“Every engaged citizen, every political activist living in our times,

which are bad times, needs to read this book.” Michael Walzer

A POLITICAL
SCIENCE
MANIFESTO
FOR THE
AGE OF
POPULISM
DAVID M. RICCI
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ii

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i

A POLITICAL SCIENCE MANIFESTO

FOR THE AGE OF POPULISM

Populism and authoritarian-populist parties have surged throughout

the world in the twenty-first century. In the United States, it’s diffi-
cult to pinpoint the cause, yet Donald Trump appears to have become
the poster president. David Ricci, in this call to arms, thinks Trump
is symptomatic of a myriad of changes that have caused a crisis
among Americans – namely, mass economic and creative destruction:
automation, outsourcing, deindustrialization, globalization, priva-
tization, financialization, digitalization, and the rise of temporary
jobs – all breeding resentment, which then breeds populism.
Rather than dwelling on symptoms, Ricci focuses on the root of
our nation’s problems. Thus, creative destruction, aiming at perpetual
economic growth, encouraged by neoliberalism, creates the economic
inequality that fuels resentment and leads to increased populism,
putting democracy at risk. In these circumstances, he urges political
scientists to highlight this destruction in meaningful and substantive
ways, that is, to use empirical realism to put human beings back into
politics.
Ricci’s straightforward argument conveys a sense of political
urgency, grappling with real-world problems and working to trans-
form abstract speculations into tangible, useful tools. The result is a
deeply passionate book, important not only to political scientists, but
to anyone who cares about public life.

David M. Ricci lives in Mevaseret, and is a former chair of the

departments of American Studies and Political Science at the Hebrew
University. He has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and the Brookings Institution. He is the
author of seven books, including The Tragedy of Political Science (1984), The
Transformation of American Politics (1993), Good Citizenship in America (2004),
Why Conservatives Tell Stories and Liberals Don't (2011), and Politics Without
Stories (2016).

This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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ii

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iii

A Political Science
Manifesto for the
Age of Populism
Challenging Growth, Markets,
Inequality, and Resentment

DAVID M. RICCI
The Hebrew University

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iv

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When citing this work, please include a reference to the
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v

CONTENTS

Preface page vii

1 THE AGE OF POPULISM 1

2 THE TEMPLE OF SCIENCE 13

3 MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS 29

4 CREATIVE DESTRUCTION 45

5 TARGETING NEOLIBERALISM 61

6 HUMANISM 92

7 A STORY FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE 110

Notes 129
Name index 235
Subject index 243

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vi

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vii

PREFACE*

Where is this book located in political thought today? In recent

years, scholars, politicians, think tankers, journalists, and
pundits have conducted an anxious debate about how democ-
racy may succumb to what they call populism. Such thinkers
do not fear a revival of late-​nineteenth-​century agrarian unrest
in America, when Mary Pease told farmers they should raise
less corn and more hell. But they have already published books
such as John Judis, The Populist Explosion (2016),1 Jan-​Werner
Muller, What is Populism? (2016),2 Benjamin Page and Martin
Gilens, Democracy in America (2017),3 Edward Luce, The Retreat
of Western Liberalism (2017),4 Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger (2017),5
Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal (2017),6 David Runciman,
How Democracy Ends (2018),7 Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt,
How Democracies Die (2018),8 William Galston, Anti-​Pluralism
(2018),9 Francis Fukuyama, Identity (2018),10 Robert Kuttner, Can
Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? (2018),11 Barry Eichengreen,
The Populist Temptation (2018),12 Yascha Mounk, The People vs.
Democracy (2018),13 John Campbell, American Discontent (2018),14
Paul Starr, Entrenchment (2019),15 and Sophia Rosenfeld, Demo­
cracy and Truth (2019).16
The debate has examined many trends and events to explain
the recent rise of populist governments and the success of popu-
list candidates for public office in many countries. Opinions
vary, but most of the debaters agree that an underlying cause

* This book cites, and quotes from, the presidential addresses of

fourteen presidents of the American Political Science Association
(APSA). I found that those addresses were especially relevant to my
project because their authors stepped back from personal research to
comment knowledgeably on their discipline –​for example, on what
it should investigate, and on how it should report its findings. D.R.

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 viii P reface

of contemporary populism is the resentment many people feel,

with considerable justification, because of disruptive changes
forced on their lives by the modern economy, which may be
described as capitalism, free enterprise, neoliberalism, global-
ization, or a market-​based society.17
Some of those changes –​in working conditions, in the distri-
bution of wealth, in the use of drastically new products such as
smartphones, and more –​are regarded by American Political
Science Association president (2019) Rogers Smith as belittling
beliefs that frame virtuous lives, as challenging traditional
stations in society, and as deflating narratives that inspire
important groups of citizens. If this goes on, some vital social
bonds may vanish and some essential democratic institutions
may collapse.18
In these circumstances, various parties to the debate have
discussed what modern societies might do to avoid sinking
into full-​blown populism. Here is not the place to discuss their
recommendations, which are diverse and not always compat-
ible with one another.19 Instead, A Political Science Manifesto for
the Age of Populism proposes that, even while the debate con-
tinues in a general way, some scholars should target the overall
crisis specifically in their research and teaching.
To that end, while the debaters continue to explore large-​
scale propositions about populism, what I will suggest is that
some political scientists, in concert, should investigate and
publicize cases of contemporary “resentment.” I will further
suggest that, to achieve an effective focus, this sort of research
should highlight one particular source of resentment, which
is the destructive side of what economists call the process of
“creative destruction.”
Such destruction, which I will discuss later, flows from eco-
nomic innovations –​such as automation, outsourcing, dein-
dustrialization, globalization, privatization, financialization,
digitalization, and temporary employment –​that generate
social disruptions, occupational dislocations, environmental
damages, and personal injury to the point of breeding
resentment, which fuels much of what happens, sometimes
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 Preface ix

undesirably, in American politics today.20 People who ana-

lyze the nature of our times –​in scholarly research, in news
broadcasts, on social media, in talk shows, in families, in party
forums, and among friends –​often focus on issues that may not
seem immediately economic but cultural, such as rage against
immigrants or despair over waning family values.21 Even those
issues, however, are usually fueled by elements of economic
change, such as when citizens fear that immigrants will take
from them good jobs that have not yet been outsourced to
globalization, or when parents (and children) who yearn for
closer relations at home are stressed out because many modern
mothers and fathers must work long hours to make ends meet.22
In this situation, drawing attention to the downsides of
creative destruction may encourage, or even inspire, elected
officials, journalists, campaign consultants, pundits, lobbyists,
political activists, and ordinary voters to try to mitigate the
damaging effects of economic change and therefore reduce
resentment and its populist consequences. As if to endorse this
strategy, President Emmanuel Macron, on December 10, 2018,
in a nationally televised speech, responded to intimations
of French populism by promising swift governmental action
designed to reduce resentment among demonstrators who,
he admitted, could not make a decent living in the modern
economy.23 In their anger, before Macron’s speech, thousands
of “yellow-​vest” citizens took to French streets week after week
to protest, sometimes violently, against a combination of high
taxes and low wages that led them to conclude that politics as
usual was no longer acceptable.
As I write these lines, yellow-​vest demonstrations are con-
tinuing and no one knows if the tax cuts and wage increases
that Macron promised will put the French populist genie back
in its bottle. But that the French president spoke out as he did
is an indication of seething passions waiting to be addressed.24

Mostly in reference to America, I will suggest, starting in

Chapter 1, a program of academic engagement with resent-
ment, which I believe is the most powerful source of modern
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newgenprepdf

x P reface

populism. I seek in this book to enlist first of all political

scientists, because they are my disciplinary colleagues. But
I hope that what I write will also interest other scholars who
care about public life, in disciplines such as sociology, anthro-
pology, history, economics, geography, psychology, philosophy,
religious studies, and more.
These men and women may rest assured professionally.
Many of them rightly aspire to political neutrality, that is, to
not taking sides between opposing sectors of society. However,
academics need not shy away from the engagement I am about
to recommend, because it violates no principles of responsible
scholarship. That is so because to study resentment –​why it
arises, where it appears, and what it produces politically –​is
not a partisan project. Rather, from Republicans to Democrats,
from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street, from Donald
Trump to Bernie Sanders, from Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, from The
American Conservative to The Nation magazines, from Hillsdale to
Oberlin colleges, from MSNBC to Fox News, Americans agree
that a good deal of resentment exists today and drives a large
part of public life.25
In those circumstances, to investigate, to teach, and to write
about populism via currents of resentment that emerge from cre-
ative destruction is not a matter of taking sides but an exercise
in highlighting exceptionally important facts.26 For example,
some fact-​finding along these lines took place in Washington,
DC, at the American Political Science Association’s 2019 Annual
Meeting & Exhibition, which was dedicated to the theme of
“Populism and Privilege.”

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 1 THE AGE OF POPULISM

A number of preliminary matters must be dealt with before

we can proceed to the central arguments of this book. So let
us do that now, and then get down to business starting in
Chapter 2: The Temple of Science.

A Compound Proposition
My first postulate is that we live in an Age of Populism. Like
it or not, that is where we are. I will refer to populist presi-
dent Donald Trump frequently as we move along. Indeed, as
I write these lines, he so dominates America’s public conversa-
tion that I am tempted to call the times we live in the Age of
Trump. However, to name our era after Donald Trump would
be to exaggerate his importance because this president is just
a symptom of modern trends that have brought America to
where it is today. These trends –​in values, in expectations, in
work, in information, in technology, in family relations, in
international trade, in public manners, in finance, in politics,
and more –​will continue to shape the nation’s life for many
years to come, and not only in welcome ways.
Ergo, scholars and pundits have labeled the output of such
trends populistic, not Trumpian. From that point of view, it
is the overall condition, rather than the passing instance,
which weighs most significantly on the country. Accordingly,
I propose, while public life seems especially threatened and
vulnerable these days, that some political scientists, whose
profession is especially focused on that life, will address our
political circumstances, in a populist age, by highlighting the
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 2 T he A ge of P opulism

disruptive results of what economists call “creative destruc-

tion.”27 Later, I will discuss creative destruction at some length.

But why highlight economics when our object is politics? Because,

beyond the importance of this or that case of creative destruc-
tion, the overall exercise is a dynamic process of innovation
in modern society that rewards some people –​like Bill Gates,
software engineers, accountants, Michael Bloomberg, hedge-​
fund managers, James Dyson, doctors, lawyers, investment
bankers, Sam Walton –​and penalizes others, like the workers
sent home when General Motors closed its 4.8-​million-​square-​
foot assembly plant (larger than the Pentagon) in Janesville,
Wisconsin in December, 2008.28 Or, it rewards some high-​tech
communities, like New York and San Jose, while it punishes
others in the Rust Belt, like Youngstown or Detroit. Therefore,
in my view, this creative destruction, which is praised by most
politicians for its ability to generate “economic growth,” is
extremely dangerous for upending millions of citizens’ lives
and thus powerfully challenging the basic institutions and
practices of American democracy.

My proposition, then, is (1) that there is a national crisis, which

I will call the Age of Populism; (2) that much of that crisis is
caused by the results of creative destruction; and (3) that some
scholars, but especially political scientists, should commit
themselves, via research and teaching, to trying to mitigate
those results. This is a compound proposition whose various
elements, and the strategy I want to suggest for confronting
them, will take some time, throughout this book, to explain.

What is Political Science For?

As for how my colleagues might relate to all this, we should
begin by asking: What is political science for? Political scientists
do not always ask that question explicitly.29 They usually feel
that what they are doing –​which is studying politics –​is so
obviously important to society that they need not discuss its
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 A Previous Political Era 3

rationale at length. What they do instead, in political science

departments from one college and university to another, is
teach classes about their discipline’s “scope and methods.”
In those classes, the professors discuss what sorts of people,
events, procedures, and institutions should be subjects of pol-
itical research. This is the matter of “scope.” Additionally, they
discuss how such things should be investigated. This is the
matter of “methods.”
This book extends those discussions, in that it explores
a package of scope and methods that might be appropriate
for some political scientists today. But for the moment, let
us phrase the matter differently. Let us consider that, under-
neath talk about which subjects to study and how, there lies a
large and sometimes unstated question, which is about what
purposes political science should serve in a modern, demo-
cratic country.
I regard that question not as an invitation to theoretical
speculation but as a call for immediate action. That is because
“What is political science for?” is an urgent question that arises
in a specific social, economic, and political environment that
worries me greatly, and that is the Age of Populism. Are we not
therefore somehow, at least somewhat, obliged to consider the
nature and dynamics of that environment?
Now if, in the pages that follow, we will think along those
lines, we will see that for some political scientists there may
be, in all of this, a special role to play, an exceptional contri-
bution of research, teaching, and publishing to offer students
and colleagues, friends and neighbors, activists and pundits, a
testimony, in some respects –​in other words, a special vision of
what at least part of political science is for. I will return to that
possible project but, first, let us place it in perspective.

A Previous Political Era

Many of the trends that brought Donald Trump to power (such
as political polarization, gerrymandering, globalization, auto-
mation, outsourcing, round-​ the-​
clock news, the gig economy,
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 4 T he A ge of P opulism

immigration, deindustrialization, too-​big-​to-​fail banks, gated com-

munities, silo thinking, click-​bait journalism, digital addiction,
platform capitalism, identity politics, media extremism, per-
petual wars, educational elitism, and more) will remain after
his administration and continue to shape public life. Therefore,
although this president did not create the Age of Populism, it is
epitomized in him, in the trends that brought him to power, and
in the enthusiasm for, and the opposition to, what he says, does,
and stands for.
That being the case, it is safe to predict that, in years to come,
hundreds of books and thousands of articles, blogs, Facebook
and Twitter posts, etc., will be written about Donald Trump.
They will look back to analyze where he came from, and they
will explore how his election and administration affected
how Americans lived together. Anxiety will animate many of
the people who will write those books, and they will divide,
roughly speaking, between (1) those who believe that much in
American life was appalling and therefore Trump’s authenti-
city was the solution,30 and (2) those who will feel that Trump
himself was appalling, in which case the country had to undo
much of what he said and did.31
Some such books have already been written. I won’t take
sides among them, but I want to note that the present wave of
severe anxiety, fueled by conflicting fears and convictions, is
not unique in the cycles of American public life.32 For example,
a similar upheaval struck America in the 1920s and 1930s, after
an unspeakably horrible world war, when an old and largely
aristocratic order was breaking down in many European coun-
tries, and when economic upheavals and hardships threatened
America, most obviously in the Crash of 1929 and the ensuing
Great Depression.
We should recall, then, that while America in those years
experienced dangerous events at home and abroad, the interval
between World War I and World War II was a time when, like
today, some Americans went sharply right and others went
sharply left.33 This happened because many people worried that
existing political institutions –​from political parties to national
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 A Previous Political Era 5

elections, from federal agencies to judicial review –​might fail

to preserve democracy in the face of brutal alternatives such
as fascism and communism. As challenges arose, Americans
became aware of shocking circumstances, such as the 25-​
percent unemployment rate at home,34 breadlines in the
streets, inflation in Weimar Germany, famine in the Soviet
Union, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, pogroms against
German Jews, the Moscow trials, the civil war in Spain,35 the
annexation of the Sudetenland, the Molotov-​Ribbentrop Pact,
and more. Most obviously, they saw that compelling ideolo-
gies took center stage in Europe, to the point where autocrats
and dictators rose to power in Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain,
Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Albania, Poland, Portugal,
Yugoslavia, Austria, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
In those inter-​war years, Americans agonized a great deal
over matters of political principle. This was because, when
challenged by right-​wing and left-​wing thinkers, who advocated
dramatic and even charismatic leadership, democracy inspired
by eighteenth-​ century Enlightenment ideals of moderate
and sensible public behavior became difficult to defend. In a
society increasingly committed to science and tangible metrics
in industry, agriculture, commerce, transportation, education,
and more, American faith in a higher law of natural rights,
which via the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of
Rights had historically justified the nation’s constitutional
and representative government,36 seemed to many American
thinkers a fragile inheritance, philosophically speaking, of
well-​intentioned but somewhat anachronistic Founders.37
In short, much of the inter-​war anxiety called into question
fundamental American institutions and practices. Accordingly,
some fears in those days were almost apocalyptic, like some
of the fears that fuel political anxiety today. Nevertheless,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal devised a set
of federal agencies and public policies –​such as the Securities
and Exchange Commission, the Social Security Commission,
the National Labor Relations Board, farm subsidies, bank
deposit insurance, rural electrification, public works, and
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 6 T he A ge of P opulism

more –​to alleviate some of the Depression’s major problems.

Consequently, many Americans proceeded after World War II
as if the systemic ruptures and failures that had alarmed them
earlier had eventually been repaired.
Causes for post-​ war optimism abounded. Victory against
Germany, Italy, and Japan inspired ideological confidence. The
economy boomed and promised to continue growing via trade,
science, and technology. The country enjoyed years of demo-
cratic progress, wherein McCarthyism was deplorable but
injured relatively few people, while civil rights made consid-
erable gains, though not large enough. From 1945 to the mid-​
1970s, many workers enjoyed industrial peace, while unions
were strong and corporations were accommodating. Everyone
knew that a nuclear war between the United States and the
Soviet Union would be catastrophic, but most people assumed
that it had been postponed indefinitely by the Cold War stale-
mate based on mutually assured destruction (MAD). And then,
of course, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and democracy
by American standards seemed poised to spread throughout
the world.

Populism
We should recall these events not because they demonstrate
that America solved its largest problems (we are still struggling
with some of those). Rather, they indicate, in the Age of
Populism, that we need not feel uniquely stressed because our
culture and society are threatened by immensely powerful
dislocations. In this sense, the lesson to be learned from earlier
anxieties is not that solutions to large public problems are
easy to achieve but that every generation, including our own,
is entitled to confront even extremely difficult circumstances
with some confidence that, in time, many of them can be
overcome.38
And that, of course, is where we are now. Today, we confront
massive and unprecedented troubles with little assurance
that we can keep them from destroying the post-​World War II
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 Populism 7

mosaic of arrangements and understandings that for two

generations kept most (but not all) Americans safe and pros-
perous. Post-​ war confidence in the “American Dream” has
severely declined, for many reasons. Millions of urban and
small-​town manufacturing jobs have been automated away or
outsourced to low-​wage countries; rural families are increas-
ingly in thrall to corporate giants like Cargill, Smithfield
Foods, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Bayer, Tyson, and
DuPont;39 waves of recent immigrants are undermining the
long-​
standing dominance of earlier immigrants and their
descendants; the World Trade Center disaster on September 11,
2001 precipitated an interminable “War on Terror”; the Crash
of 2008 destroyed prosperity for millions of “Main Street”
families while “Wall Street” banks were bailed out by unfath-
omable billions of federal dollars; and the Electoral College vic-
tory of Donald Trump in 2016 led to what philosophers call a
“category error” by transforming the White House into a stage
for reality television.40

Intense efforts to understand current trends, and the costs they

impose –​such as crumbling infrastructure, bizarre income
gaps, environmental deterioration, and plummeting social
status –​on many Americans in recent years have focused
mainly on what scholars and journalists call “populism.” This
frame of mind they see as associated with the rise of Donald
Trump, as generating the excitement of Bernie Sanders’ pri-
mary campaign, as precipitating the election of Jeremy Corbyn
to head the British Labour Party, as fueling the “Brexit” refer-
endum on the United Kingdom leaving the European Union,
and as underlying the growing power of right-​wing leaders in
France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and more.
Those who fear what they call populism accuse its enthusiasts
of mistakenly preferring the principle of popular sovereignty
over the complexities of actual government. Populists, they say,
hope that what “the people” want will prevail in public affairs
rather than that the totality of governmental institutions and
instruments –​a welter of legislatures, courts, commissions,
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 8 T he A ge of P opulism

elections, regulatory agencies, police forces, trade agreements,

defense treaties, central banks, and more –​will continue to
shape public life.41
Thus, Barry Eichengreen suggests that “Populism… favors
direct over representative democracy insofar as elites are dis-
proportionately influential in the selection of representatives.
It favors referenda over delegating power to office holders
who can’t be counted on to respect the will of the people.”42
And thus Yascha Mounk observes that leaders such as Donald
Trump in America, Marine Le Pen in France, Nigel Farage in
Great Britain, and Victor Orban in Hungary claim that “the
most pressing problems of our time” are fairly simple and can
be fully understood by “the great mass of ordinary people.”
Nevertheless, “the political establishment” has failed to resolve
those problems, in which case populists believe that “the
people” should take matters into their own hands by electing
officials who, in the people’s name, will do the job properly.43
Eichengreen in The Populist Temptation (2018), Mounk in The
People vs. Democracy (2018), and William Galston in Anti-​Pluralism
(2018) for the most part regard populism as indifferent to dem-
ocracy and hostile to liberal virtues such as compromise, coord-
ination, and civility. I somewhat agree with those men and
I will explain why later in this book. But some other writers
argue that Donald Trump and his administration are rightly
promoting an “America First” strategy by taking firm steps –​
such as withdrawing from international treaties on “free”
trade, on nuclear proliferation, and on global warming44 –​ to
represent the interests and preferences of Americans who feel
that Washington insiders, activist judges, liberal journalists,
radical professors, corrupt labor unions, and arrogant minority
leaders have for too long led the country astray.45
The second group of writers agree with the first that America
is in danger.46 In effect, however, they hold that those who
threaten its tranquility and prosperity are people who they call
pluralists rather than populists, that is, people who prefer “iden-
tity politics” to patriotism, and who endorse moral “relativism”

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 Three Responses 9

rather than traditional virtues.47 In which case, even though

scholars and activists disagree on how to define what has gone
wrong in the Age of Populism, we can conclude that both
sides in this confrontation fear politics as usual because they
feel that many politicians have abandoned them.48 The result
is mounting resentment in various quarters, to which I will
return.

Three Responses
I believe that some political scientists should respond to such
circumstances on three levels, all of which I will discuss more
fully throughout this book. First, we should not so dwell on
professional puzzles as to stand, unintentionally, aside from
society’s current needs.49 To that end, political scientists should
recall their forerunner David Easton. In his presidential address
to the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1969,
Easton defined an earlier moment of crisis thus: “Mankind
today is working under the pressure of time. Time is no longer
on our side… An apocalyptic weapon, an equally devastating
population explosion, dangerous pollution of the environ-
ment, and in the United States, severe internal dissension of
racial and economic origin… move toward increasing social
conflict and deepening fears and anxieties about the future,
not of a generation or a nation, but of the human race itself.”50
Easton called on his colleagues for “relevance and action,”
which I believe, taking recent circumstances into account,
should inspire some of us today.
Second, we should cast our net widely. On this score, we
were admonished by another forerunner, Karl Deutsch. In his
presidential address to the APSA in 1970, Deutsch stipulated
that “The overwhelming fact of our time is change…” To deal
with it, Deutsch insisted that political scientists should con-
sult changes in “population, economic life, cultural and social
practices … [in which case we must collect data] from eco-
nomics, demography, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry.

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 10 T he A ge of P opulism

Regardless of their disciplinary origin, such data are becoming

crucial for political analysis … Not a marginal extension of pol-
itical analysis … [but] inseparable from its core and essence.”51
Deutsch was right, I think, to call for widening our horizons. In
later chapters, I will extend his plea for judgment based on far-​
flung data –​i.e., casting a wide knowledge net –​with a Temple
of Science metaphor.
Third, political scientists should work hard to preserve
whatever commendable principles and practices the country
already enjoys. We cannot afford to believe that, in a dan-
gerous era, those are safe and will take care of themselves. This
point is made by Timothy Snyder, who warns against assuming
that progress is “inevitable,”52 as Francis Fukuyama did in 1989
when the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, and when
America seemed, to Fukuyama, the obvious precursor to world-​
wide liberalism and democracy.53
If progress is not inevitable, say modern sages, backsliding
is entirely possible, as from democracy in the German Weimar
Republic to dictatorship in the German Third Reich.54 It
follows that caution and conscious commitment should be our
watchwords. As Mounk says, “… we retain the power to win a
better future. But unlike fifteen or thirty years ago, we can no
longer take that future for granted.”55

Consulting Great Thinkers

Hollywood awards Oscars for best supporting actors and
actresses. We should keep that in mind because, in times
of great public stress, such as in the Age of Populism, great
thinkers from the past can stand by our sides and offer large
and useful political thoughts.56 On this score, we should
recall a somber message of the Nobel Prize winner (literature,
1980), Polish poet and diplomat Czeslaw Milosz. In The Captive
Mind (1953), Milosz described how he lived through Nazi
devastations in wartime Poland and experienced Communist
brutality behind the Iron Curtain. Thereafter, he hoped that
East Europeans would cope successfully with circumstances
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 Consulting Great Thinkers 11

that had shattered conventional, traditional, and long-​standing

political assumptions, institutions, and practices.
What Milosz meant was that hard times call for inspiration
from large political ideas –​such as the concept of republican
virtue, the principle of checks and balances, and the imperative
of separating Church and State –​many of which come down
to us from previous ages of crisis, such as the Renaissance,
the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. As the Cold War
got under way, however, he assumed that American thinkers
would little help their European counterparts on this score,
because he judged that Americans, living in a fairly stable
society, lacked the imagination to grasp what must be done
when normal politics collapse.57
Times have changed since Milosz wrote, and many Americans
now understand that life in their country has gone seriously
awry. Therefore, although Milosz did not think that New
Worlders had much to offer, I believe that American political
scientists are capable of responding effectively to the current
crisis, of turning to cardinal political issues, and of being
mindful that standard academic concepts –​animating a good
deal of social science as usual –​can sometimes fragment our
experiences and deny big-​picture inspiration.58
The bottom line to all this, which I will later explain more
fully, is that at least some of us should go beyond routine polit-
ical inquiry and regard first-​order political ideas, such as those
of thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke,
Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Mill, Marx, Weber, Dewey,
Orwell, Arendt, and Rawls, more as live issues than as, so often
recently, mainly grist for academic exercises.59
The point is simple. Many first-​order thinkers, in their times,
dealt with change. They were surrounded by change, worried
by change, buffeted by change, challenged by change. I don’t
suppose they got everything right. But they knew what their
problems were, more or less. As William Butler Yeats observed
after World War I, with perfect rhetorical pitch, “Things fall
apart; the center cannot hold.”60 And that is where we are now,
riveted by a unique president in the Age of Populism.
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 12 T he A ge of P opulism

Neoliberalism
A final postulate is in order. I intend to propose a project for
political scientists. To that end, I will later explain why I think
some of my colleagues should have a special care for the
destructive side of creative destruction. Various commentators,
some of whom I noted earlier, agree that populism is generated
by people suffering from change. What I will add to their view
is that much of that suffering flows from economic destruc-
tion, which is sometimes regarded as inevitable but which,
I believe, should not be accepted as such.
Along these lines, I will eventually insist that the chief
danger to American politics and public life, the larger peril, is
not populism but its source, which is a national commitment
to unlimited change, sometimes called economic growth, via
the process of creative destruction. That commitment appears
in certain modern practices of free enterprise, or capitalism,
often known as neoliberalism. In this sense, populism is the effect,
but neoliberalism is the cause. Therefore, if the damages of neo-
liberalism can be mitigated, I believe that populism will sub-
side at least somewhat. In which case, fortunately for all of us,
its impact on modern politics will wane.

I will have much more to say about neoliberalism. For the

moment, however, let us get underway by considering what
is happening in political science nowadays, even before some
members of that discipline will consider taking on a new pro-
fessional responsibility.

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 2 THE TEMPLE
OF SCIENCE

We live in a populist age; it threatens vital elements of

American democracy; it encourages us to reconsider funda-
mental political principles; some scholars should relate to
those principles in their work, and some political scientists
should do that by focusing especially on the destructive side of
creative destruction.
These are complex propositions, which we may begin to
explicate by considering what political scientists are now
doing, roughly speaking. What are we studying and teaching,
and how does that reflect our present understanding of what
political science is for, even in a populist age?

Scope and Methods

In truth, political scientists haven’t decided exactly what pol-
itical science is for. That is, they do not agree, except in very
general terms, on what they together are doing, or should be
doing. Therefore, when they discuss what are sometimes called
“scope and methods” for their discipline, entire books may
treat the subject of methods,61 whereas matters of scope often
warrant no more than a few pages. In those pages, colleagues
usually focus on “politics,” which involves “power,” but they
cannot define precisely either the term or its locus.62
So terminology is one problem for political science. Another
is that when members of the discipline choose research topics
and thereby demonstrate their preferences on scope, they
divide up among themselves by investigating many different
realms where people confront one another. Thus, they study a
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 14 T he T emple of S cience

wide array of people who exercise many kinds of power (verbal,

social, economic, physical, sexual, and more) in order to shape
relationships in favor of this group or that.
Bewildering variety in research and teaching therefore shows
up, for example, when the 2018 APSA’s Annual Meeting in
San Francisco scheduled over several days the presentation of
papers, many simultaneously, in fifty-​six “Divisions” of interest
ranging from “Formal Political Theory” to “Comparative
Politics,” from “Legislative Studies” to “Race, Ethnicity, and
Politics,” from “Information Technology and Politics” to
“Sexuality and Politics,” from “Migration and Citizenship” to
“American Political Thought.”63
The same diversity emerged recently in an edited volume
based on asking 100 political scientists which research
questions should be raised in their fields and which earlier
findings are especially noteworthy. Each colleague was invited
to address these two questions in 1000 words or fewer. The
answers, collected in The Future of Political Science: 100 Perspectives
(2009), agreed neither on what should be done nor on what has
already been done especially well.64
This situation –​cacophony, really –​is not new. Years ago,
leading political scientists already threw in the towel on
issues of scope. Thus Leon Epstein, in his 1979 presiden-
tial address to the APSA, admitted that “I find it difficult to
offer general advice now that political scientists identify with
increasingly specialized subjects and employ more disparate
methods.”65 And thus Gabriel Almond, the APSA president in
1966, described various political science approaches in a 1988
essay entitled “Separate Tables: Schools and Sects in Political
Science.”66

For my purposes, pluralism within political science is useful

because I propose that only part of the discipline, or only some
political scientists, in effect only a sector within the many
“Divisions” at the annual APSA meetings, should relate in a
special way to events and circumstances in our populist times.
There is no need to sweepingly revise current disciplinary
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 Procedure and Substance 15

interests and practices. Whatever most political scientists are

doing –​and many of them are doing it well, I believe –​they will
continue to do. There is the pluralism I just described. In my
opinion it cannot, and should not, be discouraged.
Accordingly, some qualification is in order. In present
circumstances, I propose a project of only partial extent, which
flows from a realization that, as an adjunct to our talk about
scope and methods, some of us should begin –​professionally,
voluntarily, rigorously, and responsibly –​to become more
involved politically than we used to be. This is, after all, an era
more dangerous and frightening than the one which we, our
students, and the public lived in previously.67
In short, I propose that a fraction of the total discipline should
commit to a particular strategy and principle. Therefore, in
this matter, unlike in some others, I will decline the advice of
a distinguished forerunner. Lucien Pye, president of the APSA
in 1989, recommended that his colleagues should pay special
attention to a particular situation in his time, and which he
described as a crisis undermining authoritarian regimes such
as that in the Soviet Union.68 I think, however, that such a
collective commitment is neither necessary nor desirable.
The American Political Science Association, within whose
professional warrant our scholars work, is a big tent or, in
sociological terms, a community rather than an organization,
serving to collect colleagues rather than to point them in any
particular direction.69 I have no objection to it remaining so.

