America’s Current Socialist Trend Could End Badly

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As J.R. Dunn noted in his July 17th Members Weekly Newsletter (you should subscribe!) in an article titled “Targeting the Socialists,” America’s socialist and socialist-adjacent movements have emerged in four major waves since 1920. Today, we appear to be entering the fifth.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: you say socialists, I say communists. Why? Because socialism has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot sustain itself economically. Faced with one failure after another, socialist governments have historically responded by concentrating political power, restricting dissent usually violently, and expanding state control. That is, they start socialist (some private ownership) and end communist (the nationalization of all business and all power concentrated in the state).

In practice, socialism and communism often become different stages of the same process, all ending in enslavement. For this discussion, the distinction matters less than the ultimate destination.

This fifth wave differs from the previous four in one critical respect: it is no longer confined to the political fringe but is moving steadily into the mainstream across multiple geographic areas. Earlier socialist movements struggled to gain lasting influence outside activist circles, academia, and labor organizations, rarely penetrating America’s most influential institutions.

The current movement already possesses significant political power and has established itself within many of the institutions that shape how Americans learn, communicate, and govern. It has accumulated influence simultaneously in education, politics, parts of corporate America, activist organizations, and much of the media, where these institutions increasingly reinforce one another and normalize ideas that only a generation ago would have remained political nonstarters. That institutional foothold is what distinguishes this fifth wave from its predecessors—and what makes it potentially far more dangerous.

Among its most visible political leaders are Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Elizabeth Warren. They differ in style and emphasis, but all advocate a substantially larger role for government than has traditionally characterized American political thought.

Collectively, they have helped make socialism appear not just respectable, but inevitable to many younger Americans. Perhaps even more, they strongly motivate some to hate their country, its institutions, and our very Constitution. Given that, shouldn’t we be suspicious of their motives?

Outside electoral politics, organizations ranging from the American Federation of Teachers, which appears to be more socialist cheerleaders rather than educators, to the World Economic Forum, which openly promotes expanded governmental authority and increasingly centralized, one-world government solutions to social and economic problems, can be viewed as not evolutionary but revolutionary in nature.

These groups may differ slightly in philosophy, but they generally favor concentrating decision-making in larger institutions while reducing the roles of markets, local communities, and individual choice, and promoting increasingly anti-American rhetoric.

Institutional capture is what distinguishes today’s movement from previous waves.

What today’s socialist movement shares with the past is that socialism doesn’t introduce or promote itself through promises of coercion, which they know would be rejected. Instead, it appeals to emotions of fairness, compassion, equality, and security. Each generation believes it has rediscovered a more humane way of living that avoids the failures of the past.

The appeal is understandable. Redistributing wealth is easier than creating it. Government promises always sound easier than dog-eat-dog competition. Economic inequality naturally breeds frustration, and socialism promises moral certainty to people seeking easy explanations over hard truths.

Unfortunately, good intentions have never proven sufficient to overcome economic reality—and therein lies socialism’s Achilles’ heel, the one thing that invariably drags it down.

History repeatedly demonstrates the same pattern. Some people believe prices are something you can wave a magic wand over rather than being market-driven. Integral to all command economies (all socialist systems inevitably are), investment slows while innovation declines. Ultimately, in such a system, becoming a bureaucrat is more important than being an entrepreneur. Government promises eventually exceed government resources, while inflation, debt, shortages, and declining productivity begin reinforcing one another.

Whether in the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, Britain during its economic crises of the 1970s, Argentina during periods of heavy state intervention, or Sweden before its turn from socialism, the details differ, but the underlying pattern remains remarkably consistent. Central planning can’t keep pace with the millions of independent decisions made every day in a free economy. Only a disciplined, market-driven economy, where decisions are made by consumers, not government apparatchiks, can balance supply and demand.

Markets eventually impose discipline that politics cannot repeal.

Economic failure creates an unavoidable dilemma for the socialists. Leaders can admit they failed, or they can blame someone else. History suggests they almost always choose the second option.

The villains receive different names—capitalists, wreckers, speculators, hoarders, foreign enemies, the one percenters, or misinformation—but the response is always the same: censorship expands, political prosecutions become normalized, bureaucracies grow, personal and property rights weaken. Eventually, dissent itself marks that individual as a threat to the system. We’ve seen this all before.

This is where socialism and communism converge. Once preserving political power becomes more important than preserving liberty, coercion naturally follows.

America is currently vulnerable to this trend of dishonest promises, economic control, economic collapse, and the diminution of liberty. America has always depended upon free citizens making independent, often selfish decisions rather than waiting for centralized direction. That’s how capitalism works. It also requires universal civic knowledge and engagement, a historical understanding, and a belief in the power of individual responsibility.

Unfortunately, many of our foundations have weakened. Civic education, when it exists at all, is often weak, incomplete, or intentionally distorted by ideological agendas. Historical knowledge has declined, leading to an acceptance of dependence upon the government. The national debt continues expanding while cultural fragmentation makes it increasingly difficult to see America as a unified whole. Prosperity itself has bred complacency, leading people to believe that wealth simply exists rather than being created through incentives, investment, and hard, productive effort.

Government intervention usually compounds these problems rather than solving them.

What does this mean for America?

The best news I have is that ideology cannot repeal economics. Governments cannot spend indefinitely. Central planners will never outperform millions of decentralized decisions made by free people building wealth for themselves. Human nature has remained remarkably constant throughout history.

The tragedy is that socialism seldom fails quietly.

Before economic reality finally reasserts itself, nations endure slower growth, capital flight, inflation, declining investment, reduced innovation, greater political polarization, restrictions on liberty, and weakened national security. The damage accumulates long before the system collapses under its own weight.

Each new generation believes it has finally discovered the version of socialism that will succeed where all others failed. Every generation eventually discovers that economic reality is immune to sloganism.

The question is not whether this fifth wave will fail. History has already written that chapter.

The real question is how much of America’s prosperity and liberty we will sacrifice before enough Americans recognize the lessons history has repeatedly shown us. Every generation eventually faces the same choice: preserve the institutions that created its prosperity, or surrender them in pursuit of promises that history has proven, over and over again, cannot be kept?

God Bless America.

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Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at 1plus1equals2.com.