by Kevin Lively
“-isms” are dangerous things. Weighty ideologies with wide sweeping narratives packed into a neat little bundle, whose slogans are repeated ad-nauseam until the word itself becomes the message and any empirical weight the narrative may have had recedes into the background. Capitalism, Marxism, Constitutional Originalism, Fascism, Liberalism, Socialism, Anarchism, Statism or Nihilism. Thinking in such terms, or worse self-identifying with them, is often the death knell of actual thought. Much more ominously: action in defense of the ideology gains a higher moral prerogative than the consequences of the action itself. The only reasonable course in drawing inspiration from such streams of thought is to choose to consciously grapple with the inherent messiness of the fact that no fixed system of beliefs will ever offer permanent solutions in a human society living on an exponential technological slope. Looking at population growth from a Malthusian perspective, an English lord who died almost a hundred years before the discovery of penicillin, seems almost as daft as criticizing labor relations in China for being Communist, where it doesn’t seem like the workers have much control over the means of production.
A striking aspect of very strong “-ism” people is how they tend to consciously or unconsciously mirror their supposed ideological rivals. For example, one of the best sources of quantitative Marxist analysis on wealth and power in society is the leading business newspaper the Financial Times (FT); with the caveat that all the values are reversed. This point is repeatedly brought up by the hosts of the alternative media outlet Novara Media who alternate between self-identifying as either Socialist or Communist, yet whose diverse roster of guests on their Downstream podcast from across the political spectrum almost all concur that FT is the world’s leading source of news. For college students, maybe these “-isms” are not so dangerous, unless they happen to hold green-cards and their “-isms” run afoul of the present US administration. The real danger to society at large is when people wielding inordinate amounts of power and influence and who, crucially, are unaccountable to the public, are true believers in one “-ism” or another.
History’s charnel houses, in particular those of the 20th century, are replete with (typically men) wielding “-isms”. China’s Great Leap Forward, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, the killing fields of the eastern front in WWII, and, let’s be frank, the International-Realism driving Nixon and Kissinger’s carpet bombing of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Of course there are degrees to the impact that any ideology can have on society. In more or less functioning democratic societies, where centers of power are accountable to the population and the capacity for violence against the domestic population is weakened, the latitude for catastrophic decision-making by people at nerve centers of influence is locally reduced. Note that when I say centers of power, I mean this in a broad sense. This can mean agglomerations of economic capital which control large swathes of a society’s capacity to generate material goods, such as energy, raw resources, or digital infrastructure, i.e. corporations or private billionaires. It can also mean the state and its monopoly over violence, a monopoly which it sometimes allows to be devolved into private hands as I mentioned in my previous column.
The impact which “-isms” have on the populations of western post-war democracies takes on a fundamentally different character than the horrors I listed above. This is with thanks to our ancestors who fought for the right that government cannot impose unchecked violence on most of us (police brutality and incarceration rates for non-whites being a glaring exception in the US). The impact of powerful people wielding ideology in the west is more relegated to the violence of preventable death, or systematic policy failure, for example the roughly 190,000 excess deaths per year due to the US healthcare system. The tools by which they are enforced exist often in the realm of argumentation, persuasion or outright lies. Since these are the types of societies which I and many of you are a part of at this present moment, the manifestation of ideology within power centers in such systems is of critical importance to us. Furthermore, given the dis-inhibition on violence with which, for example, the US, France and the UK act on foreign populations, those among us who would not have atrocities performed in our name should also take note.
Take for example Margret Thatcher in England. She quite famously said “there is no such thing [as society]! There are individual men and women and there are families. . .”. Now, this is a highly ideological statement, from a highly ideological woman (see it’s not just men!). Thatcher’s free-market ideology, sourced from the likes of Friedrich Hayek, Ludiwg von Mises and Milton Friedman asserted that markets were the ultimate determinant of value, that poverty was caused by personal and not societal or economic failings, that public ownership of infrastructure such as water and rail transport or interference in housing prices were anathema to a purer vision of how society should be organized. After attaining control of her enemy, the government, in a democratic election, she set about enforcing her ideology upon society. The effects have been long debated, but among them was an increase in child poverty from 13% in 1979 to 34% in 1991 after she stepped down, due to unemployment and cuts to benefits. In contrast, directors of a “quite typical” City of London bank, Morgan Grenfell, went from earning an average of £45,000 a year in 1979 to £225,000 in 1986 (Vinen. R. Thatcher’s Britain. The Politics and Social Upheaval of
the 1980s, pg. 183).