Procedure and Substance

Nevertheless –​and here content is important –​even though plur-
alism befits the discipline, many American political scientists
come together in a practical rather than theoretical way, in
that they direct much of their research and teaching to two
cardinal subjects, which are “democracy” and “citizenship.”
Like other scholars, political scientists are active members of a
society that values both of those matters highly, and they live
in places where state and local governments encourage and
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 16 T he T emple of S cience

may even mandate grade-​school and college courses in “civics”

and government.
It makes sense, then, that political scientists will partici-
pate in what amounts to a nation constantly renewing and
improving itself along these two lines. To that end, colleagues
talk to each other often about how to conduct their partici-
pation most effectively.70 For example, Margaret Levi, APSA
president in 2005, called upon her colleagues to fashion a new
theory for government that should be democratic, representa-
tive, responsive, fair, and so forth.71
Democracy and citizenship are patently worthy ends, espe-
cially when times are fairly quiet and stable or, as economists
might say, when ceteris is paribus. But in the Age of Populism
ceteris is not paribus, and that is a situation which obliges us,
I think, to consider that political science teachings on dem-
ocracy and citizenship are mainly procedural rather than
substantive.
These terms are straightforward. We may describe democ-
racy as a set of techniques, such as national elections and town
meetings, and we may think about citizenship as a matter
of who belongs to the state –​for example, who can carry its
passport and enjoy the civil rights it grants. Together, such
techniques (what citizens do) and matters of membership (what
citizens are) generate procedural democracy.72 That sort of dem-
ocracy touches upon important affairs. But it also leaves open
large questions about substance –​that is, about what should be
done with the powers of citizenship beyond just maintaining
them, and about where the ship of state should sail rather than
how it might just stay afloat.73
For example, Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens discuss dem-
ocracy and citizenship in their Democracy in America? What Has
Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (2017).74 They describe
democracy as “majority rule,” and they insist that policy
makers should serve voter preferences as expressed objectively
in polls. To reach such a desirable state of affairs, they recom-
mend public policies to provide citizens with more personal
resources, education, and information than they possess today,
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 Universities 17

all of which can challenge, and perhaps even reduce, the

influence of money, advertising, and lobbying over American
politics.75
This view of American democracy amounts to strengthening
its procedures, to enabling “the people” to express fully their
opinions, and then to hoping for the best.76 It is a commend-
able but incomplete vision, because in difficult times we need –​
I think very urgently –​to supplement procedural arrangements
with at least some acts of substance. On this score, present
circumstances call for recommendations that will go beyond
even an admirable concern for democratic machinery.
Happily, scholars can be not just specific but also patriotic to
this end. Therefore, in line with my recommendation that some
of us will engage with large political ideals promoted by great
thinkers, let us note what gets slighted when we concentrate,
even commendably, on repairing democratic practices. At that
point, what can get overlooked are the purposes for which such
practices can be used. And those purposes include the public goods
envisioned –​but not in modern terminology –​when the Founders,
in their electrifying Preamble to the Constitution, declared that
“the People of the United States, in order to establish a more per-
fect Union,” created the Constitution “to provide” for “justice,”
for “domestic tranquility,” for “the common defense,” for “the
general welfare,” and for “the blessings of liberty.”
With such goals in mind, it seems to me that, in hard
times, the bottom line is that America needs not just excel-
lent trappings of procedural democracy but also, on occasion,
constructive acts of substantive citizenship.77 That is why I will
propose, in later chapters, that some scholarly research and
teachings will recommend such acts designed explicitly to
mitigate the social and economic damage caused by creative
destruction.

Universities
Meanwhile, let us return to what political scientists are doing
now, even before they might consider my proposition. I have
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 18 T he T emple of S cience

suggested that, lacking clear agreement on scope, my colleagues

do not know exactly what they are doing together. But they
know where they are, which is mainly in American universities.
And that is a context worth considering here at some length.
Universities are modern America’s intellectual lynchpin.
They are where most formal knowledge is generated,
where it accumulates, where it is discussed, and where it is
promoted for use elsewhere. In America, millions of people
who want to become engineers, doctors, lawyers, architects,
chemists, ministers, journalists, programmers, psychologists,
teachers, managers, nurses, pollsters, accountants, physicists,
advertisers, meteorologists, biologists, bankers, brokers, and
more pass through universities to become skilled thinkers and
workers. In short, men and women in many realms of American
life are affected by how they are informed and trained in the
country’s system of higher education.78
In that system before the Civil War, America built colleges,
and those had fairly narrow philosophical schemes of organ-
ization. That is, the founders who ran the colleges –​who
were usually devout –​adhered to mission statements which
indicated what was to be studied, and which often aimed at
renewing the supply of ministers needed in the New World. For
instance, Harvard turned out Puritan ministers, Rhode Island
College (later Brown University) educated Baptist ministers,
the College of William and Mary produced Anglican ministers,
and the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University)
trained Presbyterian ministers. Elective courses were rare
and, in these small institutions, with no more than hundreds
of students, if politics was studied at all it likely appeared in
the guise of “Moral Philosophy.” This was an Enlightenment
compendium of moderate theological and secular maxims, fit
for the Age of Reason, designed to promote a decent social
contract, and usually taught in the senior year of studies
by someone of wide horizons, such as the president of the
college.79
After the Civil War, while an industrial revolution unfolded
in America, science rather than theology gradually became the
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 Multiversities 19

rule in higher education, and some colleges expanded into, or

were superseded by, private and public universities crowned
by professional schools and going beyond bachelor degrees
to offer master and doctoral studies. In these new entities, it
became common for professors –​as experts in their fields –​
rather than founders to shape the curriculum, so that aca-
demic disciplines rather than mission statements set the tone.
The result, after 1900, was to turn growing universities into
intellectual smorgasbords, bringing together “departments”
and institutes, with greatly diversified scholars and research
centers, where “the sum of the parts added up to a nominal
whole joined by no organizational principle or rationale other
than administrative and financial convenience.”80

Multiversities
In 1963, Clark Kerr, Chancellor of the University of California,
called these conglomerations “multiversities.”81 Because such
entities aspired to promote expertise in many fields, professors
had much to do with deciding what was investigated and
taught. However, as years passed, all this became increasingly
expensive, to the point where financial officers became a dom-
inant feature of university life.82 Then, more than ever, each
university president became less a leader of the whole insti-
tution –​which in the post-​college era anyway no longer had a
preconceived aim –​than a competent broker, smoothing out
balances of power among professors, students, parents, alumni,
townspeople, grant agencies, corporate sponsors, foundations,
sport fans, and other interested parties.83
Generation after generation, critics have called for Kerr’s
kind of universities to emphasize education more and training
less, and to promote humane values along with valuable skills.84
Their voices have not reduced the influence of money in higher
education –​after all, one cannot run a school without substan-
tial budgets –​but they do indicate that important questions
can be raised about the purposes that universities serve in a
complex world. And those questions, in turn, bear on what we
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 20 T he T emple of S cience

have been asking, which is what political science is for, in that

same world.
As Kerr pointed out, apart from dormitories, stadiums,
shuttle buses, alumni reunions, and the like, but in relation to
what people know about the world and our place in it, modern
universities are collections of departments (plus institutes
containing related departments and scholars)85 where pro­
fessors, divided more or less into academic disciplines, inves-
tigate various parts of nature and our lives, after which those
professors teach students whatever it is, practical or theor-
etical, that their disciplines manage to discover. This means
that one department teaches economics, another teaches
physics, one teaches history, another teaches mechanics, one
teaches statistics, another teaches accounting, one teaches
entomology, and so forth. In those circumstances, universities
will occasionally establish new departments dealing with new
knowledge –​say, with conflict resolution or nanotechnology.
On that score, universities are admirably flexible instruments,
able to create new workspaces for intellectual pioneers who
seek breakthroughs in modern knowledge.86
In Kerr’s world, all that is clear. In a nutshell, modern uni-
versities are congeries of departments, first investigating and
then teaching. What is not clear is who decides on the distribu-
tion of departments, or fields of knowledge, in each university.
For example, who decides which professors will address what?
That is, who decides that there will be a department treating
this subject but not that one? Or, who decides that this depart-
ment is doing its job but that one is not? Or, who decides when
a new department is needed while another would be super-
fluous? Or, in the final analysis, who in the university decides
if its sum total of existing departments is adequate, in the
sense that they cover all the ground that should be covered so
that the nation’s citizens will learn, from this great knowledge
institution, what they need to know in order to live well?
That is, (1) who decides on the institution’s overall mission,
in the service of which a compendium of academic disciplines
work simultaneously, and (2) who decides whether or not a
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 Multiversities 21

particular department, or all of them together, are serving that

mission faithfully? Who, in short, in this very large entity where
each department is doing its own thing, is in charge of holding
all this activity together or, in effect, herding these cats?
To rephrase these questions in social science terms, we
might ask where is the standard “model” that, more or less,
explains the shape and character of the university as a sin-
gular institution in modern society –​which it certainly is –​at a
time when scholars have, roughly speaking, fashioned models
for other singular institutions such as churches, towns, tribes,
armies, factories, nations, big box stores, and platform com-
panies? And if there is no standard model, can it be that the
eminent university where I studied years ago, where I stood
one afternoon before Widener Library while bells tolled to
mark the passing of President John F. Kennedy, where in
hundreds of classrooms today, thousands of professors teach
20,000 students – can that institution have no plan or organ-
izing principle at all?

Clark Kerr wrote about universities more than fifty years ago.
Since then, many of the schools he described have grown and
innovated, and most of them, large and small, while serving
a diverse population, are led by officers who feel they must
respond to budgetary imperatives and marketplace consider-
ations. In practice, this means that American universities are
constantly evolving, sometimes adding new programs and
departments, sometimes cancelling others, occasionally going
online, looking for and relying heavily on adjunct teachers,
offering practical training in many fields, and providing space
and staff for groundbreaking research.
Despite this increasing complexity, Kerr’s concept of a
“multiversity” is still useful, because it can still serve to denote
an institution that has no particular shape or inherent goal.
Consequently, many thinkers, for or against Kerr but not
always explicitly so, raise questions about universities and
how they work, about where the money for higher educa-
tion comes from and who will spend it, about what resources
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 22 T he T emple of S cience

should be allocated to this end or that –​often to more or less

liberal arts or business administration –​and why. To make a
long story short, we may conclude that the conversation about
such things is interesting but inconclusive, because a signifi-
cant reconstruction of universities, away from their present
muddle, is unlikely to occur for so long as parties to the conver-
sation have material and ideological interests that they prefer
not to compromise.87
On the other hand, for political science to deal with problems
that arise in a populist era, it does not matter if modern uni-
versities will or will not change their line-​up of departments,
institutes, and schools. That is, we don’t need to fight to recon-
struct Kerr’s universities. We need simply to think about them
in a new way, and especially about how their departments are
distributed and what they do. That question we can address
without reference to whether or not the present configur-
ation of academic interests and resources is satisfactory in a
general sense. We need only to observe that political science
departments, in every university, are already equipped to per-
form a special function, directed at the Age of Populism, which
scholars in other departments are not now performing consist-
ently and effectively.
This point is worth repeating. There are excellent fields of
interest in Kerr’s multiversity, and various departments there
house disciplines that are commendably expanding the avail-
able sum of knowledge about many things and creatures –​about
what Lewis Carroll called “cabbages and kings.”88 Nevertheless,
something very important is missing from Kerr’s schools. And
political science, as I will explain later on, is in a position to
compensate for that.

The Temple of Science

To portray the missing element clearly, I want to suggest a
higher-​
education model that resembles, metaphorically, a
Grecian Temple of Science, where the term science is used in

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 The Temple of Science 23

the European sense as a field of knowledge, as in the French

sciences politiques, the Spanish ciencias politicas, and the German
politologie. We can think of this model, which is only suggestive
and not precise at all –​I repeat, only suggestive and not pre-
cise –​as a sort of Athenian Parthenon, with fluted columns
marching around a rectangular sanctuary, and above those
an architrave, frieze, and pediments linking the columns to
support the temple’s roof.89
If we use this Temple model to stand for an intellectual edi-
fice representing the world of academic knowledge,90 we can
see, in our mind’s eye, many scholarly columns, located fig-
uratively in universities today and housing various “sciences,”
such as physics, history, biology, philosophy, political science,
and electrical engineering. The model says nothing about how
big or important its various columns are. But that they are
physically separate helps us to understand immediately that,
in the real world, most professors work only in their columns
and know little or nothing about what people study and teach
in other columns.91
This isolation is obvious with regard to subjects, from soci-
ology to chemistry, from immunology to accounting, and so
forth. But it is not just subjects that inhabit different columns,
because many scholars in those columns use research methods
that are little understood by their neighbors. For example, in
the economics department, scholars may deploy statistics; in
area studies, they must use foreign languages; in astronomy,
mathematics is a necessary tool; and in anthropology, some
practitioners will become embedded observers.
To continue the metaphor, if the Temple of Science’s columns
were to stand only by themselves, they might fall down. But
they are capped and held together by architraves and friezes
which, by analogy, we can regard as the academic world’s
management sector consisting of deans, provosts, chancellors,
trustees, and the like.92 In most cases, these people are not dir-
ectly involved in the creation and dissemination of knowledge.
But the administration they provide –​a sort of centripetal

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 24 T he T emple of S cience

force –​enables the university to generate that scholarship

which is, after all, the Temple’s signature function.

The Temple’s Roof

There remains, in this modern Parthenon, a roof supported
by pediments. And there, as Hamlet said, is the rub. Because
the striking thing about the roof is that, unlike in the Temple
of Science’s columns, there are no scholars there. That is, no
modern scholars are sitting on the Temple of Science’s roof
collectively, distilling there lessons derived from various
Temple columns together and teaching, for example, that
climate change (in meteorology’s column) has something to
do with marine extinctions (in biology’s column), with hurri-
cane damages (in the accountancy column), with community
breakdowns (in anthropology’s column), and with populist pol-
itics (in political science’s column).
The bottom line here is that, by displaying an empty roof,
the Temple of Science model shows us graphically that modern
universities are missing a very important capacity. This occurs
because, while departments are producing experts in this field
or that, and while administrators are helping them to do so, the
same departments are usually unable or unwilling to produce
generalists who will integrate expert knowledge from different
realms (columns) and provide wide-​ranging advice to students
and the public at large.
Let us restate that point. In the Temple of Science, there
are departments that, as we saw, reside in columns that stand
pretty much alone. But there is no department that consists of
professors whose task it is to sit, figuratively, not in a column
but on the Temple’s roof, to study from there what is known in
many columns, combine the available facts and insights, and
pass on teachings that will help us all live together.
In other words, America finds itself in the Age of Populism,
where events and inclinations investigated in many columns
threaten to destroy exactly that sensible democracy and mod-
erate citizenship that, in theory at least, embellish American
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 Limitations 25

exceptionalism. But universities do not squarely confront this

situation, because they do not provide a department or discip-
line –​again, figuratively on the roof –​that would collect what
we know from wherever knowledge resides, distill this infor-
mation, and explain to students and the public how it shows
the way to progress and prosperity.
Thus in the Temple mode, the Age of Populism as a whole is
not on the scholarly agenda, although parts of it may be. And
this is because what we call populism, and even its obvious
avatar Donald Trump, represents a general calamity, flowing
from many trends interacting with one another, rather than
a specific issue of one dimension, to be analyzed and resolved
comfortably –​academics as usual –​within a particular Temple
of Science column.

Limitations
Yet many scholars are outraged by Trump. Why, then, are
there no teachers on the Temple’s roof ? One reason is diffi-
cult to name, but we may regard it as “cultural” because,
since the late nineteenth century –​after Darwin’s theory of
evolution appeared –​Western societies essentially decided
that the scientific method can produce knowledge more useful
and valuable than any other sort of knowledge, bringing great
improvements in medicine, agriculture, industry, transporta-
tion, communications, commerce, and so forth.
The result was that many scholars came to believe that
science is the main or only road to progress. And since
professors, each in his or her own field, first investigate and
only afterwards teach, it followed that their work at univer-
sities, discipline after discipline, came increasingly to emulate
science. In department after department, professors fashioned
hypotheses, searched for evidence, and hoped to find law-​like
regularities. Therefore, what they knew and taught appeared
to be more certain than what was being done less scientifically,
say by professors of philosophy or by theologians at divinity
schools. Consequently, when fields were compared, knowledge
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 26 T he T emple of S cience

that could not be cast as scientific was widely regarded as

somehow imperfect, somehow dubious, somehow less reput-
able than science, i.e., the real thing.93
So here is the first reason why few professors aspire to sit on
the Temple of Science’s roof, handing out general advice based
on various disciplines simultaneously and therefore not pos-
sibly clear and exact enough to warrant respect for being “sci-
entific.”94 But there is a second reason why the roof is empty,
and that is the fact that the Temple’s columns are so full of
information that most human beings, including professors,
cannot get a grip on all that is known in any one column and
certainly not all that is known in two or more columns.95
In other words, no one can sit on the roof and reasonably
claim that she knows what is going on below, when the sheer
amount of stuff in several columns is so great that she cannot
conclusively argue that she knows enough to connect all the
available “facts” (which she cannot entirely assimilate) to any
sort of definitive advice. A professor who would try that could
easily be challenged by sceptics who might ask: “Sure! But have
you read the articles relating to that subject by Professors Smith,
Chang, Khouri, Cohen, Lombardi, Patel, and Gesundheit?”

Economics
From the metaphorical Temple of Science, then, a paradoxical
syllogism emerges. (1) We see that, with no scholars on the
roof, the university is not adequately confronting our populist
era.96 (2) We see also why the Temple’s professors, including
political scientists, for quantitative and qualitative reasons,
cannot expect that they will sound persuasive if they will offer
general advice about that era or any other. Accordingly, (3) we
understand that little or nothing would be gained from their
trying.97
On the other hand, this story most definitely should not
end here. In a sense, it is true that modern people do not seek
advice from the Temple’s roof. But that does not mean that

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 Economics 27

political scientists should continue doing only what they have

done until now. Instead, in my opinion, they should consider
a paramount aspect of learning in universities that we have
not examined yet, but which is an open secret, and which
is this: Regardless of what appears in the Temple of Science
model, in the real world of American sciences there is one dis-
cipline –​that of economics –​which frequently and confidently
dispenses advice about how Americans should live together.
Therefore, although they do not use our terms, it is as
if economists believe that their discipline is capable of ana-
lyzing and assessing what other Temple columns study, to the
point where, in effect, economists can sit on the Temple’s roof
and explain to everyone else how to get along efficiently and
prosperously. Furthermore, as we shall see in a moment, this
advice, especially about the desirability of perpetual economic
growth, is accepted by many people.

So here is an oddity. In the Temple of Science, in theory, no one

can successfully sit on the roof. But in practice, the economists
seem to be up there anyway. What does that mean? Does it mean
that, in the real world, there is a blip in the Temple model?
If there were a blip, we could ignore it as a technical trifle
if we were convinced that the advice that economists offer to
society is satisfactory. But what many economists recommend
as social policy –​on how we should live together now, and on
how we should get through the coming years –​is nowhere near
satisfactory. Indeed, as we shall see, it fosters dangerous trends
that are at least partly responsible for the Age of Populism.
In which case, we have reached a turning point for what
I have been proposing all along, which is that some political
scientists should begin to criticize part of what economists rec-
ommend, which politicians promote, which business people
celebrate, and which many ordinary Americans praise but
which, for example, has recently automated millions of good
jobs out of existence, has destroyed hundreds, if not thousands,
of Main Streets in favor of Walmart, Target, Walgreens, Kroger,

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 28 T he T emple of S cience

and Home Depot, has strip-​mined and fracked many vulner-

able citizens, has increasingly privatized public services, has
neglected enormous swaths of national infrastructure, has
addicted millions of citizens to smart phones and fast food,98
and has hollowed out the middle class.
That is the situation we will turn to now.

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 3 MAINSTREAM
ECONOMICS

We have arrived at economics, even though this is a book about

politics. Therefore, lest we forget, here again is the overall
objective. In our populist age, some political scientists should
start paying special attention to a matter that I have not yet
explicated, but which I have already described several times
as the destruction caused by what economists call creative
destruction.
To get closer to understanding that mission and why it is
essential, we need now to consider two faces of economics. In
this chapter, I will discuss how economists persuasively define
themselves as social scientists with a distinctive and effective
way of looking at human affairs. In the next chapter, I will
explore the central recommendation, in favor of ceaseless eco-
nomic growth via creative destruction, that economists offer
to their students and the public, which those people generally
accept, but which is so unsatisfactory as to contribute substan-
tially to why we are now enduring populist difficulties.

Mainstream Economics
We may start with the nature of economics as a scholarly enter-
prise. This is a complicated business, so please bear with me
while I begin by considering “mainstream economics.”
The first thing we need to understand is that the term “main-
stream economics” refers to what most professors of economics
believe and is therefore used to describe conventional thinking
in their Temple of Science column. Specifically, what main-
stream economics projects is a persuasive set of assumptions
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 30 M ainstream E conomics

that are used to justify powerful teachings. Most American

economists endorse at least the assumptions I will describe in
a moment. Furthermore, many endorse a certain collection of
teachings that they regard as flowing from those assumptions,
and that we will eventually see are usually more in favor of
competitive capitalism than of democratic socialism.99
The vocabulary here is problematic. Thus “mainstream
economics” is a term used by many writers to describe what
they consider to be the central thrust of economics. This they
do, for example, in books by journalists like Jeff Madrick and
economists like Juliet Schor.100 However, in other sources,
mainstream economics is named differently. Thus economists
Avner Offer and Gabriel Soderberg refer to “core doctrines of
economics,101 economists Joe Earle, Cahal Moran, and Zach
Ward-​Perkins reject what they call “neoclassical” economics,102
think-​tanker Dean Baker criticizes “standard economics,”103
and political scientist Jonas Pontusson postulates an “economic
orthodoxy” that he calls “the market-​liberal view.”104
Now, if mainstream economics is conventional –​that is,
inside the box of economics overall105 –​how many economists
belong or do not belong to the mainstream? Knowledgeable
sources dodge this question and speak approximately, which
is not surprising because there are around 20,000 members of
the American Economic Association and they are not formally
bound by a professional template. Thus, Nobel Prize winner
(economics, 2001) Joseph Stiglitz writes that, “As we peel back
the layers of ‘what went wrong’ [in the Crash of 2008], we
cannot escape looking at the economics profession. Of course,
not all economists joined in the jubilation of free market eco-
nomics; not all were disciples of Milton Friedman –​a surpris-
ingly large fraction, though, leaned in that direction.”106
Furthermore, if there really is a “mainstream” in economics,
how can that be so when there is no mainstream in other
social sciences such as sociology or political science where, in
those disciplines, instead of promoting a conventional wisdom,
various “schools of thought” and “methodological approaches”
compete with one another? Oceans of ink have been spilled
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 Mainstream Assumptions 31

on that question or its cognates. Either you believe that the

mainstream economic view represents truth and therefore is
refined and promulgated as a demonstrable certainty from one
generation to the next, or you believe that mainstream eco-
nomics serves powerful commercial forces in modern society
and therefore gets subsidized and rewarded to the point where,
because most economists promote it unswervingly, many
people come to believe it is true.107
Whichever, aside from those who conform, are there
economists who reject only some assumptions and teachings
of the mainstream? That is, are there economists who
reject not all of the mainstream but only some of its shared
understandings? Yes, there are, including but not limited to fig-
ures such as Amartya Sen, Juliet Shor, Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas
Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, Robert Skidelsky,
and Robert Frank. Their works, which have much to say about
economic injustice and inefficiency, provide a wealth of empir-
ical evidence for social critics like Edward Luttwak, Timothy
Noah, Hedrick Smith, George Packer, Robert Reich, John
Ehrenreich, and Chris Hedges.108

Mainstream Assumptions
The next thing we need to understand –​to avoid fruitless
recriminations –​is that mainstream economics is not a blanket
term invented by some writers so they can use it to criti-
cize prevailing economic ideas because they, the writers,
favor increasing government regulation of business, a more
egalitarian distribution of income, stricter environmental
protection, higher taxes on the rich, and so forth. The term
itself is neutral and its purpose is to identify something that
really exists, in and around, say, a certain range of economic
models, axioms, functions, and theorems. This is clear because
mainstreamers, including tenured professors at leading univer-
sities, themselves often talk, and talk proudly, about standard
ideas in their field. Thus, Nobel Prize winner (economics,
2017) Richard Thaler observes that “economics has a unified,
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 32 M ainstream E conomics

core theory from which everything else follows. If you say the
phrase ‘economic theory,’ people know what you mean.”109
Not surprisingly, there are differences of opinion about how
exactly to describe this core theory, about which disciplinary
assumptions and teachings to emphasize more and less.110
I have my favorites among scholars who participate in this
debate. I won’t name them here, though, so as not to unfairly
attribute to them opinions that I may imperfectly represent
because the subject is inherently contestable. That said, and
basing myself on writers who are, I think, thoroughly know-
ledgeable about this issue, the following assumptions seem
to me to describe the sort of economic thinking that features
prominently in American economics departments.111

Methodological Individualism
First, there is an assumption of “methodological individualism.”
Mainstream economists assume that the most important eco-
nomic actors are individuals, who decide what is important to
themselves, and who act so as to gain, acquire, or achieve it.
This assumption draws the attention of mainstream scholars
toward individual behavior, or abstract models of individual
behavior, and therefore pays little or no attention to the way
groups act, as if groups –​from families to churches, from
corporations to governments, from labor unions to banks –​
are simply collections of individuals among whom each is
out chiefly for herself or himself.112 Thus sociologists and
anthropologists often “do” groups, whereas economists usu-
ally “do” individuals.113

Rational Calculations
A second assumption is that people, when engaged or not
in economic activity, are animated by rational calculations.
Rational in this sense is not a synonym for “reasonable,” which
might be a cogent notion of what is good or healthy or fitting
for human beings. Rather, rational in the economic sense
pertains to the technical matching of means to ends. A person
decides that he or she wants something and then seeks to
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 Mainstream Assumptions 33

apply the most effective available means to that end.114 In this

sense, saint or sadist, one acts “rationally.” Economists leave it
to philosophers and theologians to say otherwise.115

Utility
A third assumption is that the driving force behind rational
behavior is the hope of acquiring not a particular thing but the
quality of “utility” that someone can enjoy from that thing.
Each person decides what will make himself happy or pros-
perous, then sets out to gain it. The point here is that, for
economists, utility is a subjective quality so that, as Jeremy
Bentham said, in terms of utility defined as happiness there is
no difference between reading poetry and playing the game of
push-​pin. As a purely descriptive matter, in economic theory
each person seeks out whatever will produce utility in his or
her own eyes.116

Self-​Interest
A fourth assumption is that, because economics assumes that
individuals seek utility, it is clear that workers, on behalf of
wages, and employers, on behalf of profits, are driven chiefly
to satisfy their personal desires. But by extension economists
can also claim that people in other social realms do the same,
in which case in governmental matters –​a very important
realm for political scientists –​some economists advise us to
assume that voters, activists, elected officials, and bureaucrats
act mainly out of self-​interest. This sort of reasoning underlies
“public choice theory”117 and helped James Buchanan win a
1986 Nobel Prize in economics.118

Prices
A fifth assumption is that individuals trying to obtain utility
are guided in their calculations by prices, which economists
claim are linked to marginal production costs and which, in
ideal markets, present themselves as equal to whoever intends
making a sale or purchase. Marginal pricing is important
because, among other reasons, it contributes to an ideal market
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 34 M ainstream E conomics

situation where, unless government interferes, buyers and sel-

lers presumably interact solely on the basis of price informa-
tion, which is objective and therefore fair to all participants.119

The Invisible Hand

A sixth assumption is that when individuals go to market,
some to sell and others to buy, within a framework of prices
known to all, an “invisible hand” brings together all of their
preferences and priorities into a configuration of deals that
can be considered “efficient.” This assumption of a benevolent,
invisible hand that assures that, for a fee, people like butchers
and bakers will supply our needs was postulated during the
eighteenth-​century Enlightenment by Adam Smith.120 It was an
elegant way of keeping a just, but also non-​denominational,
God at our side when various philosophers were no longer sure
that Providence cared.121

Equilibrium
A seventh assumption is that if the invisible hand is permitted
to operate more or less freely, the sum total of all deals made
between individual actors will generate a benign balance,
which economists call “equilibrium” or “general equilibrium.”
Associated with the work of economists such as Leon Walrus,
Vilfredo Pareto, Kenneth Arrow, and Gerard Debreau, the
notion of a society-​wide equilibrium of voluntary exchanges,
providing utility to both buyers and sellers, suggests that
leaving people free to make deals among themselves will maxi-
mize the utility that can be attained by the amount of eco-
nomic resources available at any particular time.122

Mainstream Teachings
Mainstream economics contains more than seven assumptions
and we will meet some of the additional ones later. I will also
have more to say about the original seven. For the moment,
though, what I have described is enough for me to offer a

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 Mainstream Teachings 35

generalization about what the conventional, standard, neo-

classical, core, modern, central, signature thrust of economics
is about.
According to this generalization, economics as a “discip-
line” –​or, as a column in the Temple of Science –​aims at
explaining how natural and human resources can be used “effi-
ciently,” or how “factors of production” can be combined fruit-
fully, in trading situations that economists call “markets,” with
“innovation” helping us to generate the maximum amount of
“utility” that those factors can provide. Oddly enough, if all
of this works well –​that is, if government will just let people
alone to get on with their economic propensities –​there is no
need for society, or, as Offer and Soderberg write, “if the model
is true, then society is redundant.”123 The United Kingdom’s
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher may have had something
like that in mind when she declared that “there is no such
thing as society. There are individual men and women and
there are families.”124

Gross Domestic Product and Welfare

At least three very large teachings flow from this sort of eco-
nomics. The first concerns the fact that when individuals buy
and sell goods or services in order to acquire or achieve utility,
they pay for what they get. As a result, their transactions can be
registered as expenditures, after which those expenditures can
be added up, in dollar terms, so that the totality of transactions
can be represented by a monetary aggregate that denotes what
economists call the gross domestic product (GDP).125
Most importantly, that sum, in any particular country, in
whatever currency, represents the amount of utility that indi-
viduals in that country have generated in consequence of
buying and selling. It follows that GDP may be regarded as a
collective index of happiness and satisfaction. And therefore,
because in every exchange each side either buys or sells in
order to become better off, the sum of their exchanges is a
measure of what economists call “welfare.”126

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 36 M ainstream E conomics

Markets and Value

The second teaching is related to the first. If the sum of
exchanges, in money terms, tracks the quests of many indi-
viduals for utility and therefore registers the welfare of all eco-
nomically active individuals in a country, then the mechanism
that facilitates exchanges is a necessary part of that country’s
economic equipment. And that mechanism, according to main-
stream economics, is the “market,” to which each individual
comes to sell what he has and buy what he wants. In that
sense, markets create “value,” because that quality appears
when an exchange takes place and both sides emerge from it
happier and more prosperous than before they traded.127 And
if markets are the field where value is created, then markets
should be permitted to function freely so as to continue to
produce that value.128

Economic Growth
The third teaching –​and this is really the capstone, the
flagship, the epitome, the ne plus ultra of mainstream economic
teachings –​builds on the first two. If (1) GDP (which economists
promote) is an index of welfare, and if (2) markets (which
economists recommend protecting) are where the exchanges
that add up to GDP are created, then (3) the purpose of eco-
nomic action is to generate well-​being and prosperity, from
one year to the next. In other words, the third mainstream
teaching is that economists, (a) by studying the factors of pro-
duction, and (b) by analyzing how those can be combined and
peddled effectively in markets, more or less (c) show us how
to generate welfare. Even more specifically, what economists
show us is that, (d) if markets are carefully fashioned and
reliably maintained, (e) they will facilitate so much product-
ivity that, as time passes, increasing amounts of utility will be
created for the country.
Let’s rephrase this. In effect, economists teach us that
the main purpose of economics, as a Temple column, is to
help everyone understand how to maintain and increase

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 Economic Growth 37

productivity or, in a word, to promote “economic growth.” GDP

is nominally (in America) a dollar index. Therefore, if it rises
from one year to the next, the later and higher sum only shows
that more dollars are circulating in the country. However,
appropriately interpreted, GDP shows much more, because the
assumption of mainstream economics is that when GDP goes
up (subtracting for inflation) it is composed of more things
(and/​or services) than previously, which themselves embody
more utility and are therefore, when taken together, desirable.

