As the battle heats up on the Democrats’ voting legislation in the Senate and on the push to change the 60% practical majority rule to ensure its passage, large American corporations are again under pressure to take a political stance (“US Companies Condemn Election Fraud ‘Falsehood’ on January 6 Anniversary,” Financial Times, January 6, 2022). Business for America, a corporate lobby group whose members include PayPay, declared:
We urge all companies to ensure their future donations go to those supporting free, fair, accessible, and secure elections that represent the will of the people.
A hint that Business for America, just as the Business Roundtable, is not defending constitutional democracy (the classical liberal ideal of limited democracy in a free society) is the invocation of “the will of the people.” This expression is a trademark of right-wing and left-wing populists. It has no meaning in a constitutional democracy. Who is “the people”? Fifty percent plus one? Sixty-six percent? The “patriots”? The woke? I elaborated on this approach in a few Econlog posts as well as in an Independent Review article, “The Impossibility of Populism” (Summer 2021). At any rate, it is pretty clear that the lead vocalists in the corporate world are not defending a free society.
One reason is that the vast majority of them don’t know what a free society is. In a Regulation article of last Summer, I wrote:
In his 1973 book Capitalism and the Permissive Society, the late Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan observed that “businessmen can usually be relied upon to defend the indefensible aspects of their activities while giving in to their collectivist opponents on all essentials.”
They are bullied by the woke and caught in debates they don’t understand.
James Buchanan proposed an interesting analysis. He defended a (classical) liberal and Smithian presumption of “natural equality” among individuals and thus opposed the power of the cognoscenti or any other elite. Yet, he emphasized that the maintenance of a liberal society does require citizens to have an understanding of simple principles of social interaction and thus basic economics, or else be willing to “defer to others who do.” (See his Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative [Edward Edgar Publishing, 2005].) If Buchanan is right, the corporate elite is digging its grave or preparing its move to the Nomenklatura class.
I would add that corporations are not obliged to, and should not, choose between wokism and fascism, which are not so different anyway. In their ideological fog, they should focus on what they know, that is, how to efficiently produce the goods and services wanted by individual consumers in all their diversity. The separation of economy and state is a feature, not a bug, of a free society.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Jan 10 2022 at 12:35pm
“opposed the power of the cognoscenti or any other elite.”
Corporations are people. The people who run and/or own the corporations (the ones who will decide on the behavior of a corporation) will be the rich people. You vocally oppose the power of the wealthy who run the corporations but how do you prevent them from having power?
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 10 2022 at 1:44pm
Steve: I oppose corporations and their shareholders or executives having political power. (Whether they are rich or poor: for example, a significant share of corporate capital belongs to pension funds, the beneficiaries of which are not all rich.) The classical-liberal way to do this is to give the state so little power and especially discriminatory power that there is little in terms of privileges that it can grant to corporations or to the rich or to the poor.
Jon Murphy
Jan 10 2022 at 2:07pm
To Pierre’s point, the state should not grant privileges or make it necessary so that firms want/need to band together to lobby for favors. As Adam Smith writes:
(Smith spends the next 4 paragraphs discussing various ways governments make such assemblies against the public interest necessary).
Jose Pablo
Jan 10 2022 at 9:08pm
What “political” power do they (the wealthy) have?
Please be precise since there is a lot of fuzzy thinking regarding this topic.
Phil H
Jan 10 2022 at 11:17pm
“wokism and fascism, which are not so different anyway”
Can you even hear yourself? You often seem to write in a little closed right-wing bubble, but this is taking bizarre opinions too far… Please note, I’m not engaging in debate on this point. I’m just saying, when the person you’re reading has nothing better to say about something he doesn’t like than, “HITLER!” it’s time to walk away. My reading triage here is done.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Jan 11 2022 at 4:26am
Your comment is a verbal analogue to a drive-by shooting.
Pierre doesn’t use the word “fascism” loosely. It’s fair for you to be unfamiliar with his previous discussion; but the proper response is to ask for a reference or reiteration, or at least to state what you believe to be the nature of fascism, and then to contrast it with what you believe to be the nature of wokism.
The allusion to Hitler is simply yours. Many serious scholars are at pains to distinguish National Socialism from fascism; but, even if we take the position that Naziism is one form of fascism, it is clearly not the only form.
Craig
Jan 11 2022 at 8:56am
I can actually provide two very real world examples to illustrate the Professor’s point. The first was TX Republicans seeking to strip the Dallas Mavericks of certain subsidies if the Mavericks did not play the national anthem before games. The second is GM dropping its support for a lawsuit opposing CA’s air regulations. CA has responded to the lawsuit, in part, by no longer buying GM cars.
Perhaps the word ‘corporatism’ might be a better choice.
Jose Pablo
Jan 11 2022 at 9:01am
“You often seem to write in a little closed right-wing bubble”
This is clearly “a way of reading Pierre” (a very dificult to understand way, by the way) and not “the way Pierre writes”.
Unless for you “clasical liberalism” (closing to anarchism sometimes) and “right-wing” are the same thing.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 11 2022 at 10:30am
Jose: You’re right. Somebody who cannot see the difference between (classical) liberalism and the “right wing” would greatly benefit from reading Hayek’s “Why I Am Not a Conservative,” Buchanan’s Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative, or just Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, not to mention the works of more radical libertarians.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Jan 11 2022 at 9:45pm
If we adopt the definition that operationally characterizes most use by progressives and by egalitarian socialists of “right-wing” — opposition to their policies and programmes — then Phil H invoked Hitler about as much as did Pierre. 😉
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 11 2022 at 11:11pm
Daniel: It’s permitted to them. The end justifies the means.
Jose Pablo
Jan 11 2022 at 9:06am
Here is an interesting characterization of wokeism as an ideology (pretty close to a religion).
https://fakenous.net/?p=2729
Following this definition you can discover the abundant similarities between “wokeism” and “fascism” (which, as Daniel was pointing out is a much broader concept that “Hitler”, always a useful “straw man” as you know)
Comments are closed.