Carelessly calling political opponents communists or fascists sows confusion and hurts democracy.
Carelessly calling political opponents communists or fascists sows confusion and hurts democracy.
T he midterm elections are over, but the ideological warfare that they fueled is unlikely to end with the counting of votes. Republicans labeled numerous Democratic candidates socialists — even communists — and warned that America’s future depended on preventing a communist takeover. Democrats returned fire, describing some Republican candidates as fascists, authoritarians, and racists, warning that democracy itself was at stake. Both parties seemed determined to “save America” from the other.
It is true that both communist and fascist tendencies deserve vigilance — I understand that well, having lived under the hell of Chinese communism. Democracy is not a self-driving car. Its passengers must constantly watch the road, question the direction, and correct the steering before it crashes. But indiscriminately attaching historically charged labels to political opponents can itself damage democracy, and ultimately the quality of life that democracy is supposed to protect.
The first problem is intellectual confusion. Socialism, communism, capitalism, and fascism are concepts developed to describe particular political-economic doctrines, practices, and institutions. Applied carelessly to contemporary America, they often obscure more than they illuminate.
Consider socialism. Politicians advocating expanded welfare programs, higher taxes on the wealthy, or greater government intervention are routinely called socialists or communists by those on the right. Indeed, there’s a growing faction on the left that welcomes the label of socialist (putting “democratic” in front of it) or even communist. Yet there is a fundamental difference between advocating redistribution within a market economy and abolishing private ownership of productive assets, suppressing markets, and placing economic life under centralized political control.
I know that difference firsthand. Under Maoist communism, private enterprise was virtually eliminated, economic decisions were dictated by political authorities, and ideological conformity governed opportunities and livelihoods. The Soviet Union followed a comparable model. The results included chronic shortages, economic inefficiency, coercion, and the destruction of individual freedom. By contrast, Nordic welfare states preserve private property, competitive markets, entrepreneurship, and political pluralism. Whatever one thinks of their tax rates or welfare policies, they are not communist societies.
The same conceptual confusion surrounds capitalism. The capitalism of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is hardly identical to today’s political economy. Smith envisioned markets in which competition could discipline producers and consumers exercised meaningful choice. He also understood the dangers of monopolies and collusion. Today’s largest corporations, however, command resources comparable to the annual economic output of substantial nations. Some technology companies influence the boundaries of public discourse, control critical information infrastructure, and even affect the military capabilities of nations at war, as Starlink’s role in Ukraine demonstrates. Yet private power is not subjected to the same constitutional checks imposed on government power.
Historically, the relationship between government and capital has often been portrayed as a struggle for dominance. Today’s America presents something more complicated: exceptionally powerful government and exceptionally powerful corporations operating simultaneously, with increasingly intimate relationships between them. Their convergence raises questions about competition, accountability, political influence, and public trust that conventional left-right categories cannot adequately explain.
Consider the irony of President Donald Trump denouncing socialism while his administration has pursued direct government equity stakes in private companies, including Intel, and arrangements involving strategic mineral producers. These are not America’s first government ownership interests in private enterprises; earlier interventions, including during the 2008 financial crisis, provide precedents. Nevertheless, such industrial interventions challenge the traditional distinction between free-market conservatism and state-directed economic policy.
Likewise, an administration identified with free enterprise has embraced sweeping tariffs and extensive government intervention in international trade. These policies may have defensible national-security or industrial objectives. My purpose is not to adjudicate their merits here. It is to demonstrate how poorly inherited ideological labels describe today’s political-economic realities. When concepts cease to clarify reality, they cease to facilitate serious policy debate and become weapons against political enemies.
The same caution applies to accusations of fascism and dictatorship. There are legitimate reasons to scrutinize executive overreach, attacks on institutional independence, and disregard for constitutional restraints. But America remains fundamentally different from Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia, or Xi’s China. Americans can openly criticize their president, organize opposition, publish dissenting opinions, challenge government actions in court, and vote incumbents out of office. These freedoms are not incidental distinctions; they are defining features of constitutional democracy.
Calling every troubling exercise of executive power fascism diminishes our ability to identify actual authoritarian danger. Conversely, dismissing every concern about democratic erosion as partisan hysteria would be equally irresponsible. Democratic vigilance requires precision, not exaggeration.
The second danger is even greater: Ideological labeling deepens polarization, making rational discussion and effective government increasingly difficult. Once opponents become communists or fascists rather than fellow citizens with different priorities, compromise becomes betrayal and disagreement becomes moral warfare. Questions involving health care, immigration, taxation, industrial revival, national security, or foreign policy are judged less by their practical consequences than by the ideological identity of their advocates. No nation can prosper indefinitely under such conditions, democratic or authoritarian.
Democracy’s distinctive achievement is not that it eliminates disagreements. It provides institutions through which people with competing interests, values, and beliefs can negotiate workable compromises and discover common purposes. Yet contemporary American politics increasingly creates the impression that democracy manufactures division rather than manages it.
This perception has consequences far beyond America’s borders. Many people in China and elsewhere who once looked to American democracy as an inspiring alternative to authoritarian rule now see political paralysis, mutual hostility, and institutional distrust. Authoritarian governments eagerly exploit these images to argue that democracy is inherently dysfunctional.
America’s competition with China is therefore not merely about military strength, industrial capacity, or artificial intelligence. It is also about which political system can produce prosperity, stability, innovation, and public confidence. A divided America weakens its capacity to mobilize national resources, sustain strategic commitments, and persuade others of the advantages of freedom.
American democracy must deliver, not divide. But how can it do so? Not by eliminating ideological differences. The left and right each possess valuable insights. The left emphasizes social protection and fairness; the right emphasizes liberty, responsibility, and the productive power of markets. Their disagreements are natural and often beneficial. The danger begins when either side moves toward extremism, transforming partial truths into absolute doctrines.
Extremism also breeds extremism. Each side points to the other’s excesses to justify its own, creating a vicious cycle in which radicalism becomes mutually reinforcing.
Both Western and Eastern civilizations recognized this danger long ago. The ancient Greek maxim inscribed at Delphi, “Nothing in excess,” expresses a principle of restraint. Confucius’s Doctrine of the Mean similarly teaches that wisdom requires balance, proportion, and judgment appropriate to circumstances. Neither tradition demands passivity or the abandonment of conviction. Both warn against allowing conviction to become fanaticism.
America now needs leaders capable of restoring democratic civility and strengthening the center-right and center-left against their respective extremes. Moderation does not mean splitting every difference. It means defending constitutional principles without compromise while approaching practical problems with intellectual humility, evidence, and a willingness to negotiate.
Nearly a century ago, the influential Chinese intellectual Hu Shih confronted a country devastated by poverty, political fragmentation, and ideological struggle. While the Nationalists championed Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People and the Communists promoted Marxism-Leninism, Hu urged his compatriots: “Talk less about isms, and more about solving problems.” His appeal went largely unheeded. Ideological warfare consumed China, producing decades of suffering whose consequences remain with us today.
America is not China, and its circumstances are profoundly different. But Hu’s warning transcends national boundaries and historical periods. The United States faces urgent problems at home and abroad that cannot be solved by labeling opponents communists or fascists.