Perspectives on Foreign Policy Part Two: Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, The Myth of American Idealism (New York: Penguin Press, 2024)

Let me restate what I’m doing here. My last blog post was a review of Walter Russell Mead’s Special Providence. Today I will discuss Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson’s The Myth of American Idealism. Why bring together Mead and Chomsky-Robinson? To facilitate a discussion between different perspectives and hopefully produce some insight. Mead represents the thoughtful articulation of a more or less mainstream, relatively positive appraisal of American foreign policy, while Chomsky-Robinson offer a thoughtful leftist critique. 

For those unfamiliar with him, Noam Chomsky is a famous linguist, philosopher, and critic of American foreign policy, whose major works date back to the 1950s and 1960s. Nathan Robinson is the editor in chief of Current Affairs, a left-leaning magazine. Why did they write this book? In the preface to The Myth of American Idealism, Robinson explains the origins and purpose of the book, namely to coauthor a work that would bring together “into a single volume” Chomsky’s “central critiques of U.S. foreign policy.” (Preface, xii). Chomsky’s lifetime of commentary can be daunting, as it ranges across decades of books, articles, and interviews. For those unfamiliar with Chomsky’s critique of American foreign policy it is worth the time to set out the basic principles guiding his argument. This is what Chomsky and Robinson set out to do.

As a starting point, and contrary to what many critics of Chomsky think, he does not claim that the U.S. is uniquely bad or oppressive. Far from it. Rather, the U.S. acts in a manner similar to previous dominant powers. “The United States is very much like other powerful states. It pursues the strategic and economic interests of dominant sectors of the domestic population.” (4-5).

This lack of uniqueness is key to the Chomsky and Robinson critique. Yes, leaders in the US often use the language of Wilsonian idealism (as Mead discusses in his book). But consider the British Empire. Does anyone doubt that its leaders often used lofty, benign, and sweeping rhetoric to defend their decades of global rule? And how seriously do we take those proclamations now?

Many imperial actors, and even leaders of aggressive states actively making war, declare benign intentions—witness Putin today or the heads of the Axis powers during World War II. The authors run through a gamut of world leaders offering lofty language to defend acts of violent conquest. Thus, declarations of benign intent are almost universal and should therefore be seen as largely meaningless. As Chomsky and Robinson bluntly put it, “sensible people pay scant attention to declarations of noble intent by leaders, because they are a universal. What matters is the historical record.” (4).

As Chomsky and Robinson suggest, once you look beneath the public rhetoric and dive into the archive of classified conversations among American statesmen you generally find appeals not to high-minded ideals but to that concept known as the “national interest.” It is a fairly vague concept but one that mainstream accounts tend to take for granted. Again, the authors argue that this is a universal trait of powerful states, both now and in the past.

According to the authors this is precisely where we should start asking questions. For the “term national interest is itself a euphemism, for what is usually meant is the interest of a small sector of wealthy domestic elites.” (7).

This is an essential part of their analysis. Mead, representing a more mainstream perspective in my previous blog, doesn’t really offer a detailed account of how American foreign policy gets made. He discusses prominent policy-makers and gestures as national security elites, but his overall account generally presumes that American democracy works more or less as it should and thus policy tends to reflect the diverse mix of perspectives among the American public. In an insightful chapter late in his book Mead suggests that the foreign policy elite are becoming disconnected from the wider public. What for Mead is a concerning new development is for Chomsky and Robinson a basic, longstanding feature of American politics.

What exactly has this elite-dominated foreign policy looked like? Chomsky and Robinson focus primarily on American foreign policy in the past century, especially since World War II when the U.S. fully embraced its role as successor to the British Empire. Starting during World War II and continuing to today the United States has sought global “military and economic supremacy.” (10).

Why might this be a problem? They note that “discussions of foreign policy are often cool, abstract, and antiseptic.” (12). Yet in practice the stakes are often life and death for real human beings. This is a valuable contribution of the book. By focusing on American interventions abroad, whether overt wars or covert CIA actions, they draw our attention to the real, lived consequences of these policies. A coup in Guatemala leads to decades of brutal military dictatorship and civil war. Real human beings die by the thousands.