Three Propositions
The implications of promoting economic growth are cardin-
ally important, and very complicated, and we will come back
to some of them. For the moment, let us only confirm that it is
truly a representative teaching of the mainstream. For example,
the great importance of economic growth underlies what
economist Alan Blinder offers as three “noncontroversial prop-
ositions” that, for Blinder, sum up what he calls “the economic
way of thinking.”129 These three propositions stipulate that: (1)
“For most goods and services produced and sold in a market
economy, more is better than less.” (2) “Resources are scarce.”
And (3) “Higher productivity is better than lower productivity.”
The first proposition, that more is better, certainly justifies
economic growth. It is, however, nowhere near being “non-
controversial” (although mainstream economists may regard
it as obvious).130 In fact, it only seems sensible to say “more is
better” if we ignore a great many specific cases of where it is
not. Therefore, as one critic observed, “More is not enough.
Often, it’s not even better. Sometimes it’s decidedly worse.”131
This would be true, for example, of making more teakwood
tables (cutting down jungle habitats), doing more dental work
(required because people eat too much sugar), raising more
shrimps in ponds (causing downstream pollution), buying
more SUVs (burning up more gasoline than smaller cars), and
installing more self-​service supermarket checkout machines
(increasing unemployment among former and potential
cashiers).132
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 38 M ainstream E conomics

The second proposition, about scarcity, connects to the

third, about productivity. The sequence is as follows. If
resources are scarce, people feel constrained by not having
as many things as they want to consume; therefore, we need
rising productivity at work to more effectively turn resources
into more things than we have today; after which, when there
will be more things, we will consume more of them than pre-
viously and thereby reduce our unpleasant sense of being
constrained. That is, more things generate more happiness or,
in economic terminology, more utility. We will return to this
notion.

The Salience of Economics

In America, collecting national economic statistics became a
federal project in the 1930s whereupon, after World War II,
because GDP figures had become available, politicians moved
quickly to declare that the national government should pro-
mote economic growth that would, hopefully, prevent a
relapse into the terrible idleness and poverty that plagued
many Americans during the Great Depression.133 In those
circumstances, because economists were present to explain to
students, the public, and elected officials how to generate eco-
nomic growth, and because that growth was widely considered
to be America’s main public policy goal, economics became,
in the intellectual world, what Lorenzo Fioramonti has called
“the most powerful of all disciplines.”134
This salience of economics we should try to understand,
although it cannot be measured precisely.135 In general, the
power of economics as compared to other disciplines –​the
perceived importance of one Temple column as opposed to
others dealing with human affairs –​comes in many parts.
But the bottom line is this: When economists talk about how
to achieve economic growth, they sound especially credible
because, to many people, economists sound like what they
know is “scientific.”

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 Methodological Individualism 39

What happens here is that in a society where, since Darwin,

scientific work –​meaning empirical or experimental work –​
enjoys great prestige, economists define the target of their
research as activities that can be tracked by the expenditures
they entail.136 That is, economists work with reference to
dollars (or other currencies), which exist in exact quantities
and are not the sort of intangible items that other disciplines
deal with –​for example, “love” in psychology, “conservatism”
in political science, and “holiness” in theology. Economists
take this simple metric, collect relevant examples of it –​wages,
profits, loans, sales, taxes, production costs, debts, and more –​
which presumably reflect economic activity, and then, in
lectures and writings, they analyze those examples mathemat-
ically, as if scientifically.137
When enough mathematical formulations about expend­
itures are available, some economists claim that the regular-
ities of behavior they reveal, if any, are similar to natural laws
like those discovered by physicists.138 They may even suggest
that economic laws of behavior are as regular and predict-
able as those which govern the solar system.139 And all this
the discipline as a whole discusses within a complex web of
metaphors –​like “curves,” “thought experiments,” “game
theory,” “marginal productivity,” “equilibrium,” “counter­
vailing power,” and “consumption function” –​which seem sci-
entific even when, like all metaphors, they aren’t.140 Because
other social science disciplines do not, or cannot, persuasively
make similar claims, economics seems, by comparison, singu-
larly impressive.

Methodological Individualism
The bottom line here is that a general reputation for being
scientific generates great prestige for economics. But a more
specific factor, somewhat technical, is the “methodological
individualism” assumption we noted earlier. Focusing on
individuals –​from consumers to CEOs, rather than groups or

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 40 M ainstream E conomics

organizations –​as prime economic actors, economists argue

that each individual behaves in the special way that economists
describe as “rational” for seeking “utility.” So many people
behave this way, economists tend to say,141 that when such
people go about making voluntary economic deals with other
people, the result is an equilibrium that can be interpreted, in
theory at least, as an optimal condition in social affairs.
That is, if economic exchanges are made freely –​and there
is one implication of the term “free enterprise” –​each party to
an exchange enjoys more utility after the exchange than she
did before, else why make the exchange at all? As Nobel Prize
winner (economics, 1976) Milton Friedman says, “both parties
to an economic transaction benefit from it provided the trans-
action is bi-​laterally voluntary and informed.”142
To buttress this proposition, economists draw “indifference
curves” (as if on graph paper), in seemingly scientific fashion,
to show how exchanges between two individuals can be
regarded as satisfactory. Thus, in the Edgeworth Box diagram,
one person (a consumer) has a curve representing what quan-
tities of, and at what prices, she is willing to buy X (when there
is a lower price for X, she will buy more of it; when there is a
higher price for X, she will buy less of it). At the same time,
another person (a producer) has a curve representing what
quantities of, and at what prices, she is willing to sell X (where
there is a higher price for X, she will sell more of it; when there
is a lower price for X, she will sell less of it). Where those two
curves meet, the price of the buyer and the price of the seller
are the same, in which case, when both sides agree to trade at
that meeting point, both sides will benefit.
I will say more about Milton Friedman’s informed volun-
tarism and the a-​historical Edgeworth Box, both of which are,
in fact, painfully unrealistic. Meanwhile, let us note that, in
theory at least, if all parties to “voluntary” economic exchanges
are better off than before, this is surely an admirable result,
and perhaps even optimal for America if millions of such
exchanges every day are facilitated, or unimpeded, by govern-
ment policies.
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 Voluntary Exchanges 41

Voluntary Exchanges
Ergo, starting from individualist assumptions, economists
suggest to non-​economists that if they, as political leaders and
followers, will heed economic advice and direct government
to maintain markets that will enable voluntary exchanges,
the country will grow increasingly prosperous and happy. On
this point, economics seems praiseworthy to many people
for aiming America in the right direction. However, the con-
cept of “voluntary” in such matters is complicated by the fact
that, in real life as opposed to theory, people are exposed to
powerful practices such as commercial advertising, which
encourage them to act not voluntarily but in line with some-
times subtle and sometimes obvious nudges.143 In other words,
what if economists are mistaken for suggesting that markets,
suitably maintained, will increase well-​being because, in those
markets, voluntary trading is conducted?
Mainstream economics deal with the likelihood of involuntary
trading – which would confound their theory – very success-
fully by mostly assuming that it doesn’t exist.144 By definition,
it cannot exist if people make decisions based on “rational
calculations,” because if those decisions are rational, they arise
from within individuals and not from what surrounds them,
such as advertisements. The key concept here is “consumer
sovereignty,” which suggests that consumers –​who exercise
purchasing power when they shop –​are stronger than produ-
cers, because consumers cannot be compelled, but can only be
enticed, by producers (or stores) to buy what is on sale.145
The fallacy of downplaying ads was pointed out long ago
by economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who observed that
manufacturers and stores (i.e., “producers”) spend billions of
dollars on advertising,146 much of which is not truthful, to per-
suade (but not force) ordinary people (i.e., “consumers”) to buy
not what they independently desire but what producers want
to sell to them. He called this order of influence “the revised
sequence,” by which he meant that conventional economic
thought assumes that consumers control producers whereas,

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 42 M ainstream E conomics

in fact, the reverse is true.147 To make a long story short, it is as

if Galbraith agreed that consumers cannot be forced but added
that they can be duped.
Galbraith’s argument has little influenced mainstream
economists, who devote almost no research or teaching to
advertising, and this for three reasons that are not registered
formally. The first is that economists mainly ignore non-​
monetary impulses –​say, tradition, envy, custom, love, class
sentiments, charisma, and institutional solidarity –​because
admitting the influence of those factors on all of us would
refute the marginal utility, rational-​ calculations model of
billiard-​
ball-​
like consumers just buying what they want at
prices they are willing to pay.148 In other words, the abstract,
rational individual model –​the basis for “methodological indi-
vidualism” –​is so useful for generating fame and fortune in the
discipline of economics that most economists try to preserve it
even though psychologist Daniel Kahneman received the 2002
Nobel Prize in economics for demonstrating that many con-
sumers miscalculate probabilities and therefore cannot make
accurate choices or rational trades.149
The second reason why mainstream economists stay
away from advertising and its power is that many American
corporations, like General Motors or Amazon or Walmart or
Apple, are very large compared to John Q. Public or Joe the
Plumber. In that situation, which cannot be hidden, a power
imbalance threatens American principles of democratic
equality. As Andrew Hacker said, the world of real economic
life is like elephants (corporations) dancing in the barnyard
among chickens (the rest of us).150 It is therefore comforting to
believe that, if the concept of consumer sovereignty is accurate,
the chickens will not get crushed, i.e., that little consumers are
actually stronger than big corporations.
Third, for more than 100 years now, public relations and
advertising talk have infected discourse in modern society,
where some people are paid to deceive other people, or, in
the polite phrases that describe such deception, to “spin”
perceptions into comfortable beliefs or to “frame” reality so as
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 Academic Imperialism 43

to make it look like something else.151 If the scholars who write

about this sort of manipulation are correct,152 what they know
challenges the mainstream economic notion that most people
make their decisions “rationally,” that is, as a deliberate reflec-
tion of desires that they sense in themselves and that they seek
to fulfill without reference to signals from other people. In
truth, if one has needs, that is one thing. But if one has wants,
they can spring from outside manipulation rather than inner
conviction.153

Academic Imperialism
At the outset of this chapter, I said we should consider two
faces of economics. The first face relates to how economists
come to seem especially persuasive among social scientists by
displaying a distinctive way of looking at human affairs. Along
these lines, we have seen that mainstream economics seems
objective for looking scientific, with mathematics and models;
it seems effective for measuring life exactly, in money terms;
it seems useful for showing how the country can increase wel-
fare, via economic growth; it seems virtuous for showing that
trades can achieve a fair equilibrium if they are voluntary; it
preserves a reputation for realism by downplaying causes of
irrationality in economic behavior; it comforts us by affirming
that we control large corporations instead of them manipu-
lating us. The list is long and impressive.
Let us add one more factor to this list and then move on to
considering the second face of economics, which is its signa-
ture advice in favor of economic growth. This final factor we
may regard as a kind of academic “imperialism,” in that some
economists enjoy great prestige because they have leveraged
their view of “rational” human behavior into a claim that who-
ever studies economics will best understand how individuals
make (or should make) decisions in fields as diverse as political
campaigning, nuclear strategy, global warming, buying cars,
and choosing marriage partners.154 Moreover, to understand
economic thinking is, or so economists say, to find answers
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 44 M ainstream E conomics

to questions such as who wins in sumo wrestling? Why do

many drug dealers live with their mothers? Why are seatbelts
deadly? Who should pay for oil spills? Why are some people
against abortions? Why do capitalist employers ignore race
when hiring? Why are brown eggs more expensive than white
ones? Why do people vote? and more.
In short, in addition to its presumably effective research and
teaching having to do with money and money matters –​and
who among us cannot use advice on that important subject? –​
economics as a discipline tells Americans that it is more useful
than other columns in the Temple of Science even in realms
where those columns have traditionally ruled.155 This far-​
reaching claim appears repeatedly. For example, Gary S. Becker
and Guity Nashat Becker, The Economics of Life: From Baseball to
Affirmative Action to Immigration, How Real-​World Issues Affect our
Everyday Life.156 For example, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen
J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden
Side of Everything.157 For example, Robert H. Frank, The Economic
Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas.158 For
example, Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That
Shape Our Decisions.159 For example, Steven E. Landsburg, The
Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life.160 For example,
Tim Harford, The Logic of Life: Uncovering the New Economics of
Everything.161 The blurbs for such books strengthen their claim
that economic wisdom trumps (excuse me) much of what other
columns in the Temple might offer.162

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 4 CREATIVE
DESTRUCTION

I have discussed so far why, for general reasons, economics

today enjoys special prestige compared to other social science
disciplines. Let us now consider, more specifically, that the dis-
cipline of economics is held in great regard in America because
its mainstream recommends very powerfully to citizens and
politicians that the central policy goal of government at local,
state, and federal levels should be perpetual economic growth.
Consequently, we will see that admiration for economic
growth brings economists to praise the process of “creative
destruction,” and we will then see how that praise inspired
my original proposal, that in the Age of Populism, some pol-
itical scientists should take up arms against the downsides of
economic creativity, which have become terribly dangerous to
public life.

Promoting Growth
As we noted in Chapter 3, economic growth as registered in
GDP statistics became a national goal after World War II. Pent-​
up wartime demand for civilian goods and the conversion of
wartime factories to civilian production fueled a consumer
boom, which assured Americans that their country would not
retreat into another Great Depression. Moreover, journalists,
academics, business people, public intellectuals, and elected
officials praised growing affluence because, among other
reasons, they thought it proved America’s moral superiority
when compared to lesser prosperity in the Soviet Union during
the Cold War.163 Furthermore, economists insisted that, in their
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 46 C reative D estruction

professional opinion, growth was inherently virtuous, because

it would create a bigger pie that could be divided among
everyone, or because it would generate a rising tide that would
lift all boats.164 Even liberals who worried about trends in, say,
environmental pollution and habitat destruction, admonished
other liberals to commit themselves to economic growth,
albeit “fairer” and “faster” than existing growth.165
For whoever seeks a precise description of growth, econo­
mists offer a reassuring formula: GDP = C+I+G+(X−M), or, in plain
English, Gross Domestic Product equals private Consumption
plus gross Investment plus Government spending plus (Exports
minus Imports).166 Technically speaking, within this formula
most economists suggested, and most politicians agreed, that
government should foster growth by encouraging consumer
“demand.”
The emphasis on demand meant making sure that con-
sumers would have enough money to buy what they needed
and wanted, where wants were constantly evoked and amp-
lified by modern advertising. Most notably, it was John
Maynard Keynes who stressed that government should main-
tain “demand,” if necessary with infrastructure projects such
as during the Great Depression. The emphasis here was on
“fiscal policy.” Later, however, even critics of Keynes such as
Milton Friedman called for government to maintain demand,
although to that end Friedman recommended mainly
manipulating the nation’s quantity of money by changing
interest rates. The emphasis there was on “monetary policy.”
Between the followers of Keynes and those of Friedman, some
points of analysis were different. But the main point was
clear: Maintaining “demand” would stimulate production, and
when more products were made they would, when sold, drive
up indices of growth.167
Within growth as the settled goal, a few economists called
for stimulating GDP by pumping up the “supply” of products.
Here, the thesis was that manufacturing more products, by
hiring and paying more suppliers and workers, would stimu-
late consumer demand, would promote sales, would raise
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 Success for Economics 47

profits, and would thereafter increase public revenues, when

those profits would be taxed at even moderate rates.168
Mainstream economists regarded this “supply-​ side” view,
which required reducing taxes for the well-​ to-​
do –​that is,
for people most likely to invest in creating more supply –​as
“trickle-​down” economics.169 In that theory, major benefits
(lower taxes) would surely go to the top of society, while other
benefits (jobs, good wages) might trickle down to those at the
bottom. In plain language, the rich would certainly gain, from
tax cuts, whereas the poor, if things worked out, might get
something later, or might not. John Kenneth Galbraith, who
grew up on a Canadian farm, described such a theory as “… the
less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough
oats, some will pass through on the road for the sparrows.”170
Controversies broke out between people who favored demand-​
side or supply-​ side prescriptions for economic growth. We
cannot resolve those controversies and they need not concern us
here.171 It is enough to note, for the record, that presidents Ronald
Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, all Republicans,
encouraged Congress to enact supply-​side tax cuts.172
What is more relevant to our purposes, however, is the ubi-
quitous presence of talk about economic growth, no matter
how it is promoted, from the right and the left. In fact, talk
about economic growth, and how to achieve it, and who will
most likely do that, and have they succeeded in generating it
or not, infuses America’s public conversation at every hour
of every day, now reported with mind-​numbing repetition in
twenty-​four-​hour news stations that broadcast, for example,
“Quest Means Business,” “MoneyWatch,” and “After the Bell.”
Therefore, space here permits us only to note briefly some
reasons why the footprint of economic thought appears so
prominently in the landscape of public policy talk.

Success for Economics

First of all, the discipline’s basic definitions and goals are
promoted enthusiastically in talk about public affairs because
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 48 C reative D estruction

they validate important parts of what pundits call “the American

Dream.” Historians trace this ideal back to the Puritans and
the Protestant Ethic, to Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, to
Ralph Waldo Emerson on “self-​reliance,” to The McGuffey Reader
on work ethics, to Horatio Alger’s stories of young men who get
ahead mainly on pluck, to Andrew Carnegie on the gospel of
wealth, to Bruce Barton on the entrepreneurship of Jesus, and
so forth.173 The point of the story is that if individuals will make
strenuous efforts and offer unusual contributions to society,
those will be so appreciated as to reap outstanding rewards.
And this, after all, is exactly what mainstream economics
teaches, that people who freely make deals with other people –​
as in Edgeworth Boxes –​provide utility and therefore deserve
to receive utility in return. In which case, if a person becomes
rich by lawful means, economic theory shows that that
person’s success is deserved.174 So there is a sense in which,
among social sciences, economics stands out for certifying –​
presumably scientifically –​the validity of the national story.

Cognitive Capture
Second, because many economic ideas mesh fully with long-​
standing promises in American life, economists and their ideas
are widely discussed and cited, thereby generating what is
called “cognitive capture.” This term suggests that, for many
people, the vocabulary of economics appears in a familiar
range of concepts when public affairs are discussed. In radio,
newspapers, television, and social media, for example, there
are endless references to economic indicators such as “the
natural rate of unemployment,” “efficient markets,” “assets
and liabilities,” “austerity,” “bailout,” “balance of payments,”
“the bond market,” “buyback,” “stock options,” “cost-​benefit
analysis,” “credit default swap,” “externalities,” “high-​ speed
trading,” “too big to fail,” “long and short,” “moral hazard,”
“opportunity costs,” “positional goods,” “privatization,”
“restructuring,” “synergy,” “venture capital,” and “yield.”175
To speak of the totality of such terms as an expression of
cognitive capture is not to claim that people who use, or who
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 Success for Economics 49

are familiar with, this vocabulary are in thrall to any particular

economic view of the world –​say, that they are disciples of
John Maynard Keynes or Friedrich Hayek. It is to suggest, how-
ever, that to the extent those terms are common in chattering
about circumstances that we share, the people who use or rec-
ognize that vocabulary are thinking that public affairs can best
be understood in economic terms rather than, say, ethical, or
spiritual, or artistic, or communal, or cultural terms.
That is one reason, apparently, why the economists, bankers,
former bankers, and future bankers –​men such as Hank Paulson,
Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Laurence Summers –​
who handled Washington’s response to the Crash of 2008 while
thinking in economic terms, bailed out the big banks (Wall
Street) with trillions of federal dollars but, by leaving out of their
calculations compassion and empathy,176 did almost nothing to
help millions of small homeowners (Main Street) who defaulted
on their mortgages and lost their homes.177
Of course, not everyone thinks about life in economic terms,
because many people work at part-​ time, precarious, and/​ or
dead-​end jobs that may provide (barely) a living wage but do not
really permit economic creativity.178 However, there are many
who do think in those terms, therefore I will return to cogni-
tive capture, in effect, when I discuss the neoliberalism that
rules America’s public conversation in the Age of Populism and
is very economically minded.179

An Extra-​Scholarly Role
Third, a great many economists, and people who studied
chiefly economics (or business administration) in colleges and
universities, are employed outside of American higher educa-
tion, in think tanks, in media circles, in research institutes, in
trade associations, in banks and insurance companies, and as
consultants to corporations and investors. In such places –​and
in policy conferences and media interviews –​they constantly
project their views, speaking to the public, to foundations,
to legislators, to lobbyists, to bureaucrats, to reporters, to
financiers, and more.
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 50 C reative D estruction

In doing so, they generate and bolster cognitive capture with

their language. But they may also, while guided by principles
incorporated into that language, personally influence spe-
cific decisions relating to important economic matters, for
instance, by working at Federal Reserve banks or for the
International Monetary Fund. The same principles may also
animate them while holding key Washington jobs –​say, in the
Treasury Department or the Council of Economic Advisors –​
where, together with the president, they sanctioned multi-​
billion-​dollar federal bailout loans after the Crash of 2008. No
other social science discipline is so directly linked to centers of
power in government and commerce, and certainly one result
of this massive extra-​scholarly role is to promote, and not just
from ivory towers, an economic rather than, say, political view
of the world.180

Creative Destruction
In Chapter 3, I highlighted reasons why economics is espe-
cially admired in America for its intrinsic qualities –​embodied
in assumptions, principles, methods, and so forth –​in com-
parison to other fields of knowledge. In Chapter 4, so far, I have
explained something of how these qualities, expressed in eco-
nomic teachings, came to play an outsized role in America’s
conversation about public life. Plus, I have emphasized how
all this is capped by the goal of economic growth, which
economists recommend and politicians endorse.
Accordingly, to this point we have seen that the subject of
economic principles and teachings is large and complicated.
Nevertheless, we have progressed to where the final part of my
original proposal –​that some political scientists should take a
special interest in the downsides of “creative destruction” –​is
approaching. To arrive there, however, we have first to sim-
plify a bit. To that end, we must begin to think of economics as
a discipline, or a Temple of Science column, that regards itself
as being principally about creative destruction.

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 Creative Destruction 51

Creative destruction is a phrase, coined by economist Joseph

Schumpeter,181 which describes the process by which new tech-
nologies and products are designed and brought to market,
gaining for their owners and promoters success while replacing
old technologies and old products. A new item, like a tran-
sistor, becomes profitable, and the people who produce and sell
it prosper; simultaneously, the old item, like a vacuum tube,
becomes obsolete, whereupon the skills and machinery that
went into making it lose value and may even become worthless.
Actually, I should qualify what I just said. I am not suggesting
that introductory economics textbooks declare explicitly and
repeatedly that economics is all about creative destruction. But
I am observing that those books, which are used for instruction
in economics departments across the land, are about how to
combine factors of production effectively, and that they are
about how to generate more production wherever possible,
and that they are about encouraging innovation as the key to
getting more out of the resources that are available (remember
Alan Blinder stipulating that “Higher productivity is better
than lower productivity”).182
Moreover, when innovation does come along –​embodied in
new knowledge, new technology, new design, new products,
new marketing techniques, new business models, and more –​
economics textbooks say that, at that moment, while con-
sumers make their choices, creative destruction unfolds, when
new devices and arrangements defeat the old in a market-
place of voluntary transactions. When that happens, some
employers, owners, and workers will fall behind and suffer.
But their distress, in economic theory, is simply the price we
pay as a society for getting GDP to go up, which is what pros-
perity is all about.183
Therefore, as shorthand for many details, let us regard
economics as the science of creative destruction, or as the
steady promotion of constant innovation. After all, this is how
economists regard their own work, with adjustments to be
made here and there around the edges, and with increasingly

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 52 C reative D estruction

sophisticated mathematical formulations fashioned to show

how, in fact, this is the best way forward.184

The Cost Side

The fly in the ointment is this: Political scientists and ordinary
citizens –​that is, people who are especially concerned for the
health of American democracy –​should regard this recipe for
perpetual creative destruction as extremely problematical.
For example, the concept itself amounts to an enormously
powerful “frame,” in the sense that, when used in conversa-
tion, it “frames” what is happening in such a way as to (1) high-
light creation –​of trains, cars, planes, antibiotics, polio vaccine,
miracle rice, computers, barcodes, smartphones, GPS, etc. –​
and (2) downplay destruction whereby, for example, social
dislocations, as we saw in Chapter 1, can produce resentment
and therefore populism.185
Yet destruction, like creation, is everywhere. Thus
automobiles are prized and coachmen are forgotten. Thus
automatic elevators become routine and elevator operators dis-
appear. Thus Instagram is celebrated and Kodak workers are
gone.186 Thus Walmart prospers and Main Street languishes.
Thus television prices drop and television repairmen must
retrain. Thus FedEx goes up and Post Office workers go down.
Thus Netflix has over 50 million American subscribers and
Blockbuster stores have vanished.187
In other words, and without mincing words, the phrase “cre-
ative destruction” gently “spins” an occasionally brutal pro-
cess that, in plain English, is analogous in some respects to
war, with winners and losers. In other words, in both creative
destruction and war, one sets out to demolish other people’s
incomes and lifestyles; one plans surprise attacks backed up
by, say, great financial power; one unapologetically ruins indi-
viduals, families, neighborhoods, firms, unions, family farms,
towns, and cities; one deliberately transfers wealth and liveli-
hood from this actor to that; and one without remorse fosters

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 The Cost Side 53

in other people anxiety and feelings of insecurity over what

might happen next in their lives.188

Of course, people who advocate creative destruction do not

describe what they recommend as “war,” which most of us
regard as an unattractive way of living together.189 But, like
business professor Clayton Christensen, they do plan deliber-
ately for “disruption,” and they analyze not “aggression” but
“innovation.”190 Moreover, they talk not about “belligerents”
but about “entrepreneurs.” And they discuss the clever devas-
tation of one’s “competitors,” who they do not call “victims,”
as a process whose consequences, in the long run, are benign
rather than merciless.191
Unfortunately, reality is not so mild.192 Thus, in the 1930s,
Germany’s generals cleverly decided to put radios into tanks. It
was a great innovation. As a result, the Wehrmacht rolled over
the French Army in 1940. This was not exactly what France
and England wanted. Moreover, during World War II, Allied
scientists cleverly worked to invent an atomic bomb. This, too,
was a great innovation. They succeeded and dropped two of
those on Japan. The world has lived fearfully ever since.
That was war. But in the civilian world, Jeff Bezos in 1994
cleverly created an online book store that did not pay most
state and local taxes. Consequently, Amazon sold books more
cheaply than traditional bookstores could and eventually
drove many of those stores, such as the Borders and B. Dalton
chains, out of business. More recently, Uber and Airbnb are
cleverly using a business model –​based on subcontractors –​that
avoids many taxes and insurance premiums. As a result, they
are ruining cab drivers and hotel operators who are obliged to
pay those costs in full.
Many “creators” know that their economic environment
is warlike.193 They also know that, in the marketplace tread-
mill of fierce competition leading to economic growth, add-
itional damages are in store. Thus, if a modern, sophisticated,
and well-​ funded start-​up laboratory were to create a cheap

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 54 C reative D estruction

but excellent artificial coffee, putting it on the international

market would devastate the economies of Brazil, Vietnam,
Columbia, Indonesia, and Ethiopia.194
No one expects that to happen soon, but economic history is
not reassuring. For example, German scientists around 1900,
led by future Nobel Prize winner (chemistry, 1905) Adolf von
Baeyer, invented a profitable artificial indigo dye and thereby
destroyed most of India’s indigo horticulture.195 Closer to home
in America, 3D printers and driverless vehicles are expected to
wreak havoc in industry and commerce, within a decade or
two displacing millions of employers and employees, engin-
eers and craftsmen, in manufacturing, construction, transpor-
tation, maintenance, and more.196

Luddites
Economists who favor economic growth tend not to spend
much time discussing its costs, and we will come back to that
in a moment. They often insist, though, that those who com-
plain about destruction are like Luddites. The reference is to
the Luddite movement of textile workers who, in England
between 1811 and 1816, vandalized textile factory equipment
in an attempt to persuade creative factory owners not to lower
wages paid to skilled workers.197
In other words, modern Luddites are defined as being people
who stand in the way of progress, as being pessimists who do
not sufficiently appreciate the way economic growth has, over
centuries, lifted millions and even billions of people all over the
world out of poverty and poor health, isolation and ignorance,
provincialism and prejudice.198 As a graphic example, just con-
sider that streets in the world’s great cities, before automobiles
appeared, were strewn with fly-​blown horse manure that chil-
dren were hired to collect.199
From all this we should conclude that criticism of Luddites is
not exactly fair but not exactly misplaced either. We all know
that, in life rather than theory, it is good to be ethical but worth-
while to be realistic. So on behalf of realism, we should recog-
nize that the concept of creative destruction is not something
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 Who is Getting What? 55

economists invented to make themselves look shrewd. Rather,

it is an existing practice within society which they simply rec-
ognize, describe, analyze, and facilitate. Moreover, we should
agree that prosperity is desirable. That does not mean, though,
that it is free, and some of its costs may be distributed inequit-
ably. Furthermore, it is a fact of life that some people are more
economically effective than others and therefore more likely
to innovate or benefit from works by people who innovate. The
question is, what do we owe, ethically, to those who, through
no fault of their own, are not especially effective?200

Who is Getting What?

