Is This Country Having Its Socialist Moment?

In the last few weeks, we have seen self-described democratic socialists winning primary elections across the country. Most were closely associated with Zohran Mamdani, the socialist who became mayor of New York City this year, who is seen by many on the left as a figure who is finally able to enact the kind of agenda that had made Bernie Sanders and AOC popular in previous election cycles.

At the same time, Vice President JD Vance went viral last week for celebrating that the American right was moving away from Milton Friedman-style market economics and supporting the idea that the federal government should get a lot more involved in the economy.

The growing popularity of this kind of sentiment and the indisputable electoral success it’s having in some primaries has predictably caused establishment liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to panic. Centrist commentators across the country have been sharing the most extreme policy positions and previous statements from the socialist candidates who won their races, seemingly under the assumption that the radicalism alone will be sufficiently off-putting to enough people. That is, at best, a dangerous misreading of the situation.

Despite the surface-level rhetoric used by all sides, the growing popularity of “socialism” or “populism” is primarily a non-ideological phenomenon.

That becomes obvious if we look back in time. Because there was a period in the early twentieth century when the intellectual battle between advocates of socialism and capitalism was as rigorous and intellectual as many like to pretend it still is. That phase culminated in the so-called “calculation debate” between Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek and socialist scholars like Abba Lerner and Oskar Lange. The debate sought to determine if a centrally planned economy was—not preferable to a free market or workable in practice—but whether it is even possible in theory. The Austrians unequivocally won that debate.

Mises, specifically, delivered a simple yet devastating case that economic calculation—or the efficient allocation of capital goods and...(READ THIS FULL ARTICLE 100% FREE HERE).

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.

Today's Top Stories