Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883): Is his time finally finished?
Wikimedia Commons / John Jabez Edwin Mayall

The administration of President Barack Obama  may have marked the high-water mark of dirigisme in the United States. Brexit in Europe may have done the same for that continent. Hopefully, before the end of my life, I will be able to witness this milestone for humanity in Japan, Russia, and China as well. For Iran to achieve this may take somewhat longer, as that country has to deal with the dirigisme of a theocracy, and it is next to impossible to contradict the diktat of a god.

The Revolt Against Progressivism in the United States

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other,”  Benjamin Franklin once declaimed, and we American fools may finally be learning about dirigisme’s futility and danger. It is futile because rule by technocrats over chaotic human systems is impossible in the face of their complexity. It is dangerous because it sets us on Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, as we have seen recently with progressives’ growing authoritarian tendencies.

The evidence for American educational progress can be found in the just finished 2016 elections. As has been widely remarked, this election was a furious rebellion against the elites of this country, causing a break in many party loyalties. In fact, it seems as if the Grand Old Party has stolen the allegiance of the working class away from the Democrats. In the link to the CNN post in my last sentence, the author Paul Sracic postulates the reason for Donald Trump’s theft: Erstwhile Democratic working-class voters could say to themselves that Trump is not really a Republican. Indeed, given Trump’s seemingly underdeveloped personal ideology, this is a proposition with which many conservative intellectuals could agree.

However, Sracic’s postulate would only explain how Trump could steal the working class for the GOP; it does not explain how the working class was susceptible to being stolen in the first place. For this explanation we need look no farther than the very poor economic results of the Obama era, as well as the decrease in American physical security from Russia, China, Iran, and Islamic terrorism, even here within the United States. On top of this, Obamacare was wreaking serious economic injuries on family budgets, at least for those working-class families in the middle class who could not qualify for government subsidies. In addition, to heap injury on top of injury on the working-class, Obama and the Democrats appeared to be actually encouraging illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America to compete for working-class America’s jobs! If the Democrats were so disloyal to the working class, why should the working class remain loyal to them?

In short, the Obama administration had created a vast progressive experiment in dirigisme that has self-evidently failed immensely. I say “the Obama administration”, but in fact the progressive experiment had been growing for almost a century ever since the administration of Woodrow Wilson, dented only occasionally by Republican administrations. Nevertheless, the Obama administration was the culmination of this test of authoritarian economic and social control, and a mighty failure it is. Unfortunately, the public debt and the obligations of mandated entitlements with which this experiment has saddled us might still destroy us. Unless, growth in entitlement spending is quickly curbed, it together with payments on the national debt will absorb every penny of federal revenues within one to two decades. At that point the operations of the federal government would grind to a halt.

The scope of the progressive defeat is far more than just the loss of the White House. In addition to capturing the Presidency and holding both houses of Congress, the Republican Party increased its hold on state governments. The Wall Street Journal reported the GOP now controls a record 69 0f 99 state legislative chambers, having flipped three state chambers including the Iowa Senate and the Kentucky house. Both of these chambers turned Republican for the first time in about 100 years.

The tally of new Republican pickups related by the WSJ essay goes on and on. Republicans picked up three new governors in Missouri, New Hampshire, and Vermont, which brings the tally of GOP governors to 33, 66 percent of all the state governors! In half of all states, the Republican Party holds the governorship and both state chambers, and can claim 29 state attorneys general.

One particularly significant importance of this growing control of state governments bodes well for charter schools and school choice. The WSJ notes that congressional leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell may work with President Trump to pass legislation devolving federal school funding to the states.

Now the ball is in the court of the Republican conservatives controlling government. They will have two years before the next midterm elections to convince the American electorate that limited government with less intrusion and interference with the economy and less government spending and taxation will mean greater GDP growth, and greater employment with higher wages.

What Is Happening in Europe?

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic pond, the same phenomenon of mass alienation against the ruling elites is occurring in Europe. There was the British vote to leave the European Union last June, generally referred to as Brexit, but that movement was hardly the sum total of popular disdain against the EU throughout Europe. In quasi-socialist France, a country that should be fanatically in favor of the EU if ever there was one, the population has been viscerally inflamed against the EU by the example of the British. In fact the French appear to be even less pleased about the EU than the British. A pan-European survey,

released last June just before the Brexit vote by the Pew Research Center, showed that 61 percent of French voters have an unfavorable view of the EU compared to 48 percent in the United Kingdom. The bar-chart to the left, showing national attitudes toward the EU, was part of that report. Clearly, there are a lot of very unhappy Europeans.

In addition, the trends over time of these attitudes must also greatly discourage European elites, as demonstrated by the plots versus time below. The Pew Research Center report also showed 19 percent of all Europeans believed national governments should cede more powers to the European Union, 27 percent thought the division of powers should remain the same, and a plurality of 42 percent believed some powers should be returned to the national governments, where the citizens could have more of a say on what happens.

Since the European governments as well as the EU have been following dirigiste policies generally similar to the domestic policies of the Obama administration, you will probably not be surprised that the causes of European discontent are generally similar to our own.

Government management of European economies has been a general failure, just as it has in the United States. And just as in the United States, the Europeans are learning about the futility and danger of detailed government management of chaotic economies through the school of hard knocks.

In the short term, how the European nations evolve their policies may depend on what kind of example the U.S. provides for them. If the new Trump administration can reignite U.S. economic growth through free-market policies, Europeans might see a similar path out of their woes. No one would cheer harder than I.

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