This question brings us back to my proposal about what some
political scientists should do in our troubled times. In aca-
demic life today, the discipline of economics, as one column
in the Temple of Science, focuses in particular, via individual
transactions and national aggregations, on economic growth
and its process of creative destruction. There is nothing
delinquent or irresponsible in that emphasis. And we should
commend economists who perform their disciplinary mission
well, on behalf of students, clients, and the public.
It is also true, however, that while economists are performing
their professional task more or less competently, their discip-
line is dealing almost entirely with the creative side of creative
destruction. I can’t prove this proposition about little ana-
lyzing of destruction because I cannot give examples of what
isn’t there.201 But it really isn’t much there, as if economists
are so busy with the positive side of creative destruction that
they mainly leave its negative results –​say, gig employment,
silo media, global warming, habitat destruction, social envy,
community deterioration, smartphone addiction and more –​to
people in other disciplines, in other columns of the Temple of
Science.
Those people might be sociologists, psychologists, polit-
ical scientists, demographers, historians, philosophers, and
so forth. What is important for us is that, unlike economists
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 56 C reative D estruction

who work in a discipline that mostly considers economic prod-

uctivity and innovation, those other scholars work in discip-
lines that are not collectively dedicated (as members of Temple
columns) to investigating cases of economic damage, disloca-
tion, destruction, and despair. Some people in those discip-
lines, as concerned individuals, investigate such cases, and we
are indebted to them for much of the information we possess
on those subjects. But there is no collective commitment on
their part to do this work, and that is where I believe that some
political scientists can now play a special scholarly role in the
Age of Populism.
The technical stake here we can infer from Robert Reich’s
observation that the “meritocracy claim, that people are paid
what they are worth in the market, is a tautology that begs
the question of how the market is organized and whether
that organization is morally and economically defensible.”202
Translated into terms we have already noted, Reich is saying
that people who promote economic growth tend to assume
that the supposedly “voluntary” trades that enter into GDP are
fair, as charted in the Edgeworth Box (which Reich does not
mention) projecting supply and demand curves to show where
buyers and sellers find prices at which they agree to trade. But
then Reich adds that we do not know (unless we have checked
via direct investigations) how the buyers and sellers in any
real Edgeworth Box (again, that is not his term) reached their
current positions in society, in which case some people may, by
force of circumstances, be short on bargaining power in their
box and therefore unable to reject the “voluntary” trades being
offered to them.203
Let’s put this another way, again within the routine vocabu-
lary of economics. Marginal utility theory, based on rational
calculations, and focused on individual actors, assumes that
both sides to a trade are satisfied with it. That is, in trading
both sides gain.204 But other scholars may insist on asking
who real (not theoretical) traders are and how sizable are their
real resources of power, of wealth, or education, or status, or
health, or location, and more. In such cases, some trades may
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 The Road Not Taken 57

result in losses, which people like Milton Friedman more or

less assume, a priori, cannot be incurred for so long as trades
are defined as “voluntary.”205
Consider, though, whether or not the trades accepted by
suppliers offered price P for shirts by Walmart –​an inter-
national behemoth that in 2018 ran almost 12,000 stores,
employed 2,300,000 workers, and collected $500 billion in
revenues –​are truly “voluntary.” If the price P is terribly low,
how can a small shirt factory in Bangladesh afford not to accept
Walmart’s proposal?206
But it is not only behemoths that illustrate the need for
checking to see who is who and who is getting what. After
all, even Adam Smith, who postulated the invisible hand,
suspected before national economic statistics were collected
that “masters” who have some wealth can hold out longer than
“workmen” when bargaining over wages.207

The Road Not Taken

So here is the crux of the matter. Society needs economists
because they study economic creativity, which is an important
matter. But if they won’t highlight economic destruction,
someone else should, because that is also an important
matter, especially when some things are getting out of hand
in our times. Therefore, I propose, and I will in Chapter 5
explain further, that political scientists are likely candidates
for the job.
First, however, let us note a final reason for feeling that eco-
nomics is too important to be left entirely to economists. As a
matter of conventional wisdom since the end of World War II,
most American economists and their disciples in non-​academic
life have been steadily pro-​ capitalist, which is historically
understandable because they live in a society that promotes
that point of view. However, they have also, and also under-
standably, expressed their support of capitalism by being anti-​
communist or, in scholarly terms, anti-​Marxist. Accordingly,
they don’t use, or rarely use, Marxian concepts to understand
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 58 C reative D estruction

the world. And there, something is seriously and significantly

absent, like when the dog did not bark for Sherlock Holmes.208
I want to be very clear on this point. America does not need
Marxian calls for armed revolution. Even in hard economic
times, democracy is preferable to civil war and fortunately,
unlike when Marx wrote, it (democracy) is widely available to
ordinary people who want to elect new leaders to make new
laws and public policies.209 That much is patently clear. But
we might benefit from using some Marxian concepts –​which
most economists do not –​for the sake of intellectual analysis
because, as a critic of capitalism, Marx powerfully highlighted
what he thought were its downsides, even unto describing the
process of creative destruction without using that term (which
was later invented by Joseph Schumpeter).210
To begin with, Marx welcomed capitalism as a progres-
sive social and economic force that would demolish the sti­
fling practices of feudalism. (There is the creativity.) This he
maintained in his theory of history, which praised capitalism
for its ability to improve upon and supersede feudalism’s
constraints at home and at work. On the other hand, Marx
pointed out that, while it was welcome to begin with, capit-
alism was not a flawless society but one that imposed severe
social, economic, and emotional costs upon many of its citi-
zens. (There is the destruction.) That is, for Marx, who did
not use our vocabulary, capitalism in effect entailed certain
measures of creativity followed by some of destruction.
Americans scholars don’t need to become Marxists to know
this. But their scholarly teachings might acquire a heightened
sense of urgency if they would occasionally note some dra-
matic Marxian concepts and phrases that, in a sociological
sense, say something about where capitalism is likely to go
unless someone heads it off at the pass. For example, there is
the Marxian notion of how, during the reign of capitalism, “all
that is solid melts into air.” That notion is certainly relevant to
how many Americans –​some of them conservatives and some
of them liberals –​today feel that their principles and traditions

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 The Road Not Taken 59

are under constant assault, are constantly “melting,” in the

ever-​churning modern economy.211
Marxism also suggests a notion of “class war,” which might
shed light on what is happening between the One Percent (one
class) and the Ninety-​Nine Percent (other classes) in America.
Furthermore, that confrontation might be considered via the
Marxian concept of “exploitation,” where one group (or indi-
vidual) takes advantage of another’s weaknesses. Then there
is the Marxian concept of an “industrial reserve army,” which
might illuminate the modern situation where many good jobs
are either automated away or sent overseas, leaving behind
a pool (“army”) of impoverished and desperate workers who
live precariously while more effective Americans take home
a lion’s share of the nation’s GDP. In these circumstances,
Marxists have decried what they call the “immiserization of the
working class,” which is a phrase that might sensitize us into
understanding some of the convictions that led many people in,
say, the American Midwest –​depressed and deindustrialized –​
to vote for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.212
Moreover, some aspects of the present consumer society,
where baubles are being purchased privately rather than
infrastructure being funded publicly, might seem more under-
standable if we were to focus on what Marxists call “the fet-
ishism of commodities,” which leads people to value private
over public goods. And while we are on the subject of cultural
manipulations, general suspicion of mass media nowadays
might be regarded as one consequence of what Marxists call
“false consciousness,” where advertisements that are very clev-
erly designed to entice people into buying things they don’t
need wind up encouraging many voters to believe that no one
in public now speaks to them truthfully.
A final realm of possible “disinformation” –​a Russian/​
Marxist term –​may shed light on America’s horrendously
costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.213 Iraq had no weapons of
mass destruction. Why, really, did President George W. Bush
insist that it did? Bin Laden is gone. Why, really, is Washington

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 60 C reative D estruction

still making war in Afghanistan? Beyond invoking unreliable

conspiracy theories, some plausible answers to such questions
might emerge if the subject of Middle East oil and Great Power
politics were linked to what Marxists have for more than a cen-
tury called “imperialism.”

“All that is solid melts into air,” “class war,” “exploitation,”

“industrial reserve army,” “immiserization of the working
class,” “fetishism of commodities,” “false consciousness,”
“disinformation,” and “imperialism.” The point is not that
American scholars should become Marxists. But political
stories powerfully influence the way we see the world, which
is a matter to which I will return. Therefore, we should bear
in mind that mainstream economists are closing off some of
our analytic options by, in effect, telling an un-​Marxian or even
anti-​Marxian story.214 For the record, they are also ignoring or
neglecting the democratic-​socialism story, but there is no room
here to dwell on that.215

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 5 TARGETING
NEOLIBERALISM

Here is the sequence so far. Much of the search for know-

ledge takes place in Kerr’s multiversity. The Temple of Science
model suggests that that institution is excellent in some ways
but lacks a general commitment to confront the populist age in
which we live. While such a commitment is absent, modern
society has nevertheless accorded unusual authority to the
Temple’s economics column, as if scholars there possess espe-
cially useful knowledge as compared to what is discovered by
other disciplines (columns) dealing with people.
Within what economists say, mainstream economics is
regarded as particularly incisive. It recommends that gov-
ernment should above all promote economic growth, which
is generated by creative destruction. The recommendation
in favor of growth is accepted by many Americans, from
politicians to industrialists, from workers to corporations,
from farmers to doctors, from ministers to talk show hosts. In
the light of this intense interest in, and support for, economic
growth, the downsides of creative destruction, some of which
fuel populism, receive much less attention.

Karl Polanyi
I believe that some political scientists should fill in some of
what is missing. But before we move on to consider where and
how they might do that, let us note an insight on this sub-
ject from one of the great thinkers worth engaging in our
times. Thus Karl Polanyi observed in The Great Transformation
(1944): “Nowhere has liberal [that is, Enlightenment]
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 62 Targeting N eoliberalism

philosophy failed so conspicuously as in its understanding of

the problem of change. Fired by an emotional faith in spontan-
eity, the common-​sense attitude toward change was discarded
[in the nineteenth century, after the Enlightenment] in favor of
a mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of eco-
nomic improvement, whatever they might be. The elementary
truths of political science and statecraft were first discredited,
then forgotten. It should need no elaboration that a process
of undirected change, the pace of which is deemed too fast,
should be slowed down, if possible, so as to safeguard the wel-
fare of the community.”216
In effect, Polanyi declares that change –​political, economic,
social, and technological –​is not compelled by some fixed
rule like the law of gravity, something which, for the religious
among us, constitutes an immutable act of God and which, for
secular people, is something to which they must adapt rather
than something they are allowed to control.217 Instead, Polanyi
reminds us that statesmen and educated people were once
wary, and for good reason, of permitting change to go forward
without consideration for how it might be limited for “the
welfare of the community.” This is, I believe, a common-​sense
observation that we should keep in mind as we begin now to
address what many of today’s opinion leaders, in and out of the
academy, are powerfully hawking.218

Targeting Neoliberalism
Polanyi suggests that it is reasonable to “slow down” some
effects of creative destruction. But he does not say how scholars,
or anyone else, should promote such a slowdown. Therefore,
I want to recommend that we should direct our thoughts and
efforts to that end by targeting the late-​stage capitalist belief
system that social scientists and historians call neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism is the practical and ideological force that inspires
creative destruction, in which case challenging the former may
help us soften the impact of the latter.

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 What is Neoliberalism? 63

So the first reason for targeting neoliberalism, which relent-

lessly advocates creative destruction, is, for me, a matter of
principle, because I believe it endangers our society.219 On that
score, in my opinion, taking the measure of neoliberalism’s
imperfections is a matter of conscience.
The second reason for targeting neoliberalism is practical.
Political scientists (as a class) do not legislate, and we vote only
in small numbers. But we do study, we do teach, we do publish
for one another, we join our neighbors in acts of good citizen-
ship, and we have a presence in the mass media. In all these
realms, targeting neoliberalism would be a practical strategy
for at least part of our discipline.
Thus, (1) to be practical would be to specify a common adver-
sary and, by aiming at it, assemble otherwise scattered pieces
of research about various instances of social and environ-
mental destruction. Furthermore, (2) to be practical would be
to explore where a dangerous force comes from in history and
how the costs it imposes are likely to continue if no one checks
them. And finally, (3) to be practical would be to maximize
impact, would be to unite around a visible target and offer non-​
political scientists accessible and riveting information about
exceptionally important events and trends. It follows that if,
say, journalists would pay attention to our findings along these
lines, politicians and voters would hear from media sources
more than they do today about what political scientists are
together criticizing and why.

What is Neoliberalism?
So what exactly is “neoliberalism”? The term refers to a new
(modern) liberalism that in some respects resembles the old
(classical) liberalism that Polanyi criticized and that arose in
the nineteenth century. At that time, the term “liberalism”
referred to a set of ideas that, roughly speaking, condemned
the economic arrangements of late-​ stage feudalism, and
that admired a wave of enterprise galvanized especially by

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 64 Targeting N eoliberalism

middle-​class creativity (which could not fully flower under feu-

dalism) in realms such as science, commerce, manufacturing,
agriculture, banking, education, transportation, communica-
tion, international trade, and more.
Many years later, the ideas and practices of neoliberalism
came to constitute an updated version of this former liberalism
that, as we saw, Karl Marx first praised and then criticized. The
later liberalism is therefore equal, in another vocabulary, to
contemporary “capitalism,” which, sanctified by mainstream
economics, endorses repeated acts of creative destruction and
is therefore a source of both prosperity and devastation.
In a sense, then, neoliberalism is the pro-​creative-​destruction
ecology of American social life that we should investigate in the
Age of Populism. However, it is also something around which
there already exists a lively public conversation. Therefore –​
and this is an ethical matter of no small importance –​if some
of us will participate professionally in that conversation, our
presence there will be directly relevant to the society in which
we live.
Commitment to that last point, in effect, was proposed by
Robert Putnam, APSA president in 2002, who declared that
“My argument is that an important underappreciated part of
our professional responsibility is to engage with our fellow
citizens in deliberation about their political concerns, broadly
defined.” Putnam went on to argue that public alienation and
disengagement from government have grown, therefore pol-
itical scientists should debate them more than they have. He
said the same about globalization and social justice. And he
affirmed that “I believe that attending to the concerns of our
fellow citizens is not just an optional add-​on for the profession
of political science, but an obligation as fundamental as our
pursuit of scientific truth.”220

Unfortunately, to study neoliberalism and its effects is

easier said than done, because neoliberalism is not a thing,
like a dog, which can be scientifically described in specific
ways as different from other things, like bananas or granite.
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 What is Neoliberalism? 65

Neoliberalism is, instead, a concept, relating to the social world

like many other concepts such as justice, power, authority,
rights, charisma, democracy, and more. That being the case,
scholars and pundits who talk about neoliberalism don’t
always agree on exactly what they are talking about when they
use that term. Moreover, in the Temple of Science, different
sorts of professors, from different columns, approach research
subjects differently, to the point where many books and articles
address, but not always consistently or compatibly, aspects of
modern life that they ascribe to neoliberalism.221
Accordingly, there are complicated interpretive contro-
versies in all this that we cannot resolve here. But what
happened –​that is, the historical record –​is fairly straightfor-
ward. The Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression challenged
American faith in capitalism,222 while John Maynard Keynes
insisted that private markets would not automatically balance
themselves in a socially beneficial way. Consequently, gov-
ernment intervention in economic activity seemed to many
voters warranted, whereupon, in 1932, they elected Franklin
Roosevelt president with a Democratic majority in both the
Senate and the House of Representatives. Roosevelt and his
Democratic colleagues enacted New Deal measures, such as
the Securities and Exchange Act, the Glass-​Steagall Act, and
the National Labor Relations Act, which placed some capitalist
institutions under government supervision. Later, Washington
in the 1960s and 1970s continued to keep some capitalist cre-
ativity in check, for example, initiating programs to improve
workers’ safety and increase environmental protection.
Then, as voter impressions of damage caused by the Crash
and the Depression faded, the conservative Ronald Reagan was
elected and began to restore to capitalism, now called “free
enterprise,” some of its earlier powers. Thus “neoliberalism”
began to “take off” in the 1980s, when large tax cuts, mainly
for the well-​to-​do, fueled an expansion of prosperity financed
by massive federal spending deficits. Consequently, supported
by most Republicans and many Clinton Democrats, leading
up to the Crash of 2008, labor unions were weakened, public
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 66 Targeting N eoliberalism

services were privatized, interest rates were unleashed, social

services were reduced, welfare became “workfare,” home
mortgages were “securitized,” commercial and investment
banks were permitted to engage in brokerage and insur-
ance,223 corporate and private political contributions were
uncapped, “globalization” led to “deindustrialization,” “down-
sizing” encouraged “outsourcing,” disparities of income and
wealth separated the One Percent and the rest, while conser-
vative think tanks (such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage
Foundation) and conservative media outlets (such as Encounter
Books, The Washington Times, and Fox News) were established to
promote neoliberal ideas and policies.224

Homo Politicus
These were some elements of what happened in recent
American history. That such things transpired is not much in
dispute. What is more complicated and controversial is why
they happened. That is, to ask why neoliberalism appeared,
and why it now dominates American life, is to engage in
inexact interpretations of what the facts imply, is to argue over
which intangible ideas and concepts drove the establishment
and evolution of those facts.
On this score, scholars agree that neoliberalism, as an
extension of capitalism, entails a very fundamental mental
switch away from the concept of homo politicus to the con-
cept of homo economicus.225 Starting with Aristotle, great
thinkers long considered people to be political animals (homo
politicus), who are naturally intended (as opposed to how
Greeks assessed neighbors who they called “barbarians”) to
live together consciously in a well-​organized community (or
polis). In that community, people could exercise their capaci-
ties for self-​rule, for defending home and hearth, for making
moral judgments, for legislating rules of conduct, for cre-
ating art and commerce, and for pursuing a good life. In the
same community, a person of central importance was the
citizen, who was endowed with a potential for reason, with
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 Homo Economicus 67

the right to hold office, and with the power to participate in

(some) community decisions.
Assuming that they were in the category of homo politicus,
citizens eventually came to be regarded, say by Locke,
Montesquieu, Jefferson, and Madison, as naturally competent
to fashion social contracts that would empower them to exer-
cise sovereignty (political power) together, thereby maintaining
institutions and practices –​such as religious tolerance –​by
which their communities (states) would stand or fall. By exten-
sion, the aim of achieving social contracts fostered democracy
in the modern world, where in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries more and more people became citizens, protected by
constitutions and other legal arrangements that afforded them
opportunities for maximizing their natural talents for public
expression and political action.

Homo Economicus
While all this unfolded, disciples of Aristotle suspected, as he
did, that people who lived mainly by and for commerce –​the so-​
called homo economicus –​were dangerous to society. The problem
was that, driven by an acquisitive instinct, such people might
so resolve to accumulate money and riches, rather than just
reasonable sustenance, that their passion for piling up wealth
might generate social conflicts and thereby undermine the
community’s ability to foster moderation, reciprocity, respect,
balance, and civility.
Nevertheless, when fairly static feudal classes in Europe
began to disintegrate, some people –​a growing middle class –​
began to enlarge industry and trade in European society. In
those circumstances, acquisitive behavior –​in banking, in
manufacturing, in timber, in mining, in large-​scale buying and
selling of slaves, cotton, sugar, wool, tobacco, pottery, textiles,
spices, and coffee –​became more acceptable than formerly, and
thinkers like Adam Smith began to talk about the “natural pro-
pensity” of all people “to truck, barter, and exchange one thing
for another.”226
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 68 Targeting N eoliberalism

Accordingly, thinking positively about the sort of people

summed up in the phrase homo economicus (although not
using that term) became more common than previously.227
Simultaneously, a new science of economics, from Smith to
Ricardo to Jevons to Pareto to Schumpeter and further, arose to
analyze what happens when people are measured less by their
rank in society (feudalism) and more by their contribution to
economic efficiency (capitalism).
In philosophical terms, it was as if men and women were no
longer born to seek a good life (for example, in Aristotelian or
Christian virtue) but to make themselves useful in a natural
system of voluntary market exchanges, which no one created
or controlled. In economic terms, which annoyed Polanyi, it
was as if people were expected to welcome lives marked by
constant flux, as if creative destruction were sacrosanct and
citizens had no choice but to accept its dislocations. In social
terms, it was as if residents would not be regarded chiefly as
political citizens in the state –​for example, enacting laws to
control constant change –​but as economic actors competing in
implacable markets. In Kantian terms, although neoliberals
are not disciples of Kant, it was as if everyone were destined to
risk becoming a means to someone else’s end.228

Economic Consequences
Because it assumes that people are homo economicus, neo-
liberalism promotes distinctive beliefs about the nature of
(1) individuals, who animate the modern economy. Then it
promotes distinctive beliefs about the nature of (2) markets,
where homo economicus individuals presumably come together to
trade. And then it promotes distinctive beliefs about the nature
of (3) commercial corporations, which arise from the way in
which economically minded people sometimes aggregate their
resources and ambitions in order to produce and to profit.
From these and related beliefs, various consequences follow.
Limited space here permits us to consider only a few of them.
They cannot be explained in straight-​line fashion, as if they
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 Economic Consequences 69

flow from a single theory or syllogism, with one proposition

leading to the next, and after that another and another. But
neoliberal propositions do hang together, based on shared and
interlocking concepts. So let us first consider those that are
mainly economic, and then we will consider those that are
mainly political.

The Market-​Based Society

For example, when neoliberals assume that people belong
to the category of homo economicus –​which is another way of
describing the mainstream economic concept of utility-​seeking
people calculating rationally –​they sanction a predominantly
“market-​based” society. In that society, every adult is expected
to cultivate his or her own worthiness “to compete” against
others,229 even though neoliberals do not think of this society
as a Hobbesian war “of every man, against every man.”230 That
is, each person is evaluated by how much marginal utility he or
she can contribute to the market; many individuals must turn
themselves into commodities for sale to others; each worker is
regarded as an animated machine enabling production; young
people are advised not to seek moderation and stability but
to adapt and evolve ceaselessly according to changing market
needs;231 education for life and citizenship is transformed by
globalization imperatives into a national commitment to job
training;232 and so forth.
Some people, naturally ambitious and competitive, probably
enjoy these circumstances. Many others are constantly anx-
ious and “lead lives of quiet desperation.”233 Yet all this seems
reasonable to neoliberals even though no one can really be
sure why some people succeed economically and others, who
may be reasonably energetic and conscientious, do not. After
all, in capitalist thought, everyone is supposed to earn in pro-
portion to his or her contribution to output and prosperity.
But, in truth, no one –​not economists, not employers, and
not workers –​has ever measured the market system’s basic
building block, which is, according to neoliberals, the marginal
utility of any person’s contribution (that of owner or renter,
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 70 Targeting N eoliberalism

supervisor or secretary, hotelier or bellhop, Steven Spielberg or

Julia Roberts, and so forth) to economic activity.234 So we don’t
really know, according to marginal utility theory, why some
full-​time, hard-​working people are mired in poverty.235

Natural Markets
Neoliberal faith in economic growth works through an
assumption that markets are natural. Citing opinions
expressed by former CEO of the Goldman Sachs Group and
then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson (2006–​ 2009),
Larry Bartels describes this faith as a “general tendency to
think of the economy as a natural system existing prior to, and
largely separate from, the political sphere.”236
Now, if markets are natural (economic) and separate
from governments (political), one can argue that in markets
successful people deservedly acquire money and property,
which they can use to resist government power.237 In which
case, in a way, efficient markets, by sustaining economically
secure citizens, are what keeps governments from becoming
tyrannical.
In addition, however, to assume the existence of natural
markets is to ascribe to them natural consequences, such as
inequality. In which case voters, and government officials,
need not inquire too closely into where those consequences
come from. Inequality, for example, is painful to some people,
therefore some of them seek government help. But political
decisions, say neoliberals, are artificial, selfish, and inherently
fallible, whereas market decisions are genuine, flow from
impartial confluences, and are simply the price that we (actu-
ally, the losers) must pay for progress.238
In fact, to insist that “capitalism” or “free enterprise” works
through “the market” is a slight-​of-​hand trick, because nat-
ural markets don’t exist.239 David Graeber has pointed out
that, despite Adam Smith’s supposition that markets arise
naturally from the division of labor and the propensity to
barter, the history of primitive societies reveals only contrived
markets fashioned differently by various tribes, cities, and
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 Economic Consequences 71

governments.240 Nevertheless, neoliberals not only assume

that markets are natural and precede government, they also
believe that, on behalf of economic “efficiency,” the chief obli-
gation of governments is to protect unremitting competition
and creative destruction in those markets even if that requires
criticizing politicians and voters who might want, on behalf of
society, to regulate such churning.241

Entrepreneurs
Neoliberals argue that “entrepreneurs” generate creativity and
prosperity, but that claim is only part of a wider neoliberal
notion that “capitalism” (or “free enterprise”) and its special
characters, such as entrepreneurs, produce economic growth
and progress.242 The argument here is that governments,
everywhere in the world, should establish the wherewithal
for ceaseless economic competition, including conditions such
as “law and order, the foundations of secure property rights,
and an inclusive market economy.” Where those conditions
have obtained, as during the Industrial Revolution in England,
“The engine of technological breakthroughs throughout the
economy was innovation, spearheaded by new entrepreneurs
and businessmen eager to apply their new ideas.”243
On the one hand, at home this thesis justifies using gov-
ernment to legislate in favor of a fraction of the class of
homo economicus as if they are the movers and shakers of
national prosperity. On this score, tax breaks and subsidies
for commerce are enacted, and the theory of supply-​side eco-
nomics is commended.244 On the other hand, the same thesis
promotes globalization abroad, which extends domestic
practices into the international arena –​assuring profitable
access for American managers and investors –​by insisting
that each country should act in the spirit of competitive cap-
italism in order to avoid economic “failure.” Resistance is
scorned, as summed up with rhetorical brilliance by Thomas
Friedman’s praise for “the golden straitjacket”245 –​ unpleasant
but effective –​which consists of economic practices fashioned
and enforced by globalization champions such as the World
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 72 Targeting N eoliberalism

Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade

Organization.246
What is neglected in this scenario for going forward are
people who are not remarkable, who are nevertheless vir-
tuous, and who contribute greatly to progress and prosperity.
For example, there are scientists and engineers who discover
things like antibiotics and Lipitor, who understand why
glaciers are melting, who learn to grow two blades of grass
where one grew before, who invent transistors and turn them
into computers, who place satellites in orbit and broadcast
from them signals for GPS systems. Some of these people may
aspire to profit greatly from their work, as neoliberals claim.
But others may act from a sense of vocation, for instance, from
the challenge of discovering something new.247 And they may
be willing to do that as government employees, which would
cost society much less than when, in the name of promoting
innovation, neoliberals insist that discoveries paid for by gov-
ernment research grants should be turned over to capitalists
for development.248
A second loss relates to fairness. To the extent that innova-
tive businessmen succeed, they do not produce prosperity by
themselves. Other people have a hand in their success and may
deserve to be treated more generously than they are today.
Philosophers have made this point by insisting that science,
technology, education, and good health surround successful
entrepreneurs, who get ahead by standing on the shoulders of
giants, by working with earlier discoveries, and by reaping gains
from government spending on research and infrastructure.249
Furthermore, praise for entrepreneurial creativity usually
discounts how it may profit from the occasional indecencies
of historical forces, and especially from those associated with
war.250 For example, while British capitalism flourished along
with colonial exploitation, Hilaire Belloc described as follows
England’s major cultural advantage during the battle of
Omdurman (1898) against Arab tribes in the Sudan: “Whatever
happens, we have got /​the Maxim gun and they have not.”251
Moreover, American capitalism thrived greatly after 1945
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 Economic Consequences 73

because, protected by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, it

emerged from World War II unscathed compared to Germany,
France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, and
Japan.252

Free Trade
Underlying neoliberal support for globalization is enthusiasm
for “free trade.” Free trade justifications go back to nineteenth-​
century economist David Ricardo and his principle of “compara-
tive advantage,” which says that any country can benefit from
exporting what it can produce most efficiently and importing
what its trading partners can produce most efficiently. That is,
exploit your comparative advantage and let your trading part-
ners exploit theirs. Later economists would draw the same con-
clusion in terms of marginal utility theory, where producing
efficiently (using few or cheap resources) generates inexpen-
sive utility, to be exchanged for someone else’s inexpensive
utility (based on using few or cheap resources) in return.
Thus Nobel Prize winner (economics, 2008) Paul Krugman
declared to his readers that “If you had taken the time to under-
stand the story about England trading cloth for Portuguese wine
that we teach to every freshman in Econ. I, [then]… you know
more about the nature of the global economy than the current
U. S. Trade Representative (or most of his predecessors).”253 With
that kind of confidence emanating from economists, the con-
servative pundit Charles Krauthammer, perhaps recalling what
he studied in college, agreed with Krugman by declaring: “That
free trade is advantageous to both sides is the rarest of political
propositions –​provable, indeed mathematically.”254
Well, not exactly. There are serious problems with this
abstract model, to the point where using it as a basis for making
real-​world decisions may cause enough local resentment to
propel some voters into populism. One is that, as understood
by neoliberals, the model suggests that, under conditions of
free trade, economic boats everywhere are rising, to the point
where hundreds of millions of people worldwide are no longer
as poor as they used to be.255 Here is an accomplishment that
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 74 Targeting N eoliberalism

little impresses many American workers, some of whom lost

their jobs when American factories outsourced many of those
jobs to Mexico after the North American Free Trade Agreement
(1994) was proposed by Republicans in Congress, supported
by more Republicans than Democrats in both Houses,256 and
signed into law by the neoliberal President Bill Clinton.257
A second problem with the free-​trade model is that it deals
with average gains. That is, neoliberals argue that “America”
and “China” are better off, in GDP terms, from massive trading
between them. This may be true, if GDP is a test of national
welfare. But it is also a barometer of creative destruction, in
which competitive innovation produces local winners and
losers. In which case, many Americans may feel that, even if
“America” is better off, they themselves lost ground.258
Or, in a powerful political story of recent years, it turns out
that in a national economy driven largely by creative destruc-
tion working through free trade and globalization, the richest
One Percent of Americans now own 40 percent of the country’s
wealth,259 while the average family in the top One Percent
of income receivers took in more than twenty-​six times the
average family income of the other 99 percent of income
receivers.260

Shareholders and Stakeholders

Free trade is dominated by large actors, which are often
business corporations, and those are regarded by neoliberals
as best administered according to “the theory of shareholder
value.” Milton Friedman explained this theory as early as in
1970, but did not name it at the time, when he argued that
the sole responsibility of corporate managers, within what-
ever legal guidelines the state may determine, is to maximize
profits.261
In other words, because shareholders own the corporation,
its officers are obliged, by their terms of employment, to serve
those shareholders by earning for them as much profit as the
law permits. In theory, at least, the notion of managers serving

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 Economic Consequences 75

shareholders even justifies the practice of “venture capitalists”

buying enough shares to take over a corporation, selling off
parts of the enterprise, loading up what remains with debt, but
all the while paying substantial dividends and/​or creating for
the new owners other financial benefits (such as buying back
the corporation’s stock in order to boost its market price).262
In short, the shareholder theory is an elaboration of Alfred
Sloan’s aphorism, from the 1920s, that General Motors, which
Sloan led, existed to make money rather than motor cars.263
The problem there, for social thought, is that the theory of
shareholder value clashes with older notions, familiar to pol-
itical thinkers, which may be used to assess corporations that
operate, after all, under public authorizations. Joint-​ stock
corporations, such as the eighteenth-​ century Charles River
Bridge Company in Massachusetts, which enjoy limited liability
and other valuable privileges by law, were invented by Western
societies to serve public needs, such as building a bridge over a
particular river.264 In the realm of such corporations, profit was
an expected by-​product, but public service was the larger goal.
Accordingly, even when in the early nineteenth century
the flexible practice of general incorporation (without a spe-
cific legislative charter and with no designated purpose) was
authorized in America by state laws, there remained some sen-
timent in favor of regarding corporations as artificial persons,
licensed and charged with serving not just shareholders but also
other citizens. These might include corporate clients, con-
sumers, tenants, workers, neighbors, taxpayers who pay for
public education and infrastructure, governments that protect
corporations from foreign enemies, and more.265
This view, which is in effect a stakeholder theory of cor-
porate management, harks back to a time when Populists and
Progressives feared that capitalism was run mainly for the
benefit of bankers and industrialists –​that is, shareholders –​
who critics regarded as serving themselves and exploiting the
public.266 That suspicion lasted well into the New Deal, but it
has been challenged by neoliberal thinkers ever since.267

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 76 Targeting N eoliberalism

Scarcity
Homo economicus, natural markets, entrepreneurs, free markets,
shareholder values: All these terms, framing neoliberalism,
rest on a supposition that economic activity is about “scar-
city,” much like psychology is about personality. Neoliberalism
adopts this concept from mainstream economics. As Nicholas
Gregory Mankiw says in his bestselling textbook Principles of
Economics, “Economics is the study of how society manages its
scarce resources.”268 Or, as we saw Alan Blinder saying, there
are three “noncontroversial propositions” in “the economic
way of thinking,” and the second of these is that “Resources
are scarce.”269 That point may seem obvious when people have
in mind, say, the limited amount of gold worldwide, or the
shortage of curbside parking spaces downtown.
Nevertheless, economic scarcity is not simple. One difficulty
has to do with how resources are distributed and allocated
within the existing economy. For economists, “resources”
in this sense are the items –​from coal, to clean water, to
antibiotics, to wood, to aluminum, to oil, to computers,
and many other things –​that get combined in families, in
factories, in farms, in schools, in laboratories, and more, to
produce goods that people want. It follows that, because such
resources are not endlessly and easily available, there is at
any moment a finite supply of them. In which case, a market
mechanism is needed to enable citizens to compete against
one another, voluntarily of course, and to receive, each
according to his or her utility contribution, more or less from
the stock of goods that scarce resources, in combination, are
capable of producing.
Well, again, not exactly. One problem is that, on scarcity, neo-
liberalism draws no distinction between “needs” and “wants.”
Needs are, roughly speaking, what we require to get along as
normal, ordinary, moderate, balanced, and civilized people.
On that score, it is obvious that the world’s population today,
if organized to that end, could easily make enough, for
example, tables, chairs, shirts, pants, bread, jam, dwellings,
and medicines to supply what everyone really needs.270 So

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 Economic Consequences 77

satisfying needs is not prevented by scarcity. Add to the needs

list some luxury items based on cravings and idiosyncrasies,
and the necessary productive capacity still exists.271
Wants, however, are an entirely different matter. Wants have
to do with what we “desire” rather than what we “need.”272
And our desires are constantly enlarged by social norms, by
advertisements, by fashion, and by keeping up with the Coopers
who are themselves straining to stay ahead of the Smiths.273 In
a way, then, desires are innumerable and insatiable. It follows
that satisfying wants/​desires completely is impossible. There is
simply not enough stuff to go around.274
In these circumstances, the axiom of scarcity fits into a
neoliberal endorsement of “consumer sovereignty,” where
presumably it is consumers who rule the economy and
corporations that merely seek, obediently, to satisfy their
demanding customers.275 That consumer desires are created
day after day by ubiquitous advertising, that store shelves can
be cleared only if we will buy things that we don’t need, that
planned obsolescence is built into cars, appliances, furniture,
and other items, that many children and adults have more
toys and clothing than they can play with or wear: All these
are common-​sense observations that must be ignored by neo-
liberalism because they might validate the critics who claim
that large corporations actually dominate small consumers
rather than the other way around.

