Capitalism’s far-left advocates don’t seem to understand capitalism very well.
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is endorsed by socialists like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but has repeatedly rejected the socialist label. Because people keep asking. Because of what he says and does.
El-Sayed’s race is an important one, not only for the balance of power in the Senate, but also at a crucial time in American history when socialism’s popularity is rising.
“I’m not [a socialist],” El-Sayed told sports pundit Stephen A. Smith recently. “I’m a capitalist who just understands capitalism.”
Considering El-Sayed supports a bunch of socialist policies, like a government takeover of the healthcare system, it’s a fair question to ask. He followed that comment with a lecture on the history of the word capitalism.
“The term capitalism was coined by a guy named Adam Smith, and Adam Smith said that there is ‘no market without morals,’” El-Sayed said. “He also said that the biggest danger to capitalism was not government regulation; it was monopoly.”
Adam Smith was a Scottish economist back in the 1700s, who wrote a highly influential book titled “The Wealth of Nations,” which is regarded as the foundation of modern economic thought. He believed markets work best when trade is free and unburdened by government direction and was reacting to mercantilism, where the government controlled the economy.
But it would be news to Smith that he coined the term capitalism, since that word was never used in his writings. Instead, the term started in the 1800s by French Socialists who used it in a derogatory sense to popularize Socialist reforms.
In other words, El-Sayed is trying to prove he’s not a socialist by mistakenly quoting socialists. That’s not a good start.
In fact, the more El-Sayed talks about capitalism, the more it is clear that he has no idea what he’s talking about, and that he is mostly influenced by Karl Marx, an opponent of free markets and the ideological father of socialism (and communism). In other interviews, when asked which democratic socialist policies he wouldn’t back in office, El-Sayed wouldn’t name one and just said, “the socialism part.”
Though Smith doesn’t appear to have ever said “no market without morals,” Smith did have a strong belief in men being regulated by morality and would support sensible laws that prevented fraud, enforced contracts and protected property rights.
Smith certainly didn’t support heavy-handed government intrusion into the free market, and thought markets were regulated by self-interest, competition and price signals, which all aligned to provide public benefit and create wealth.
Smith also supported public projects like roads since he didn’t think anyone could make enough profit to justify the risk in building them. And he supported public financing for schools, but with user fees and fee-based teacher pay, specifically designed to preserve competition and avoid unaccountable government monopolies.
So, yes, Smith worried about monopolies. But the monopolies he worried about were the ones government created and protected and not so much those emerging from free competition.
El-Sayed doesn’t seem to understand any of this. The rest of the clip was a rant against monopolies and oligopolies, again sounding more Marxist than anything Smith would have said.
Marxist ideas are gaining ground fastest with younger generations who have the least firsthand familiarity with the human cost of the communist and socialist experiments of the last century. The body count and the breadlines alone should give anyone pause.
Capitalism — or, more precisely, the free market — has done more to lift people out of poverty and expand freedom than any economic system in human history. Maybe that’s a case free-market advocates have failed to make loudly enough, leaving room for candidates like El-Sayed to tell the story of markets badly, and incorrectly. We shouldn’t let them.
Matt Fleming is a columnist for the Southern California News Group