Republicans are seeing red. Not the red of a red-and-blue election map, but the red of socialism and communism.
Nearly four decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but less than a year after New York City elected a member of the Democratic Socialists of America as its mayor, the nation’s conservative party has become quite liberal about calling its opponents socialists — or worse.
Many of the Republican House incumbents in Virginia (and probably elsewhere) have made a point of calling their opponents either socialists or sometimes outright communists.
Rep. John McGuire, R-Goochland County: “Whether it calls itself communism or socialism, we must firmly reject this failed ideology and the radical policies being pushed by the Democrat Party.”
Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt County: “Socialism does NOT belong in America. The Democrat Party is moving further and further left with the rise of the DSA and their radical agenda. “
Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach: “Today’s Democrat party is the party of Socialism. The ‘moderate democrat’ is a thing of the past & ‘moderate democrats’ are losing elections across the country in their primaries.”
Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin got into the action during a recent campaign appearance in Roanoke on behalf of Cline: “We’re having to deal with the march of socialism and communism,” he said. “I feel I’m in a nightmare dream. We’ve got to stop it before it takes root.”
And then there was this subject line on a mass email sent out by the Albemarle County Republican Committee about the three proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot: “vote NO on all these communist plant lies for idiots.”
I have grown up hearing Republicans call Democrats “liberals,” “radical liberals,” “leftist” and “radical far-leftists,” but I don’t think I’ve heard socialism and communism mentioned so much since I was back in professor Henry Myers’ class on Marxist-Leninist Theory at James Madison University back in, well, the dark ages.
The class was dreadful, through no fault of the professor, but it’s hard to make “Das Kapital” entertaining. He did make it instructive, though.
Just as a mechanic insists on using the right tool for the job, as a writer I’m sensitive to the misuse of words. In that spirit, let me first deal with the Albemarle Republicans who called the proposed constitutional amendments “communist.” These amendments — on abortion/reproductive health, same-sex marriage and restoration of rights — might be wrong-headed (that’s up to you to decide), but they are not “communist.”
True communists would not be in favor of Amendment 3 to restore civil rights to convicted felons because communists didn’t exactly believe much in rights, period, although they have been firm believers in gulags. As for the others, only one communist country — Cuba — ever recognized same-sex marriage, which is the purpose of Amendment 2. Many communist countries have allowed abortion (which is much of the focus of Amendment 1) although that seems to have nothing to do with communist doctrine and more the social views of the country in question. Romania had more liberal abortion laws until Nicolae Ceausescu came to power in 1966, when he cracked down on the practice. Think of the amendments what you will, but Karl Marx had nothing to say on these matters.
Now, let’s move on to define the terms. I can’t find the textbook I had in professor Myers’ class, so I will have to rely on Encyclopedia Britannica. Marx used the terms communism and socialism interchangeably, although in modern practice we understand them as two different things. Marx also wrote three volumes to explain his views, and those volumes clock in somewhere between 1,300 and 2,500 pages, depending on how the type is set. Marx was even more long-winded than me!
We do share certain other similarities. A police report on Marx once described him as slovenly, disheveled and not suited for a traditional workday schedule: “He is often idle for days on end, but when he has work to do, he will work day and night with tireless endurance. For him there is no such thing as a fixed time for sleeping and waking. He will often stay up the whole night and then lie down on the sofa, fully dressed, around midday and then sleep till evening, untroubled by the fact that the whole world comes and goes through his room.” That is, thankfully, where our similarities end.
More seriously, under Marx’s view of communism (and its later implementation under the Soviets), there was no private property. The government owned everything. In theory, that means “the people” owned everything, but we know how that really worked out. Communism, wherever it has taken root, has inevitably been authoritarian. We see lots of people trying to get out of Cuba and not many trying to get in.
Socialism allows room for private ownership (and elections!) but does involve more government involvement in the economy than a purely free market approach. That’s a pretty broad definition, which allows a lot of room for politicians (particularly those of opposing views) to describe it however they wish.
If Democrats who don’t see themselves as socialists now find themselves being accused of being socialists, then the party has brought that on itself with the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America, a subset of more conventional Democrats. We don’t exactly see mainstream Democrats rushing to denounce New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani or evict him from the party. I don’t mean to get too far into the philosophical weeds here, although this is one consequence of America’s two party system. In a European system — a parliamentary system — we’d have four or five main parties. In 2020, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, famously told New York magazine that the Democratic “big tent” was too big: “Oh God. In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.” Under that scenario, the Democratic Socialists would be their own party, not a faction, but that’s not the way our system is set up. For what it’s worth, Ocasio-Cortez recently rejoined the Democratic Socialists of America. On Friday, she’ll be in Dumfries to campaign for Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Prince William County.
The Democratic Socialists may not represent all variations of socialism — stick with us for that — but let’s at least explore what the DSA believes. Conveniently, there’s no dispute over that because the Democratic Socialists of America this summer released a 20-page document to lay out their platform.
Among some highlights:
“Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. Enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to spend on public goods and infrastructure.” (The document does not identify that those “largest corporations and essential industries” are.)
“Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” (This would completely undo what our founders intended, when they intentionally created a system of three separate branches of government because they distrusted each one of them.)
“Defund the Department of War. End all foreign wars and close overseas military bases.” (What would happen, then, if we had to endure another round of terrorist attacks? Or if North Korea decided that was a fine time to overrun South Korea? Or for Russia to take over the Baltic states? This document does not say.)
