This article was originally published by Connor O’Keeffe at The Mises Institute.
Lately, Donald Trump and his team have taken to labeling their opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as a far-left socialist—even a full-on communist. The strategy comes after an uncharacteristic lull in messaging from the former president and his team as they worked out how to prudently attack the vice president.
It’s the job of a presidential campaign to make people terrified about what’s in store for the country if the other side were to win. But there are several problems with labeling Kamala Harris a communist.
First, strategically, this approach risks taking steam out of the best parts of the Trump movement. As Dave Smith argued on Part of the Problem last week, much of Trump’s appeal has come from his opposition to the political establishment. By framing Harris as an extremist, Trump is implicitly placing his campaign on the side of the status quo.
But beyond being a bad campaign strategy, the claim that Harris is a radical communist is just not true. And that’s important for her critics to understand because the threat she poses is actually far more dangerous.
Before continuing with what could easily be derailed into a semantics debate, it’s important to define some terms.
Socialism is an economic system where private property has been abolished as it relates to the production of goods and services. All production decisions are determined by the commands of state or cooperative managers in a non-market environment—meaning without prices.
Communism is a more extreme form of socialism where private property, hierarchy, and social class are abolished in all parts of life. While parts of a mixed economy can and do have socialist qualities, communism is a totalitarian system that encompasses everything.
Neither of these terms describe the current political-economic system of the United States. We live under what can better be called interventionism.
Interventionism is a system where a small political class uses government interventions in a market economy to coercively transfer wealth into their own pockets. As Ludwig von Mises detailed in a number of his books and essays, interventionism inevitably moves towards socialism as the predictably bad consequences of interventions are used to justify more interventions, leading to more and more government control over the economy.
But while the politicians, bureaucrats, and politically-connected business leaders who make up the political class often rely on socialist rhetoric and Marxist academics to justify their next interventions, it is not in their interest to jump straight to a full-on socialist economy. There is too much money to be made along the way, and they want their coercively extracted profits to remain private.
Kamala Harris is an interventionist. She is fully committed to the big scam at the center of the political system and economy. That’s what makes her so dangerous.
While communism itself is far worse than the interventionist system we are dealing with today, having a communist in the Oval Office, at the ostensible helm of a government committed to interventionism, would not turn America into a communist country.
As has been made clear by the cognitive decline of Joe Biden while he remains in the White House, the actual position of president is essentially a figurehead. Presidents do have power — which is why elections are still important. But, as we saw in the first Trump term, it is practically impossible for presidents to implement sweeping changes to which the rest of the political class stands in total opposition. The federal bureaucracy has shown that they’re willing and able to quietly quash executive orders they disagree with.
A literal communist in the Oval Office would be fairly limited in what they could accomplish. Today’s political class would never rally behind the policies a communist president would be most inclined to pursue—such as breaking up the biggest companies and handing full control over to the workers. The heads of big banks, weapons companies, and tech giants and their friends in the government would make sure such an order or bill never saw the light of day. An ideologically committed communist would also have principles that they’d be unwilling to compromise on—further minimizing the damage they could do to the country.
Not only does Kamala Harris not have principles, but she is also fully onboard with the interventionist racket the political class is pulling on the rest of us. The executive orders and legislation that she pursues will assuredly accelerate the interventionist downward spiral. But they will also be lucrative for the rest of the political class—meaning they are far more likely to come to fruition than anything a communist would strive for.
By trying to characterize Harris as a radical, far-left communist, Trump and his team are not only implicitly taking the side of the very people their campaign should be directed against, but they’re also misleading his supporters on the nature of the problem facing our country. If the political establishment is ever going to be defeated, it must first be understood.
