- “Donald Trump is a socialist”…
- Washington and Lincoln, socialists…
- Jim Rickards issues an urgent warning for all investors…
Dear Reader,
“Donald Trump is a socialist.”
There you have the studied conclusion of Mr. Kevin Williamson.
Mr. Williamson is a writer of conservative orientation. Is this fellow correct?
Is the president a socialist?
I note first that the terms “socialist” and “communist” are devil terms.
I note further that they are as loose as they are precise.
And so the accused, nine times of ten, is neither socialist nor communist.
The accused is merely a welfare statist.
Don’t Confuse the Welfare State With Socialism
As observes Mr. Williamson:
- Socialism doesn’t mean high taxes or an expensive welfare state. You don’t need socialism to have a portfolio of social-welfare programs. Japan has an extensive social-welfare apparatus, and it is far from socialist.
- Singapore is super-capitalist, and it offers my favorite kind of welfare: direct money payments to poor people. Even the big-spending Scandinavians have long abandoned the experiments in socialism that wrecked their economies in the postwar decades:
- In the high-tax European countries that so many of our progressive friends profess to admire, the trend for a generation has been away from state enterprise and central planning and toward privatization, trade, and investment…
- Socialism does not mean government-funded education and retirement benefits and health care subsidies — those things are simply welfare, and there are better and worse ways to go about doing such things.
How then does this fellow define socialism?
A Centrally Planned Economy
Mr. Williamson:
- Socialism means a centrally planned economy, one that is dominated by state action irrespective of whether it is dominated by formal state enterprises. Food stamps are welfare — socialism can mean state-owned farms and grocery stores, but more often it means a state apparatus that runs the farms and grocery stores as though it owned them, setting prices, negotiating the terms of employment, and determining how business is to be done — a little more of this crop, a little less of that commodity, etc.
- V.I. Lenin described his ideal society as one managed as though it were “one big factory.” The Leninist view… was profoundly influenced by some of the big ideas and most influential and prestigious thinkers of late 19th-century and early 20th-century capitalism, especially the mania for “scientific management”…
Trump, Factory Boss?
Mr. Williamson believes President Trump clings to the “one big factory” theory of society.
Thus he believes the president clings to the socialistic theory of society.
He believes the president’s tariff and trade policies are unrelenting foes of the free market.
And that the president would boss the United States economy as the factory owner bosses the factory.
Thus Mr. Williamson argues that:
- Donald Trump’s vision of the economy is classic socialism. And if you want to say that what it really is is classic nationalism, fair enough… at the level of practical economics nationalism and socialism are the same thing: nationalized industries are socialized industries, socialized industries are nationalized industries, nationalized medicine is socialized medicine, etc.
Just so. And I am with Mr. Williamson — the nationalized industry is the socialized industry.
Yet is the nationalized economic nationalist theory the incorrect theory of governance?
Washington, Nationalist
In 1790, President Washington argued that “the safety and interest” of a “free people” required that they “promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent” of other nations.
This was especially true for “essential” and “particularly for military supplies.”
Meantime, President Washington exhibited:
“A decided preference to the produce and fabrics of America, whensoever it may be done without involving unreasonable expenses or very great inconveniences”… [It would be] “shameful” [should we] “discourage our own industry and ingenuity by purchasing foreign superfluities.”
Next we come to Mr. Abraham Lincoln.
The dour, angular Illinoisan caroled the virtues of economic nationalism.
Thus in Mr. Williamson’s telling, Mr. Lincoln caroled the virtues of socialism.
Lincoln and the Socialist “American Plan”
As Freedom Financial News contributor Jim Rickards styles it:
- Alexander Hamilton… drafted a report to Congress called the Report on Manufactures presented in 1791. Hamilton proposed that in order to have a strong country, America needed a strong manufacturing base with jobs that taught skills and offered income security.
- To achieve this, Hamilton proposed subsidies to US businesses so they could compete successfully against more established UK and European businesses…
- Later on, Abraham Lincoln adopted the American System as his platform in the election of 1860…
I do not know if Mr. Williamson has ever labeled Presidents Washington or Lincoln socialists.
I concede the possibility that he has. I am simply ignorant of those claims.
Does Trump Really Oppose Reagan?
Finally, Mr. Williamson sketches a blinding contrast between Ronnie Reagan and Donny Trump:
- [Trump] is economically more in Lenin’s camp than in Adam Smith’s and Milton Friedman’s and Ronald Reagan’s.
Yet I would remind the writer that President Reagan threatened Japanese automobile manufacturers with very substantial tariffs.
And as Mr. Steven Hayward of the Civitas Institute notes:
- Reagan imposed protectionist measures on textiles, specialty steel, Canadian wood products, Italian pasta, motorcycles, and even mushrooms during his two terms. In 1986, Reagan threatened to impose a 200 percent tariff on Spain for its restrictions on U.S. grain imports.
Was Mr. Reagan too a socialist, Mr. Williamson?
I Just Want Consistency
Here I do not argue the case for economic nationalism. Nor do I argue the case against economic nationalism.
The theory of economic nationalism may have its points — yet I argue it also has points against it.
I am not certain the sitting president recognizes the points against it.
Yet I am also against slavery to abstract doctrine — the abstract theory of free trade included.
Thus I am willing to lend the economic nationalist a receptive ear.
I am also willing to deny him a receptive ear… should his claims go clanging off my outstretched ear.
What am I decidedly against? The answer is selective defamation.
And so I say: If Donald Trump is socialist…
This Williamson fellow should declare Presidents Washington, Lincoln and Reagan socialists…
And nearly every other president in United States history.
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
