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There’s an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. Are some socialists just capitalists who don’t know it yet? This is not a story about the investment portfolio of Bernie Sanders. Rather than a dreary tale of hypocrisy, today brings an uplifting story of overwhelming support for economic liberty. Public opinion surveys consistently find that Americans prefer capitalism to socialism, but often by margins that are disturbingly close given how much misery socialism has inflicted upon the world. A new Harvard-Harris poll at first seems to offer another set of findings in this vein, with especially troubling responses from Democrats. The new survey asks, “What do you think is a better economic system – capitalism or
socialism?” Capitalism wins by a 59% to 41% margin, which is better than some recent findings but still not the complete repudiation that Marxism deserves. The most disturbing aspect is that socialism wins among Democrats, 54% to 46%. This suggests that if this fall’s midterm elections go the way they normally do for a second-term president’s party, next year the U.S. Congress could be debating ownership of the means of production. The somewhat hopeful news is that support for socialism is concentrated among people who don’t know what it is. As for the alternative, over the years various readers have discouraged use of the word “capitalism” to describe a market economy given that the term was originally used by socialists to denigrate
it. The new Harvard-Harris survey suggests that the readers have a point. Here’s another question in the new poll:
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