As I pointed out in my first column, across numerous sociological metrics, the USA also experienced massive shifts in well-being for large segments of the population ranging from life expectancy, to job security to income inequality, while the wealth and income of the upper quintiles diverged from the rest of society. These changes started to show themselves in the 1980s and as I wrote previously, seem to have been the consequence of a conscientious and quasi-unanimous reorientation of public policy across political parties in response to an “excess of democracy” which had been developing in the 1970s. Last time I sketched the liberal-internationalist perspective to this dreadful excess of democracy. Now I will turn to the reactionary-libertarian response, and hope to point to how many aspects of our current political situation arise from the execution of the plan it laid out.
Quite infamous among certain circles, the Powell Memorandum, dated August 23, 1971, was sent by Lewis F. Powell Jr. to the Chairman of the Education Committee at the US Chamber of Commerce. In it Mr. Powell, a corporate lawyer, whom a few months after its writing would be nominated by Nixon to the Supreme Court, laid out what can be best summarized as a manifesto against what the title of the memo called an “Attack on [the] American Free Enterprise System”. In it he states that:
“No thoughtful person can question that the free enterprise system, variously called capitalism [or] the profit system is under broad attack [by those who prefer] socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism).”
Amongst the evidence which he presents for this thesis, in addition to some Milton Friedman quotes, Powell cites an article in Fortune magazine interviewing Ralph Nader. Most people now may vaguely remember Nader as the third party candidate which threw the 2000 Presidential Election to Bush, but in the 1960s and 70s he was a force to be reckoned with, a “legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans” in Powell’s words, and someone who also came up in the Trilateral Commission study from my last column. In the quoted article, Nader is cited as saying
“a great many corporate executives belong in prison – for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise, poisoning the food supply with chemical additives and willfully manufacturing unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer.”
Powell then lays out the campaign which should be undertaken to fend off such attacks, and I do mean a strategic campaign. The document is divided into section headers like
- “What to do about the campus”
- Answer: fund faculty and speakers which defend capitalism.
- “What can be done about the public”
- Answer: ‘monitor national television networks in the same way that textbooks should be kept under surveillance’.
- “The neglected political arena”
- Tactics: ‘educate’ the public and ‘assiduously cultivate’ political power to be used ‘aggressively and with determination’.
- “Neglected opportunity in the courts”
- Answer: ‘with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change’.
- “A more aggressive attitude”
- That is: there should be ‘no hesitation to attack’ people like Nader who ‘openly seek destruction of the system’.
Powell concludes with a message which may sound very familiar to the US audience:
“[…] the contraction and denial of economic freedom is followed inevitably by governmental restrictions on other cherished rights. It is this message, above all others, that must be carried home to the American people.”
Now, some (inverted) Marxist screed being sent off to the Chamber of Commerce, even if it was written by a future Supreme Court justice, could potentially be dismissed as a dalliance in hobbyist political writing by a bored lawyer who should probably have been touching more grass. That could be the case, if it wasn’t for the organized and systematic response which took place across the US business community, spearheaded by the Chamber to bring these words to action. Fascinating investigative journalism conducted by The Lever has uncovered details about the “Powell Memo Task Force”, which the Chamber organized, and the cadre of actors which came together to implement this plan. One such meeting which took place at Disney World (of all places) had executives from JC Penny, 3M, the American Medical Association, GM and deans from multiple universities taking part. Another meeting occurring simultaneously in Dallas (which makes more sense) had none other than Roger Ailes the future founder of Fox News in attendance, who spoke on how advertisers could exert influence on TV programming.
The memo was xeroxed and sent throughout corporate boardrooms across America, landing in the lap of Charles Koch, an inveterate idealogue and billionaire, who went on to found the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the American Enterprise Institute and Americans for Prosperity (AFP). These foundations exist under the umbrella of multiple charitable foundations which by now give out well over $100 million annually for supporting scholars and educating the public. Such “education” efforts, at least in 2009, took the form of the AFP’s national director of policy sitting down with the prominent conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck on Fox News to discuss the conspiracy of global warming, and the AFP coordinating with Tea Party organizers to prop up primary challengers to Republicans such as Trey Gowdy who is now a Fox News host (from Kochland pgs 439 and 451.).
CEOs like the head of Coors, the beer company, started the Heritage Foundation precisely because of this initiative. The Heritage Foundation played a pivotal role in the Reagan administration, and coordinated the Project 2025 initiative. According to Vice President J.D. Vance “The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.” CBS president Aurthur Taylor apparently wrote how the Powell memo spurred him to push his journalists to be friendlier to business. Does this sound familiar to what Jeff Bezos instructed his staff at the Washington Post to orient their opinion pages towards last month?
John Olin, the CEO of a aluminum chlorine and sodium hydroxide manufacturing company, was present at the Disney meeting, and subsequently started a foundation which gave out $370 million to conservative think tanks, media outlets and law programs at universities. One such institution was the Federalist Society, whose present leader Leonard Leo has said “We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious”. This group has been overwhelmingly influential in shaping the American judiciary. Five of the sitting supreme court justices were at one time affiliated. The 124 judge positions held vacant by the intervention of Mitch McConnell by the end of Obama’s presidency were seized as an opportunity by this organization to put forward suggestions. One ideological trend associated with the Federalist society is the unitary executive theory, which in some of its manifestations asserts inordinate power to the president to exert sole control over the executive branch away from legislative oversight, a philosophy which we appear to be de-facto drifting into.
