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President Trump is not a capitalist
by Dave Anderson, opinion contributor - 03/04/19 3:30 PM ET
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By historical standards, President Donald Trump is not a capitalist.
Capitalism in the United States went through a massive series of changes
in the early 20th century, in the 1930s and in the 1960s. The so-called Progressive Era, the New Deal Era and the Great Society Era all initiated
so many structural changes in regulations and redistribution of wealth and power in our economic system that it no longer makes sense to refer to it
as capitalist. Many commentators refer to our economic system as a “mixed economy,” namely an economy that is a mixture of capitalism and socialism.

Admittedly, some refer to mixed-economies as a form of capitalism, but
this form of nomenclature, “a capitalist mixed-economy,” has never made
sense. What is the point of introducing the phrase mixed-economy other
than to say that calling a particular economy capitalist or socialist is problematic? For those economies that fall in between a stark laissez-
faire capitalist economy and a socialist economy where the means of
production are publicly owned, we just call them “mixed economies.”
{mosads}

Given that President Donald Trump does not call for fundamental changes in
the regulatory and redistributive structures on the U.S. economy, although
he certainly stands for scaling back on the more robust forms of
regulation and redistribution, it is most accurate to say that he supports
the “mixed-economy.” Indeed, because he has not fundamentally challenged
the two-thirds of our budget which is made up of mandatory programs
(especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), it is really counter-intuitive to say that Mr. Trump does not support the “mixed
economy.” He certainly does not support a laissez-faire capitalist
economy. Presidents William McKinley and Herbert Hoover, to a substantial extent, supported a laissez-faire capitalist economy.

In campaign 2020, Mr. Trump has begun the effort to define most of the Democrats running for President as socialists. One of them, Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.), says that he is a Democratic Socialist, and he ran as
such in 2016. The rest, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen.
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Sen. Amy
Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and other potential candidates like Governor Andrew
Cuomo (D-N.Y.), deny that they are socialists in any sense of the term.

Sanders is really a Social Democrat (and not a socialist) along the lines
of many European countries, including the Nordic countries, Sweden,
Finland, Norway and Denmark. The mainstream liberals are best regarded as supporting a robust mixed-economy.

The difference between Trump and Harris, for example, is between a
moderate and a robust mixed-economy proponent. Neither is a capitalist in
any responsible use of the term.

Rather than charge Trump with being a ruthless or rigged capitalist, which
is the Sanders line (and that of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the
Democrats would be wiser to call Trump what they really think he is: a president who wants to weaken the mixed-economy by strengthening the
position of corporations and the wealthy. But once you call him a
capitalist, and a bad one at that, you lose your footing with him and
enable him to call you a socialist.{mossecondads}

These semantic issues are hardly the sole province of academics. To the contrary, they are at the heart of campaign politics and politics in
general. As Trump is an expert at using phrases to define and criticize
his opponents, one cannot overestimate the importance of getting the
language right. It will not work for candidates to just focus on the
policies. Trump is going to use general terms to define his opponents —
like “socialist” — and thus the Democrats must fight fire with fire.

It is high time for Democrats to stop cartooning the President and
Republicans in general as ruthless and rigged capitalists and find
language that enables them to make their criticisms in effective ways.
When they play the game of oversimplification because they think the
voters cannot handle complex concepts and language, then they get into
trouble.

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