Economic Growth
If perpetual scarcity exists, one way to deal with it is to gen-
erate endless economic growth. More growth equals more
things equals more acquisitions equals more happiness… until
one decides to pursue the next new thing. Apart from the
treadmill quality of this proposition, it may sound plausible
until one considers that when neoliberals borrow their ana-
lysis of economic growth from mainstream economists, and
when they boundlessly admire that project, they usually over-
look or discount the inevitable adjunct of growth, which is
what economists call “externalities.”
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 78 Targeting N eoliberalism

A useful item, say a home air conditioner in 1950, may be

produced where it did not previously exist and may therefore
be considered a welcome multiplier of economic growth. But
beyond its market price, making that product and many others
may impose on society “external costs,” some personal and
some social, for example, environmental pollution and eco-
logical disorder.276 Which means that “more” is not necessarily
“better.”
In our day, the worst of externalities is global warming,
driven by burning fossil fuels purchased at market prices.277
Global warming is catastrophic, but you would not know that
from buying affordable gallons of gasoline. The problem is that
market prices, which add up to GDP and therefore indicate
economic growth, do not necessarily include external costs,
because they register only the marginal utility value (short-​term)
of items that are exchanged. And the problem there is that the
marginal utility prices of items like gasoline, used on a daily
basis in the modern economy, mostly do not take into account
either the long-​run fate of humanity, or the absolute value of the
Earth –​its soil, its forests, its water, its air, and more –​which
supports us all. So we keep driving, all too often in gas guzzlers.
Some neoliberals claim that when we will become richer, we
will be able to afford to solve ecological problems; that is, they
say we can continue to do what we are doing now, to boost
GDP, and we can at the same time safely assume that, some-
where later on, people who will be less vulnerable to scarcity
will create the efficiencies and substitutions we need to pre-
vent disastrous externalities.278 They might also explain, along
these lines, that because economic growth is required for pro-
gress and prosperity, there is a growth versus climate “trade-​
off” for which we must seek “an optimal path that puts the
benefits and costs of each into balance.”279
Nowadays, that optimum path, in strictly economic terms,
might entail enacting a carbon tax.280 Its proponents assume
that if carbon emitters will have to pay more for what they
are doing, they will stop emitting.281 What would happen to
the Earth if they would just frown and pay up (as comfortable
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 Economic Consequences 79

people do when the price of gasoline for their SUV rises) is

discussed nowhere in neoliberal writings that I know of. For,
as Naomi Klein says, “To admit that the climate crisis is real is
to admit the end of the neoliberal project.”282

Ideology
Another difficulty with the notion of scarcity relates to its role
in neoliberal “ideology.” Ideology is a term sometimes used
by scholars in reference to what are called “catechisms” or
“creeds” in religion, where some authoritative source, such as
the Bible, is distilled into a collection of principles and propos-
itions, such as the Nicene Creed of 325 AD, which tell us what
life is about and what we should do with it. On the secular front,
Marxism is sometimes seen as this sort of ideology, composed
of various linked principles and propositions derived mainly
from the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.
Neoliberalism is not an ideology in this sense. It has no
leaders like the Pope, and it has no authoritative scriptures
like those of Marxism.283 However, “ideology” is also a term
with sociological dimensions. It can be used to describe a com-
pendium of principles and concepts, which are not based on
formally authoritative sources, which are not written down
anywhere systematically, but that indicate what some people
do together in society and why what they do justifies their col-
lective status, perhaps conferring on them wealth, prestige,
and political power.284
In this sense, the assumption of perpetual scarcity, borrowed
from mainstream economics, is part of a powerful complex of
ideas that add up to an ideology that is commended by, and that
is promoted by, many of the more successful people in America
today. In this sense, it is a middle-​class, or bourgeois, ideology –​
as opposed to an aristocratic, or proletarian ideology –​because,
to deal effectively with what they call scarcity, neoliberals
praise and applaud people who generate growth (there are the
entrepreneurs), who encourage growth, who justify growth,
who admire globalization (there is the free trade project), who
support privatization (there is the marketplace), who injure
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 80 Targeting N eoliberalism

or eliminate jobs, traditions, small towns, unions, bowling

leagues, and more, all in the name of progress (there is the cre-
ative destruction).285
For example, Edward Conard explains that capital is chron-
ically scarce because “workers” or “voters” won’t cut back on
consumption.286 There is the scarcity assumption. In his view, it
justifies lowering taxes on entrepreneurs so that those people,
when successful, will retain enough money to invest –​that is,
to pay for taking “risks” that only they, among workers and
voters, will incur but that society requires in order to stimulate
innovation (economic growth), to the benefit of all.
But what is the context? Conard identifies himself as a
“former managing director of Bain Capital, LLC.”287 We should
note, then, that his contention, on behalf of investors like him-
self, is a long-​standing thesis, going back to the 1830s when
classical economists such as Nassau Senior justified (bour-
geois) profits by arguing that capitalists practice “abstinence,”
whereas workers provide “labor.”288 That is, capitalists refrain
from a measure of consumption, accumulate savings, then
use that money to build productive enterprises, and therefore
deserve to profit when those enterprises generate goods for
the benefit of society at large. In other words, what Conard
says today is, in effect, more or less what industrialists and
business people have long claimed. But he makes the case for
capitalist privileges and power in terms of “innovation” rather
than “abstinence,” probably because we don’t usually believe
that abstinence is characteristic of people like Jeff Bezos, Bill
Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, or Michael Bloomberg,
to say nothing of President Donald Trump.

Political Consequences
So far, we have looked at neoliberal ideas that relate mainly to
economic practices. In the real world, though, even small eco-
nomic practices can have large political consequences.289 So let
us consider some of those now, even though they are so large
that we can explore them here only briefly. Like neoliberal
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 Political Consequences 81

economic ideas, these political consequences cannot be

depicted in straight-​line fashion, as if they express the orderly
unfolding of a formal theory. They do connect, however, via
shared concepts, and they are worth noting here, even unsys-
tematically, because they are especially relevant to political
scientists who, in the Temple of Science, might commit them-
selves professionally to analyzing America’s political condition
in the Age of Populism.

Public Goods
Let us start by noting that neoliberalism is very weak on
“public goods,” which in any society provide a large part of
social well-​being. The Constitution says that “the People of the
United States, in order to … establish justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the gen-
eral welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity, do ordain and establish” constitutional gov-
ernment in America. Thus, in its Preamble, the Constitution
describes the new government as responsible for facilitating
the achievement of several public goods that will benefit all
citizens.290
The reason why neoliberals are weak on public goods is that
they are strong on markets, as opposed to governments.291
That markets fail to provide public goods (such as fresh air,
clean water, and national defense) is obvious, but it was also
demonstrated logically by economist Mancur Olson, who
argued that, because everyone can enjoy a public good once it
is created, rational (self-​centered) individuals will decide not to
pay for it voluntarily.292 If it is there, they will use it; if it is not
there, they will wait for someone else to pay to create it; once
that other person, or persons, has paid, then rational individ-
uals will use it, thus acting as “free riders.”
Technically speaking, markets do not provide public goods
because such goods cannot be priced, like cars and breakfast
cereals, for separate and voluntary purchase. For example,
weapons are necessary for the creation of a public good called
national security. However, it is not likely that customers would
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 82 Targeting N eoliberalism

be willing to pay separately, say in Home Depot, for missile fins

or tank treads, and then send those parts to the Pentagon so
that soldiers could assemble them into weapons to defend the
country.
Therefore, public goods will only appear if government will
tax (force) citizens enough to pay for them. But neoliberals rec-
ommend enacting the lowest taxes possible, in order, presum-
ably, to leave money in private hands so that profit-​seeking
entrepreneurs will be able to innovate. In which case, the
neoliberal prescription for how to maintain government ser-
vices while not raising enough tax money to support them
thoroughly is that individuals should mainly pay government
for what they use, such as water, parks, libraries, roads, trash
removal, sewage, education, and more. As one privatization
enthusiast says, “We must scale government benefits to eco-
nomic contributions. Charge users for the [government] ser-
vices they consume.”293
There is a philosophic issue here. Which goods will be
regarded as public goods depends on which goods a society
decides, on the basis of ethical considerations, to regard as
publicly valuable or not, after which it will provide them or
not on the basis of taxation for the general welfare of society’s
members. Thus, when Barack Obama was president and there
were Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress, they
decided together that health services should be available to
all citizens, to which end they enacted the Affordable Health
Care Act of 2010. The argument was that many millions of
Americans could not afford existing private health insurance
policies but that the community as a whole would benefit from
paying for everyone to be as healthy as possible.294
In response, neoliberal politicians and intellectuals, who
preferred that health care would remain private, within the
realm of competitive market practices, argued that Democratic
politicians wanted to enact a public health care law so that
the receipt of affordable health services would cause poor
people, previously uninsured, to become loyal members of

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 Political Consequences 83

the Democratic Party. In other words, beyond law, order, and

national defense, all of which protect markets and private
enterprise, neoliberals are apt to regard proposing, and then
providing, additional public goods as designed to achieve polit-
ical gain rather than social well-​being.295

Democracy
As it is weak on public goods, neoliberalism is also weak on
democracy, again because it focuses mainly on the market
economy. That economy encourages creative destruction,
pursues endless growth, and generates the One Percent out-
come, sometimes called the “Winner-​ Take-​All Society.”296 In
that society, the top One Percent of citizens receive more than
20 percent of the nation’s yearly income and own more wealth
than the nation’s bottom 90 percent.297 This striking inequality
of economic rewards and resources was the central theme of
Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign for the Democratic presiden-
tial nomination.298
Against critics like Sanders, neoliberal thinkers insist that,
according to the economic model of marginal utility, people
who have large incomes deserve what they earn because they
make corresponding contributions to national prosperity.
A large gap in personal incomes is therefore justified. What this
economic approach to rewards does not explain is that small
incomes are spent mostly on needs,299 whereas large incomes
cover needs and savings, in which case the savings (wealth) can
be used, via lobbying and campaign contributions, to project
power in politics.300
In other words, when unequal incomes turn into unequal
wealth, which they inevitably do, the democratic principle
of one person, one vote is endangered because some (mon-
eyed) people have, in effect, more power than that conveyed
by a single vote.301 In recent years, that power in politics has
been enormously boosted by two Supreme Court decisions,
where the justices voted 5–​4 in Citizens United v. Federal Elections
Commission (2010) to permit virtually unlimited group political

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 84 Targeting N eoliberalism

contributions and again 5–​4 in McCutcheon v. Federal Elections

Commission (2014) to permit virtually unlimited individual pol-
itical contributions.
Is this money crucial? Because ballots are cast secretly, we
never know exactly which citizens vote for one policy rather
than another, or why one candidate rather than another wins
an election. Therefore, when scholars compare whatever cam-
paign spending figures are available, they disagree on whether
or not money by itself can assure electoral success to whoever
spends more. Nevertheless, there are clear indications that,
as the saying goes, money talks.302 Indeed, the Supreme Court
inadvertently endorsed that notion when it ruled that, by
expressing the opinions and preferences of those who give,
campaign contributions are no more nor less than a form of
free speech, which is guaranteed by the Constitution.
In effect, the Court considered the legality of money-​backed
talk but did not take that talk’s impact into account. Yet
candidates pay special attention to people who are likely to
contribute, and elected officials are reluctant to act against the
interests of people whose money they will need to cover cam-
paign expenses next time around.303 In such circumstances,
democracy becomes, to some extent, a neoliberal marketplace,
a political form of “consumer sovereignty” whereby some
citizens figuratively “buy” candidates with their single votes,
and whereby other citizens figuratively “buy” candidates with
thousands or millions of dollars’ worth of campaign donations
and lobbying.304 Officially, all citizens are equal. But, as George
Orwell explained in Animal Farm (1945), when some animals
(the pigs) gain control of the farm’s resources, all the farm’s
animals may remain equal in a formal sense, even while some of
them (the dominant pigs) are in fact more equal than others.305

The Middle Class

As we have seen, neoliberals prefer the market-​ centered
economy. Consequently, again, they are weak on something
very important politically, and that is the middle class. This
weakness suggests a glitch in their economic theory because,
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 Political Consequences 85

if they expect supply-​side innovations to generate economic

growth, it is not clear from where they expect that consumers
will earn enough money to buy what innovators are going to
offer/​supply to them.306
In the One Percent economy, attention focuses on what is
there, in the sense that a great many modern resources and
power have been captured by One Percent of Americans. The
problem of the middle class, on the other hand, is what is not
there; among the remaining 99 percent of Americans, ever
fewer people possess the resources and therefore the power
that had once belonged to a vibrant middle class that thrived
in America between the end of World War II and the mid-​
1970s.307 Those were the days when, as Robert Reich points out,
“the income of a single schoolteacher or baker or salesman or
mechanic was enough to buy a home, have two cars, and raise
a family.”308
What happened is not that technological productivity
declined or that formerly middle-​class people stopped working
hard and responsibly but that, in later years, the rules of the
economic game –​determining who will win and who will lose –​
changed around them. For one thing, banks, credit card com-
panies, brokers, and insurance agencies benefited from new
legal arrangements that permitted them to consolidate and
charge higher fees than before, to the point where the finan-
cial sector (which employs relatively few people and generates
more paperwork than it makes commodities) began to take in
more of America’s national GDP than the people who manu-
facture things, from food to medical instruments to clothing
to home appliances and to machine tools.309
Moreover, people who did manufacture things were, as a
class, unable to hold out for a greater share of the nation’s prod-
uctivity gains because private-​sector labor unions shrank. It was
a classic Edgeworth Box situation, where workers (who were
selling labor) had little bargaining power against employers
(who were buying labor) because, for example, many of their
jobs could be outsourced to low-​wage countries, many other
jobs could be eliminated by increasing automation, many
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 86 Targeting N eoliberalism

workplaces could be flooded with temporary personnel,310

many illegal immigrants could undercut wages for bona fide
citizens, and many factories could be closed down because
free-​
trade agreements permitted easy importation of cheap
goods made in countries where unions did not exist.
Furthermore, while neoliberals pushed for reduction or pri-
vatization of public services, an economy emerged where in
many families two people must work to make ends meet even
minimally. In those cases, some people have been squeezed
out of the middle class by their inability to pay for things they
formerly had obtained free or inexpensively.311 This is the
story, for example, told by Alissa Quart, about how millions
of ordinary Americans, conscientious and reliable, working for
low wages and sometimes on several jobs, cannot afford preg-
nancy expenses, cannot afford child care, cannot afford college
tuition, cannot afford health insurance, cannot afford home
mortgages, and cannot afford retirement plans that were for-
merly subsidized by employers.312
The decline of the middle class is an issue where consulting
with great thinkers is patently worthwhile. For example,
Ganesh Sitaraman notes recent decades of increasingly unequal
incomes in America, leading to a severe shrinking of the
middle class to the point where, in 2015, for the first time in
generations, middle-​class Americans no longer constituted a
majority of the population.313 But when the country lacks a mod-
erate, middle-​class anchor, he says, growing class differences,
pitting poor against rich, threaten the republican values and
civic constraints that, starting with Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero,
Machiavelli, Harrington, and Montesquieu, eventually inspired
the Constitution.
Thus, from where we are today, Sitaraman recalls first-​order
political thinkers and their ideas. Whereupon, while engaging
those thinkers, he cites and analyzes the anti-​tyrannical con-
stitutional balance among groups and classes that some of
them, such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James
Madison, fashioned for America. He then explains, by drawing
on recent empirical studies, how, because the middle class is
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 Political Consequences 87

in decline, that vital balance is being lost today. And, finally,

he recommends public policies, in education, banking, and
employment compensation, by which it can be restored.314

Populism
I will again sound repetitive for proposing that neoliberalism’s
enthusiasm for markets is implicated in a further political
problem, which is the rise of populism. A mainly market-​
based economy may not be the only cause of populism, but
it is certainly one major reason why populism has grown in
recent years.
The sequence is as follows. While GDP rises, and while it
is regarded as demonstrating that the country enjoys more
prosperity than ever, then the decline of the middle class is an
indicator that prosperity is not reaching many Americans. As
Nobel Prize winner (economics, 2001) Joseph Stiglitz declared
point-​blank: “The American economy no longer works for most
people in the United States.”315
The problem here is that rewards for hard work in America
are being distributed unevenly within a worldwide matrix of
globalization, including free trade and financialization, which
can only be resisted if America’s government will be strong
enough to confront numerous and powerful corporations that
profit from existing economic arrangements and oppose all
political inclinations to change them. But the state apparatus
in America is weaker than it used to be because, when neo-
liberal principles are translated into practices, “the state” gets
weakened in favor of “the market,” as we have seen. This even
though, when the state is weak, it cannot make adjustments
that might be necessary to provide, beyond present market-​
based outcomes, well-​being and prosperity for all its citizens.316
Many Americans therefore feel, increasingly since the 1970s,
that they have been treated badly by markets and that no one
is doing anything about it.317 In the circumstances –​and here
are the grounds for populism –​resentment is turned against
conventional political leaders who, for years, were nominally
in charge but produced only more of the same. Surely this
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 88 Targeting N eoliberalism

resentment in 2016 worked against Hillary Clinton because, as

a candidate for president then, she looked like a former office
holder who, while taking home millions of dollars in speaking
fees, had done little to compensate “losers” in the war of all
against all.318
At the same time, Donald Trump benefited from resentment
when his slogan, “America First,” encouraged many ordinary
Americans to feel that he would stand up for them against a cor-
porate world whose leaders cared more for globalization, dein-
dustrialization, creative destruction, automation, free trade, and
international finance than for the well-​being of most neighbors
at home.319 That Trump was, objectively speaking, a member of
the global elite did not deter his supporters.

The Death of Truth

To round out this review of some neoliberal political
consequences, we should note what may be called “the death
of truth.”320 America’s market economy, which neoliberals
praise and promote, is not based on scarcity, no matter what
neoliberals claim, because, for at least a century, American
factories and workers have been able to produce everything
that everyone needs. There is no scarcity to overcome, then,
except in the unevenness of distribution. In fact, flowing from
modern science and technology, overproduction –​which is the
exact opposite of scarcity –​is a constant threat.
Accordingly, the real imperative underlying modern
commerce and technology is to convince people to buy what
they do not need, and for this purpose advertising has evolved
into a complex and sophisticated form of incessant persuasion
where truth, if it exists at all, is secondary to provoking wants.321
In ads, young and beautiful people dash about, alone or
together, accompanied by snappy music, wearing new clothes,
driving flashy cars, using famous toothpaste, tennis rackets,
and smartphones, promoting Calvin Klein, Toyota, Nike,
Apple, American Express, Tide, and, via Chipotle, McDonald’s,
and Applebee’s, and happily eating their way through life.322 In
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 The Death of Truth 89

the circumstances, as Stephen Colbert put it, metaphorically

speaking, truth is something we think with our heads, by our-
selves, whereas desire, aroused by nonstop ads, is something we
know in our hearts.323 In other words, truth is beleaguered and
desire is boundless.
Now this is, not surprisingly, analogous to the way in which
neoliberals, via their enthusiasm for mainstream economics,
make no judgment about what people prefer and why they
buy anything.324 For so long as something on sale gives people
pleasure (utility), it is commendable for contributing (via GDP)
to their well-​being and that of society. If apparently frivolous
goods are going viral, so be it. After all, value is not what is true
across the board but what people feel is true for themselves. As
Bentham said, pushpin or poetry, it’s all the same.325
Of course the language of persuasion, refined and elaborated
in commercial advertising, quickly spread via exercises in
public relations to other realms of life, to wherever people could
gain an advantage by making something look more attractive
than it really is.326 It was inevitable, then, that advertising
techniques would powerfully influence politics, especially in
lobbying and campaigning, where a great many things –​such
as taxes and war, and some candidates for public office –​have
always had to be made more attractive than they really are.327
The problem here is that, in public life, and especially in
democratic societies, truth is not something we can easily do
without. In fact, it is a vital public good for, without truth, how
can democratic citizens think accurately about the condition of
their society and how they might vote and speak up to improve
it? In that sense truth is a public good because, when it exists,
it is available to all citizens, and their access to it serves to
make them all better off.328
More specifically, without truth, people cannot talk to
each other constructively, cannot understand each other’s
interests, and cannot adjust together successfully to real-​
world conditions.329 Yet truthful talk is not a default setting
in the Age of Populism, personified by a president who runs
the White House like a soap opera and often sounds like a
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 90 Targeting N eoliberalism

walking advertisement for himself and his branded proper-

ties.330 Indeed, when confronted by adversaries or journalists
wielding the truth, the president accuses them of promoting
“fake news,” and his spokespeople claim that Trumpian declar-
ations, even when patently false, are justified by “alternative
facts.”331
History teaches stern lessons about the importance of
truth.332 For example, Hannah Arendt, who fled to America
from Nazism, warned, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951),
that fascist and communist regimes erased the difference
between fact and fiction, true and false, to the point where
their citizens would willingly endorse and commit extraor-
dinary brutalities.333 And George Orwell, after serving unhap-
pily as a British propagandist during World War II, in 1984
(1948) darkly portrayed fictitious but plausible societies whose
leaders, such as Big Brother (who Orwell invented and named),
promote public policies based entirely on lies. Thus Orwell’s
protagonist Winston Smith, living in Oceania (including
mainly North and South America, Britain, and Australia), and
working in the Ministry of Truth, where official explanations
and justifications changed daily, warned that there can be
no freedom without truth. As Smith said: “Freedom is the
freedom to say [the truth] that two plus two makes four. If that
is granted all else follows.”334

John Stuart Mill

To sum up, creative destruction is promoted ceaselessly by
neoliberalism, therefore some political scientists should frame
their concern for destruction within the public conversation
on neoliberalism. I will return to all that in a moment. But first,
let us illuminate the neoliberal propositions I have discussed so
far by citing a great thinker who was seriously worried about
change and prosperity.
Thus John Stuart Mill, in his Principles of Political Economy (1848),
commented as follows: “I confess that I am not charmed with
the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal
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 John Stuart Mill 91

state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the

trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s
heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most
desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable
symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.”335
Clearly, Mill would oppose neoliberalism were he alive today.
Therefore, he continued: “It [the trampling, crushing, etc.] may
be a necessary stage in the progress of civilization … But the
best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is
poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear
being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves
forward.” Mill called this “best state” the “stationary state,” in
the sense that it would not pursue endless economic growth
but would rest content to make here and there small scien-
tific and technical adjustments that would improve people’s
lives.336
In the Age of Populism, while we are beset by severe personal,
social, cultural, ethical, commercial, and ecological strains,
I believe that hoping for less struggle, for less trampling, for
less pushing forward, and for less of a human footprint on
the Earth –​that is, hoping to mitigate creative destruction in
neoliberal times –​is a reasonable aspiration. Perhaps that is
what Polanyi had in mind when he warned that not all change
amounts to progress.337
However, to transition to such a state of affairs in America
would require far-​reaching political decisions, which economists
don’t typically study and which neoliberals, who prefer market
outcomes, disdain. So let us turn now to the study of politics,
to see where political scientists might take a stand against the
perpetual-​growth optimists.

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 6 HUMANISM

What have we seen so far? (1) That we live in the Age of

Populism, which is an era of dangerous trends and forces.
(2) That public life in that era is churned by painful conflicts
and polarizations, some of them generated by a market-​based
economy that creates winners and losers who are not neces-
sarily more or less meritorious than each other. (3) That on the
advice of economists in the (metaphorical) Temple of Science,
politicians, opinion leaders, and ordinary citizens are strongly
committed to economic growth, which emerges from creative
destruction, which entails constantly changing social and eco-
nomic practices leading to pockets of prosperity but also to
the One Percent problem of inequality. (4) That, among other
consequences, inequality gives rise to political contributions
that, in the name of free speech, confer political power on
dollars along with voters, to the point where, in effect, a market-
place based partly on moneyed activism has come to influence
all branches of government.338 (5) That, in that marketplace,
many people increasingly believe that institutions and other
people are not telling them the truth. (6) That, against a back-
drop of all these factors, resentment grows and encourages
populism. And so forth and so on.

In those circumstances, which I think are extremely worrisome,

how might political scientists proceed? Because the truth is
that, so far, like many other scholars, and of course like most
ordinary citizens, they have not responded collectively to what
I just described.

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 The Default Setting 93

Many political scientists are followers of Aristotle in that they

assume that most people are homo politicus, naturally intended to
live in communities, which in the modern world have become
states. Because politics in those states entail a wide range of
relationships, some personal and some social, between many
people and to various ends, the political science discipline is plur-
alistic and embraces a wide array of different sub-​fields –​from
“Information Technology and Politics” to “Legislative Studies,”
from “Formal Political Theory” to “Women and Politics.”
In practice, however, in whatever their sub-​fields, most pol-
itical scientists tend to investigate, teach, and publish about
democracy (say, institutions and techniques) and about citizen-
ship (say, political rights and participation). Moreover, when
they talk about such subjects, they are most likely to highlight
what many colleagues have regarded as procedural rather than
substantive matters, that is, how things get done (or not), rather
than which things should be done (or not).

The Default Setting

Professionally speaking, then, the default setting for many pol-
itical scientists is an abiding interest in democracy –​what it is
(and is not), where it is (and is not), who its citizens are (and
are not), how it is working for them (or not), whether it needs
repair (or not), and more. That being the case, if some of us will
want to focus on large trends that plague our times, we can
easily remain within our professional vocabulary and research
techniques, where many of us are anyway working on subjects,
including stubborn conundrums, related to democracy. So our
first step in the direction of analyzing the Age of Populism,
if we choose to go down that road, is not even a step: We are
already there.
We should be aware, however, that there is an auxiliary
dimension to political science’s default setting, and that is
our commitment, as scholars, to work scientifically wherever
that is possible. On this score, most political scientists are

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 94 H umanism

post-​Darwinians because, in our world of knowledge, scientific

(empirical) research and analysis are more highly regarded
than the (value-​laden) suppositions that are sometimes called
“qualitative research.”339
In a moment, along with Ian Shapiro, I will commend the
practice of empirical research. But I want first to warn that, on
the subject of democracy, such research tends not to support
and may even cast doubts on democracy.340 A good many empir-
ical studies, including some of the best, suggest that American
democracy is attenuated and imperfect. Sometimes scholars
point out (1) that average voters fail democracy, that many of
them are polarized, that many of them ignore electoral issues,
that many of them refuse to learn about candidates, that
many of them neglect public interests, and more. And some-
times scholars point out (2) that powerful players –​ individuals
and groups –​deliberately distort the system, for example,
via intense partisanship, gerrymandering, large campaign
contributions, lobbying, sponsored punditry, social media
manipulations, and more.
The point here is that, if we want to serve a democratic
society, it is not enough to study democracy and then prove
that it doesn’t work. We must do more than highlight dreary
instances of ineptitude and irrationality.341 We must go beyond
concluding that American politics is dysfunctional,342 or that the
modern state cannot make decisions and stick with them,343 or
that, as time goes by, democratic nations create such a gridlock
of conflicting groups that political standoffs and stalemates are
the rule of the day,344 or that because, nowadays, many citizens
are politically incompetent, we should replace them with an
“epistocracy” of people who “know” rather than just entertain
“opinions.”345

Humanism
We should, in a word, make some of our work contribute to
what has historically been called humanism. Humanism was the
informal creed of many intellectuals during the Enlightenment,
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 Humanism 95

who believed that ordinary people are competent enough to

overthrow social restrictions and discriminations on the road
to fashioning more equitable practices and making them
work well.346 Humanism was the faith of thinkers like Thomas
Paine, with his appeal in Common Sense to colonial Americans
for an insurrection against King George III.347 It was what
inspired James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, in
The Federalist, to insist that representatives of the people were
capable of hammering out a constitution that would defend
and protect all (white male) Americans.348 It was Ralph Waldo
Emerson identifying with the “party of hope.” It was Abraham
Lincoln calling on Americans to ensure that government of
the people would not perish from the Earth. It was William
Jennings Bryan refusing to let his compatriots be crucified
on a British cross of gold. It was Woodrow Wilson going to
war to make the world safe for democracy. It was Franklin
D. Roosevelt proclaiming that Americans have nothing to fear
but fear itself.349 It was Rosa Parks taking her seat on the bus.
It was Martin Luther King maintaining his belief in a dream.
And, for the academic world, it was Richard Rorty telling us
that, if a scholar is to serve her society, “You have to be loyal
to a dream country rather than the one to which you wake up
every morning.”350
Rorty did not mean that we should be unrealistic about
our social aspirations. We need empiricism to know what
is happening. And when populism is promoted by truth-
challenged leaders like Donald Trump, which Rorty did not live
to see, we need empiricism more than ever. What Rorty had
in mind, though, was that sometimes people can be inspired
to go beyond the facts, to change the facts, to do what is right
rather than what is routine. What he insisted, therefore, was
that we should be optimistic about the chances of achieving
even unlikely goals.351
In other words, what Rorty really believed was that we
should do scholarship with passion, about things that are
important to us and to our society, regardless of short-​term
forecasts. Coincidentally, that is what Theodore Lowi, APSA
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 96 H umanism

president for 1991, called for in his presidential address.

Lowi argued that many works of modern political science are
“dismal” and lacking in “passion” because, while accepting the
present bureaucratic state’s parameters, they use that state’s
economic yardsticks to shape research in fields like public
opinion, public policy, and public choice. The dispassionate
results show up in political science journals like the American
Political Science Review, which Lowi criticized for publishing few
articles that “transcend their analysis to join a more inclusive
level of discourse.”352

To restate the matter, we should be passionately committed to

things we know are true, even though current circumstances
might seem indifferent or even hostile to them. In that sense,
and to learn from a great thinker, we should recall that James
Madison rejected Thomas Jefferson’s suggestion of rewriting
the Constitution in every generation. Madison believed that
such constant change would undermine habits, emotions,
traditions, and trust in government.353
It was not, I think, a matter of proof; it was something that
Madison felt he simply knew. In our day, it would not be fan-
ciful to apply the same insight, against constant change, when
economists and neoliberals encourage us to generate the serial
disruptions of creative destruction. Paradoxically, to insist
every morning that the downsides of creative destruction are
our target would not be utopian because it would be conser-
vative in the best sense, according to, say, the standards of
Edmund Burke, who praised social stability, moderation, small
group solidarity, habits, and traditions.354
That a liberal like me can align with a conservative like Burke
suggests that, in the matter of trying to mitigate the damage,
destruction, and dislocations of economic growth, we can be
passionate without slipping into partisanship.355 To that end,
various sensible sources encourage us. Thus journalist Evgeny
Mozorov says that “The overriding question, ‘What might we
build tomorrow?’ blinds us to questions of our ongoing respon-
sibilities for what we built yesterday.”356 And conservationist
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 A New Role 97

John Sawhill declares that “In the end, we will be defined not
only by what we create but by what we refuse to destroy.”357
And World Health Organization director Gro Brundtland warns
that “We must consider our planet to be on loan from our chil-
dren, rather than being a gift from our ancestors.”358
Along these lines, the Hippocratic Oath has long enjoined
doctors to do no harm. For political scientists, Samuel
Huntington, president of the APSA in 1987, in effect suggested
a corollary to Hippocratus when he observed that “by and large,
political scientists want to do good … [with regard to] social
goals or public purposes … [where these include] enhance-
ment of liberty, justice, equality, democracy, and responsibility
in politics. The impetus to do good … is … embedded in our
profession.”359 To extend Huntington’s sentiments, political
scientists can promote the “good” in different ways within
their pluralistic profession. But surely one of those ways could
be to focus on indiscriminate economic destruction, innocent
losers, and subsequent political resentment.

