Michael J. Hicks, the “Distinguished Professor of Economics” at Ball State University, says that Donald Trump is moving the United States “closer to socialism than any president in history” and laments that “faced with a textbook definition of socialism from a GOP president, the silence” from Republican politicians “is overwhelming.”
The “textbook definition” that Hicks relies on says “Socialism is a political movement that advocates for government ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods and services.” Supporting his claim that Trump is the “most socialist president ever,” Hicks offers three pieces of evidence: “profit sharing” by Nvidia and AMD, two tech companies that manufacture computer chips; “partial ownership” of Intel, another tech firm; and “promising to do more of the same” with weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin.
Are these moves taking the United States “closer to socialism”? No. Socialism is a system where the working class holds political power, and the economy is planned to meet the needs of the people and the planet. In the United States, billionaire business owners control the political system and the capitalist economy is an unplanned anarchy, where the profits of this or that corporation are prioritized over life, to the detriment of workers and the environment.
Taxes, government ownership of capitalist stocks are not socialist
The Nvidia and AMD chips in question are advanced graphics processing units, nominally similar to ones used in PCs or gaming consoles to render images of video games, but highly specialized for use in AI data centers instead. The Trump administration secured an agreement with both companies, which will pay 15% of the revenue they make selling the chips to China.
The deal is effectively an export tax, paid by the companies to send their chips to buyers in China. The companies were willing to pay, given the fact that it reversed an export ban intended to hamstring China’s development by denying them access to these advanced US-made chips in the name of “national security”.
This same anti-China anxiety is the driving force behind the Intel stock purchase. Intel’s press release announcing the “$8.9 billion investment” quoted Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick as saying the Trump administration “remains committed to reinforcing our country’s dominance in artificial intelligence while strengthening our national security.”
Even more illuminating is that when Lutnick was asked about possible stock purchases in Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Palantir, and other weapons firms, he said that Lockheed Martin is “basically an arm of the U.S. government.” Lockheed Martin is certainly not socialist!
While the government will technically own Intel stocks, the voting power that goes with those shares remains in the hands of the Intel Board of Directors. According to Intel’s SEC filings, “The United States Department of Commerce must vote any shares of common stock held by it in favor of the nominees of and any proposals recommended by [Intel’s] Board of Directors and against any other nomination or proposal not recommended by the Board of Directors.”
Hicks admits that the government bailed out banks, car manufacturers and directed companies to shift production to tanks in wartime. He excuses these as “temporary acts done in crisis.” It’s okay with Hicks to do a little of his so-called “socialism,” so long as we go back to capitalism after the crisis (which was produced by capitalism in the first place) subsides.
Hicks conflates fascism with socialists, who defeated fascism at great cost
In an effort to vilify socialism that does nothing to support his argument, Hicks writes, “Most of the violent death and destruction of the 20th century came under the banner of some flavor of socialism.” He goes further to allege that “some 150 million to 200 million” people died under “the movement in its various forms.”
While he lacks the courage to say so outright, he is clearly conflating the Nazis with the Soviet and Chinese socialists who, 80 years ago, gave their lives by the millions in sacrifice to defeat the Nazis and their fascist allies in World War II. This is a despicable smear of socialists, who were the first targets of the Nazi fascists who openly proclaimed the indefinite detention of communist organizers in the first concentration camp they opened in Dachau in 1933.
Hicks’s distortion of history relies further on debunked and ridiculously inflated numbers, by Robert Conquest and other frauds, of deaths in the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China. Hicks combines these fake numbers with valid ones: tens of millions of people murdered by the Nazis in death camps and tens of millions more soldiers killed in action, most of whom were Soviets and Chinese, and lumps them all together as “victims of socialism.”
It is a disgusting, dishonest slander and disgrace to the memory of the socialist heroes who were murdered at the hands of Nazis or died fighting to protect the world from fascism to call the Nazis “socialists,” and call those martyrs “souls extinguished” by “socialism.”
Trump interventions a sign of capitalist crisis, not socialism
The actions taken by the Trump administration show the capitalist system is in crisis and that the millionaires and billionaires who control the political system are abandoning the “free market” ideology that students are indoctrinated to believe is actually how the economy works. Donald Trump is not a socialist—he is a capitalist business owner, and he is doing the bidding of his fellow capitalists in a desperate bid to halt the rise of China under its socialist leadership.
It’s not surprising that someone who says “the MAGA movement and the Democratic Socialists of America are indistinguishable from one another” is so brazenly wrong about socialism. Hicks, like the Republicans he looks to for leadership, uses “socialism” as a billy club to bash his opponents and to freeze out any consideration of socialism as a serious response to the endless cycle of capitalist crises.
As the threat of another global war, climate catastrophe, and massive job destruction driven by AI and automation loom over the heads of working and oppressed people, socialism—meaning a system where the working class holds political power, and the economy is planned to meet the needs of the people and the planet—represents the only solution that can actually address and end these crises. Socialism deserves serious consideration, not infantile disparagement.
Noah Leininger is an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. In 2022, he was the Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate for State Representative in District 90.
Featured photo: Michael Hicks imposed over an American flag and Soviet flag.