Socialism Is Back In Fashion — And Both Parties Are Wearing It.
Democratic socialists swept New York, a socialist is poised to run Britain, and the man in the Oval Office wants federal stakes in AI. When both wings start eyeing government ownership, the portfolio question stops being about ideology and starts being about where the heavy hand lands.
Capital Wealth Daily · Analysis by Sean Anees Saifi · June 26, 2026
When the state wants a seat at the cap table, it’s a positioning question, not a politics one.
A Trend On Three Continents
Greg Ip’s Capital Account column this week makes a claim that should land in every retirement plan, not just on the op-ed page: government ownership of private companies is back in fashion. Democratic socialists swept two New York City primaries — all but locking up November — with Washington, D.C. and Seattle trending the same direction. Across the Atlantic, socialist ex-Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is poised to become Britain’s next prime minister after Keir Starmer said he’d resign. A Cornell historian calls it the “fourth wave” of nationalization in a century, and from Indonesia to Belgium the idea is, in Ip’s word, “in vogue.”
The Part That Isn’t Partisan
Here’s the twist that makes this more than a left-wing story. Ip argues the wave is bipartisan — he sees “little practical difference” between Bernie Sanders’s socialism and the state capitalism the Trump administration practices. Both want the federal government to take direct stakes in major AI companies. One side calls it economic justice and the other calls it strategic competition, but when you strip the labels off, both end at the same destination: Washington holding equity in the companies your index fund already owns.
For a retiree, that matters more than the rhetoric. A government that owns a piece of a business is a government with a reason to set its prices, protect its jobs, and steer its capital — and those decisions rarely line up with maximizing the dividend you were counting on. The risk isn’t that the country turns socialist overnight; it’s that the regulatory hand gets heavier in the specific corners where it tends to land.
When both wings want a stake in your companies, the question isn’t which party wins — it’s which sectors get a politician sitting on their cap table.
Where The Hand Usually Lands
History is fairly predictable about its targets. Utilities, water, energy, and anything stamped “strategic” are the perennial nationalization candidates, because they’re essential, local, and politically irresistible. That’s the argument for favoring cash-flow durability and genuine pricing power over assets whose fate hinges on a politician’s mood — and for spreading the book across geographies, so no single capital can rewrite the rules on your whole sleeve at once. Owning the world broadly here isn’t paranoia; it’s just reading the room on three continents at the same time.
What This Means For The Book
This is why the book leans on companies that earn their keep from cash flow and pricing power rather than on a story a government could rewrite. The names most exposed to a heavy hand — pure-play domestic utilities and water in a single jurisdiction — are exactly the ones we size carefully and diversify around, pairing them with integrated energy and global businesses whose revenue doesn’t depend on one capital’s politics. The goal isn’t to predict which party takes the stake; it’s to make sure no single political outcome can break the income stream. Geographic diversification stops being a slide in the deck and becomes the actual hedge.
One Thing To Keep In View
State ownership is rarely the end of the story — it’s a phase. The same British Steel was nationalized, privatized, renationalized, and re-privatized four separate times in 36 years. For a long-term holder that revolving door is its own risk: assets that keep changing owners tend to underinvest, and the dividend is usually the first thing to go when the politics flip. Own the cash flow you can see, not the one that depends on who’s in office.
Themes & Tickers In This Article
ThemeNationalization — the “fourth wave,” now bipartisan
Want to talk about where a theme like this does — and doesn’t — belong in your plan? Bring your statement; we translate the headline into a position-level decision.