A New Role
The default setting of political science encourages practitioners
to consider many aspects of democracy. But that central theme
does not stand alone. Get the facts straight, but believe that
they can evolve. Study politics quantitatively, but add quali-
tative considerations. Study representative governments, but
compare them to authoritarian regimes. Study the politics
of individuals, but see what groups do politically. Study the
majority, but keep an eye on minorities. Study the rich, but
don’t forget the poor. Study leaders, but also track followers.
As I said earlier, this pluralism in political science, but with
an emphasis on democracy, gives us room to maneuver if we
will want to direct some of our attention to the downsides
of creative destruction. To rephrase that, we need not aspire
to overthrow current disciplinary interests and practices but
to add something to them. What most political scientists are
doing, in the Big Tent of their Temple of Science column (to
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 98 H umanism

mix metaphors), most of them are doing well. So I am not

suggesting that they stop.
What I am proposing, instead, is a project that flows from
a recommendation that, as an adjunct to our occasional talk
about what we together should be doing (scope and methods),
some of us should become –​professionally, voluntarily, rigor-
ously, and responsibly –​more involved politically than we used
to be.360 And I suggest that strategy because, in populist times,
some circumstances –​which will not all fix themselves –​are
more dangerous than those that we, our students, and the
public, lived with previously.

Yes, some scholars should go up on the Temple of Science’s roof.

From there, they should study, teach, and publish about how
to arrange our lives more successfully than living conditions
are presently ordered in the Age of Populism. The roof-​sitters
will not all agree among themselves, and we will not all agree
with all of them. The point, though, is that they will talk
about what they think they know from their own and other
Temple columns as if, in an Aristotelian sense, their enter-
prise endeavors to understand what bears upon homo politicus
seeking a good life in a good community.361
Here is a bottom line because, I think, modern political
science is the academic discipline most suited for this work.
First, because when we consider scope and methods, we agree
that it is our scholarly job to investigate degrees of power,
which affect who prospers more and who prospers less in
many realms of life treated by various disciplines in the Temple
of Science. APSA president (1956) Harold Lasswell made this
point when he described power struggles authoritatively in his
canonical Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1935).362
Lasswell’s formulation of “who gets what, when, how” has
been quoted innumerable times by later political scientists.363
Moreover, it was extended analytically by Peter Bachrach and
Morton Baratz to cover almost every sort of power relation-
ship, that is, not just what does happen (and why) but what
does not happen (and why), that is, not just decisions but also
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 A New Role 99

non-​decisions.364 Therefore, we have a warrant to study power in

many realms, where it creates both winners and losers. And, of
course, we have good examples of power research along these
lines, such as Larry Bartels, Unequal Democracy (2008),365 and
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-​Take-​All Politics (2010).366
Furthermore, we are heirs to humanistic thinking, such as
during the Constitutional Convention, about how to make a
system that will work well or, at least, not badly.367 On this
point, we were advised to think constructively by Austin
Ranney, APSA president in 1975, when he advocated what he
called “political engineering.” On political engineering, Ranney
said, “I mean the application of empirically derived general
principles of individual and institutional behavior to fashion
institutions intended to solve practical political problems.”368

Some colleagues will say that advice from the Temple’s roof,
on how to live together better, will gain little or no traction
in a modern society that favors scientific analysis and defini-
tive conclusions. In which case, we should stick to that analysis
and those conclusions. I, too, fear that traction from the roof
is hard to come by. But, following Richard Rorty, I hope it will
sometimes appear.
And besides, because I am not sure what sort of good society,
ideal in every respect, I could ever suggest –​I will come back
to that difficulty in a moment, with Judith Shklar –​what I am
really proposing for roof-​sitters is something less ambitious.
What I am proposing is that, with a bird’s-​ eye view from
above, some political scientists will highlight destruction and
damage, that is, will highlight the social and ecological costs
of unmitigated creative destruction. If we will do that, we will
keep on public display conditions and consequences that, if
enough citizens will notice them, may be taken into account
when, in the spirit of humanism, voters and legislators may
consider moving on from where we are now.
It is a question of taking up intellectual slack. Mainstream
economists, politicians, business people, journalists, think
tankers, and others in favor of growth via creative destruction
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 100 H umanism

know that some destruction occurs. But they tend not to worry
much about it. They will continue to assume that the system is
basically effective, in which case we need mainly to fix not the
system but the people in it.369 What the winners believe, then,
is that destruction may be inevitable but also positive, because
it creates an ever-​growing number of things to buy and sell,
thus driving up GDP and the community’s welfare. Therefore,
in a neoliberal world, people should adjust to the system rather
than vice-​versa.370 In a word, so much for the Luddites.

Against Tyranny
For what I propose, inspiration surrounds us, because strange
and dangerous trends vex the Age of Populism and broadcast
urgency. However, whoever wants to highlight the downsides
of creative destruction must consider how to proceed.
To that end, we should start by reflecting on a thesis proposed
by Judith Shklar, who was president of the APSA in 1990.371
In her 1989 essay, “The Liberalism of Fear,” Shklar stood with
those people in modern history –​she called them liberals –​who,
since the Enlightenment, have advocated overthrowing various
forms of what they regard as tyranny against freedom.372 These
manifestations of tyranny differ from generation to gener-
ation, from witch trials to slavery, to colonialism, to lynchings,
to concentration camps, to misogyny, and more. And therefore
liberals of one era, say John Locke, do not necessarily high-
light the evils that shock another, say Isaiah Berlin.373 But to
Shklar the main point was that tyrannical practices stimulate
all liberals to criticize the existing order and work to improve
it. In her opinion, that is what the philosophes did, that is what
the American Founders did, that is what Abraham Lincoln did,
and that is what Franklin Roosevelt did.
Most importantly, Shklar did not describe liberals as pro-
moting an ideal society, complete with philosophical the-
ories that pinpoint the meaning of life and justify specific
institutions and practices.374 What unites liberals, she thought,
was their fear of terrible acts, of coercion, of oppression, of
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 For Realism 101

discrimination, of confinement, of domination, and of other

appalling conditions that citizens should condemn. In other
words, what unites liberals is not what they are for but what
they are against. As Shklar said, liberalism does not “offer a
summum bonum toward which all political agents should strive,
but it certainly does … begin with a summum malum, which all
of us know and would avoid if only we could.”375
Without intending to do so, Shklar in effect suggested what
some political scientists might do by way of offering advice from
the Temple of Science’s roof. Hers was, after all, a common-​
sense view of social responsibility, as if, when some situation
seems sufficiently tyrannical, sufficiently dangerous, suffi-
ciently painful, and sufficiently unfair, it should be publicly
criticized and condemned. That is, we do not need to formulate
a theory or a philosophy of what exactly must be censured and
what exactly should come next. We need, though, to focus on
acts and circumstances that are obviously cruel.376
Let’s put all this another way. There are many good people in
America who praise economic growth, and some of them know
that the creative destruction that fuels such growth can damage
Americans who, for one reason or another, cannot keep up. But
much of this awareness is abstract, is a matter of theory, is a
fleeting idea, is an occasional twinge rather than a persistent
foreboding that arises from direct and distressing confronta-
tion with the painful dislocations of economic growth.377
In these circumstances, there is room for a rooftop pro-
ject, for some scholars to highlight what actually happens,
and to whom, as a result of economic creativity. If, when
conditions will be sufficiently known, voters and journalists
and politicians will enlist to mitigate them, then perhaps some
of the powerful resentment that met the Sanders and Trump
campaigns in 2016 will abate.378

For Realism
Ergo, we don’t need to practice epochal political philosophy
from the roof. Even in its absence, a sensible and pragmatic
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 102 H umanism

emphasis on the facts can make large and commendable

contributions to social improvement.379 Nevertheless, we
must still ask ourselves, in professional terms, how to pro-
ceed methodologically.
On this score, we can follow the lead of political theorists
like Ian Shapiro. For Shapiro, objectivity and profession-
alism, and rigorous investigatory procedures, must guide our
research and teachings. But we must beware, he says, of using
methodologies that are fashionable among colleagues but do
not necessarily explain events accurately. Instead, we should
embrace what Shapiro calls realism, where it is the questions
we ask rather than our methodologies that are likely to direct
us to facts that will lead to useful findings.380 Or, in a variation
of the same thesis, we should choose our research topics not
according to the methodology at hand but depending on the
nature of the problem we wish to explore.381
If that is so, and here I extrapolate, we have arrived at an in-​
house formula for framing the anti-​tyranny issues that Shklar
recommended we study. If it is problems that we aim to ana-
lyze, we should not shrink from investigating many unjust
situations –​for example, much of creativity’s destruction –​that
now plague American life. In short, among political scientists,
even as it is respectable to invest time and energy to use and
refine various research procedures, including rational choice
theory and functionalism, it is also respectable to examine
circumstances that appear to constitute a problem. Thus, it is
problem-​driven research that appears in books such as Jacob
Hacker, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the
Decline of the American Dream (2006),382 and Suzanne Mettler,
The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine
American Democracy (2011).383

What Should We Challenge?

In the Age of Populism, some political scientists should partici-
pate, as democrats and Enlightenment liberals, in the already

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 What Should We Challenge? 103

lively public conversation about neoliberalism. By itself, an

inclination to participate there does not tell us exactly how to
proceed. Nevertheless, we have considered two parts of what
I think is a reasonable response to that question of how. In
Shklar’s terms, we should be especially motivated by what we
regard as obvious instances of tyranny. And in Shapiro’s terms,
we should frame our research projects more to address urgent
problems than to extend methodological projects.
There is, however, a third part to the issue of how political
scholars might join the public conversation on neoliberalism
in populist circumstances, and it is this: Which problematic
conditions should we explore? There is no simple answer to
this question, because acts of creative destruction take place
in many realms of life, therefore we must direct our attention
depending on which of those acts seem most destructive and/​
or most damaging. On that score, however, there are two
areas of inquiry in which findings will be useful at least for
contradicting the calm assurances of neoliberals who say that
present conditions in America are what we should expect
and also beneficial to society as a whole. A few words about
these, and we will move on in Chapter 7 to consider how pol-
itical scientists might confront the Age of Populism effectively
within an appropriate narrative.

Real People
The first area to be investigated pertains to the individual in
modern society. Neoliberalism assumes that homo economicus is
the typical modern person, calculating rationally and pursuing
subjective utility. Such people are driven, by circumstances
and expert advice, to define themselves in terms of what the
market will bear.384 Outstanding actors among them, according
to mainstream economics, will take the lead, as entrepreneurs,
in creating new practices and products, to spur economic
growth and thrive by competition.
Is this a realistic description of the people who live in
America, or anywhere? “Not really, but who cares?” –​I am

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 104 H umanism

paraphrasing Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winner (eco-

nomics, 1976). A scholarly model’s assumptions don’t have to
be accurate, Friedman claimed, if its predictions are useful.385
However, the matter is a great deal more complicated than
that if one asks, useful for what? And also, useful to whom?
Surely much of the modern economy –​producing climate
change, producing massive employment shifts, producing
undemocratic surveillance, producing the precariat,386 produ-
cing click-​bait politics, producing “epistemic rot,”387 under-
mining cherished traditions, shrinking the middle class –​is far
from useful for many citizens. In those circumstances, to really
prosper together, we are entitled to realistic descriptions of real
people, some of them winning and some of them losing, but
all of them, nowadays, playing in a game recommended to us
by people who, unlike Aristotle, think we all are, and should
be, homo economicus.
So one area of inquiry for some political scientists who are
worried by downsides of creative destruction, and who want
to mitigate that destruction, is the age-​old question of human
nature. What do we know about real people as opposed to
those postulated in the neoliberal vision of modern society, with
its abstract formulas that assure us that this is the best of all
possible worlds?388
Here is where political science’s wide-​ranging warrant for
studying all sorts of power can send us to learn from other
columns in the Temple of Science, from columns such as soci-
ology, anthropology, business administration, philosophy,
history, psychology, and literature. From those columns we
can see that scholars and scientists have already discovered a
great deal about what real people are like, and therefore much
informed thinking may bear on what treatment they deserve
from other people.
For example, who are the real people who make everyday
life possible? Given the work they perform, do some of us owe
them, ethically speaking, more than what we currently pay
them?389 How do real people behave? For example, how do they

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 What Should We Challenge? 105

deal with the constant pressures of economic competition?390

What are their motivations? For example, is profit their only
reason for working or are some of them driven by a sense of
vocation to serve others?391 How do real people handle modern
complexity? For example, how do they deal with the huge vari­
ety of goods now offered in stores and online?392 And what are
the talents of real people? Obviously, some of us are naturally
good at making money while others are naturally good at pro-
ducing art and literature. But if the latter are paid poorly or
not at all, who will beautify our surroundings and inspire our
souls?393
Furthermore, if we are already talking about real people,
what does it mean to say that they are rational or not, more or
less? In the neoliberal world, some people look like they choose
to behave irrationally, in which case perhaps they deserve to
become losers.394 But is that a fair assessment, or is it simply
to measure their behavior by what economists say rationality
is? After all, most people have an understandable rationale for
what they do in their own circumstances, whereas the “ration-
ality” that mainstream economists promote, adding up to
GDP, may sanction circumstances entailing harsh efficiency
(including temporary work without paid social benefits, such
as driving for Uber), which exist in the modern economy and
confront many hapless citizens.395

Real Markets
The second area to be investigated pertains to markets. Many
shortcomings of neoliberalism, which recommends creative
destruction, flow from assuming that existing markets are
actually natural markets, from which progress, prosperity,
and well-​being emerge as if all that government has to provide
is, roughly speaking, law and order to maintain contracts vol-
untarily entered. In truth, though, markets in the real world
do not naturally exist. They flow from tax laws, traditions,
personal habits, political pressures, court decisions, budgets,
government regulation, and more, which shape what goes into

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 106 H umanism

them and what comes out of them.396 Therefore, together with

what we know of real individuals, some of us should study how
real markets, rather than theoretical markets, can be improved.
On the one hand, talk about real markets can start from
what they are not. That is, they are not markets as described in
paper-​and-​pencil models of economic competition. If American
markets worked the way those models assume that markets
do, they might allocate gains and losses equitably. But real
markets don’t work that way, as if the deserving succeed, eco-
nomic growth climbs, and all boats rise (everyone wins).397 Real
markets don’t always have many buyers, they don’t always
have many sellers, they don’t always have identical products,
they don’t always have mobility for all factors of production
(labor, capital, data, technology, etc.), they don’t always have
easy entry and exit, and they don’t always have complete
information.398
In other words, in the world we live in, which can be studied
and challenged, fairness and neutrality may be postulated but
there are always real people who possess, or strive to achieve,
economic advantages. For example, sometimes they are born
to effective parents, who send them to private schools, and
sometimes they grow up not in slums but in suburbs full of
soccer moms. Sometimes they exercise more mobility than
other people can, and sometimes they acquire more informa-
tion than other people have. Sometimes they buy out other sel-
lers, sometimes they use patents to prevent competitors from
arising, sometimes they expensively advertise their wares, and
so forth.
Furthermore, in many cases, winners may succeed in
building advantages into the way their market-​ centered
society operates, say with low inheritance taxes, with buybacks
to increase the value of their stocks,399 with a Federal Reserve
Bank that favors creditors over debtors,400 and with no govern-
ment supervision of derivatives. After which they will prosper
greatly, and their children will be “born on third base.”401
On the other hand, talk about real markets can start not
from what an abstract model says they are, which they are not,
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 Driverless Cars 107

but from what they actually are, which means looking at the
advantages they may be conferring, day after day, on some
people as opposed to others.402 From this perspective, neo-
liberalism entails government decisions about what Robert
Reich calls five “building blocks” of capitalism. These are prop-
erty, that is, what can be owned or not; monopoly, that is, how
much market power is permissible or not; contract, that is, what
can be bought and sold, and how; bankruptcy, that is, what to
do when purchasers don’t pay; and enforcement, that is, making
sure that everyone observes the rules laid down by these gov-
ernment decisions.403 What decisions have already been made
in these areas, we should ask, and who do they favor?

Driverless Cars
To study those five building blocks of real markets diligently
is to encounter many of the downsides of creative destruc-
tion. I will leave those for my colleagues to catalogue, but just
one example may suffice here to illustrate the importance of
keeping track of such downsides and investigating them con-
stantly so that, hopefully, they will be widely discussed and
their effects mitigated.
“Autonomous vehicles” are being developed by the wealthiest
high-​ tech and car companies, including Google, Apple,
Amazon, Tesla, Mercedes, General Motors, and Ford.404 There
is little or no popular demand for this product.405 Nevertheless,
to justify their intent to supply us with autonomous vehicles
whether we want them or not, entrepreneurial corporations
with deep pockets claim that their new product, when it will
become feasible, will avoid mistakes made by human drivers. If
that is the case, we are told that –​if workable vehicles are suc-
cessfully developed, and if society will tax itself to pay for the
expensive infrastructure needed to guide them electronically
along America’s roads –​these vehicles of the future will save
a significant number of lives by preventing traffic accidents.406
In truth, this is mainly an argument of convenience. Large
corporations do not have consciences but are designed to seek
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 108 H umanism

profits.407 To that end, workable driverless vehicles have the

potential for generating stupendous profits –​actually, not just
stupendous but colossal –​because, in the process of installing
those vehicles, tens of millions of American car and truck owners
will be compelled, like it or not, to pay to replace what they
are now driving.408 The costs of this creativity will spread to
the support system for cars and trucks, entailing closure of gas-
oline stations, neighborhood garages, parking lots, and acces-
sory stores, and forcing the reconfiguration of roads, houses,
factories, stores, and offices.409 It is hard to estimate how
much consumers will have to spend on the driverless replace-
ment vehicles; it is hard to estimate how many workers will
have to find new jobs (some servicing and deploying the new
machines); and it is hard to estimate how much society will
have to pay to refashion its present patterns of rural, suburban,
and urban life.
That horseless carriages (especially cars and tractors)
replaced transportation and farm horses was an earlier case
of creative destruction. At that time, millions of American
blacksmiths, hackneymen, harness makers, footmen, farriers,
carriage makers, hostlers, saddlers, wheelwrights, draymen,
grooms, stable owners, breeders, knackers, and auctioneers
gave way to people who worked for car manufacturers and
auxiliary services.
Some progress was surely achieved.410 But what was the
price in personal stress, anxiety, and despair? No one knows.
As decades passed, it is probable that most of these displaced
people found other jobs, many in manufacturing. Thus over
time, we usually assume that they substituted one sort of
employment for another.
But how long did that substitution take? And how much
suffering did the people who participated in substitution
endure while it unfolded?411 And how many years will substi-
tution require this time around? And will that happen com-
pletely, with everyone finding new employment even though
many good American jobs are being outsourced and, in fac-
tories and offices, automated out of existence?
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 Driverless Cars 109

Some pundits nowadays suggest that permanently unem­

ployed or underemployed citizens might be allocated some
kind of guaranteed income, although not much.412 But will
that provide recipients with meaning in life? That question
deserves to be asked plainly and repeatedly. To put the matter
in terms we have already considered, why is America permit-
ting the “autonomous vehicles” project to go forward for the
benefit of shareholders without taking into account the interests
of people who we might regard as stakeholders?413

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 7 A STORY FOR
POLITICAL SCIENCE

For scholars to respond to the Age of Populism is a complicated

business, because every academic discipline has its own
principles, procedures, and goals, in which case to take into
account a large and important set of new conditions and
characters requires considerable professional adjustment.
However, the American Political Science Association, with over
12,000 members, embraces more than sixty fields and sub-​
fields about people, institutions, issues, and research methods,
and we share a signature concern for the exercise and impact
of power relationships. Therefore, we are equipped to deal
with this challenge if some of us will want to do that.
In these circumstances, I have proposed that appropriate
responses to the Age of Populism should relate to a vari­
ety of factors. These include insights we inherit from great
thinkers, procedural and substantive democracy, good citi-
zenship, the shape of multiversities, a metaphorical Temple
of Science, mainstream economics, indices of gross domestic
product, needs and wants, economic growth, entrepreneur-
ship, neoliberalism, homo economicus, homo politicus, free trade,
shareholders, stakeholders, scarcity, public goods, the decline
of the middle class, beleaguered truth, humanism, opposition
to tyranny, problem-​ centered research, power studies, real
people, and real markets.
The trends among these factors are fueled in large part by
creative destruction, which generates dislocations in various
realms of life to the point where many citizens resent the
modern economy and distrust leaders and institutions –​from
politicians to journalists, from professors to bankers –​who
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 Lists and Stories 111

have praised innovation but done little to mitigate its adverse

consequences. Therefore, I have proposed that some political
scientists will take a special interest in those consequences,
contributing to the public conversation about neoliberalism by
investigating and highlighting the costs of economic growth.

Lists and Stories

It remains for us to consider how political scientists might most
effectively present their findings in the national debate over
neoliberalism. To this end, several factors are worth adding to
those I have described so far. One of these is what I have called
elsewhere the “list syndrome,” which we should avoid.414
The list syndrome is a matter of weak “framing.”415 It shows
up when liberal politicians such as John Kerry, Barack Obama,
Charles Schumer, and Hillary Clinton propose a jumble of
new government policies to deal with what they regard as
social and economic problems.416 It also appears when liberal
social critics write about what strikes them as social and eco-
nomic difficulties, each critic treating a particular problem –​
say global warming, nuclear proliferation, racism, pesticides,
automation, misogyny, gun control, illegal immigration, and
more –​but not clearly relating it to others.417 In other words,
the list syndrome shows up when politicians and critics “string
together one policy proposal after another (there are the lists)
rather than organize those proposals around short and powerful
statements, repeated endlessly, about what such proposals
represent together and why they should be adopted.”418
In Politics Without Stories (2016), I wrote about how, for histor-
ical and philosophical reasons, including Weberian disenchant-
ment and Deweyan pragmatism, the list syndrome reflects a
liberal lack of powerful political stories.419 This absence is a ser-
ious rhetorical handicap, because political stories, told again
and again, can relate to various policy proposals and may enlist
for them public support to the extent that stories seem to link
those proposals in a vision of large ends worthy of collective
action.420
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 112 A S tory for P olitical S cience

On that score, approximately speaking, Bernie Sanders

promoted a dramatic story of inequality culminating in the
“One Percent,” which gave shape to his campaign, and Donald
Trump promoted a vivid story of the “swamp” in Washington,
which invited resentful voters to support him as their cham-
pion against haughty elites. At the same time, Hillary Clinton,
whose official campaign website offered solution after solution
for a wide range of policy issues,421 promoted a disjointed list
of policy proposals and lost the election.422
Political scientists as such are not running for office. But
avoiding the list syndrome is essential for the project I am pro-
posing. Critics of the modern economy and its consequences –​
of capitalism and its bag of mixed blessings –​have already
written, and will continue to write, about what should be
repaired or ameliorated in that economy. Their output fills
libraries, bookstores, the internet, and social media. But, as
Naomi Klein observed, saying “no [for example, saying no
to oligarchic banking] is not enough … What was too often
missing [in recent protest movements] was a clear and captiv-
ating vision [story] of the world beyond that no.”423
In other words, although Klein did not say this, we may take
our inspiration from Judith Shklar. As a matter of principle,
Shklar pointed us toward opposing tyranny. That is her goal,
as a matter of principle. But if, as a matter of practice, in order
to pursue tyranny we will employ the sort of problem-​driven
research that Ian Shapiro recommends, we should rhetorically
clothe our indignant findings in effective terms.
To that end, neoliberalism’s critics need stories to step up their
case’s appeal, and this is especially so because neoliberalism’s
supporters use stories to powerfully defend it. Some of the pro-​
capitalist stories are implicit in the kind of mainstream eco-
nomic thought that we explored in earlier chapters, which
is about individualism, utility seeking, scarcity, and more-​is-​
better, and which legitimizes the national enthusiasm for
long-​term economic growth punctuated by creative destruc-
tion. And some of these stories infuse political speech on the
American right –​which I have treated elsewhere424 –​ where
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 A Tale for Political Scientists 113

flagship conservatives like William Buckley, Barry Goldwater,

Ronald Reagan, George Will, Robert Bork, Charles Murray,
Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Grover Norquist, Paul Ryan,
and Tucker Carlson, who helped to install neoliberalism in
America before Donald Trump took center stage, already
promoted a powerful rhetorical vision of personal freedom,
free markets, small government, welfare queens, evil empires,
reckless “elites,” robust patriotism, and divine sanction for
American exceptionalism.

A Tale for Political Scientists

In sum, political scientists have the research tools needed to
deal with our populist age. And some of us should move in
that direction. And we should frame our messages in a story, or
interlocking stories, about the target of our disaffections and
what to do about it.
However, as I have explained elsewhere, no one knows for
sure how to create long-​ term, popular, and inspiring polit-
ical stories. Leave aside philosophical and historical debates
425

on this matter. In plain terms, it is impossible to describe in

words, amounting to clear guidelines, how to create gripping
and unforgettable stories because what must somehow be
generated are qualities as ethereal as a beautiful painting, a
melodious sonata, a spellbinding potboiler, a riveting haiku, an
enthralling anecdote, a melancholy requiem, an entrancing blouse,
or a harrowing fairy tale. Furthermore, if a modern story-​teller,
such as Stephen King or J. K. Rowling, succeeds in generating
any of those results, it may be that the intended effect will
emerge for only some in the audience and not for others. Thus
those of us who, say, fashion television commercials or polit-
ical stump speeches, work hard at what we do but cannot guar-
antee success for our own creations.
So there is a difficulty on this score. Accordingly, without
trying to create a durable, popular, inspiring, and explicit pol-
itical story, I suggest that critics should place neoliberalism at
the center of their messaging, where doing that repeatedly is
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 114 A S tory for P olitical S cience

itself an implicit message.426 They should constantly pound

home neoliberalism’s name in association with descriptions
of wretched outcomes for “losers” across the land, for ener-
getic and decent neighbors who do not deserve to be judged
solely by their economic “efficiency.” They should write
about responsible citizens who are in fact victims of forces
over which they have no control, about people who might be
small towners, suburbanites, slum dwellers, farmers, minority
citizens, factory workers, college students, single parents,
high-​tech geeks, soccer moms, office clerks, homeschoolers,
nurses, NRA members, feminists, mall-​ store “associates,”
devout congregants, gig economy temps, the precariat, click-​
bait journalists, and more, who could do better in life if they
would see themselves all in the same boat and in politics act
accordingly.
Neoliberalism, in this implicit tale of continual wronging,
should be identified, and shamed, as a perpetuation of contrived
markets –​remember, there are no natural markets –​which arise
at least partly from unequal power relations,427 which value
trinkets more than people, and which measure the dollar value
of everything instead of the ethical value of anyone.428 We need
not deny that neoliberalism is often creative, and we should
agree that key parts of economic growth may contribute to
prosperity. But insisting that some of neoliberalism’s results
are shameful, may over time generate an inclination to doubt
the wisdom of letting economic events run their course as if an
invisible hand will really produce most of the outcomes that
society needs.429

An Immoral Index
In public talk, political scientists should leave preaching to
others. We can count on some of those to warn against pur-
suing material wealth endlessly. For example, priests tell us
about Luke insisting that “You cannot serve both God and
money.”430 And ministers remind us about Jesus warning that
“it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than
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 An Immoral Index 115

for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”431 And rabbis and
imams echo similar sentiments, citing the Torah or the Koran.
Still, as Judith Shklar might say, scholars can see, even
without the benefit of clergy, scholars can see that some situ-
ations are extraordinarily disagreeable, and those we should
move to condemn. Therefore, scholarly critics should insist,
in impartial terms, that neoliberalism is guilty of measuring
merit in modern times by immoral indices.
Thus, when pro-​marketeers assume that everyone should
behave like homo economicus, they are assigning some people to
failure through no fault of their own. This is because in actual
life, as opposed to what abstract economic theories describe,
various amounts of economic talent, imagination, and energy
are allocated in normal curves to real people. The result is
that some people naturally receive more efficacy resources
and others receive less, after which, in a job market where
good jobs are constantly being automated out of existence or
outsourced away, some workers will get the jobs that remain
and others will trail in the economic race.432
The standard neoliberal response to this situation is to
argue, with or without acting to budget the necessary funds,
that America needs extensive job retraining programs. The
assumption is that if there are not enough jobs to go around,
unemployed workers can be retrained to do tasks that are
not presently being performed or are being performed inad-
equately, after which entrepreneurs will find these workers
and creatively hire them to upgrade existing projects or fashion
new ones.
Well, yes. The country should welcome retraining programs.
Certainly it is better to have some such programs than to have
none. But retraining will not solve the problem of modern
unemployment, because if idle workers will be upgraded by
job training, good American jobs will still be automated away.
Moreover, even if millions of new and lucrative jobs will be
generated in America, there is no assurance that they will
stay there, because countries like China and India have many
millions of people at or near the top of their normal curves of
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 116 A S tory for P olitical S cience

competence who are, relatively speaking, inexpensively avail-

able in the international job market for so long as mobile cap-
ital and free trade are cornerstones of neoliberalism. And if
Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, on behalf of the
modern economy, really believe that the country can retrain
workers to the point where the normal curve for American
workers will rise –​where, like the cherished children of
Garrison Keillor’s Lake Webogan, they will all be “above
average” in talents and skills –​then neoliberals should consult
with scholars in the Temple of Science’s psychology column
about the limits of normal curves.433
In principle, Friedman and Mandelbaum deserve credit for
insisting that what victims of economic growth and creative
destruction need is thoughtful and community-​ wide action
to help people who cannot keep up on the economic tread-
mill. Unfortunately, it is exactly this sort of shared mitigation,
probably requiring political decisions, which most neoliberals
will not promote because, having adopted the mainstream eco-
nomic notion of incomes based on rational behavior, they view
society as a collection of individuals who should take care of
themselves.434
For example, neoliberals usually reject comprehensive
proposals for deliberately sheltering a wide range of familiar
American industries and enterprises.435 And they are unlikely
to favor enacting statutes to forbid “venue shopping,” whereby
corporations –​like Amazon –​play American cities and states
off against one another to receive tax concessions that deprive
local governments of adequate funding for education, roads,
sewers, libraries, and other public services.436

Another Immoral Index

On this score, the fact that neoliberals praise nation-​wide or
“average” gains from globalization, as if life for all of us is
getting better all the time, amounts to using a second immoral
index to justify existing practices. The Ricardian notion of com-
parative advantage, which neoliberals endorse, says that two
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 Another Immoral Index 117

countries engaging in free trade will both benefit.437 And we

will know this is happening when GDP, at home and abroad,
goes up.
In this view, free trade is a win–​win situation. Now, that
may sometimes be true for countries. But this piece of conven-
tional wisdom tells us nothing about the people who live in
those countries.438 For many of them, average is an irrelevant
yardstick because, in truth, some of these people will prosper
greatly and others will suffer from comparative inefficiency.
For example, if workers in America need wages of fifteen
dollars per hour to make even basic ends meet, some of them
will surely not achieve that if globalization offers new jobs to
poor, crowded, and corrupt countries where workers make no
more than several dollars a day.
In social science terms, to regard average incomes as an index
of well-​being and prosperity is to ignore differences in the “dis-
tribution” of incomes. One way to do this is to speak of high
incomes –​such as the sometimes irritating billions collected by
the One Percent –​as if, for the most part, they flow justifiably
from unusual efforts and initiative. To this end, the concept of
entrepreneur is conveniently available, and famous ­examples –​
such as Sam Walton, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Bloomberg, and
Mark Zuckerberg –​come easily to mind.
Another way for neoliberals to avoid distribution issues, how-
ever, is to assume that lesser incomes depend on the routine
marginal utility contributions of people who don’t live in One
Percent neighborhoods. That is, if mainstream marginal utility
theory is valid, the market provides everyone who works with
an income, however modest, which is exactly equivalent to
that person’s contribution to society’s happiness.439 In which
case, there is no need for public discussion of income distribu-
tion because it is already being done automatically and fairly
by the private realm.440
Well, not really. Technically speaking, social science research
shows that in existing markets many high incomes depend
(1) on exploiting various kinds of “rents,” such as when patents
prevent potential competitors from challenging a current
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 118 A S tory for P olitical S cience

producer,441 or (2) on creating what economists call “network

effects,” as, for example, when so many people join a digital
system that you feel you must join to be able to communicate
with its members even if the system is technically second-​
rate.442 Facebook is an obvious recent example of a network
effect, because many people open accounts on Facebook in
order not to be left out of its community. And that impulse
enables Mark Zuckerberg and his co-​investors to make inor-
dinate profits from selling the personal information that
Facebook collects on each of its users. Another network effect
favors Bill Gates, whose engineers designed the word pro-
cessing program called Microsoft Word. Many people choose to
buy that program (thereby enhancing Gates’ income) and write
with it because it is compatible with what many other people
are using (which is also Microsoft Word).443
Social scientists know, then, that the unequal distribution
of income is often unfair, and this is a large strike against neo-
liberalism. But inequality also leads to a situation we noted
earlier, which is that when incomes are unequal, some people
will be able to turn their surplus income (wealth) into political
power (lobbying, funding electoral campaigns, underwriting
think tanks, sponsoring referenda, hiring consultants, owning
media outlets, etc.). As a result, economic inequality in America
today is an enormous political problem.444
Neoliberals are largely indifferent to this problem, especially
after, in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010) and
McCutcheon v. Federal Elections Commission (2014), the Supreme
Court decided that throwing heaps of money at politics, some-
times anonymously, is not an abuse of power but a legitimate
exercise of free speech. This indifference to inequality invites
a strong response among those who will investigate the Age of
Populism’s human ecology. Here they will find many matters of
fact that should be presented front and center, again and again,
in a message about the downsides of creative destruction.
Among those downsides, for example, we should pay
attention to how creativity in the invention of new commer-
cial instruments –​such as junk bonds, securitized mortgages,
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 Hartz’s Story 119

credit swaps, and derivatives in companies led by entrepreneurs

like Ivan Boesky, Sanford Weill, Michael Milkin, Jack Welch,
Kenneth Lay, Angelo Mozilo, and Richard Fuld445 –​ generated
the growth of financial institutions that caused the Crash of
2008 but were “too big to fail” and now account for 20 per-
cent of the country’s GDP even though mostly they make
profits rather than things.446 In other words, contrary to the
way neoliberals usually tell their story, it turns out that gainful
creativity is not always a matter of inventing patently useful
goods like transistors, Corningware, standardized shipping
containers, and Ibuprofen.447

In sum, there are principles and practices in our special

times that should be analyzed and criticized by some political
scientists. In order to avoid activating the list syndrome, how-
ever, which might reduce the public impact of their findings,
they should frame those findings in a relentless message,
shared among scholars, about the downsides of neoliberalism
as it is driven by creative destruction. As I noted, no one knows
exactly how to create large-​scale stories that will surely be
popular, therefore such a story critical of dangerous current
trends need not be specified explicitly, like in a religious cat-
echism. But we are entitled to hope that it might grow over
time out of repeatedly underlining undesirable, market-​based,
neoliberal outcomes in American life.

