A recent survey by the Cato Institute and YouGov paints a troubling picture: 62 percent of Americans aged 18–29 say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism, and 34 percent say the same of communism. This is shocking given that communism is responsible for 100 million deaths worldwide and is rooted in socialism, the same philosophy that spawned both Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s National Socialism. To favor socialism is to flirt with tyranny.
Therefore, it is imperative that libertarians educate more Americans to recognize the socialistic actions of big government and fight against them. As Friedrich Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom, “the rise of fascism and Marxism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.” He also noted that both Mussolini and Hitler started out as socialists.
In the March 2025 survey, Cato/YouGov asked a national sample of 2,000 Americans aged 18 and older about US fiscal policy, including the following: “Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Socialism?” and “Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Communism?”
A total of 43 percent said they have a “favorable” view of socialism, and for those aged 18–29, 62 percent said favorable. For communism, a total of 14 percent said they have a favorable view; however, in the 18–29 group, 34 percent said favorable. That’s about 18 million people. (The findings are estimates, and the poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.54 percentage points.)
In other words, roughly one-third of young Americans say they’re fine with an ideology that has outpaced Nazism in terms of body count. (The Black Book of Communism, Harvard University Press, documents that about 100 million people died in the 20th century because of communism.) In addition to the communist fans, some 32 million young Americans are fine with socialism.
The poll did not define “socialism.” So, it’s unclear whether the respondents view it in the historical way, where the state owns the means of production, or if they see socialism as a modern-day “mixed economy” with cradle-to-grave welfare, price controls, and “fairness” enforced by the state.
As Senator Rand Paul (R‑KY) wrote in The Case Against Socialism (2019), young Americans who identify as socialists don’t even agree on what the term means. Some want government ownership of industries and central planning, and others want heavy regulation, wealth redistribution, and a vast welfare state. However, what unites them is a disdain for capitalism and a preference for collectivism over individualism. This is innate to all forms of socialism.
As Ayn Rand warned in 1944, “Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme—collectivism.” In a 1965 essay, The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus, Rand added that socialism and fascism “both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government—and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail ….”
Commenting on Rand’s remarks in 2016, libertarian scholar George H. Smith said that Rand viewed fascism as “socialism for big business,” and saw both ideologies as “variants of statism.” Even a welfare state falls into that latter category for Rand.
Smith also noted that Rand, echoing Ludwig von Mises, warned of the dangers of a mixed economy, which is what exists in the US.
“A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls” to fix the alleged flaws in capitalism, said Rand. But the controls create economic distortions, which then lead to more controls, and this may “collapse into dictatorship” if the controls are not ended. Mises, similarly, wrote that “all the methods of interventionism are doomed to failure” because they are self-defeating. Some of these methods include price controls on rent and health care, minimum wage laws, and industrial policy.
Faced with the failure of its initial intervention, a government “is not prepared to undo its interference with the market and to return to a free economy,” but instead adds “more regulations and restrictions,” wrote Mises. “Proceeding step by step on this way it finally reaches a point in which all economic freedom of individuals has disappeared. Then socialism of the German pattern, the Zwangswirtschaft [compulsory economy] of the Nazis, emerges.”
That’s not to say that the US is marching into national socialism. But the bipartisan expansion of government intervention—on everything from health care and education to housing and industry—poses a real threat to liberty. As Mises put it, socialism can arrive in installments.
Hayek echoed this concern, writing, “To many who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters the connection between the two systems has become increasingly obvious, but in the democracies the majority of people still believe that socialism and freedom can be combined. They do not realize that democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something utterly different—the very destruction of freedom itself.”
If millions of young Americans don’t know the basic facts about ideas that enslaved nearly half the world and helped launch World War II, how can they make sound decisions about policies—or whom to vote for?
The answer is education. And not the kind dispensed by most high schools, universities, Hollywood scripts, or Netflix documentaries. It must come from those who understand the foundations of liberty.
Many libertarian leaders and institutions, such as the Cato Institute, Reason.com, and Libertarianism.org, are already working to fill this void—using podcasts, books, YouTube videos, internships, and seminars to teach the values of free markets and individual liberty. Programs like Cato’s SPHERE and Cato University connect young people and teachers to these essential ideas.
In the introduction to the 1994 edition of The Road to Serfdom, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman said, “The battle for freedom must be won over and over again. The socialists in all parties to whom Hayek dedicated his book must once again be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men.”