But why focus on the United States? Because, “as the global superpower, the U.S. poses unique risks; it is more consequential if a powerful country departs from a moral standard than if a weak one does” (16). This connects to the basic moral standard guiding their analysis: We should focus on American crimes because a) the United States is the global hegemon, so its actions have major consequences, b) we should hold ourselves to the same or higher standards that we hold others, and c) because as Americans we have the most ability to effect the actions of our own government. In their words, “it is helpful, when assessing U.S. conduct, to ask a simple question: How would we judge a given act  if it were performed by a rival power rather than ourselves?” (17).

Their guiding argument is that as Americans we should focus on our own policies. As Americans, we can exercise the most influence on our own government. Yes, we should unequivocally condemn the tyranny of the Chinese Government as it suppresses dissent, and likewise the grotesque imprisonment of anti-war protesters in Russia. But the government we have the most ability to influence is our own. Though oligarchic, America is remarkably free and we have the ability and responsibility to focus our attention on its actions.

In Mead’s typology this is a very Jeffersonian impulse and one that I fundamentally share. We should focus on making America more democratic and draw down our imperial commitments abroad. Unfortunately, as Mead notes in his book, the Jeffersonian perspective is not a dominant one in American foreign policy.

Internal policy documents also reveal a hubristic mindset that should be horrifying in any democracy—namely the assumption that we have the right to interfere anywhere, anytime, for any reason, all across the world. “It is simply assumed that it is U.S. prerogative to decide which leaders we will put up with.” (30). The book is replete with examples of Presidents and Senators simply assuming that we have to right to invade any country we want, whenever we want.

Chomsky and Robinson then provide detailed examples of key moments and elements in the history of American foreign policy. The chapter on the Vietnam War is a horrifying and damning example of what an unjust war looks like. There are also chapters on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Latin American intervention. These chapters in Part One of the book serve as a series of case studies in empire—this is what empire actually involves when you get past anodyne phrases about “intervention” and “regime change.”

Chapter nine examines the domestic power structure in the US and how it produces foreign policy. As they say, “the broad American public has little influence over U.S. foreign policy. In fact, divergence between public opinion and state action is frequently sharp.” (235).

Why? According to Robinson and Chomsky, “in highly unequal countries, the public’s role in decision-making is limited. In the United States, as elsewhere, foreign policy is designed and implemented by small groups who derive their power from domestic sources.” (239). Indeed, there is considerable social science literature on how a small set of wealthy, well-connected elites have the most domestic power. This research ranges from Mills and Domhoff writing in the mid-century to Gilens and Page, Winters, Hacker and Pierson, Ferguson, and other mainstream scholars writing today. It is all well-worth reading. 

The most simple way of stating the principle is that “concentration of wealth yields concentration of power” and, as Piketty and many others have demonstrated, the US is an extraordinarily unequal society with massive concentrations of private wealth. (239). Therefore, public opinion tends to be far removed from foreign policy.

This is a strength of Robinson and Chomsky relative to Mead’s account—they have a much more clear, explicit theory for how foreign policy gets made. It is of course contestable. But compared to Mead’s work, which is vague and impressionistic on this score, Chomsky and Robinson are remarkably concrete and cogent.

Chapter 11 deals with media coverage of American foreign policy. They note that in the US we have tremendous freedom to say what we want. Unfortunately, mainstream media coverage does not actually give voice to a particularly wide range of perspectives. “Major media corporations…reliably reflect the assumptions and viewpoints of U.S. elites. They contain spirited criticism and debate, but only in line with a system of presuppositions and principles.” (272). This is merely a brief introduction to the media critique Chomsky offers in other works like Necessary Illusions and Manufacturing Consent (coauthored with Edward S. Herman). 

