Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum argues in an Atlantic column that Donald Trump is “making socialism great again.” From 1983 to 2007, Frum says, America knew that capitalism was the way to go. We were an era of moderation with unemployment never above 8 percent, a growing economy, only a couple of recessions (I presume he cherry-picks his time frame to avoid including the recession of the early Reagan era), and a memory of how bad the socialist, centralized planning of the USSR, China and their satellites had been. Now, not only is the Felon actively intervening to manipulate trade with all his tariffs and deals but his blatant corruption makes it look like capitalism itself is corrupt.
The result? We have dudes like Zohran Mamdani proposing affordable housing, government-run grocery stores and free transit, all of which clearly leads to the total nationalization of American industry. Okay, technically Frum doesn’t say that but he strongly implies Mamdani wouldn’t advocate for one set of things if he wasn’t wanting to end capitalism. And frustration with capitalism made Bernie Sanders a star, which weakened Clinton enough in 2016 to put the Felon in the White House! (There were lots of other factors in play but the FBI’s bogus investigation and the press hyping Clinton’s email non-scandal don’t prove socialism is bad).
For starters, Frum’s history is a mess. The economy may have grown but along with that we had decreasing economic mobility — the poor stayed poor, the working class stayed working class, etc. And the poor wound up worse off in Reagan’s first term — I was poor, so I should know. That included increases in Social Security taxes to shore up the system; little did we know that a couple of decades later, Republicans would be wanting to kill the program.
Reagan slashed taxes on the upper earners, claiming this would lead to massive increases in tax revenue as the economy boomed. It didn’t (his economic adviser David Stockman later admitted “supply side economics” had always been bullshit). We wound up with record red ink at the end of Reagan’s eight years and the rich began pulling away from the rest of us in money and power (here’s some discussion as to why).
As for moderation, give me a break. Reagan’s eight years saw his administration refuse to put money into AIDS treatment while lying that there was no need. The Religious Right formed out of outrage that segregated schools such as Liberty College and Bob Jones University could no longer qualify as non-profit organizations (which had made donations to them tax-deductible). They were never moderate and spent every year between 1980 and now pushing back against women’s right and civil rights (as did Reagan).
In those seven good years of the W administration the government sent hundreds of people to Guantanamo Bay as terrorists without due process or habeas corpus, claiming they were the worst of the worst. Almost all of them were innocent. The W government authorized torture and, again, some of the victims were innocent. There is nothing moderate about torture.
Fingering FOTUS as the reason people are losing faith in capitalism is also a distortion. What about the massive savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s? The mortgage fraud cases of 2008 (and the fact only one banker went to jail) and the countless other cases that fed the Great Recession? The way AI keeps steamrolling ahead despite being so wrong (here’s a recent example of an AI encouraging self-mutilation to serve Moloch. And Grok is sometimes a literal Nazi) because the techbros can shape our economy the way they choose?
It’s also worth remembering that Frum’s enthusiasm for capitalism isn’t purely a belief that it uses goods and resources most effectively. He also believes it’s important because risk and fear keep us submissive: “Everyone is at constant risk of the loss of his job, or of the destruction of his business by a competitor, or of the crash of his investment portfolio. Risk makes people circumspect. It disciplines them and teaches them self-control. Without a safety net, people won’t try to vault across the big top. Social security, student loans, and other government programs make it far less catastrophic than it used to be for middle-class people to dissolve their families. Without welfare and food stamps, poor people would cling harder to working-class respectability than they do.”
As noted at the link, you can be as circumspect as you like and your boss may still cut your pay, axe your jobs, your company may replace you with AI that does a worse job or outsource your job to another country … but the point is not that submitting to the yoke will keep you afloat, it’s that you submit to the yoke. Frum is taking the worst criticisms of capitalism — it’ll reduce people to soulless wage slaves and drones! — and treating them as a good thing. And as I said a few years ago, this kind of thinking never applies to the rich — billionaires aren’t at constant risk because they have so much of a cushion. I suppose Frum could use people like Elon Musk as proof of what happens when you have a safety net, but I doubt he will.
If Mamdani proposes turning all the grocery chains in NYC into government outlets, that would be bad. But he’s talking about setting up stores in food deserts where capitalism hasn’t provided them. That seems like a great idea. Apparently Frum can’t think of anything wrong with it other than a debatable slippery slope leading us to five-year-plans and liquidating the kulaks.
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