“Common Good Capitalism” vs. the Free Market Kind
7th August 2021
Earlier today, I wrote about an alleged ideological division in the Democratic party between the far left and the establishment. Now, I want to consider an ideological split in the Republican party about which Eliana Johnson filed this report.
That gap is related to, but not the same as, the division between hardcore Trump supporters and Republicans who would like to see the Party move on from the ex-president. It’s the divide between traditional free-market Reagan Republicans and Republicans who, in Eliana’s words, want the government “to get more, rather than less, involved in national economic policy in order to help advance a certain set of social and cultural goals.” Apparently, the emerging label for the latter group is “common good capitalism.”
As I have written before, when you stick a qualifier on the front of a term, the term no longer applies. ‘Common good capitalism’ is no longer capitalism, just an attempt to hijack the term in service to a non-capitalist political agenda.