Is there some hidden mandate that every story about American politics in mass media has to be about how “both sides do it” without any regard for scope or scale?
The latest example is via Axios: Why both left and right have rejected free markets.
American political leaders on the left and right are rebelling against the market-first consensus that dominated Washington for four decades.
Why it matters: The result is one of the biggest shifts in U.S. economic policy since the Reagan revolution, overturning decades of orthodoxy on trade, manufacturing, housing, health care and corporate power.
Sounds dramatic! So who is doing what?
It’s evident in everything from the Trump administration taking government stakes in dozens of private companies to socialist candidates winning Democratic primaries promising a more active government role in the economy.
And here is where I want to not just tap the brakes on the underlying thesis of this piece, but full on slam them.
To recap: the comparison is between the sitting presidential administration and what is currently a minor faction in the Democratic Party.
In terms of a basic logical fallacy, this is false equivalence. Or, if you prefer it in Sesame Street terms, one of these things is not like the other.
It is bad enough that the headline speaks in broad “left” and “right” categories, which was already enough to set my teeth on edge because those two boxes are too big and ambiguously defined to be of any use to begin with. But to then use “the Trump administration,” who are engaging in a series of anti-market policies as the right, versus “socialist candidates winning Democratic primaries” who are “promising” some stuff as the left, is just beyond absurd.
I know Axios needs to generate the clicks, but good grief!
Yes, the neoliberal consensus that has guided US politics and policy for decades is under criticism and stress. I am less than convinced it has fully ruptured, but that is a longer discussion about an unfolding situation. I can, however, state that we are hardly on the precipice of “reject[ing]” free markets.
Part of why I find the freak-out about the DSA and generic discussions of “socialism” v. “free markets”/”capitalism” is that this is an utterly false dichotomy. At least in terms of the actual content of these conversations, it is possible that both things can co-exist. Or, more to the point, no system is purely one or the other.
I mean, sure, we could have, in theory, a system in which everything is owned privately and the market dictates access to all goods and services. Maybe you go basic night-watchman state (a minimal kind of protection of citizens from outside aggression and internal crime), but leave everything else to the free market.
But as soon as you start doing things like public roads or public schools or the postal service (or any number of other things) you have introduced some elements of centralized ownership/societal control of some common assets for the purpose of equality of access regardless of the ability to pay.
Sure, you could then say, “Public roads are cool, let’s socialize everything!” and then the state is taking ownership of natural resources, the means of production, land, and the rest.
In short, it’s a spectrum, not a dichotomy. And, further, because language is a battleground, not everyone who uses the word “socialist” means the same thing when they do so. Do they mean places like a lot of European countries that have more generous welfare states than the US, or do they mean places like Cuba and North Korea?
The former means a system of higher taxes and more social spending, but still private ownership of capital in the main, while the latter means severe government control, if not ownership, of capital.
Let’s turn back to Axios to see what both sides are doing!
On the right: “American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman,” Vice President Vance told right-wing political commentator Michael Knowles last month.
So yes, this would be a rejection of neoliberalism’s attachment to free trade. It represents more of a mercantilist, industrial-policy approach. This has manifested the most in the administration’s tariff policies, especially when it claims to be trying to drive domestic investment. Of course, the utterly haphazard way the tariffs and exemptions to tariffs have been applied makes trying to find policy coherence a bit of a challenge. And yes, rejecting free trade is a rejection of neoliberalism, but it is also not an utter break with capitalism as a whole.
Indeed, the piece notes:
The shift is far from universal. Trump paired tariffs and industrial policy with traditional Republican priorities — including corporate tax cuts, deregulation and a generally business-friendly agenda.
There is a lot of pro-business/pro-capital activity going on in this administration.
However, Trump’s moves to have the government acquire shares in companies are perhaps the most socialist thing any president has done, well, ever. It is also perhaps more mob-boss/Russia-esque oligarchy than anything else.
So, yes, some important deviations from pure free markets, and some serious ones at that.
How about the pesky left?
Back to Axios:
Democratic socialists like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani argue that government, not markets, should guarantee affordable housing, health care and other basic necessities.
First, we are again comparing unlike items. The mayor of New York, in case anyone was wondering, does not have the same amount of power as the President of the United States. But beyond that, all this strikes me as fairly standard left-liberal policies that government should be the guarantor of certain goods and not the market. The least controversial one on that list is health care. It is not some new, radical notion that the government should make sure that persons have access to health care (perhaps readers will have heard of obscure policies like Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA?). And let’s face facts: regardless of how you get your health care, it is not in the context of an unfettered free market.
Sure, there are a lot of devils in the various details of the government getting involved in health care, housing, or other policy arenas, but that list is not the same in scope or significance as what Trump has been doing. I will even agree that we are having a national debate about things like free trade and the neoliberal project. But things like this Axios piece are underplaying what the Trump administration is doing while trying to make a factional movement in the opposition party into an equal and opposite force. This is absurd.
To date, here* are the new DSA-backed candidates to date for the House (who will win in November due to the partisan makeup of their districts–and note, these are heavily Democratic districts). So, these folks plus AOC and a handful of current fellow-travelers plus Mamdani are supposed to be equivalent to MAGA? This is analytically ridiculous.
These are urban and heavily Democratic districts. I have a hard time seeing this as the takeover of the Democratic Party by the DSA. I would note, too, that in the seats where an incumbent was ousted, there was a clear age difference. In NY13, Chavalier is 31, while Espalliat is 73, and in CO1, Kiros is 29, and DeGette is 68. It seems to me that it is plausible these results are as much anti-incumbent youth-movements as they are a DSA surge.
*I used Claude to generate the table. I confirmed the list against the DSA’s own website.
