Republicans Built This Form of Capitalism. Why Aren't They Being Forced to Defend It?

With left-leaning candidates — many though not all of them calling themselves socialists — winning some high-profile Democratic primaries, socialism as a political force has become a topic of fevered discussion in the news media. Unfortunately (and predictably), that discussion has been both shallow and misdirected.

The new ascendance of socialist candidates is being treated as a phenomenon that raises questions only for Democrats, and has nothing to do with Republicans. In fact, the new socialist energy has everything to do with the party that not only runs Washington, but is responsible for shaping the American economy as it exists today — the thing socialists are reacting against.

In other words: The growing strength of a challenge to American capitalism as it is currently constructed should be understood as a failure of those who constructed it that way and continue to defend it. And most of those people are Republicans.

Right now, prominent Democratic officeholders who are interviewed by elite media will almost inevitably be asked whether their party is going to be doomed by this insurrection of radicals, and what they plan to do about it. “Are you confident that democratic socialists can win in general elections in purple states?” Kristen Welker asks Bernie Sanders on Meet the Press, with the obvious implication that it would be absurd to think so. “How do you deal with the fact” that socialists are doing well in Democratic primaries, Jonathan Karl demands of Donna Brazile on This Week. “Can Democrats still win if socialists take over their party?” asks The Hill. Socialism is framed as a political problem for Democrats, and nothing more.

What I have yet to see is a bigshot journalist ask a Republican whether the growing strength and popularity of socialism is evidence that the GOP has failed and must change what it offers the public. That is the question Democrats were asked when the Tea Party arose, and when Donald Trump’s use of hatred and resentment toward immigrants was unexpectedly successful: What did Democrats do to cause this? And aren’t they now obligated to change in response?

I’m not arguing that the version of capitalism that exists in America was entirely built by Republicans; many Democrats along the way played a part. But mostly? Absolutely. And the features of that system that are causing so much distress and making the arguments of Democratic socialists so appealing are precisely the ones Republicans fought the hardest to create, and still defend with all their energy.

This isn’t about what socialism actually means, or whether the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for bullying its way into ownership stakes in private companies is socialistic. At the broad level, Republican economics is what people are rebelling against.

So imagine if prominent Republicans were repeatedly asked some version of this question:

Capitalism as it exists today in America was not only built largely by your party, its features are precisely to your liking. We have some of the lowest taxes in the developed world, especially on the wealthy. The war on collective bargaining that ramped up starting with Ronald Reagan has been a smashing success; today less than 6% of private sector workers are represented by unions. Not coincidentally, the proportion of GDP going to workers is lower than at any point since the government began measuring it in 1947. Thanks to the Supreme Court you captured, corporations and the wealthy have more influence over politics, and therefore over economic policy, than ever in modern times. We’re still the only developed country without a national, universal health care system. Since Trump took office, your party successfully gutted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and shut down enforcement of white collar crime. Your major accomplishment of the last two years was a bill that gave tax cuts to the wealthy while gutting social programs.

Yes, there are some things you still haven’t accomplished — you’d prefer if Medicaid and Medicare ceased to exist, and you aren’t too happy about Social Security either. But in most ways that matter, this version of capitalism is exactly the one you wanted. And people hate it. So if millions are now attracted to socialism and barely half of Americans say they have a positive view of capitalism, isn’t that your fault?

So how are you going to change in response? What alterations will the GOP make to its economic program? What precisely will you offer to those who are struggling and feel that this system isn’t working for them?

I’d be interested to see how Republican leaders would respond to those questions, but I have yet to see any of them asked.

Nevertheless, Republicans certainly feel threatened by the prevailing discontent; none other than the comically corrupt Ken Paxton recently put up an ad saying that “the American Dream is slipping away as the cost of everything from housing to health care rises.” He blames it on “Washington” without mentioning who runs the federal government, and suggests some tax credits in response, which is unlikely to get much purchase.

As Alex Thomas points out at The New Republic, a few Republicans have begun gently acknowledging that maybe people have legitimate grievances about how the American economic system works. Vice President JD Vance told Joe Rogan in July, “Does the socialism thing scare me? Yes. Is it the wrong solution? Yes. But one thing I try to persuade my fellow Republicans of is socialism is the alternative if we don’t have a pathway to give people a sense that the system is not rigged and that the American dream is attainable.”

Trouble is, Vance has no substantive answer to that challenge. Perhaps you can give him partial credit for admitting that socialism becomes more attractive to people when capitalism creates misery in their lives, but we all know that JD Vance is never actually going to do anything about it. What exactly is the kinder, gentler version of capitalism he’d support? Universal health coverage, like they have in every other developed capitalist economy? Surely you jest. Mandated paid family leave or free child care? Not on your life. A genuine shift toward more power for workers? Vance talks about it in vague terms, but there is no evidence that he has lifted a finger on the issue as vice president.

He tells Rogan he’s “pro-labor” and says “What really worries me about AI is the fact that private sector unions have largely disappeared from the United States of America.” But can anyone name a single thing Vance has done to make union organizing less difficult? In truth, his answer to everything is that we should have fewer immigrants, which would only change our capitalist system by making it poorer and less dynamic.

I’m not trying to absolve establishment Democrats of their own responsibility for the challenge they face. Not only did too many of them decide to become friendlier with corporations starting in the 1990s, they gave up on precisely the kind of labor-intensive organizing socialists are now deploying against them, in favor of flooding people with fundraising texts and using the revenues to air TV ads, just about the least effective means of building long-term political power one could imagine.

It’s also true that few people really know what “socialism” means, and I might be happier if the debate was centered around my own preferred version of capitalism, which would basically be an Americanized version of Scandinavian social democracy. But the fact remains that if people are disillusioned with the current state of American capitalism, the thing they’re angry about is a Republican creation. And Republicans are the ones who ought to be forced to justify it.