The Business roundtable, a collection of CEOs who lobby and advise the President (cited as “Obama’s closest ally in the business community”) was formed in 1972 and took part in followup meetings in 1974 held by the Chamber. This meeting discussed holding nationwide symposia and conferences to spread the good word and tactics on how to coordinate media outreach. Although it may seem quaint by today’s standards, Bart Cummings, a member of the Advertising Council, organized a “Public Service Announcement” campaign to “improve public understanding and awareness of the [American economic] system”, a campaign which in other times would be called propaganda, pioneered in America. This was nothing new to corporate America which in the early 50s was spending $100 million on advertising for their public and employee relations budgets according to Fortune magazine editor William H. Whyte Jr, according to this book, page 401. By 1976 corporations had agreed to pay “$2.5 million in advertising costs while Newspapers, magazines, television and radio outlets had promised to donate $100 million of free ad space and air time”. Efforts included printing and shipping 100,000 20-page primers on economics with Peanuts comic strip illustrations at government expense. With apologies to any “It’s a Wonderful Life” fans, even actor Jimmy Stewart got in on the campaign, narrating a 20 minute propaganda film extolling the virtues of free-market capitalism and complaining that “government bureaucracy is becoming a paternalistic monopoly that is burying us in paperwork and red tape”.
Now, half a century later, what are the effects of this coordinated and ongoing campaign of ideologically charged propaganda which the public has been subjected to? According to a 2010 study, much of the US population which receives some direct benefit from the government, is unaware that this comes from the government, including 43% of unemployment insurance recepients, and 40% of Medicare recpients reporting that they have “not used a government social program”. The results shown is this table should be sufficient to blunt the humor of the previous protest sign.
I would argue that the key problem of the free-market ideology and the society it has created now is one of ownership, responsibility and accountability. Charles Koch, before he learned to hide his ideology behind a web of think tanks, wrote in 1978 in a magazine titled Libertarian review, that
“We have accepted the fallacious concept that the corporation has a broad ‘social responsibility’ beyond its duty to its shareholders. We have been made to feel ashamed of private ownership and profits, and have been hoodwinked into characterizing government regulation as ‘virtuous’ and in the ‘public interest.’ As a typical example, the Advertising Council, backed by most of the major U.S. corporations, goes so far as to describe regulation as, ‘the promotion of fair economic competition and the protection of public health and safety.’ What simple-minded nonsense!”
In a generous reading, one could argue that immediately after WW2 when 93% of stocks were owned by private households in the USA, such a philosophy would be compatible with democratic norms of public accountability and oversight on the primary concentrations of wealth and economic activity. However, in today’s economy, households own only 38% of the circulating stock, and the majority of that ownership is concentrated in the upper quintiles. Thus the notion that centers of economic decision making are only accountable to their share holders is hardly compatible with meaningful public participation in the material aspects of society. Furthermore, given that the top 10% of households account for 49.7% of consumer spending, allowing decision making to rest entirely with markets will almost inevitably mean that material interests will align more with 10-20% of the population.
In Germany, my adopted home, it’s written into the constitution that
“Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good”.
These are two very powerful sentences, deep in the modern German psyche. It is worth a moment to contrast their import to the above quote from Koch. In US law, property is defined partially in terms of the right of exclusion, i.e. preventing others from using or profiting from it. The phrase “Eigentum verpflichtet” – property entails obligations – I think, has a dual meaning which US society can learn from today. The first is the notion that the uses of property should serve the public good. If we believe in responsible citizenship, and if the concept of nationalism holds any real weight beyond motivating violence abroad, then the fruit of our labors should go to help our fellow citizens and strengthen our society, even if we limit ourselves to the construct of nation-states. The second is a negative reading. If property obligates service to society, then a lack of ownership implies a lack of responsibility. Home ownership for instance has been found to increase community participation and participation in local elections, for obvious reasons. If by contrast increasing numbers of households are disconnected from the profits of corporations which find increasingly elaborate ways to avoid contributing to society by taxes, if the median wealth of renters remains 44 times smaller than that of home owners, if the population is deliberately kept in ignorance about the equalizing and societally supportive role one of the few democratically accountable organizations, the government, performs, then the population has dwindling reason to remain invested in abstract notions of democracy, or god forbid even human rights.
Regardless of which “-ism” you may subscribe to in today’s shifting maelstrom of political orientation, I hope that we can nonetheless find enough common ground to come together and avoid the worst of the excess of unaccountable power.
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