18 Jul 2016

Trump’s Economic Nationalism is Socialism

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TrumpSanders

Jeffrey Tucker explains that the Trump Nationalist agenda is just another version of Socialism, and that the world has seen the rise of precisely this kind of nationalist socialism before.

The rise of Fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period,” wrote Hayek, “but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.” In Hayek’s reading, the dynamic works like this. The socialists build the state machinery, but their plans fail. A crisis arrives. The population seeks answers. Politicians claiming to be anti-socialist step up with new authoritarian plans that purport to reverse the problem. Their populist appeal taps into the lowest political instincts (nativism, racism, religious bigotry, and so on) and promises a new order of things under better, more efficient rule.

Hayek’s thesis is very similar to Mises’: that the greatest threat in the world today comes from a version of socialism — a rightist socialism — cobbled together in the name of fighting authoritarianism abroad and countering leftism at home. The road to serfdom, in Hayek’s view, is paved by a blind pursuit of unified nationhood and central planning in the name of national greatness. Or, to use today’s language, “making America great again.”

Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton agree on a lot, especially on the need to protect and enlarge state power. None of them accepts any principled limits on what the state may rightfully do to the individual. Even on big issues where one might think they disagree — healthcare, immigration, and control of lands by the federal government — their positions are more alike than different. …

Most of these candidates’ supporters don’t see it that way, of course. They imagine themselves to be rebels fighting power itself, however they want to define it: Wall Street, the party establishment, the paid-off politicians, the bureaucracy, the billionaires, the foreigners, the special interests, and so on.

But notice that neither Trump, Sanders, nor Clinton attacks government authority as such. Instead they aspire to use it and grow it for their purposes. “The conflict between the Fascist or National-Socialist and the older socialist parties must indeed very largely be regarded as the kind of conflict which is bound to arise between rival socialist factions,” Hayek wrote. “There was no difference between them about the question of it being the will of the state which should assign to each person his proper place in society.”

As the campaign progress over 2015, the close relationship between right and left socialisms became more obvious. On the surface, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump represent opposite extremes. But in their celebration of the nation state as the people’s salvation — their burning calls to overthrow the existing elites and replace them with a more intense form of top-down rule — they are morally indistinguishable, and equally un-American.

Read the whole thing.

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2 Feedbacks on "Trump’s Economic Nationalism is Socialism"

John

That’s such bull, Trump has consistently advocated for smaller, more efficient and effective government.

Trump said, “Common sense tell us that the two basic principles of governing should work anywhere they are applied. First: Get government out of activities it can’t do well. (A list of thing government doesn’t do well is a very long list.) Second: Get government back in the business of providing for public convenience (transportation, public works) and safety (police and firefighters), and make sure it does so efficiently. Then judge its efforts by visible, definable results and fine-tune, as needed.”

“[Get rid of the] Department of Education. We’re getting rid of Common Core. Department of Environmental Protection. We’re going take a tremendous amount out. The waste, fraud, and abuse is massive.



Ben

Utter BS.

This is an attempt to equate Trump with Hitler and the Nazis.

If you consider Trump’s “nationalism” as socialism, I will gladly take that over Hillary’s Marxist schemes any day.



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