George Orwell, Joy Reid, and the Economics of Fascism

October 9, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

From a wonky economic perspective, fascism is a system based on nominal private ownership but de facto government control.

 

For most people, however, I think George Orwell had the best description.

Fascism is simply something you don’t like, especially if it can be mixed with accusations of authoritarianism or racism.

With this in mind, Joy Reid was recently interviewed by BET. As a former host on MSNBC, she’s definitely a leftist, so almost nothing she said was surprising (read this Fox report on her interview if you want criticism from a right-of-center perspective).

I also was not surprised that she channeled Orwell and described the Trump agenda as being fascist.

But here’s the part that made me laugh.

I have two reactions.

• First, I wish Trump had a serious plan to shrink government, end regulations, and get rid of the income tax.
• Second, that agenda is the opposite of fascism, which is very much a big-government ideology.

Here’s an article from Econlib. Written by Sheldon Richman, it explains the economic component of fascism. Here are some excerpts.

 

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. …Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism. Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. 

Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. …fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. …As with communism, under fascism, every citizen was regarded as an employee and tenant of the totalitarian, party-dominated state.

Sheldon then points out that interventionism is basically a halfway step on the road to fascism.

Fascism is to be distinguished from interventionism, or the mixed economy. …Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without government permission. Levels of consumption were dictated by the state, and “excess” incomes had to be surrendered as taxes or “loans.”

My two cents can be summed up by this adaptation of my philosophy triangle.

I’ve augmented it to make fun of Joy Reid.

I don’t include “interventionism” as a category, but if I did, it would be probably be right beneath “technocratic governance.” So my analysis would be consistent with the Econlib analysis.

P.S. Here’s one final excerpt from Sheldon’s article.

In the United States, beginning in 1933, the constellation of government interventions known as the New Deal had features suggestive of the corporate state. …It is a matter of controversy whether President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was directly influenced by fascist economic policies. Mussolini praised the New Deal as “boldly . . . interventionist in the field of economics,” and Roosevelt complimented Mussolini.

For what it’s worth, there are ample similarities between Mussolini and FDR.