The kind of critique undertaken by Chomsky and Robinson can be grim work. They realize that “to ask serious questions about the nature and behavior of one’s own society is often difficult and unpleasant.” (293). But it is necessary, as they argue at the outset of the book. The more common path, however, is just the opposite. “It is cheap and easy to deplore the crimes of others, while dismissing or justifying our own. An honest person will choose a different course.” (294). Chomsky has in other interviews and essays mentioned a famous passage from the New Testament to defend this perspective, in which Jesus says that we should focus on removing the “mote” from our own eyes rather than pointing out the “stick” in someone else’s eye. This is, frankly, a very different impulse from that which tends to guide mainstream foreign policy debate. But in its humility and decency, it is the right one.

Connecting to the previous post on Mead’s Special Providence, are Chomsky and Robinson Jeffersonians, in Mead’s sense? Overall, yes, not in the mild sense that Mead himself endorses but in the more radical Jeffersonian tradition dating back to Mark Twain. Chomsky and Robinson think that Americans, both statesmen and citizens, should focus on making American democracy more democratic, more peaceful, and more humane, setting a positive example for the rest of the world. This is how you promote and improve democracy, not by attempting to impose order on the rest of the world. 

One key point of difference between Mead and Chomsky-Robinson is that Mead thinks the American public is fairly hawkish. I’m skeptical of this point, as are Chomsky and Robinson. Indeed, they cite a large number of opinion polls that demonstrate widespread public support for diplomacy, negotiation, resolving disagreements through the UN, and so on. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that American policymakers pursue wars because they are under intense public pressure to do so. The truth seems to be closer to the opposite, which is exactly what Chomsky and Robinson argue. Namely, politicians engage in concerted publicity campaigns in an effort to drum up popular support for war. And this “support” is often very shallow. In the run up to the Iraq War in 2003 polls showed that a majority of Americans supported military action. But as soon as the war became costly, and the reasons for war were exposed as deceptive, this support collapsed. The lasting unpopularity of the Iraq War not only impacted the elections of 2006 and 2008 but continues to exercise a substantial influence over both parties and the broader culture in America. 

Chomsky and Robinson’s book can make for depressing reading and there are many more components that could be examined. But they end on a hopeful note, that democratic movements, led by ordinary citizens, can change the world for the better. In the case of US foreign policy this would involve a radical rethinking of our role in the world, one that serves the cause of democracy not by force but by example.

Perspectives on Foreign Policy Part One: Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001)

In this two part book review I will first focus on Walter Russel Mead’s Special Providence before turning in part two to Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson’s new The Myth of American Idealism. Why bring together Mead and Chomsky/Robinson? To facilitate a discussion and hopefully produce some insight. Mead represents the thoughtful articulation of a more or less mainstream, relatively positive appraisal of American foreign policy, while Chomsky/Robinson offer a thoughtful leftist critique. 

First, Mead’s book. Mead is a foreign policy scholar who has taught at several universities, written for many journals and magazines, and held positions at the mainstream Council on Foreign Relations. He is also cofounder of the centrist New America Foundation. Although his book Special Providence was published in 2001, and thus does not tackle such fundamental issues as 9/11, the Iraq War, and the more recent global populist turn, it is both a powerful overview of the history of American foreign policy and a remarkably prescient look at developments that were just starting to percolate at the turn of the twenty-first century.

To begin with, Mead says, “The United States has had a remarkably successful history in international relations.” (8). He gives examples of successful maneuvering with and against European powers that date back to the American Revolution and on through the Civil War. Mead notes that “within a generation after the Civil War, the United States became a recognized world power while establishing an unchallenged hegemony in the Western hemisphere.” (8).

This culminates, according to Mead, in a situation where in 2001 “the United States is not only the sole global power, its values inform a global consensus, and it dominates to an unprecedented degree the formation of the first truly global civilization our planet has known.” (10). He then goes on to compare this to many of the failed foreign policies of other powers, from misguided follies to immoral conquests. And this raises important questions: What counts as a successful foreign policy? How might one measure this? What counts as a moral foreign policy? We will return to these evaluative questions later. For now we must ask: Why has American foreign policy been so successful, according to Mead?

Mead sees four traditions of American foreign policy, each named after a key figure in American history: Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jeffersonian, and Jacksonian. Mead’s thesis is that American foreign policy has been remarkably successful through the effective debate, confrontation, and collaboration between these four competing perspectives. Each of the four have made valuable contributions to American successes and have helped to correct for the shortcomings and blindspots of their rivals. What defines each school?

