J.D. Vance Accidentally Comes Out as a Socialist

Gather ’round! A new definition of socialism just dropped.

“I don’t know what the term means anymore,” said Vice President J.D. Vance today when asked by a reporter how he defines it. “I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls sports.”

That response has been roundly mocked for predictable reasons. Did Venezuela implode because Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro let boys play in girls sports?

The fuller context, however, paints a more nuanced picture—one in which Vance is more knowledgeable about, and more sympathetic toward, socialism than at first blush.

Vance had arrived at the podium to announce that the Trump administration was suspending Microsoft, Adobe, and various other companies from using the permanent labor certification (PERM) program, which allows companies to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residence—a.k.a. a green card—typically through the EB-2 or EB-3 employment-based immigration categories. “Socialism is about prioritizing workers,” Vance said. “And yet in reality, I guarantee most of the self-described socialists running across the United States of America are going to howl about this announcement today, which is prioritizing American workers over foreign workers.”

In other words, the vice president was, in some sense, saying he was adhering to good socialist principles with his immigration announcement. The actual self-described socialists, meanwhile, are not.

It is a helpful admission. For many years, the Republican Party has made socialism one of its primary villains, and the opposition to it one of the party’s primary calling cards. President Donald Trump is no exception. “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism,” he said at a rally in Ohio in 2019, “and the destruction of our great, our beautiful, our wonderful American dream.”

Yet that rhetorical balancing act has gotten harder as the years have gone on. That’s especially true as the Trump administration has complained about socialism while subtly embracing it. The government has, for example, taken stakes in dozens of private companies. “Federal ownership of private companies has become routine, and it is happening on the right even as members busily point fingers at the left for its socialism,” wrote Reason contributing editor Veronique de Rugy in August. “The [Democratic Socialists of America] at least tells Americans clearly what it wants. The danger on the right is quieter: a government acquiring the means of production one letter of intent at a time, and a political party acting as though socialism is something only the other side can do.”

That’s not to imply the White House is moving to abolish private property. Yet never before has a Republican administration exerted such control over the private sector while making “socialism” its primary bogeyman. Is irony dead?

Immigration is a particularly useful subject through which to examine this phenomenon. Which is closer to the concept of “socialism”: when the free market decides whom companies can employ? Or when the government does?

The vice president appears to agree the answer is the latter. Vance, of course, knows what socialism is. He’s an intelligent, educated person. Which is perhaps why it is becoming more difficult for him to toe this line. “You don’t stop socialism by throwing slogans at people about the free market,” he said on Fox News this past summer.  “You stop socialism by making people’s lives better.” That might resonate more if he didn’t appear to think that stopping socialism required putting the spirit of it to good use.