Book review - Democracy in Chains: James McGill Buchanan’s vision of totalitarian capitalism
Nancy MacLean: Democracy
in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Reviewed by George Monbiot
His prescription was a “constitutional revolution”: creating irrevocable restraints to limit democratic choice... He aimed, in short, to save capitalism from democracy.... Murray Rothbard, at the Cato Institute that Koch founded, had urged the billionaire to study Lenin’s techniques and apply them to the libertarian cause... Between them, they began to develop a programme for changing the rules... The papers Nancy MacLean discovered show that Buchanan saw stealth as crucial. He told his collaborators that “conspiratorial secrecy is at all times essential”.
It’s the missing
chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century. To read
Nancy MacLean’s new book, Democracy
in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for
America, is to see what was previously invisible. The history
professor’s work on the subject began by accident. In 2013 she stumbled across
a deserted clapboard house on the campus of George Mason University in
Virginia. It was stuffed with the unsorted archives of a man who had died that
year whose name is probably unfamiliar to you: James McGill Buchanan. She says
the first thing she picked up was a stack of confidential letters concerning
millions of dollars transferred to the university by the billionaire Charles Koch.
A New History of the Right Has Become an Intellectual Flashpoint
It’s red meat for leftists, but how does it stand up as a piece of research?
Her discoveries in
that house of horrors reveal how Buchanan, in collaboration with business
tycoons and the institutes they founded, developed a hidden programme for
suppressing democracy on behalf of the very rich. The programme is now
reshaping politics, and not just in the US. Buchanan was strongly
influenced by both the neoliberalism
of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and the property supremacism of
John C Calhoun, who argued in the first half of the 19th century that freedom
consists of the absolute right to use your property (including your slaves)
however you may wish; any institution that impinges on this right is an agent
of oppression, exploiting men of property on behalf of the undeserving masses.
James Buchanan brought
these influences together to create what he called public
choice theory. He argued that a society could not be considered free unless
every citizen has the right to veto its decisions. What he meant by this was
that no one should be taxed against their will. But the rich were being
exploited by people who use their votes to demand money that others have
earned, through involuntary taxes to support public spending and welfare.
Allowing workers to form trade unions and imposing graduated income taxes were
forms of “differential or discriminatory legislation” against the owners of
capital. Any clash between
“freedom” (allowing the rich to do as they wish) and democracy should be
resolved in favour of freedom. In his book The Limits of
Liberty, he noted that “despotism may be the only organisational
alternative to the political structure that we observe.” Despotism in defence
of freedom.
His prescription was a “constitutional revolution”: creating irrevocable restraints to limit democratic choice. Sponsored throughout his working life by wealthy foundations, billionaires and corporations, he developed a theoretical account of what this constitutional revolution would look like, and a strategy for implementing it. He explained how attempts to desegregate schooling in the American south could be frustrated by setting up a network of state-sponsored private schools. It was he who first proposed privatising universities, and imposing full tuition fees on students: his original purpose was to crush student activism. He urged privatisation of social security and many other functions of the state. He sought to break the links between people and government, and demolish trust in public institutions. He aimed, in short, to save capitalism from democracy.
His prescription was a “constitutional revolution”: creating irrevocable restraints to limit democratic choice. Sponsored throughout his working life by wealthy foundations, billionaires and corporations, he developed a theoretical account of what this constitutional revolution would look like, and a strategy for implementing it. He explained how attempts to desegregate schooling in the American south could be frustrated by setting up a network of state-sponsored private schools. It was he who first proposed privatising universities, and imposing full tuition fees on students: his original purpose was to crush student activism. He urged privatisation of social security and many other functions of the state. He sought to break the links between people and government, and demolish trust in public institutions. He aimed, in short, to save capitalism from democracy.
In 1980, he was able
to put the programme into action. He was invited to Chile, where he helped the
Pinochet dictatorship write a new constitution, which, partly through the
clever devices Buchanan proposed, has proved impossible to reverse entirely.
Amid the torture and killings, he advised the government to extend programmes
of privatisation, austerity, monetary restraint, deregulation and the
destruction of trade unions: a package that helped trigger economic collapse in
1982. None of this troubled
the Swedish Academy, which through his devotee at Stockholm University Assar
Lindbeck in 1986 awarded James Buchanan the Nobel
memorial prize for economics. It is one of several decisions that have
turned this prize toxic. But his power really
began to be felt when Koch, currently the seventh richest man in the US,
decided that Buchanan held the key to the transformation he sought. Koch saw
even such ideologues as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan as “sellouts”, as
they sought to improve the efficiency of government rather
than destroy it altogether. But Buchanan took it all the way.
MacLean says that
Charles Koch poured millions into Buchanan’s work at George Mason University,
whose law and economics departments look as much like corporate-funded
think-tanks as they do academic faculties. He employed the economist to select
the revolutionary “cadre” that would implement his programme (Murray Rothbard,
at the Cato Institute that Koch founded, had urged the billionaire to study
Lenin’s techniques and apply them to the libertarian cause). Between them, they
began to develop a programme for changing the rules.
The papers Nancy
MacLean discovered show that Buchanan saw stealth as crucial. He told his
collaborators that “conspiratorial secrecy is at all times essential”. Instead
of revealing their ultimate destination, they would proceed by incremental
steps. For example, in seeking to destroy the social security system, they
would claim to be saving it, arguing that it would fail without a series of
radical “reforms”. (The same argument is used by those attacking the NHS).
Gradually they would build a “counter-intelligentsia”, allied to a “vast
network of political power” that would become the new establishment.
Through the network of thinktanks that Koch and other billionaires have sponsored, through their transformation of the Republican party, and the hundreds of millions they have poured into state congressional and judicial races, through the mass colonisation of Trump’s administration by members of this network and lethally effective campaigns against everything from public health to action on climate change, it would be fair to say that Buchanan’s vision is maturing in the US.
Through the network of thinktanks that Koch and other billionaires have sponsored, through their transformation of the Republican party, and the hundreds of millions they have poured into state congressional and judicial races, through the mass colonisation of Trump’s administration by members of this network and lethally effective campaigns against everything from public health to action on climate change, it would be fair to say that Buchanan’s vision is maturing in the US.
But not just there.
Reading this book felt like a demisting of the window through which I see
British politics. The
bonfire of regulations highlighted by the Grenfell Tower disaster, the
destruction of state architecture through austerity, the budgeting rules, the
dismantling of public services, tuition fees and the control of schools: all
these measures follow Buchanan’s programme to the letter. I wonder how many
people are aware that David Cameron’s free schools project stands
in a tradition designed to hamper racial desegregation in the American south.
In one respect,
Buchanan was right: there is an inherent conflict between what he called
“economic freedom” and political liberty. Complete freedom for billionaires
means poverty, insecurity, pollution and collapsing public services for
everyone else. Because we will not vote for this, it can be delivered only
through deception and authoritarian control. The choice we face is between
unfettered capitalism and democracy. You cannot have both. Buchanan’s programme
is a prescription for totalitarian capitalism. And his disciples have only
begun to implement it. But at least, thanks to MacLean’s discoveries, we can now
apprehend the agenda. One of the first rules of politics is, know your enemy.
We’re getting there.
see also
Anders Åslund - Russia’s Neo-Feudal Capitalism; More posts on Russia
Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?
Is 'Adults in the Room' by Yanis Varoufakis one of the greatest political memoirs ever?
Is 'Adults in the Room' by Yanis Varoufakis one of the greatest political memoirs ever?
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