Hamiltonian: This school, named for Secretary of the Treasury and Federalist Papers coauthor Alexander Hamilton, is focused on using American power to maintain a stable international order for trade and free commerce. Historically Hamiltonians used protectionist policies to build strong American industries but over the course of the twentieth century became the key group in American foreign policy pushing for establishing an international capitalist order, through force if necessary.

Wilsonian:  This school, named for President Woodrow Wilson, focuses on spreading democracy and human rights to the countries and peoples of the world, partly through the framework of international law and human rights, partly through armed intervention. Both the Wilsonian and Hamiltonian perspectives are more than willing to bring these imperatives about through military force. They are, more or less, the dominant mainstream perspectives of American foreign policy and empire. 

The Hamiltonian and Wilsonian perspectives are internationalist in focus and built around regular armed intervention in service of their goals. In Mead’s words, “politically the first 140 years or so of American independence were not a quiet time in American foreign relations. Virtually every presidential administration from Washington’s to Wilson’s sent American forces abroad or faced one or more war crises with a great European power.” (17).

In the early pages of the book Mead effectively shows how an active, interventionist foreign policy has been a defining feature of American history, even during the supposedly more isolationist 19th century. And of course in the 20th century, as the US became a great power, it famously intervened in Latin America and elsewhere with regularity.

So what about the other two schools? The Jeffersonian and Jacksonian perspectives are more internally focused and as such have been less dominant within the mainstream of American foreign policy. To simplify, one could say that the Jeffersonian perspective is a sort of leftist view and the Jacksonian a right-populist one, whereas the Hamiltonian and Wilsonian perspectives are both centrist. 

Jeffersonian: This school, named after President Thomas Jefferson, is concerned primarily with expanding democratic freedom at home and harbors considerable worries over the concentration of state and corporate power, not to mention a skepticism of militarism and empire. As Mead says, “Jeffersonians have worried about the ability of large economic concentrations to infringe on popular liberty.” (179). This means they tend to be focused on reducing corporate power at home and promoting more authentic democracy in the United States. Initially Mead resists categorizing the Jeffersonian school as left-wing. After all, there are right and left Jeffersonians but all are anti-authoritarian and anti-interventionist. Think of the Iraq War of 2003 (which began after Mead’s book): it was opposed both by leftists and right-wing libertarians. Jeffersonian’s fundamentally focus on preserving the American experiment in self-government. He calls it a “defensive spirit.” (181). Indeed, “fewer things were clearer to the Jeffersonians than that the growth of the American republic into an intercontinental empire was a bad business all around.” (184). Yes, and this is why Jeffersonians tend to be left-leaning critics of the foreign policy consensus.

Jacksonian: This school, named after soldier and President Andrew Jackson, is generally a folksy, populist perspective of the right, embodied by figures like Pat Buchanan (and now Donald Trump). Whereas conventional Republicans often combined elements of Hamilton and Wilson, the Trump-friendly right is more Jacksonian. He also says it “is less an intellectual or political movement than it is an expression of the social, cultural, and religious values of a large portion of the American public.” (226). The whole chapter, but especially pages 238-240, offers powerful insight into the history of the populist Jacksonian impulse in American life—indeed, it is a stunning depiction of Trump’s populist appeal today.

But as for foreign policy, Mead characterizes it is a form of realism, not overly concerned with international law, norms, or human rights, but rather focused on “honor, concern for reputation, and faith in military institutions.” (245). Jacksonians believe the US “must be vigilant, strongly armed. Our diplomacy must be cunning, forceful, and no more scrupulous than any other country.” (246). They are not isolationists; however, “in the absence of a clearly defined threat to the national interest, Jacksonian opinion is much less aggressive.” (245-246). 

Thus, Jacksonians are not particularly interested in constructing and maintaining a world order. Mead points to opposition to American intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s among both Jeffersonians on the left and Jacksonians on the right. Jeffersonians worry that democracy is undermined by the military and corporate imperatives of empire; Jacksonians worry that we will spend unnecessary blood and treasure mucking about in some place we don’t belong—hence they sometimes team up to oppose action abroad. 

