Anytime someone writes about free markets, someone inevitably arrives to argue that free marketers happily ignore crony capitalism. Worse, many self-described pro-market conservatives scoff at the idea of returning to first principles, pointing to the Republicans of the early 2000s, pre-Trump, big-government, K Street-friendly Republicans, and concluding that their failures somehow indict markets themselves.
There are two problems with that argument. First, no Republican has been genuinely free-market since President Reagan. Second, “crony capitalism” is a terrible name, because what it describes is not capitalism at all. It reeks of socialism and communism, and should be added to its respective trash heap of history.
What is “crony capitalism”?
Crony capitalism is what happens when entrepreneurs stop trying to build better businesses, create better products and services, or outcompete rivals, and instead pursue political leverage within government. Capitalism, through competition, is supposed to lower prices and improve products. Pursuing political leverage does the opposite: it lets a company use the force of government to crush competition, freeze prices at current levels or push them higher, and rely on well-placed friends in power for protection from the risks every other business must face.
My question is simple: is that capitalism, or is it a feature of communism?
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Take any so-called communist country of the last century. People did not survive by competing in business. They survived by competing for political favors. Their status, and whether you escaped the misery of those around you, depended on whom you knew in government, or who had connections to it. The connected were shielded from the brutality everyone else endured and improved their quality of life in the same way crony capitalism operates: through favors, privileges, and protection.
So if conservatives want to blast the economic principles of the Bushes, or any other establishment Republican, go ahead, just recognize what you are actually criticizing. Congratulations: you have discovered that their economic policy was closer to that of America’s Democratic socialists than to anything remotely resembling capitalism.
Too many people today want to write off free markets as a failed relic of the past. Then they act shocked when the DSA gains electoral ground in the twenty-first century. They should not be.
When the right spends its energy denouncing communism’s failures while excusing every government intrusion into the economy as a “necessary” market correction, it is not defending capitalism. It is teaching voters that central planning is normal, inevitable, and virtuous. The Right cannot keep campaigning on free enterprise and governing through the opposite.
It is time for the Right to put its money where its mouth is: stop paying lip service to free markets, stop rationalizing central control at every opportunity, and start trusting the system it claims made America prosperous. If conservatives actually believe markets work, they should have the courage to let them.