Democrats are doing it right.
It is worth remembering that Trump’s first term consisted largely of movement conservative-style economic deregulation and tax cutting — and the outcome was a popular and healthy economy. No one can say that about his second term, which has been bogged down with technocratic top-down economics.
Populists often argue that young people have turned towards socialism because of the failures of capitalists, who were corrupt and never lived up to their high-minded free-market rhetoric, and the growth of government and debt. Well, Willi Schlamm once famously said, “The problem with capitalism is capitalists. The problem with socialism is socialism.”
The notion that young people have turned to illiberal collectivist ideas because “we” have let them down doesn’t make much sense. If your problem with free enterprise is that its proponents have disappointed society, you would demand better proponents and more principled leaders.
No, young people are probably open to socialism for the same reasons young people have always been open to socialism. There is all the agitprop, of course. But collectivism also provides easy, idealistic answers to complex questions.
Plus, you get free stuff.
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And politicians are susceptible to socialist policies because they have savior complexes, love power, and believe the Proles make terrible decisions when left to their own devices.
Free-market ideas are often abstract and complex to explain. They don’t work well in slogans. Mostly, though, they do not rely on class warfare, resentment, victimhood, or the promise of goodies, all of which are the lifeblood of economic populism.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