But Jacksonians are not pacifistic. If the US is attacked, like at Pearl Harbor or on 9/11, they can become the most supportive force for military action. In the aftermath of 9/11 neoconservatives were able to mobilize Jacksonian support for the War on Terror. But two decades later Jacksonian opinion seems to have moved back to a reluctance to waste American lives intervening directly in the Middle East.

What is the upshot of this analysis? For Mead, the debate and competition between these four perspectives has led to considerable success in American foreign policy. Here is, in sum, what Mead sees as the fundamental triumph of 20th century American foreign policy: Winning the Cold War and presiding over the international political and economic system as its undisputed leader. “It contained the Soviet Union and brought about the collapse of the European communist system without fighting a nuclear war.” (54). In a sense Mead’s praise of American foreign policy sounds similar to that of David Runciman in The Confidence Trap. Democratic policy can often be complex and look like a mess but democracies tend to muddle through even the worst crises and on to success after success.

What are some criticisms of Mead? The biggest, at least for those of us on the left, is that he too often euphemistically passes over the realities of empire, which sound mild enough when seen through the lens of words like intervention, order, regime change, and the like. The reality is a fair bit uglier. Nearly constant war-making, support for murderous dictators, and interference in other country’s elections are just some of the realities of empire when you peel back the rhetoric of “stability” and “interventions.”

Mead, to his credit, criticizes many elements of European imperialism and certain American injustices, like supporting Pinochet in Chile. But this points to a fundamental difference between the mainstream and the leftist perspective—are these features of American empire, like supporting dictators, overthrowing democracies, etc., regrettable aberrations or systemic features of American foreign policy?

According to Mead, the idealistic Wilsonian perspective, but really all mainstream parts of American foreign policy, “see Wilsonian ideals as defining the norm of American foreign policy, and interpret its other aspects as unfortunate and temporary deviations from it.” (171). Yes, this does seem to be the dominant narrative in the US. But how does it relate to reality? When you actually start to run through the many military interventions in American history they start to look less like aberrations and more like fundamental features of maintaining imperial order. And if overthrowing governments we dislike (including democracies), waging regular wars, nurturing a massive national security state, sending weapons abroad, and occupying countries, are the everyday cost of empire, they demand a serious (and morally informed response). This Mead largely fails to do. And it is here that the leftist critique of American foreign policy makes it case. (We will explore these questions in detail in the Chomsky/Robinson book review).

How does Mead see foreign policy? His account of American foreign policy is generally idealist, in that competing schools of thought seem to be the biggest drivers. Yes, he recognizes that there may be economic factors, competing interests, elite machinations, and so on, but seems to suggest American foreign policy is primarily the outcome of a pluralistic competition of ideas among elites.

In his words, “each of the four schools that together represent the American foreign policy debate makes distinct contributions to national power, and each is well matched with the others—capable of complementing one another and of flexibly combining in many ways to meet changing circumstances.” (311). And this is a powerful and evocative way to explain and understand that history.

He finishes with an assessment of how the foreign policy elite has become increasingly out of touch with ordinary Americans and how this may have consequences in the future. For a book published in 2001 it has some prescient insights into the budding populist rebellion that was then still lurking beneath the surface.

It’s a well-written and thoughtful assessment throughout. But as mentioned above, the account is also somewhat amoral. Mead recognizes that the US makes some strategic mistakes but this in itself is not a moral critique. When he does recognize that the US has done something morally wrong it seems like these policies are dismissed as minor departures from a broader trend of (relatively unproblematic) success. But the critique from the left presses much harder here: Was the Vietnam War, for instance, a regrettable mistake or an unjust war? How one answers the question is not a trivial matter.

A different concern, regarding his typology:  Where do neocons fit into his four-part scheme? How about the broader category of national security hawks? These seem to combine elements of Hamilton, Wilson, and Jackson, but is this the most helpful way to see them? These questions matter, though I leave them hanging for now.

