New Gallup poll: By 57-47, more Democrats now have positive view of socialism than capitalism

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives August 14, 2018

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I think we’re mainly talking about a change in labeling. At any point 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, or 30, or 40, you could have asked Democrats if they preferred a system largely driven by state command-and-control, or by the free market, and they would have told you they preferred the former. They’ve always trusted the political class more than the business class, and they’ve always thought unfettered capitalism was inherently unjust and needed to be reined in by politicians.

The difference is that in the past they either a) thought that was capitalism; or b) were told they’d better pretend to like capitalism because it was a bridge too far politically to admit they really preferred socialism. Now they’ve either figured out what they were in favor of all along, or decided it was no longer a problem to admit it. I actually think the splits here are understated. Democrats really prefer socialism to capitalism much more overwhelmingly than this. But the question here was not which one they prefer more than the other. You can say you have a positive view of both, which is why the two add up to more than 100. When you think about it, that makes this result even more stunning:

For the first time in Gallup’s measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year — lower than in any of the three previous measures. Republicans remain much more positive about capitalism than about socialism, with little sustained change in their views of either since 2010. Americans aged 18 to 29 are as positive about socialism (51%) as they are about capitalism (45%). This represents a 12-point decline in young adults’ positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68% viewed it positively. Meanwhile, young people’s views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year, but the 51% with a positive view today is the same as in 2010.

It’s kind of bizarre that people’s comfort with the idea of socialism would be on the rise at this particular point in history, given the decimation of Venezuela and the emerging recognition that the same thing is happening in Nicaragua. But just because those things are happening doesn’t mean Democrats a) know about it; or b) understand the events correctly. If they get their news from the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN, they probably know there are problems in those countries but think it’s by no means clear that the socialist system is really the culprit. Ask your average young liberal why Venezuela is in a free-fall and they’re as likely to blame U.S. sanctions as the inept malevolence of the Chavistas. Ask them about Danny Ortega’s Sandinistas in Nicaragua and they probably have no idea they were once a Soviet client movement, or that John Kerry pimped for them during that period. And that’s another thing you have to remember. If you’re over 50 like I am, you remember well the latter years of the Cold War and the stunning end of it between 1989 and 1991, when the puppet regimes of Eastern Europe collapsed and were soon followed by the Soviet Union itself. The task of repairing what socialism destroyed was generational, and if you’re under 30 today then you have no memory of it at all in your lifetime. It’s like the Great Depression for me. It happened more than 25 years before I was born. It might as well have happened in the 1700s. That’s the way young Democrats today view the history of socialism. It has nothing to do with them, they don’t believe what capitalists say about it and they’re going to be the ones to do it right. All this, of course, goes back to their basis mistrust of capitalism. If you’re a left-wing political activist, of course you don’t like capitalism and you don’t think it’s fair. You think the solutions to everyone’s problems are to be found in politics, and likely the problems are rooted in capitalism and its basic nature. This is all garbage, of course, but if you’re too young and too ignorant to know any better, that’s why you’re a Democrat and that’s why you’re no longer shy about saying you prefer socialism to capitalism. The truth is you thought that all along.