How many Democrats will want to be identified with some of these proposals? We’ll see. The basic worldview of the platform is to use those “aggressive wealth taxes” to fund lots of free programs — most notably free college education and free healthcare. Yes, this is your classic redistribution of wealth. Great Britain found out in the ’60s and ’70s what happens if you tax wealth too much: Those with wealth move out of the country. Lots of British rock stars became “tax exiles” in the south of France or the United States. We’re in a more mobile society now than we were then. What would the tax rate need to be before our tech billionaires simply decamped to some other country and took their companies with them? There are a lot of solid reasons why Silicon Valley is around the San Francisco-San Jose area, but there aren’t many reasons why it couldn’t be rebuilt over time in some other country.
Not all the proposals the DSA endorses are unique to socialists, however. That proposal for free college, for instance. No state offers free four-year colleges but 35 states have some form of free community college. Many of those are bright red states in the sense of Republican red and not socialist. Among them: South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming. Also one called Virginia, which isn’t exactly a red state anymore, although parts of it sure are. Many of the community colleges in Virginia that have moved toward free tuition programs are in rural, conservative parts of the state, often relying on local governments and private businesses to fund scholarships. Are they practicing socialism? Maybe, if you want to be academic about it, although local officials there would say they’re promoting economic development through workforce training. So maybe that’s capitalism instead? Can those programs be mild forms of socialism to promote capitalism? That gets intellectually complicated, although it may be true in practical terms.
If someone proposes universal health care — whether under that name or Medicare for all, take your pick — yes, that’s a form of socialism. Philosophically, it fits under the socialist philosophy that we’re all in this together and need a system that takes care of everybody.
After all, some government programs that we’re long accustomed to qualify as socialism, although many of the beneficiaries of those programs would be horrified if we called those programs that. Social Security, for instance, is a form of socialism: It’s not a bank account, it’s one generation paying for another. Medicare is another form of socialism for the same reason. Let’s call things by their right name. “Medicare for all” — aka, universal health care — is definitely a form of socialism. If you think that’s a fine thing (as many Democratic candidates do, including Beth Macy, the party’s congressional candidate in the 6th District), then maybe some forms of socialism aren’t so bad, after all. It’s how most of the industrial world functions. The reality is, we already have a limited form of socialism that’s been in place since most of us were born. (Social Security was created in 1935, Medicare in 1965.) We see Republicans concerned about the rising costs of those programs but not many willing to call for doing away with them.
Investopedia, which I assume has a pro-capitalist slant given its name, distinguishes between pure socialism and “social democracy,” which it describes as “a strain of socialism that allows capitalism to exist, but it attempts to rein in its excesses through regulation. It also aims to address inequality through government-run social programs.” By that measure, Investopedia says, “many social welfare programs in the United States and elsewhere might also be seen as social democratic initiatives. Countries that combine both socialism and capitalism in this way are sometimes referred to as having mixed economies.” The Nordic countries and some other European countries certainly qualify as mixed economies, but in many ways, ours does, too. When I searched for what Virginia’s Republican members of Congress had to say about socialism, I came across this post from Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland County, in 2019: “Tonight, I spoke on the House floor against socialism and in favor of the mixed capitalist system we have in the United States.”
The most interesting word there may be “mixed.”
Curiously, one of the most enthusiastic practitioners of socialism right now is the Republican president of the United States — Donald Trump.
One of the basic tenets of communism is that government must control all the means of production; socialists believe that government should control of some of the means of production. Under Trump, the federal government has taken a financial stake in at least 34 companies, according to the libertarian Cato Institute. Many of these are companies that mine for minerals critical to American technology and defense; others are technology companies.
The most prominent has been a 10% government stake in the Intel Corp., which makes microchips. Trump has touted this as good for taxpayers. “In just eight months, the position has surged in value to more than $50 billion — a direct windfall for American taxpayers,” a White House fact sheet says. The administration says this deal is “giving taxpayers a direct equity stake in the iconic American company.” That’s true; that’s also a form of socialism — a mild form compared to, say, nationalizing companies the way the Democratic Socialists of America want to do, but it’s certainly not a pure free market approach, either. Marx might look at that approvingly and say “baby steps, comrade, baby steps.”
The Cato Institute published this critique: “What is remarkable is that federal corporate ownership is becoming routine under a Republican administration, while a Republican-controlled Congress is not just letting it happen but may even enshrine the practice in statute. Republicans warning that communists are taking over the Democratic Party might first ask why their own administration is so eager to have the government acquire pieces of private companies.”
One standard critique of socialism is that the more government is involved in the economy, the less innovation there will be — governments tend toward bureaucracy, not entrepreneurialism. The government owning part of Intel might be good now, but what happens if somebody invents a better microchip? Does government now have a vested interest in protecting its investment? If so, the government has suddenly found itself on the wrong side of innovation.
We have now wandered a long way from the original question — or maybe not far at all. When Republicans say that Democrats are moving toward socialism, they’re not necessarily wrong if you’re talking about universal health care. Democrats may not like that word, but it’s academically the correct one. Democratic support for other social issues, though, isn’t socialism — because classical socialism (and communism) is an economic theory. There’s no particular economic theory involved in most social issues, just moral ones. Trump, however, has embarked on what he sees as a capitalist program for the federal government to invest in private companies but which is really a socialist program dressed up in the name of national security.
If I were back in professor Myers’ class on Marxist-Leninist theory, I might write a paper on all this. Instead, I’ve written this column.
Marx wrote Das Kapital, which is dreadful. I write West of the Capital, which I hope is fresh and exciting. That’s our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. This week, I’ll be updating the early voting numbers. Fortunately, our elections are more unpredictable than those in communist countries.
