UNPRECEDENTED ASSAULT

The hypertrophy of the federal government has brought socialism out of hibernation and turned it into a dire threat to the American economy, according to this sweeping historical study.

Distinguishing his subject from the “traditional Left” of liberals, labor unions, and other moderate leftists, Young warns of a resurgent socialist Left with Marxist roots, among whom he numbers Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other congressional Squad members, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the campus protest Left. The author focuses on their economic agenda, which, he argues, envisions the federal government taking over and nationalizing most of the economy, providing free education and health care, guaranteeing housing and jobs, and imposing confiscatory wealth taxes. The result, he contends, would be a sluggish, inefficient, moribund economy crushed by a terminally bloated government sector. Starting in the Obama administration, Young argues, this socialist Left reemerged to try to commandeer the federal government juggernaut by taking over the Democratic Party. The author presents an intricate and wide-ranging analysis of American economics and politics, one that has both interpretive breadth and a wealth of statistical detail. He’s especially good on the socio-economic miracle of colonial America, with its unprecedented levels of prosperity and equality based in self-government, and on the New Deal’s radical break with the American pattern of limited government. At times, he overstates the gap between the Sanders-AOC program and Democratic Party traditions, but he makes a vigorous case that their approach is economically and politically unsustainable because of its heavy tax and regulatory burdens. Young conveys all of this in lucid prose that packs an aphoristic punch. (“As a multiplicity of movements with at least as many voices and priorities, the socialist Left is political schizophrenia.”) Leftists and honest-to-God socialists will find much to dispute here, but Young offers a compelling conservative riposte to progressive orthodoxies.

A trenchant critique of the Left’s economic radicalism, coupling shrewd analysis with a stinging polemic.