The Midterms Offer a Choice Between Two Brands of Socialism

In the country with arguably the most successful market economy on Earth, it’s not unreasonable to ask for just one major political party to favor a system of relatively unfettered voluntary exchange. And yet, the midterm elections offer Americans a “choice” between a party openly embracing socialism by name, and one that increasingly embraces state-directed economic activity in the cause of nationalism. Not every candidate running as a Democrat or Republican is on board with their parties’ statist transformations, and there are certainly other issues separating the two dominant political tribes. But if you want reliable advocacy of economic freedom, you won’t find it in the two major parties.

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Open Socialism vs. Nationalist Economic Control

The shift in the Democratic Party’s policy preferences from a heavily regulated market economy to outright government control has been well-documented, but it’s worth noting Eric Bradner August report at CNN about “a growing list of victories by democratic socialists who are a prominent part of the Democratic Party’s left-wing insurgency.”

Before his election as mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani called for “seizing the means of production,” as has congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which backs many of the new breed of officeholders and candidates and organized their insurgency, boasts of its solidarity with the totalitarian regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. Just a year ago, it sent “a delegation of 40 DSA elected leaders and rank-and-file members” to Havana to learn “about the achievements and challenges of Cuban socialism.”

At 65 percent support for socialism in Gallup polling, more Democrats favor a state-controlled economy than back capitalism (35 percent)—though the odd tie in favorability with free enterprise (also 65 percent, but declining) suggests the schools aren’t doing a great job of explaining ideas.

Republicans nominally hold very different economic preferences, with only 14 percent favoring socialism, while 86 percent support free enterprise and 75 percent have positive views of capitalism. But when asked by CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey whether government should have control of private businesses, “66% of Democrats found it not appropriate for the U.S. to take equity stakes in American companies, while only 34% of Republicans agreed.”

That’s likely because under the Republican Trump administration, the federal government has been grabbing a piece of the action from tech and resource firms—40 companies, at the current count—and party stalwarts are happy to go along so long as the S word isn’t used to describe the arrangement. Instead, it’s cloaked as top-down encouragement of domestic jobs and manufacturing.

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Two Parties With a Similar Taste for Government Economic Intervention

“American political leaders on the left and right are rebelling against the market-first consensus that dominated Washington for four decades,” concluded Axios‘s Courtenay Brown and Neil Irwin in July. “It’s evident in everything from the Trump administration taking government stakes in dozens of private companies to socialist candidates winning Democratic primaries promising a more active government role in the economy.”

A glimpse of a socialist future can be found not only in the rising tide of explicitly socialist Democrats, but in GOP heir apparent and Vice President J.D. Vance’s repeated denunciation of free-market economic thinking and its emphasis on private choice.

“Do we serve pure, unfettered commercial freedom?” he asked in First Things in 2019. “Or do we serve something higher? And are we willing to use political power to actually accomplish those things?”

In a June interview with The Daily Wire‘s Michael Knowles, Vance returned to the topic to criticize the market-oriented ideas of economist Milton Friedman and called for a state-directed and Christian-infused “American developmentalist” approach to escape what he called “a hyper globalized economy.”

“The policies supported by both major political parties suggest a growing embrace of state ownership of the economy,” warns economist Daniel J. Smith for the American Institute for Economic Research. “The range of policies widely accepted as legitimate options, referred to as the ‘Overton Window,’ has shifted toward greater government direction of the economy, with some conservative politicians and voters now treating partial state ownership as an acceptable function of government.”

Smith pointed out that the economist F.A. Hayek had observed this phenomenon among authoritarians of the right and left in the 1930s. It was why he dedicated his book, The Road to Serfdom, “to the socialists of all parties.”

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Rejecting Free Markets Means Losing Liberty and Prosperity

Why this is important is illustrated by Smith’s recent research into the correlation, or lack thereof, between socialism and political liberty: “The record, from 1789 forward, is not ambiguous. High degrees of political freedom and heavy state ownership of the economy have not been sustained together.”

Smith’s observation is supported by the prominent socialist writer Robert Heilbroner’s admission in his 1986 book, The Nature and Logic of Capitalism, that “political freedom in modern times…has only appeared in capitalist states.” He added, “democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist.”

Also important, as the Fraser Institute’s recently published Economic Freedom of the World: 2026 report points out, “economic freedom tends to be associated with better outcomes.” Specifically, the report indicates strong correlations between free-market economies and higher GDP per capita, higher level of income for the bottom 10 percent of earners, lower poverty, higher life expectancy, and lower infant mortality. As with the sources cited above, the report found that “personal freedoms such as freedom of speech, association, and religion are highly correlated with economic freedoms.”

So, the benefits of having a major political party that believes in and supports free markets with minimal government intrusion are found not just in expanded political choice, but also in policies that promote freedom, prosperity, and human well-being. Unfortunately, both the Democratic Party and Republican Party are retreating from economic liberty and embracing state control over how we produce, work, own, buy, and sell. Democrats’ explicit embrace of socialism, and Republicans’ dismissal of free markets in favor of state management and ownership, promise a future of less freedom and reduced wealth.

Maybe Americans would vote against socialism—both the open kind and the implicit nationalist variety—if given the choice. But it’s increasingly difficult to find a free-market option on the ballot.

The post The Midterms Offer a Choice Between Two Brands of Socialism appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Source: https://reason.com/2026/10/28/the-midterms-offer-a-choice-between-two-brands-of-socialism/