Overall Mead is most interested in an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the four schools he identifies and less in a condemnation or celebration of any school. As for his own opinion, he concludes by defending a sort of chastened, non-leftist Jeffersonian perspective, one that embraces American world dominion but seeks to do so at the least possible cost and with as little military intervention as possible. 

In part two I will turn to Chomsky and Robinson’s new book, which offers a leftist alternative to Mead. In that review I will also consider whether their perspective can fit into Mead’s four-part schema, most likely as a radical left Jeffersonian argument, one very distinct from Mead’s. 

Review of Grace Blakeley, Vulture Capitalism (New York: Atria Books, 2024)

Grace Blakeley, a leftist political commentator, has a new book out titled Vulture Capitalism. Blakeley’s goal with this book is to provide a portrait of how capitalism, particularly its most recent neoliberal variant, operates in the real world. Her main thesis is that capitalism, contrary to the claims of defenders like Milton Friedman, is not characterized by the free actions of relatively equal individual decision-makers. Rather, capitalism in the real world creates a society that is dominated by the interests of the small number of people who control the capital. Blakeley makes a compelling case for this leftist thesis.

Blakeley begins by asking why, since those of us in democratic, capitalist societies are supposed to be free, we so often feel unfree. As she says, “this sense of unfreedom is grounded in the deep disparities of power that exist within capitalist societies, many of which are completely invisible…life under capitalism means life under a system in which decisions about how we work, how we live, and what we buy have already been made by someone else. Life under capitalism means living in a planned economy, while being told you are free.” (p. IX.). Her task in the book is to illustrate the many ways in which our lives are unfree in a capitalist world.

Because of this, “the question we should ask ourselves, then, is not whether planning is possible in a capitalist economy. Instead, we should ask where planning is taking place, how it is being executed, and whose interests it is serving.” (p. X).

Blakeley effectively demonstrates how large corporations plan and exert enormous economic power through investment decisions, employment practices, market dominance, and more. This world we now live in can be summed up as follows: “A world of pervasive corporate power is one characterized by low investment, low productivity, low wages, and high inequality.” (p. XIII).

She also stresses the point, as political philosopher Elizabeth Anderson has recently made so well, that whereas we have democratic freedom in the political realm, at work we are in an unaccountable dictatorship. (In addition to Anderson, this argument has been made by many. See, for instance, work by Robert Dahl, Carole Pateman, and Richard Wolff). I also plan to expand on this point in a future double book review of Elizabeth Anderson’s Hijacked and David Frayne’s The Refusal of Work.

In chapter one Blakeley sets out the key part of her argument, namely that capitalism, in the real world, is defined not by free markets but primarily by corporate power and its intertwining with state power. As she notes, “a corporation with significant market power can make decisions that have far-reaching implications for the lives of its workers, the choices of consumers, and even factors like the direction and rate of innovation, or the health of the planet. And all these decisions are made with little or no democratic accountability.” (p. 13).

As Blakeley recognizes, this goes against the grain of much mainstream economic thinking. “After all, free-market economies aren’t supposed to be defined by big inequalities of power. Corporations are supposed to be restrained by the market mechanism” (p. 15). But in the real world things work differently. Blakeley uses the example of Boeing, a massive corporation whose cost-cutting led to hundreds of deaths, to illustrate how many a large corporation actually operates. She rightly notes that “Boeing’s executives can afford to ignore the short-term pushes and pulls of the market precisely because their firm is so large and well connected—the ability to ignore market signals is precisely what market power is.” (p. 16).

But what about the neoliberal turn? Didn’t the election of Thatcher in the UK, Reagan in the US, and similar leaders elsewhere lead to the shrinking of the public sector? Isn’t this what leading neoliberal thinkers like Friedman and Hayek wanted? In the introduction Blakeley summarizes the Keynes-Hayek debate and how by the 1970s the neoliberals had won. Yet, “we live in societies that are just as tightly regulated, surveilled, and controlled as those of several decades ago.” (p. XI). Why?