Hartz’s Story
Even more hopefully, a shortcut may be available to this end,
because there already exists a simple but powerful story of
American exceptionalism that scholars could promote, at least
in part, as applicable to the nation’s situation today. That is the
story about centrist, moderate, and democratic political values
and institutions told by Louis Hartz in The Liberal Tradition in
America (1955).
Very briefly, as Hartz put it, his book “contains … what might
be called the storybook truth about American history: that
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 120 A S tory for P olitical S cience

America was settled by men who fled from the feudal and
clerical oppressions of the Old World.”448 We may leave aside
the gender problem in that sentence and take it for what
Hartz intended, which was that ordinary men and women
came to America’s Atlantic coast and made a forward-​looking
Revolution even while, by and large, the class structure and
moral orthodoxies of Britain did not follow them. That is, the
British did not export to the colonies a small but powerful
aristocracy and a mass of credulous workers, peasants, and
tenant farmers. As a result, Americans were able to espouse
and promote political values belonging to European Liberals,
who thrived as a sector of society between the wealthy above
and the poor below.449
Most importantly for Hartz in this tale, the late-​stage feu-
dalism of the Old Order (ancien regime) of Europe, including
large and powerful established churches, was not much pre-
sent in the American colonies.450 Consequently, there were
few defenders of that Order who could try, during and after
the Revolution, to violently overthrow what was basically a
Liberal American society. Consequently, that society eventually
(but not immediately) produced a polity marked by balances
of power, separation of religion and state, widespread civil
rights, and many middle-​class citizens. In these circumstances,
the absence of a European-​style Reaction, led by philosophers
like Joseph de Maistre and statesmen like Prince Klemens von
Metternich, according to Hartz helped the American Liberal
regime to survive and prosper, even while Europe for a century-​
and-​a-​half endured terrible conflicts fueled by ethnic and class
distinctions that animated competing ideologies of monarchy,
empire, nationalism, fascism, and communism.
In 1957, the APSA awarded Louis Hartz the Woodrow Wilson
Prize for best book in political science, and in 1977, the APSA
added to that prize its prestigious Lippincott Prize for a pol-
itical theory book of enduring importance. Nevertheless, as
years passed and social attitudes in America evolved, scholars
fiercely debated whether Hartz had been right about America
and even what he meant. For example, Ira Katznelson accepted
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 Where Hartz was Right 121

Hartz’s thesis that Liberalism has long been the central current
in American life. But he insisted that that current has been
challenged repeatedly by complex alternatives, variations, and
illiberal legacies in relations between groups such as workers
and employers, whites and blacks, men and women, Jews and
Gentiles.451 Somewhat similarly, James Kloppenberg and Rogers
Smith argued that Hartz’s story was unrealistic because, per-
haps in keeping with his time, he overestimated the nation’s
commitment to Liberalism by not sufficiently accounting for
anti-​
democratic American expressions of racism and mis-
ogyny.452 Additional scholars, like Corey Robins and Michael
C. Desch, focused more on foreign affairs and rebuked Hartz
for, in their opinion, mainly overlooking Liberalism’s pen-
chant for fueling American imperialism and brutality on the
world stage.453
Alan Wolfe, however, decided in 2005 that “Hartz got the
large picture astonishingly right.”454 And there is the evalu-
ation on which we can build today.455

Where Hartz was Right

For our purposes, Hartz was right in two important respects. On
the one hand, he argued that most Americans believe strongly
in Liberal values. In Hartz’s terms, and especially by com-
parison with the full mosaic of European political thinking,
Liberal sentiments in America added up to a fairly homoge-
neous notion of American exceptionalism.456 It was as if, gen-
eration after generation, Americans believed that the country,
dedicated to democracy (as Lincoln defined it in his Gettysburg
Address, “government of the people, by the people, and for the
people”), was morally outstanding –​that is, a “light unto the
nations”457 or “a city on a hill”458 –​in which case all Americans
should pledge their allegiance to that inspiring vision.
Of course, many of the people who Hartz regarded as “Liberals”
supported segregation, scorned immigrants, oppressed Native
Americans, ignored feminism, and condemned unconven-
tional genders. Nevertheless, whatever generosity may have
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 122 A S tory for P olitical S cience

been lacking at one time or another in Liberal politics, Hartz

focused less on what was missing than on what was present.
Therefore he described most Americans in 1955, deep into the
Cold War, as confidently believing that, apart from some awk-
ward deviations, they shared a democratic, constitutional, and
pluralistic political tradition that they should defend against
all detractors.
There was, however, a problem with this American solidarity
that entails, in a way, orthodox thinking. As Hartz pointed out,
when they feel threatened, some of America’s like-​ minded
may become hostile to unusual views or unconventional
people. When that happened in the past, as in the Red Scare
in 1919–​ 1920 and during McCarthyism after World War II,
some Liberals came together to call for, in effect, government
committed to “America First” policies. Thus, at that point,
those true-​believers recommended a government devoted to
excluding or marginalizing people in their country who they
(the true believers) regarded as different, as not sufficiently
American or even, perhaps, un-​American. And that is where,
obviously, Hartz’s story of American exceptionalism may be at
least somewhat relevant to populism and its manifestations,
such as the election of President Donald Trump, a contem-
porary champion of America First,459 of border walls, and of
inviting progressive congresswomen to leave America, that is,
to “go back” to the “places from which they came.”460

Hartz was also right on a second point, which relates to how

he described America as fortunate because, in the absence of
late-​stage feudalism in America, the country could acclaim its
Liberal sentiments and, for generations, with little opposition,
maintain Liberal institutions. Hartz may have praised early
Liberalism too highly. On that score, we can be thankful, and
he was, too,461 that there is room in America for living up more
fully than originally to the great principles that were enshrined
in the Declaration of Independence even though some of the
men who signed it enslaved black Africans, devastated Native
Americans, and demeaned women.462 Thus, the country has
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 Where Hartz was Right 123

over time, and at considerable cost, significantly adjusted its

practices in realms involving race, difference, and identity.
More needs doing, but progress has been made.463
We should note, however, apart from the details, that Hartz’s
second point, about America’s good fortune for lacking a reac-
tionary opposition, is now directly relevant to politics in our
time. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as Hartz
observed, Americans did not bring into the country, from out-
side, feudal classes and institutions that, in Europe, opposed
Liberal ideas and practices. But in the late twentieth and early
twenty-​ first centuries, a troublesome new force appeared
in America itself, a force that was not imported but arose at
home, and that, like the remnants of feudalism once did in
Europe, now challenges Liberal principles and projects.464
The new and anti-​ Liberal force is neoliberalism,465 which
critics named after Hartz wrote,466 but which insists that Liberals
should not try to work through government in a humanistic
way to provide happiness and well-​being for all Americans. In
the neoliberal view, Liberals must, instead, permit markets
to make large decisions about such matters, on the grounds
that markets can do that efficiently whereas voters and elected
officials will necessarily err.467 And if the result in America
today is large disparities of income, respect, and health, like in
historically feudal societies, we are admonished to leave those
alone because they flow, justifiably, from an invisible hand
exercising a special sort of moral competence.
In other words, Hartz’s thesis from 1955 implies, in a way,
that the convictions and demands of neoliberalism after he
wrote can be regarded as analogous to historical elements of
the European Reaction.468 Yet what that means is that polit-
ical scientists can use Hartz’s story to argue that neoliberalism,
as a local amalgam of ideas, disciples, interest groups, donors,
spokespeople, and policy proposals, should be criticized now
because, in some respects, it holds back the positive side of the
Liberal Tradition in America, which might otherwise be capable
of mitigating or preventing damages caused by neoliberalism’s
central project of creative destruction.469
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 124 A S tory for P olitical S cience

It is as if, to borrow from other stories, the country waited,

for generations, for barbarians to arrive at the city’s gate.
Fortunately, the ones that Washington, Jefferson, Adams,
Franklin, Madison, and their colleagues feared never came.
Today, though, it is as if Americans must repel new, modern
barbarians, soft-​spoken and well-​dressed, acclaimed by articu-
late surrogates and steered by efficient strategists, who are
already inside the city and must be confronted there.470

Politics
I have said all along that some political scientists should deal
directly with the Age of Populism. To the matrix of factors
that I proposed taking into account to that end, let us add two
final elements, which are (1) a willingness to seriously con-
sider promoting redistribution of income and wealth, and (2) an
understanding that to do this would probably require substan-
tial political action.
Years ago, these sentiments frequently went hand in hand, as
in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Inaugural Address,
during the Great Depression, when he declared that “The test
of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance
of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for
those who have too little.”471 Some rearrangement of incomes,
then, was clearly on the New Deal agenda. More recently, how-
ever, American politicians, pundits, scholars, and activists have
focused mainly on issues of race, identity, and gender. The
problem there, as Walter Benn Michaels explained, is that such
cultural issues, important though they are, draw attention
away from broad elements of material inequality, from diverse
economic outcomes that can fuel some of the intense resent-
ment that underlies our era.472

Redistribution
With regard to inequality, then, the case for political action
comes after that for redistribution.473 Neoliberals argue that

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 Politics 125

political action is biased and fallible whereas markets are just

and effective, in which case government should be small and
markets should encourage creative destruction. But in reality,
markets create uneven distribution –​what I have called
winners and losers –​which generates inequality, which breeds
resentment, which fuels populism, which brings us squarely to
the Age of Populism and its downsides.474 And those downsides
are, after all, what political scientists should investigate and
whose parameters they should publicize to encourage voters
and politicians to reduce some of the inequalities that, inev-
itably, flow from economic growth. Therefore, at least some
redistribution is a necessary step for our times, although there
will be intense arguments about how much of it should be
fostered.

Political Action
Once the need for redistribution becomes clear, the need for
political action must also be recognized, because to the extent
that social science findings about creative dislocations and
destructions will emerge, achieving more equitable conditions
will flow mainly from taking political action to adjust the neo-
liberal system from without, from beyond the marketplace
and its uneven allocations. In plain language, our living rooms
are occupied by an 800-​pound gorilla.475 And this gorilla will
not restrain itself.476 Therefore, ordinary men and women
must together curb him by exercising their sovereign power as
democratic citizens.477
In which case, if scholars will draw public attention to the
downsides of America’s economy –​to the massive use of fossil
fuels, to the decline of Main Street, to the growth of tem-
porary work, to the corrosion of character,478 to losses of status
and self-​esteem, to disdain for traditional virtues, to the rise
of digital dependence, to the inordinate power of financial
institutions, and more –​they must be prepared to accept, and
even recommend, along with other citizens, that government
will make some or many of the adjustments necessary for

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 126 A S tory for P olitical S cience

spreading happiness and well-​being throughout society more

evenly than they exist there today.

Just Say No?

Arguments about exactly how far government should inter-
vene in markets, if at all, are endless and cannot be resolved
here.479 We should consider one approach to this issue, though,
which suggests that a substantial amount of governmental
activism could be helpful to Americans across the board, from
various groups, from various regions, from various identity
sectors, and from various political persuasions.
Here is what happened. As neoliberalism gathered strength,
Nancy Reagan argued that America did not need to fashion
legislative solutions to the destruction caused by narcotic
drugs. In a classic illustration of the neoliberal tendency to
regard society mainly as a collection of individuals, President
Ronald Reagan’s wife declared in 1986 that the national drug
problem could be solved if only children would personally
resist the temptations of heroin and crack cocaine dealers and
“just say no” to drugs.480 The First Lady campaigned earnestly
and wholeheartedly, but the drug epidemic continued.
The moral of this story is, I think, that formal rules and
collective strategies should not be rejected in principle, as
Mrs. Reagan apparently did. Rather, in some cases, they may
be necessary if a society wants to move closer to shared well-​
being.481 And this is certainly so in modern America, where
economic competition and constant change sometimes compel
individuals to choose between manifest decency and economic
success or even survival.
Thus, again and again, a lack of overall rules forces many
Americans to deal personally with stark moral dilemmas. For
example, within the framework of free trade, should I con-
tinue to operate my cookie factory in Chicago, or should I dis-
charge my Chicago employees, move the factory to a poor
country such as Mexico, and utilize cheap labor there?482 Or, if
it is my business to make 3D printers, should I stop producing
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 George Bernard Shaw 127

them because I know that, somewhere down the road, those

printers will throw millions of people out of work? Or if, along
with companies like Monsanto and Dupont, I can develop gen-
etically modified seeds and crops, should I do that even if my
selling them profitably locks growers into a system of highly
capitalized agribusiness that ruins traditional farming and
farm families?483
Furthermore, if I earn or inherit a great deal of money, should
I donate to an Ivy League university some of that money for new
laboratories so that that school will admit my child rather than
a more energetic and talented youngster from East St. Louis?
Or, if I am managing part of the American aerospace industry,
should I, on behalf of American workers in companies like
Boeing, Lockheed-​Martin, and Raytheon, favor selling precision-​
guided missiles and advanced fighter planes to Saudi Arabia,
whose violent ruling family oppresses its citizens, exports reli-
gious fanaticism, and bombs its neighbors in Yemen?484
Such dilemmas demonstrate that if a society wants to enable
its citizens to behave virtuously, so that they may live together
effectively in the pursuit of happiness, it must sometimes create
rules –​that is, governmental guidelines and injunctions –​
which constrain everyone (although not in everything), to the
point where all people can afford to follow their best instincts
because they will know that others must refrain from following
their worst. Among great thinkers, George Bernard Shaw made
this point years ago, in The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism
and Capitalism (1928), and with his insight, we can conclude.

George Bernard Shaw

Choices to make are everywhere. For most of them, we need
no guidelines from government. Will I open a business or work
for someone else? Will I teach children or sell life insurance?
Will I prefer country music by Dolly Parton or twelve-​tone sym-
phonies by Arnold Schoenberg? Will I spend my time on Twitter
or reading great novels? Will I live in a big city or a small town?
Will I marry? Will I, or my partner, decide to have children?
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 128 A S tory for P olitical S cience

These are personal matters, which most people address by

themselves and then hope for the best. However, some of our
personal decisions add up to collective difficulties that now
afflict an entire generation, which is reeling from neoliberalism,
which demands economic growth, which is rooted in creative
destruction, which perpetuates change, and which thereby breeds
resentment, to a point which generates populism.485
In these circumstances, said Shaw, experience shows “that
social problems cannot be solved by personal righteousness,
and that under capitalism not only must men [and women] be
made moral by an Act of Parliament [or Congress], but they
cannot be made moral any other way, no matter how benevo-
lent their dispositions may be.”486

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129

NOTES

Preface
1 John B. Judis, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession
Transformed American and European Politics (New York:
Columbia Global Reports, 2016).
2 Jan-​Werner Muller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
3 Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America:
What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2017).
4 Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017).
5 Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger: A History of the Present
(New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2017).
6 Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
(New York: HarperCollins, 2017).
7 David Runciman, How Democracy Ends (New York: Basic
Books, 2018).
8 Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die
(New York: Crown Books, 2018).
9 William Galston, Anti-​Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal
Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).
10 Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and
the Politics of Resentment (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and
Giroux, 2018).
11 Robert Kuttner, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?
(New York: Norton, 2018).
12 Barry Eichengreen, The Populist Temptation: Economic
Grievances and Political Reaction in the Modern Era
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

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 130 N O T E S T O PA G E S vii – ix

13 Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom

is in Danger & How to Save It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2018).
14 John L. Campbell, American Discontent: The Rise of Donald
Trump and Decline of the Golden Age (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2018).
15 Paul Starr, Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of
Democratic Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2019).
16 Sophia Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth: A Short History
(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 2019).
17 On economic resentment, see especially Campbell,
American Discontent, pp. 17–​18, 31–​55, et passim.
18 Rogers Smith, That is Not Who We Are! Populism and
Peoplehood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
forthcoming in 2020).
19 Literature about the populist debate multiplies
rapidly. For example, against policy proposals made
by Eichengreen and Mounk, see Chris Lehmann,
“The Populist Morass: Why Liberal Savants Deplore
Rule by the People,” at https://​thebaffler.com/​salvos/​
the-​populist-​morass-​lehmann.
20 For example, Edward Luttwak points out that half of all
American households in 2016 could not afford to buy a
new car, and he argues that this hard-​times fact generated
some of the anger that fueled the electoral success of
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. See www.the-​tls.co.uk/​
articles/​public/​trump-​dynasty-​luttwak/​.
21 Thus John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck, Identity
Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the
Meaning of America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2018), pp. 12–​32, et passim, maintain that Trump
and Clinton voters in 2016 were motivated more by group
identity than by economic anxiety.
22 Economic trends may exacerbate even structural issues,
such as charges of institutional unfairness. Thus American
farming requires fewer Little-​House-​on-​the-​Prairie-​style
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 Notes to Pages ix–x 131

families than in the past. Consequently, rural populations

decline, but each rural state keeps its two senators,
whereupon the Senate becomes even more
unrepresentative than it has been in the past, to the
point where, by 2040, 30 percent of the population will
elect 70 percent of American senators, while nation-wide
majorities (according to opinion polls) of citizens already
cannot shape their country’s public policies. See www
.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/upshot/as-american-as-apple-
pie-the-rural-votes-disproportionate-slice-of-power.html
and www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/
28/by-2040-two-thirds-of-americans-will-be-represented-
by-30-percent-of-the-senate/?noredirect=on&utm_term=
.d0eb113bdbe7.
23 See www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/world/europe/
macron-france-yellow-vests.html. In this speech Macron
recognized, among demonstrators, the “anger and
indignation that many Frenchmen share…”
24 Macron did not initially grasp the depth of resentment
that fueled the yellow-vest demonstrations. See
Didier Fassin and Anne-Claire Defosser, “An
Improbable Movement?” New Left Review (January/
February, 2019) at https://newleftreview.org/II115/
didier-fassin-anne-claire-defossez-an-improbable-movement.
25 For example, see Salena Zito and Brad Todd, The Great
Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American
Politics (New York: Crown Forum, 2018) and Fukuyama,
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.
26 The importance of facts depend on which “facts” are at
stake. Many liberals are concerned with what we might
call sociological facts, which may be revealed by research
and may change over time, whereas many conservatives
are concerned with what they regard as moral facts,
which may be discovered by theology or philosophy
and never change. This dichotomy (and many of its
implications) is described at length in Robert O. Self, All
in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the
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 132 N O T E S T O PA G E S X – 4

1960s (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012). Along these lines, the

American conservative thinker Richard M. Weaver, in his
Ideas Have Consequences (orig., 1948; Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 1–17, but esp. 3–6, argued that,
since William of Occam’s doctrine of “nominalism” in the
fourteenth century denied that “universals” really exist,
liberals have attributed too much importance to mundane
“facts” while they have abandoned faith in transcendental
“truth.” Weaver’s ideas still inspire conservatives
today. No one knows what he would have thought of
a Republican president who invents facts and ignores
the truth.

1 The Age of Populism

27 The phrase was first used by economist Joseph
A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3rd edn
(New York: Harper and Row, 1947), pp. 81–86.
28 Amy Goldstein, Janesville: An American Story
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017). Working space at
the GM plant in Janesville was larger than the 3.7 million
square feet of office space in the Pentagon. See www
.britannica.com/topic/Pentagon.
29 An exception to this generalization is Jane Mansbridge,
“What is Political Science For?” Perspectives on Politics
(March, 2014), pp. 8–17. Mansbridge was APSA president
for 2013 and this article is a presidential address.
30 This is the general idea in F. H. Buckley, The Republican
Workers Party: How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy,
and Why It Was Just What We Needed (New York: Encounter
Books, 2018). See also Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools: How
a Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the Brink of
Revolution (New York: Free Press, 2018), p. 3: “Trump’s
election wasn’t about Trump. It was a throbbing middle
finger in the face of America’s ruling class.” For a more
academic justification of Trump’s willingness to disregard
conventional standards and practices, and especially to
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 Notes to Pages 4–5 133

reject rule by (p. 92) “America’s expert class,” see Salvatore

Babones, The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the
Tyranny of Experts (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2018), which
(pp. 93–​111) refers to Trump as “the populist purgative.”
Conservative intellectuals will tend to set aside Trump’s
personal qualities, as they did Senator Joseph McCarthy’s,
and argue that his cause, of attacking liberalism, was
justified. For example, see William Voegeli, “Trump
and His Enemies,” Claremont Review of Books (Summer,
2016): “Sometimes, worthy causes have unworthy
champions.” At www.claremont.org/​crb/​article/​trump-​and-​
his-​enemies/​.
31 This is the general idea in Michael Wolff, Fire and
Fury: Inside the Trump White House (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 2018). See also Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk
(New York: Norton, 2018), which is shocked by Trump’s
ignorance of the vital services that government agencies
provide for America and by his willingness to appoint
agency managers who are similarly ignorant.
32 Several eras of great upheaval and danger in American life
are described in Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle
for Our Better Angels (New York: Random House, 2018). As
Meacham says (p. 7) of American history, “imperfection is
the rule, not the exception.”
33 In other words, today’s anxious polarization is not
new. For example, on the right in 1938, Congressional
conservatives created the House Committee on Un-​
American Activities, which after World War II contributed
substantially to what became known as McCarthyism.
Almost simultaneously, liberal Americans in 1937
established the National Lawyers Guild, which, unlike the
National Bar Association at that time, accepted African
American lawyers to membership. The Guild was named
in the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations
starting in 1947.
34 A similar unemployment rate today would be terrible
but less painful than before World War II, because fewer
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 134 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 – 7

women worked (for pay) in the 1930s than now, in which

case 25-​percent unemployment then meant that almost a
quarter of the country’s families had no breadwinner.
35 My 29-​year-​old uncle, Daniel Hutner, joined the
Communist Party in New York City, enlisted among 2800
American volunteers in the Lincoln Brigade to fight on
behalf of the Republican Government of Spain, sailed
to Europe on the Queen Mary in April of 1937, and was
killed in Belchite, Zaragoza, fighting against fascist forces
in September five months later. During the McCarthy
era, federal agents assumed that his Manhattan garment
industry widow, my Aunt Florence Morgenstein, was a
dangerous communist and therefore interrogated her.
Some of her relatives, including my father, a federal
government lawyer in Washington, DC, were also
questioned.
36 For example, in the Declaration, “We hold these truths
to be self-​evident, that all men are created equal, and
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable [natural] rights…”
37 The increasing fragility of democratic theory and faith
between World War I and World War II is discussed
in Edward A. Purcell, Jr., The Crisis of Democratic
Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value
(Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky,
1973). See also David M. Ricci, The Tragedy of Political
Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 88–​96.
38 This is the central message of Meacham, The Soul of
America. Optimism informed by the need for sobriety and
hard work on behalf of decency and progress appears also
in Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason,
Science, Humanism and Progress (London: Allen Lane, 2018).
39 Changes in farming and food production are among the
realms of modern economic creativity, plagued by social
destruction, and causing resentment, which worry liberals
and conservatives. See the sources in n. 478.
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 Notes to Pages 7–8 135

40 On the Trump White House as a reality show, see https://

thebaffler.com/the-poverty-of-theory/the-real-world-trump-
edition and www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/06/
is-reality-tv-really-to-blame-for-president-donald-trump.
On the character of reality shows paid for by advertising
in America’s largely for-private-profit economy, see
Jenifer L. Pozner, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth
About Guilty Pleasure TV (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2010).
Pozner describes TV reality shows – such as Survivor, The
Bachelor, The Apprentice, and The Swan – as shilling for
“consumerism,” that is, as a format designed to persuade
viewers to adopt a lifestyle promoted by producer-
driven messages. In that sense, commercial TV is today a
reflection of “neoliberalism,” which I will discuss in later
chapters.
41 See the books by scholars and journalists cited in
notes 1–16, 18. Many of those writers contend that
populism characteristically denies political complexity.
Surely that description can be applied to the referendum
held on Brexit, when the enormously complicated matter
of the United Kingdom’s economic, political, social,
emotional, and historical relations with most of Europe
was put to a yes-or-no vote before roughly 33 million UK
voters. Why experienced politicians would propose and
permit such a simplistic vote is not clear.
42 Eichengreen, The Populist Temptation, p. 3. See also p. 13.
43 Mounk, The People vs. Democracy, pp. 7–8. What Mounk and
his colleagues describe as populism can be seen in Donald
Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention in
2016, when the candidate declared to “the American people”
that “I am your voice.” See www.vox.com/2016/7/21/12253426/
donald-trump-acceptance-speech-transcript-republican-
nomination-transcript. See also Trump’s “Inaugural Address,”
wherein the president announced that “… today… we are
transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it
back to you, the American People.” See www.whitehouse
.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/. On the
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 136 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 – 9

evolution –​from Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump –​of the

populist notion of a leader who, while promoting “common
sense,” will stand up for “the people” against “experts” and
“elites,” see Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth, pp. 92–​136.
44 As of early March, 2019, President Trump had withdrawn
or threatened to withdraw from “the Paris climate accord,
the Trans-​Pacific Partnership, UNESCO, the multilateral
nuclear accord with Iran, NAFATA, the Universal Postal
Agreement, the Intermediate-​Range Nuclear Forces Treaty,
the Korean-​United States Free Trade Agreement, and
the World Trade Organization.” See www.nybooks.com/​
articles/​2019/​03/​21/​king-​and-​i-​chris-​christie-​cliff-​sims/​.
45 For example, Newt Gingrich, Understanding Trump
(New York: Center Street, 2017), p. 61: “For decades,
members of America’s elite –​in government, academia
and the media –​have steered the country in a direction
counter to the will of the American people.”
46 For example, James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism:
Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisi­
torial Tolerance, and Equality by Command (Wilmington,
DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008); Terrence
P. Jeffrey, Control Freaks: 7 Ways Liberals Plan to Ruin Your
Life (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2010); Ben Shapiro,
Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences
Americans (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013); Mark
R. Levin, Rediscovering Americanism and the Tyranny of
Progressivism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017);
Buckley, The Republican Workers Party; Jerome R. Corsi,
Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump
(West Palm Beach, FL: Humanix Books, 2018); Chris
Buskirk, Trump vs. The Leviathan (New York: Encounter
Books, 2018); and Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How
the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity
Politics is Destroying American Democracy (New York: Crown
Forum, 2018).
47 In this view, “pluralism” promotes a commitment to side-​
by-​side social components rather than a unified American
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 Notes to Pages 9–11 137

community, and moral relativism implies the legitimacy

of alternative virtues rather than a shared commitment to
Americanism as an overriding value.
48 E. J. Dionne, Jr., Why Americans Hate Politics
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), noticed this
sentiment gathering strength long before the Age of
Populism.
49 Lawrence M. Mead, “Scholasticism in Political Science,”
Perspectives on Politics (June, 2010), pp. 453–464, addresses
this point.
50 Easton, “The New Revolution in Political Science,”
American Political Science Review (December, 1969),
pp. 1051–1061, but esp. p. 1053.
51 Deutsch, “On Political Theory and Political Action,”
American Political Science Review (March, 1971), p. 11.
52 Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century
(New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017), pp. 118–120.
53 Fukuyama, “The End of History,” The National Interest
(Summer, 1989), pp. 3–18. Recently, Fukuyama has
claimed that “identity politics” on the world stage, which
political scientist Samuel Huntington predicted, may be
stronger than Fukuyama earlier anticipated. See www.the-
american-interest.com/2018/08/27/huntingtons-legacy/. See
also Fukuyama, Identity (2018).
54 Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s
Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
(New York: Henry Holt, 2018).
55 The People vs. Democracy, p. 23.
56 Thus, in the Age of Populism, Orwell’s Animal Farm
(London: Penguin, 1945) and 1984 became best-sellers
long after their original publication dates. See www
.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/2017-isn-t-1984-it-s-
stranger-than-orwell-imagined-a7555341.html.
57 Milosz, The Captive Mind (New York: Knopf, 1953),
pp. 25–53, but esp. p. 28: “The man of the East cannot
take Americans seriously because they have never
undergone the experiences that teach men how relative
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 138 N O T E S T O PA G E 1 1

their judgments and thinking habits are. Their resultant

lack of imagination is appalling. Because they were
born and raised in a given social order and in a given
system of values, they believe that any other order
must be unnatural, and that it cannot last because
it is incompatible with human nature.” Part of what
Milosz had in mind was American ignorance of East
European atrocities later described in Timothy Snyder,
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic
Books, 2010). Snyder describes American ignorance of,
or indifference to, the deliberate murder of 14,000,000
civilians by Nazi and Soviet forces between 1933 and
1945 in what he calls the “bloodlands” of, chiefly, Poland,
the Baltic states, Ukraine, western Russia, and Belarus.
Even the Holocaust, which occurred mostly in that
region, became a subject of scholarly attention and civic
consciousness in America only after the 1961 publication
of Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd edn
(orig., 1961; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
58 That academic thinking can restrict our vision is the
central message of Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Rodgers
analyzes a wide range of standard academic concepts,
such as rational choice theory, efficient markets, gender,
culture, and class, in disciplines such as philosophy,
economics, history, political science, and sociology. Joseph
J. Ellis recommends, instead, “an ongoing conversation
between past and present from which we all have much
to learn.” See Ellis, American Dialogue: The Founders and Us
(New York: Knopf, 2018), pp. 3–​9, but esp. p. 4.
59 If some political scientists will go down that road, they
will find their colleague Steven B. Smith already there.
As Smith says, “The history of political thought is not an
antiquarian appendage to the real business of research
… I am not suggesting for a moment that the study of
political philosophy can serve as a substitute for empirical
studies of political problems. I am suggesting [though] that
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 Notes to Pages 11–14 139

without being anchored in the history of political theory

empirical studies are likely to be cast adrift without a map
and with no sense of destination.” See Smith, “Political
Science and Political Philosophy: An Uneasy Relation,”
PS: Political Science and Politics (June, 2000), p. 190.
60 Yeats, “The Second Coming,” (1919) at www.potw.org/
archive/potw351.html.

