A progressive in good standing, Representative Ro Khanna is one of the last people you’d expect to see singing capitalism’s praises. Moreover, one of the last places you’d expect to see paeans to the dynamism of markets is in the pages of the New York Times. But there California Democrat was, making some sense.
Asked by his savvy interviewer, David Marchese, if there is an inherent contradiction in the phrase “progressive capitalism,” Khanna perhaps surprised Times readers by confessing that there, in fact, is.
“I’m for taxing the rich more, but there has to be a focus on economic production — on how do we grow the pie?” the congressman said. “Not just redistribution but giving more people the opportunity to create wealth.” But what does Khanna mean by “production?” Is his idea of economic dynamism the subsidization of otherwise unviable green-energy boondoggles? To an extent, yes. But apparently, not exclusively.
Khanna devoted extensive attention to the revitalization of America’s domestic steel industry, which hasn’t aged well since the interview’s publication last Friday. According to Reuters, Monday’s announcement that Japan’s Nippon Steel had inked a deal to purchase U.S. Steel represents “a bet that U.S. Steel will benefit from the spending and tax incentives in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill.” Hardly an outcome dependent on market forces, nor one that those who harp on the menace posed by global markets would tout.
Nevertheless, Khanna’s general deference to the preferability of market-oriented economic growth is a positive step. The problem he encounters in popularizing his outlook is that his fellow progressives disagree, and he knows it.
Can American progressivism achieve its “majoritarian aspirations” if its “more fiery members” remain the “face” of the movement, Marchese asked. Having already name-checked some of those more “fiery members,” Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, Khanna knew precisely who his interlocutor was talking about. And that’s when Khanna blew it.
“I think you can’t have a majoritarian progressive coalition without the fire and without some of the extraordinary members of Congress who are reaching young people and mobilizing them,” he replied. What a perfect illustration of the conundrum facing both of America’s political coalitions today, but progressives in particular.
Sure, Khanna admits, we know what policies work for the most people, and sound policy is good politics. The only problem is the biggest fundraisers in the coalition steadfastly oppose sound policy and, therefore, good politics.
Capitalism is “at its core” a system that maximizes the “absolute pursuit of profit at all human, environmental, and social cost” and is, therefore, “not a redeemable system,” said Ocasio-Cortez. It is synonymous with oligarchy, in her view, incompatible with general prosperity and even “peace.”
Omar seems to agree — at least, in broad strokes. “As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate this inequality,” she said. “We must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression, wherever we find it.”
“I respect them,” Khanna said when Marchese brought up the most dogmatic members of his caucus. Fine, but does he agree with them? Khanna declines to say one way or the other. The congressman doesn’t want to pick fights that he is sure to lose. But the fact that he seems to know who would come out on top in an intra-progressive debate over the virtue of wealth generation does elucidate the progressives’ dilemma.