Dynamism as a Public Philosophy

The populist turn of the American right over the past decade has created a policy affinity, if not an ideological one, between nationalist conservatives and mainstream progressives. Both camps are energized by a moral narrative about the injustices of corporate greed and the failures of the elite, which expresses itself through support for industrial policy, worker protections, family allowances, trust-busting, and redistributing wealth to bolster working-class wages and living conditions.

This turn has resulted in a groundswell of support for a kind of benevolent statism. Its rationale usually involves a critique of the disruption wrought by dynamism in an unfettered free market. Understood in large part as Schumpeterian creative destruction, dynamism is considered by nationalist conservatives to be the culprit behind insecurity for workers and stagnation for communities. Their desire to improve protections for workers is usually accompanied by serious skepticism of the entrepreneurial ethic, or at least the unqualified celebration of that ethic.

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