Because, in practice, while the neoliberal turn transformed the state (and broader conceptions of politics), it didn’t necessarily shrink the state. This is an important point. In Blakeley’s words, “cutting public services doesn’t create more space for free markets, it simply encourages states to rely more on unaccountable organizations like McKinsey to do their dirty work for them.” (p. 58).  She elaborates later on the same page: “The close links between the public and private sectors seen during the pandemic demonstrate the futility of attempting to draw a stark line between state and corporate power in capitalist societies, especially during crises. Throughout the pandemic, states and firms worked together to augment their power and wealth—and as they did so it became harder to see where the private sector ended and the state began.” (p. 58).

This happened in part because neoliberalism, at its heart, was and is antidemocratic: “The idea was to replace democratic government with technocratic governance—to replace government by the people with rule by technocratic elites.” (p. 35). (There is a huge literature on neoliberalism: a few good starting points can be found in work by Wendy Brown, Quinn Slobodian, David Harvey, and Jamie Peck).

Blakeley uses the example of the US Federal Reserve to show how in contemporary capitalism an undemocratic but supposedly neutral, expert body actually takes actions that serve corporate interests, from quantitative easing to raising interest rates, done largely at the behest of big finance and the broader corporate world. For example, the US Federal Reserve kept interest rates too high for nearly three decades (until the 2008 recession) leading to lower wages for workers and unnecessarily high unemployment rates. In addition, “because the law is so central to the operation of the financial system, financial institutions spend a great deal of time and money lobbying legislators and regulators to influence that system.” (p. 130). 

Blakeley uses many examples, from Google to Amazon to Ford, to provide evidence for her compelling summation—“in the real world, corporate owners and managers have power—power that derives from their control over their workers, their ownership of the physical resources used in the production process, and their close relationships with states. Corporations are a form of despotic private government.” (p. 82).

The example of Greensill Capital in the UK offers another case study of the ways in which large investors exert power over state actors. “The events surrounding the rise and fall of Greensill Capital demonstrate quite clearly that the idea of a fixed boundary between public and private—state and market—has always been a fantasy…the link between the public and private sectors have become so close that it is hard to know where one ends and the other begins.” (p. 157). Again, this echoes arguments from political theorists Sheldon Wolin and Wendy Brown (whose excellent work Blakeley draws on).

One obvious rejoinder to Blakeley would be to ask what alternatives to neoliberal capitalism would look like. After all, the model of centrally planned economies from the twentieth century isn’t exactly enticing. And on this question it will be difficult to fully persuade the skeptics. As Thatcher famously said about capitalism in the 1980s, “there is no alternative.” Thatcher didn’t literally mean there were no alternatives—just that the main alternative to neoliberalism, Communist Bloc central planning, was worse. But Blakeley, and many others on the left, show that there are alternatives. 

Chapter 8 draws on a wide range of local experiments in democratic economic control, from worker-run firms to city government projects like participatory budgeting, to flesh out in some detail what these alternatives might look like. As Blakeley and others on the democratic left like myself argue, these cases of democratic economics stand as real-world counter-examples to the grim choice between Soviet-style central planning and neoliberal capitalism. Contrary to Thatcher and Hayek, we do not have to settle for only those two choices. Thankfully, “the local-level examples of democratic planning outlined [in Chapter 8] provide the foundations on which the shift to a democratic economy will be based. Not only do they show what is possible, they also help to engage and politicize people in a project of collective social transformation.” (p. 240).

To summarize Blakeley, capitalism is not characterized by free markets but by the dominance of capital. The occurs in several ways. First, within the workplace itself, where workers must submit to their superiors as long as they are on the clock. Second, in investment and production decisions made by big corporations and rich private investors. Third, through the complex and widespread interconnections between capital and the state.

Obviously, I think Blakeley’s framing is largely correct, and one finds good elaboration of these points in the work of sociologists Vivek Chibber and Erik Olin Wright, and political theorists Sheldon Wolin, Wendy Brown, and Tom Malleson. But one should also read and engage with the alternative perspectives: read some of the great free market writers, like Friedman, Hayek, Von Mises, Sowell. And judge for yourself. It is a credit to Blakeley’s Vulture Capitalism that it does just this, engaging with prominent exponents of neoliberal capitalism and showing where they go wrong.