To the Socialists of All Parties

REASON HAS A rule against starting essays with quotes from Friedrich Hayek. After all, one could start nearly every essay in this magazine with a bon mot from the Austrian-born economist and classical liberal hero. But sometimes things get bad enough that only a Hayek quote will do.

- Katherine Mangu-Ward

In this month’s cover story, where Eric Boehm documents how the GOP has been slouching toward socialism, he kicks things off with Hayek's warning that economic nationalism can be “the bridge from conservatism to collectivism” and that thinking in terms of “our” industries is only a short step from demanding that they be “directed in the national interest.”

President Donald Trump's second-term “national champion” economic strategy has metastasized from tariffs and jawboning to direct control: a golden share in U.S. Steel and government equity stakes in Intel, MP Materials, Lithium Americas, and Trilogy Metals. No longer veiling every power grab under the guise of responding to an emergency, he is presenting these as necessary for national security and other ongoing national interests. The result, Boehm argues, will be more state control of the commanding heights, and that will invite politicized decision making, bad bets, and the well-documented underperformance that tends to follow when the state takes seats in corporate boardrooms.

Is this socialism? The word was chosen advisedly. What Trump is doing is more akin to state capitalism, for now. You might even consider whether the term fascism applies, if you want to pick a fight rather than change minds.

But once upon a time, Republicans were at least moderately chastened by accusations that their policies resembled socialism in any way. For at least a couple of decades, a staple among the conservative chattering classes was to lament that the kids these days keep telling pollsters they prefer socialism to capitalism. They're still doing it: In an October Axios-Generation Lab poll of college students, 67 percent hold a positive or neutral association with the word socialism, compared with 40 percent with the word capitalism.