2 The Temple of Science

61 See Donald M. Freeman (ed.), Foundations of Political
Science: Research, Methods, and Scope (New York: Free
Press, 1978); Alan S. Isaak, Scope and Methods of Political
Science: An Introduction to the Methodology of Political Inquiry
(Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press, 1985); Janet Buttolph
Johnson, H. T. Reynolds, and Jason D. Mycoff, Political
Science Research Methods, 8th edn (Washington, DC: C.Q.
Press, 2015); Paul M. Kellstedt and Guy D. Whitten, The
Fundamentals of Political Science Research, 3rd edn (Cambridge
University Press, 2018); and David Marsh and Gerry
Stoker (eds), Theory and Methods in Political Science, 4th edn
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).
62 On political science and power, see Robert E. Goodin,
The Oxford Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), pp. 4–7.
63 For the convention’s program, see https://convention2
.allacademic.com/one/apsa/apsa18/index.php?cmd=Online
+Program+Load+Focus&program_focus=browse_by_sub_
unit_submissions&PHPSESSID=ct3iap5g5su5is94e2uejnq
8l4#unit_type_1739. The divisions, or organized sections,
are now represented by twenty separate, specialized
journals, which contribute to pluralism or, less admirably,
facilitate the fracturing of concepts and findings within
the discipline. See the ad for these journals in American
Political Science Review (May, 2019), p. 292.
64 Gary King, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Norman
H. Nie (eds), The Future of Political Science: 100 Perspectives
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 140 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 4 – 1 6

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). The

same pluralism shows up in “Significant Works in Political
Science: Some Personal Views,” PS: Political Science and
Politics (Spring, 1983), pp. 196–​204, where colleagues do
not agree on which works to list as most significant.
65 “What Happened to the British Party Model?” American
Political Science Review (March, 1980), p. 9.
66 PS: Political Science and Politics (Autumn, 1988), pp. 828–​
842. The essay “Separate Tables” is reprinted in Gabriel
Almond, A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political
Science (London: Sage Publications, 1990), pp. 13–​31. See
also the lack of agreement among symposium participants
concerning the achievements of their discipline in
Jennifer L. Hochschild, “APSA Presidents Reflect on
Political Science: Who Knows What, When, and How?”
Perspectives on Politics (June, 2005), pp. 309–​334.
67 On getting involved “politically,” see n. 357.
68 See Lucien Pye, “Political Science and the Crisis of
Authoritarianism,” American Political Science Review (March,
1990), pp. 3–​19.
69 “Communities” usually contain many people, pursuing
many ends. “Organizations” usually pursue one major
goal, like armies fight wars, Boeing manufactures
airplanes, the Internal Revenue Service collects income
taxes, and the Catholic Church pursues salvation.
70 For example, innumerable articles on democracy and on
citizenship appear in the discipline’s in-​house journal
PS: Politics and Political Science, while the discipline’s
historical commitment to both is described in books such
as Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science.
71 Levi, “Why We Need a New Theory of Government,”
Perspectives on Politics (March, 2006), pp. 5–​19.
72 Michael Sandel has challenged what he calls the
“procedural republic” in his Democracy’s Discontent: America
in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1996), pp. 274–​315.
73 I have discussed substantive citizenship in Ricci, Good
Citizenship in America (New York: Cambridge University
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 Notes to Pages 16–18 141

Press, 2004), esp. pp. 227–​252, where the aim is not just
to maintain legal citizenship but also to practice “good”
citizenship, which consists of virtuous acts or, in a way,
citizenship not just of rights but also responsibilities.
74 Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?
What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2017).
75 See also Frank R. Baumgartner, Jeffrey M. Berry,
Marie Hojnacki, David R. Kimball, and Beth L. Leech,
Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
76 Page and Gilens, Democracy in America?, esp. pp. 11–​14.
77 The point is made in the 2018 APSA presidential address
by Kathleen Thelen, “The American Precariate: U.S.
Capitalism in Comparative Perspective,” Perspectives
on Politics (March, 2019), p. 20: “Surely the equality to
which we aspire in a democracy is not just a matter of
democratic procedures, as important as those are. It is
animated as well by substantive ambitions and a sense of
what a just society looks like.”
78 I am making here a point about formal knowledge. I am
not suggesting that people who don’t study at universities
are less important than those who do. Many people in
modern societies have little “higher” education but do
work that is absolutely vital to civilization and everything
decent. Therefore, I totally agree with David Graeber,
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018),
that such people should be paid generously and respected
more than they are today.
79 For example, see John Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral
Philosophy (London: Forgotten Books, 2012). These lectures
were delivered in the 1770s by John Witherspoon,
president of the College of New Jersey (later called
Princeton University). Witherspoon was the only
clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence, and
he taught James Madison, Aaron Burr, and more than
eighty students who became congressmen, senators,
governors, cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices.
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 142 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 9 – 2 0

80 Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science, pp. 29–​45, but esp. p. 30.
81 Kerr, The Uses of the University (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1963), pp. 1–​45.
82 On the influence of money over colleges and universities,
see Stanley Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling
the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Education
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2000); Derek Bok, Universities in
the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); James
Engell and Anthony Dangerfield, Saving Higher Education
in the Age of Money (Charlottesville, VA: University of
Virginia Press, 2005); Christopher Newfield, Unmaking
the Public University: The Forty-​Year Assault on the Middle
Class (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008);
and Suzanne Mettler, Degrees of Inequality: How the
Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream
(New York: Basic Books, 2014).
83 Kerr himself remarked that the job of chancellor came to
be defined as “providing parking for the faculty, sex for
the students, and athletics for the alumni.” Kerr is quoted
in www.berkeley.edu/​news/​media/​releases/​2003/​12/​02_​
kerr.shtml.
84 Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1936); Robert
Paul Wolff, The Ideal of the University (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1969); Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American
Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and
Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1987); Ellen Screcker, The Lost Soul of Higher
Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom,
and the End of the American University (New York: The New
Press, 2010); and William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The
Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful
Life (New York: Free Press, 2014).
85 For the sake of simplicity, I will write about
“departments” in the text above, even though all modern
universities have “institutes” which may consist of
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 Notes to Pages 20–23 143

related departments, such as German Literature, French

Literature, and Italian Literature.
86 In praise of this flexibility, and against a one-​size-​fits-​
all plan for modern universities, see David F. Labaree,
A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher
Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
87 To me, universities look like congeries of this and that; it
is probably my disciplinary background that leads me to
view them that way. But sociologists and anthropologists,
using research methods favored in their disciplines,
find that those congeries manifest patterns of behavior
that generate significant social consequences. That is,
such scholars look for, find, and highlight persistent
structures and functions in what Kerr described, more
or less, as an administrative contraption. For example,
see Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of
Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005); Richard Arum and
Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College
Campuses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011);
and Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton, Paying
for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).
88 In Carroll’s book Through the Looking Glass (1871), from the
poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” in ­chapter 4. See
the poem at www.poetryfoundation.org/​poems/​43914/​
the-​walrus-​and-​the-​carpenter-​56d222cbc80a9.
89 I first suggested the Temple of Science metaphor in Ricci,
The Tragedy of Political Science, pp. 54–​56, 212–​214.
90 That the Temple metaphor describes academic knowledge
does not mean that it is merely about academic knowledge.
In modern times, where most people of influence while
young have studied in institutions of higher education,
the shape of knowledge there bears heavily on how
worldly people outside universities think.
91 There are unwritten rules in the Temple, and one of
them is that most scholars in one column do not easily
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 144 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 3 – 2 6

introduce into their work information and techniques

that exist in other columns. It seems to me obvious, for
example, that real-​world “politics” cannot be understood
thoroughly without some understanding of “history.”
But in order to recommend that simple thought to his
colleagues, Paul Pierson wrote about “path-​dependence”
in Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and
the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review (June,
2000), pp. 251–​267.
92 If we extend this metaphor, the Temple has grown
top-​heavy in recent years because its superstructure is
growing faster than the number or size of its columns.
See the increasing number of administrators described
in Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the
All-​Administrative University and Why It Matters, 2nd edn
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
93 During the twentieth century, and even today, this
dichotomy has troubled people who do not want to
belittle the “humanities” as opposed to the “sciences”
but find themselves at a loss to explain why anyone
would want to rely on knowledge that cannot be certain,
definitive, or conclusive. Philosopher Ernest Gellner
summed up their dilemma when he argued, in early Cold
War days, that the main problem of modernity is that
the clerc no longer has the same authority as the scientist.
See Gellner, “The Crisis in the Humanities and the
Mainstream of Philosophy,” in J. H. Plumb (ed.), Crisis in the
Humanities (London: Penguin, 1956), p. 72f.
94 For example, see the distinction drawn at Stanford
University between “fuzzies” and “techies” in
Jennifer Summit and Blake Vermeule, Action versus
Contemplation: Why an Ancient Debate Still Matters
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018), esp. pp. 63–​97.
95 In academic terms, the aspiration for teachings that
will go beyond what a single column can provide has
sometimes been expressed in support for the principle
of “interdisciplinary research.” Thus researchers are
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 Notes to Page 26 145

encouraged to study more than one discipline, to combine

the techniques and knowledge of both, and to present
an amalgam to students and the public. The aspiration
is admirable, but little interdisciplinary research gets
done. Evidence of the quantitative difficulty is easy to
find. For example, in the Oxford University Press series
entitled “Very Short Introductions,” each volume contains
approximately 120 pages and covers an interesting and
important subject from “accounting” and “adolescence”
to “World War II” and “World Music.” Since 1995, the
series has published more than 640 volumes. And the list
continues to grow. The current list is available at https://​
global.oup.com/​academic/​content/​series/​v/​very-​short-​
introductions-​si/​?type=listing&lang=en&cc=il. For a case
study, Jamie Cohen-​Cole, The Open Mind: Cold War Politics
and the Sciences of Human Nature (Chicago: University of
Chicago, 2014), pp. 164–​189, explains how the Center for
Cognitive Studies at Harvard University failed to maintain
an interdisciplinary approach.
96 I say “scholars” in this sentence because we should not
forget that religious leaders, who do not usually specialize
in secular knowledge, offer general advice based on
theology rather than science, and many people accept it
from them.
97 Consider that one powerful tactical ploy among social
and political philosophers is to argue, like John Stuart
Mill, in favor of a “marketplace for ideas,” or, like Michael
Oakeshott, for a “great conversation.” The assumption is
that no one philosopher or book will provide all that we
must know to prosper, in which case we should consult
many sources and somehow decide from among them
what we should do. Implicitly, there is an admission here
that, in Temple of Science terms, individual scholars, in
separate fields, are not able enough to (1) put together
definitively everything we need to know in one place,
and thereby (2) tell us exactly how to live accordingly.
Arthur Koestler wrote his satirical novel, The Call Girls
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 146 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 6 – 3 0

(New York: Random House, 1973), about this conundrum,

where leading social theorists meet in a Swiss chalet,
discuss the dangerous state of world affairs, fail to agree
on what should be done, and send the transcript of
their conversation to the president so that he, from their
learned observations, can figure out the way forward by
himself.
98 Conservative Republican Newt Gingrich, in Understanding
Trump, praised the president’s penchant for fast food
as an indication that he was the kind of candidate who
could identify with working-​class voters and be seen by
them as representing their preferences and lifestyle.
Trump’s “personal taste leaned toward main street
American fast food. Friends who saw him in Palm Beach
at the fancy Sunday brunch at his golf course reported …
[that] Trump would wander through the line and get a
cheeseburger and fries” (p. xx).

3 Mainstream Economics
99 See Andrew Gamble, Can the Welfare State Survive? (Malden,
MA: Polity Press, 2016) for a discussion of competitive
capitalism and democratic socialism as two alternative
ideologies, mostly in Western societies. See also Jonas
Pontusson, Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe vs. Liberal
America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
100 Jeff Madrick, Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists
Have Damaged America and the World (New York: Knopf,
2014) and Juliet B. Schor, True Wealth: How and Why Millions
of Americans Are Creating a Time-​Rich, Ecologically Light,
Small-​Scale, High-​Satisfaction Economy (New York: Penguin,
2011), p. 67. Roger E. Backhouse, The Puzzle of Modern
Economics: Science or Ideology? (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), p. 154 describes “mainstream”
economics. The same is true of David Orrell,
Economyths: 11 Ways Economics Gets It All Wrong
(London: Icon Books, 2017), pp. xvii–​xviii.
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 Notes to Pages 30–31 147

101 Avner Offer and Gabriel Soderberg, The Nobel Factor: The
Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016),
pp. 18–​19.
102 Earle, Moran, and Ward-​Perkins, The Econocracy: The Perils
of Leaving Economics to the Experts (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2017), pp. 37–​38.
103 Baker, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the
Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer
(Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy
Research, 2016), pp. 17–​18.
104 Pontusson, Inequality and Prosperity, p. 4.
105 For example, Backhouse, The Puzzle of Modern Economics,
p. 154: “… there is a set of approaches, albeit one with
very fuzzy boundaries that change all the time, that
can be found in the top journals and leading university
departments, variously referred to as the ‘orthodoxy’
or, less critically, ‘the mainstream,’ as well as groups
of economists, publishing in other outlets, who do not
fit in.”
106 Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the
World Economy (New York: Norton, 2010), p. 238.
107 Robert Heilbroner and William Milberg, The Crisis of
Vision in Modern Economic Thought (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), pp. 109–​117, claim that
academic economics is all about capitalism although it
(economics) purports to be about behavior present in all
societies. That is, economists claim to view all human
behavior objectively but actually express the values
of a particular society dedicated to maintaining what
we now call capitalist production, private ownership,
and open markets. (What Heilbroner and Milberg say
contradicts what Lawrence Summers claims about
economics in n. 138, that “One set of [economic] laws
works everywhere.”) This is not just a point in theory
but has enormous practical implications. For example,
in America for generations, native people seemed to
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 148 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 1 – 3 2

men like Andrew Jackson to be “primitive” and remiss

for not placing land under private ownership like white
immigrants did. In which case, the newcomers were
morally entitled to take and “develop” tribal lands, such
as when much of Oklahoma was removed in 1889 from
tribal control and opened up to mostly white settlement.
For a recent, inadvertent example of capitalism as the
default setting in American economics, see economist
Dani Rodrik in http://​bostonreview.net/​class-​inequality/​
dani-​rodrik-​rescuing-​economics-​neoliberalism.
108 Edward N. Luttwak, The Endangered American
Dream: How to Stop the United States From Becoming a
Third-​World Country and How to Win the Geo-​Economic
Struggle for Industrial Supremacy (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1993); Noah, The Great Divergence: America’s
Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012); Smith, Who Stole
the American Dream (New York: Random House, 2012);
Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013); Reich, Saving
Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (New York: Vintage
Books, 2016); Ehrenreich, Third Wave Capitalism: How
Money, Power, and the Pursuit of Self-​Interest Have Imperiled
the American Dream (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2016); and Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018). For references
to economic research on downsides in the modern
economy, see the blog www.economicprincipals.com/​.
109 Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral
Economics (New York: Norton, 2015), p. 5. Furthermore,
leading textbooks of economics, used widely in
introductory courses, present and generally agree on what
they consider to be basic principles of the subject –​such
as methodological individualism, marginal utility, general
equilibrium, efficient markets, and the goal of growth.
110 For when the term “mainstream economics” came
into use among economists, and for how it evolved as
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 Notes to Pages 32–33 149

time passed, see www.ineteconomics.org/​perspectives/​

blog/​how-​the-​term-​mainstream-​economics-​became-​
mainstream-​a-​speculation.
111 I will say that one source that struck me as particularly
useful was Offer and Soderberg, The Nobel Factor, pp. 16–​41.
112 This means that there is little or no room in
economic theory for what psychologists, sociologists,
anthropologists, and historians might call “groupthink.”
See the classic Irving Lester Janis, Victims of Groupthink: A
Psychological Study of Foreign Policy Decisions and Fiascos
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972). Furthermore, even
if it could deal with cases of groupthink, mainstream
economics cannot systematically analyze decisions made
by a chain-​of-​command structure, like when Toyota
Motors raises its car prices. The prices got raised. But who,
exactly, did that? And why? In fact, who is Toyota Motors?
113 Actually, many economists study or speculate about
hypothetical rather than real individuals, such as when
postulating –​in thought experiments or ­vignettes –​
situations (1) involving imagined rather than real
individuals, and (2) designed to tease out the likelihood
of rational or irrational behavior. Thus the joke about an
economist stranded on a desert island proposing to other
castaways to open a washed-​up can of soup by assuming
the existence of a can opener. On the postulations of
economists versus real economic behavior, see Jonathan
Schlefer, The Assumptions Economists Make (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), passim.
114 For example, Thaler, Misbehaving, p. 25: “Normative
theories tell you the right way to think about some
problem. By ‘right’ I do not mean right in some moral
sense; instead, I mean logically consistent, as prescribed
by the optimizing model at the heart of economic
reasoning, sometimes called rational choice theory.”
115 Thus the distinction between what economists call
rational and what philosophers call reasonable is a
central theme in John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Expanded
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 150 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 3 – 3 4

Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005),

passim, but esp. pp. 48–​54.
116 That mainstream economists regard utility as legitimately
subjective contradicts the traditional ethical warning in
Judges 17:6 –​“In those days, there was no king in Israel,
but everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
117 Public choice theory emphasizes what can be learned from
analyzing “thought experiment” games such as Prisoners’
Choice, in which people assumed to be prisoners seek to
minimize their chances of punishment and maximize their
chances of being set free. It is a game predicated for the
most part upon self-​interest. To be loyal to other prisoners
in the game is regarded as an unrealistic strategy.
118 Buchanan used public choice theory to explain democracy
in James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of
Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1962). See also Anthony
Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper,
1957). On some anti-​government implications of this use
of public choice theory, see Nancy MacLean, Democracy in
Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for
America (New York: Penguin, 2017).
119 The concept of extending equal prices to all buyers
underlies the Elkins Act of 1903, which forbade
railroads from paying rebates (kickbacks) and thereby, as
previously, extending special and unfair shipping prices
to companies like John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil
Company (which shipped oil in tanker cars).
120 See Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The
Wealth of Nations (orig., 1776; New York: Modern Library,
1937), (970 pages). Economists regard Smith as the
founder of modern economic theory, but the term
“invisible hand” appeared in The Wealth of Nations only
once, in Bk. IV, ch. 2, p. 423.
121 Smith used the phrase “invisible hand” only several
times in all of his writings, and we cannot be sure
that he meant it to refer to God. The assumption is
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 Notes to Pages 34–35 151

reasonable, though, because as a moral philosopher

Smith was undoubtedly uncomfortable recommending
an economy where avarice becomes acceptable or even
admirable because, when it fuels marketplace trading,
it can be said to produce virtuous results. On economics
and theology, see Duncan K. Foley, Adam’s Fallacy: A Guide
to Economic Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2006), esp. pp. 1–​4.
122 John Maynard Keynes insisted that if an economic
equilibrium exists at any time, it may not come even
close to maximizing the utility that available resources
can supply. He had in mind the Great Depression before
World War II, when unemployed workers, idle factories,
and starving families were in equilibrium side by side.
See Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and
Money (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1935).
123 The Nobel Factor, p. 20.
124 www.theguardian.com/​politics/​2013/​apr/​08/​margaret-​
thatcher-​quotes. Mrs. Thatcher did not explain how
some people might behave as benevolent members of
families but continue to act as selfish individuals when
participating in other groups or networks. For example,
she ignored how the people of Great Britain, commonly
known as a “society,” stood up together against Nazi
Germany during World War II.
125 We should note that GDP, because it is measured in
dollars, is much easier to track than if we would try,
from one year to the next, to count specific utility items
in order to decide if people are enjoying themselves
more or less from one year to another. To track specific
utility items would require economists to accomplish
the impossible task of figuring out how many tables,
and chairs, and jeans, and gallons of ice cream, and
smartphones, and cars, and whatever else, are sold from
one year to the next.
126 As I said above, the mainstream is a complicated business
and the vocabulary is problematical. So let readers
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 152 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 5 – 3 6

beware. Economists across the board know very well that

GDP is not an index of welfare. They understand that
it includes the dollar values of “bads” (say, cigarettes)
as well as “goods” (say, heart stents). On this point, see
Diane Coyle, GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), pp. 40, 91, 105,
and see Joseph E. Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-​Paul
Fitoussi, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up
(New York: The New Press, 2010). Nevertheless, most
economists and politicians insist that we should try
to raise GDP constantly, via what they call “economic
growth.” In so insisting, they apparently believe
that somehow, overall, in the last analysis, all things
considered, elevating GDP is desirable. But that makes
sense only if they believe that, when GDP goes up, it
indicates that Americans are enjoying more welfare than
previously. So where practical politics meet everyday
beliefs, GDP is an index of welfare. Complaining that
this is so, see Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, and Jonathan
Rowe, “If the GDP is Up, Why is America Down?” The
Atlantic Monthly (October, 1995), pp. 59–​78.
127 On the economic theory of markets creating value, see
Dani Rodrik, Economic Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the
Dismal Science (New York: Norton, 2015), pp. 117–​120.
There is a crucial philosophical point here, which is
explained in William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How
the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-​Being
(London: Verso, 2016), passim, but esp. pp. 41–​69. If
“values” are (1) measured by moral, philosophical, and
theological precepts, there are a limited number of
values and society can (but not easily) dedicate itself to
maximizing them. But if valued items are (2) created by
marketplace exchanges, where individuals decide which
commodities are of value to them, there is no limit to
the number and quantity of values that can be produced.
In those circumstances, in effect, society is condemned
to run (after “values”) on a treadmill, driven by an
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 Notes to Pages 36–37 153

endless process of creative destruction and consumption.

Economists like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx,
and John Stuart Mill until the late 1800s promoted
thinking along the lines of (1). Then marginal utility
theory was invented by economists like William
Stanley Jevons, Leon Walrus, and Carl Menger. Adopting
that theory, mainstream economists began to regard
individual deal-​makers as competent to decide what is
valuable and what is not, which reflected thinking along
the lines of (2). Thus they justified the current treadmill.
128 Political scientists should note that if “value” is created
only by trade, there is little or no place in mainstream
economic analysis for a concept of “value” created by
political action, where legislators, encouraged by voters,
enact a law (such as the National Labor Relations Act,
1935) that they presume will benefit (be of value to)
the community. Different concepts of value constitute
an enormous difference between what economists and
political scientists study and teach.
129 Alan S. Blinder, Hard Heads, Soft Hearts: Tough-​Minded
Economics for a Just Society (New York: Addison-​Wesley,
1987), pp. 16–​17. Here is an example of a leading
economics professor, at Princeton University and
formerly a Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Bank, talking proudly about what some people call
“mainstream economics.”
130 William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a
Moral Economy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), esp.
pp. 1–​22, postulates that promoting more rather than
less is characteristic of capitalist economic thought and
practices. In which case, economic growth is the national
goal. He argues, however (p. 9), that twentieth-​century
Americans solved “the [age-​old] economic problem,” in
the sense that the nation’s economy, based on science
and technology, can finally make enough food, shelter,
and clothing to provide survival for all of its citizens.
Nevertheless, American capitalism persists in producing
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 154 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 7 – 3 9

more tradeable commodities, in a market-​driven process

that, in effect, disdains “humanism” (see esp. pp. 300–​
324, where Greider calls for social and political creativity
but does not refer explicitly to humanism) because it
(capitalism) denies that people together, rather than
markets, can decide deliberately what sort of society –​
stable, decent, moderate, responsible, considerate,
neighborly, environmentally sound, and so forth –​they
wish to live in. We will return to humanism especially in
Chapter 6.
131 Dirk Philipsen, The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule
the World and What to Do About It (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2015), p. 49.
132 See the classic jeremiad on this subject by E. J. Mishan,
The Costs of Economic Growth (Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1967).
133 How, when, and why driving up GDP became a
governmental goal throughout most of the world
is explained in Lorenzo Fioramonti, Gross Domestic
Problem: The Politics Behind the World’s Most Powerful Number
(New York: Zed Books, 2015), passim.
134 Ibid., p. 149.
135 For example, see Marion Fourcade, Etienne Ollion, and
Yann Algan, “The Superiority of Economists” (2015),
which analyzes “the dominant positon of economics
within the social science network of the United States.”
At www.maxpo.eu/​pub/​maxpo_​dp/​maxpodp14-​3.pdf.
136 Some valuable activities, such as child care at home,
are not handled thoroughly or at all by mainstream
economists because they (the activities) do not entail a
financial expenditure.
137 E. Roy Weintraub, How Economics Became a Mathematical
Science (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). For
example, see Robert E. Lucas (Nobel Prize winner in
economics, 1995), quoted in David Warsh, Knowledge
and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery
(New York: Norton, 2007), p. 168: “Like so many others
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 Notes to Pages 39–41 155

in my cohort, I internalized its view that if I couldn’t

formulate a problem in economic theory mathematically,
I didn’t know what I was doing … Economic theory is
mathematical analysis. Everything else is just pictures
and talk.”
138 Economist Lawrence Summers, Chief Economist of
the World Bank, Secretary of the Treasury, President of
Harvard University, Director of the National Economic
Council: “Spread the truth – the laws of economics are like
the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere”
(1991). Quoted in Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of
Disaster Capitalism (New York: Picador, 2007), p. 275.
139 This view is promoted by Maurice Allais (Nobel Prize
winner in economics, 1988): “An Outline of my Main
Contributions to Economic Science,” p. 243: “Firstly, the
prerequisite of any science is the existence of regularities
which can be analyzed and forecast. This is for example
the case in celestial mechanics. But it is also true of many
economic phenomena. Indeed, their thorough analysis
displays the existence of regularities which are just as
striking as those found in the physical sciences. This is
why Economics is a science….” https://assets.nobelprize
.org/uploads/2018/06/allais-ecture.pdf ?_ga=2.97089372.21
3120061.1536601189-1440850594.1536601189.
140 On the centrality of metaphors in economics, see
Deirdre N. McClosky, The Rhetoric of Economics (Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
141 For example, see the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics
lecture by Gary S. Becker, “The Economic Way of Looking
at Life,” https://old.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-
sciences/laureates/1992/becker-lecture.html. See also
Becker, The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior (Stanford,
CA: The Hoover Institution, 1996).
142 Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1962), p. 13.
143 In their enthusiasm for “behavioral economics,” some
economically minded thinkers today recommend that
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 156 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 1 – 4 2

government itself should get into the nudge business. See

Nobel Prize winner (economics, 2017) Richard H. Thaler
and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About
Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2009).
144 Thus, Paul A. Samuelson and William Nordhaus,
Economics, 14th edn (New York: McGraw-​Hill, 1992),
a widely used textbook for courses in introductory
economics, is 727 pages long but does not discuss
advertising or marketing. Neither commercial practice
appears in the book’s index or glossary.
145 See ibid., p. 38, on consumer sovereignty, where
(a) consumers (all of us), and (b) technology (controlled
by producers) are described as jointly “in charge” of
markets. Therefore, “Just as a broker helps to match
buyers and sellers, so do markets act as the go-​betweens
who reconcile the consumer’s tastes with technology’s
limitations” [D. R. –​the limitations are embodied in
producers’ production capacities]. In this formulation
of market activity, advertising does not appear.
Samuelson and Nordhaus observe that consumers express
“innate or acquired tastes,” but they do not explain where
the acquired tastes come from or what that might signify.
146 Bringing Galbraith up to date, spending on ads in the US
for 2017 was estimated at more than $200 billion. See
www.emarketer.com/​Report/​US-​Ad-​Spending-​eMarketers-​
Updated-​Estimates-​Forecast-​2017/​2002134.
147 Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1967), pp. 198–​218. In his The Affluent Society
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), pp. 124–​130, Galbraith
called much the same process “the dependence effect,”
where consumers were dependent on producers.
148 See Eli Cook, The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and
the Capitalization of American Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2017), pp. 243–​250.
149 Kahneman’s major work for lay people is his Thinking,
Fast and Slow (New York: Penguin, 2011). See also Michelle

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 Notes to Pages 42–44 157

Bradley, Behavioural Economics: A Very Short Introduction

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
150 Hacker (ed.), The Corporation Take-​Over (New York:
Doubleday, 1964), p. 7.
151 See Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin (New York:
Basic Books, 1996).
152 See Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World of
Advertising (New York: Penguin, 1988), and Tim Wu, The
Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
(New York: Knopf, 2016).
153 On needs versus wants, see Juliet B. Schor, The
Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need
(New York: Harper Perennial, 1998).
154 A good example of this claim, made in a leading
economics journal, is Jack Hirshleifer, “The Expanding
Domain of Economics,” American Economic Review
(December, 1985), p. 53: “There is only one social science
… [because] our analytical categories –​scarcity, cost,
preferences, opportunity, etc. –​are truly universal in
application … Thus, economics does really constitute the
universal grammar of social science.” (After I drafted this
chapter, I read Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro,
Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the
Humanities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2017) and saw (p. 2, et passim) that they also write about
economic “imperialism.”)
155 There is a commercial expression of this academic
imperialism. People who work in financial institutions –​
banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies, etc. –​think
in economic terms. As a result, they are likely to believe
that many different sorts of social problems can be treated,
and perhaps resolved, by an application of economic
principles and strategies, say, by consulting firms such as
McKinsey and Company. Anan Giridharadas, Winners Take
All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (New York: Knopf,
2018), passim, but esp. pp. 30–​34, argues that the result is

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 158 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 4 – 4 5

an outlook that he calls MarketWorld, where people who

are involved in creating the present social situation via
capitalist markets believe that they are uniquely qualified
and competent to repair the downsides –​in all domains –​
of that situation. In Giridharadas’ thesis, it is as if academic
economic training has become a locus of cure-​all advice in
the commercial world.
156 (New York: McGraw-​Hill, 1997).
157 (New York: Penguin, 2006).
158 (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
159 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010).
160 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012).
161 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2008).
162 Thus, one blurb about Nobel Prize winner (economics,
1992) Gary S. Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), says that the book
“cuts through the romantic mist that so often blinds
social scientists to the hard choices faced by families and
their members.” Another blurb, about Avinash K. Dixit
and Barry J. Nalebuff, The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s
Guide to Success in Business and Life (New York: Norton,
2008), says that “Since reading it, I’ve been seeing
everything in terms of game theory, and it feels like
having put on a pair of x-​ray goggles to view the
world.” Another blurb, about Tim Harford, The Logic of
Life: Uncovering the New Economics of Everything, says that
“Reading this book, you’ll discover that the unlikeliest
of individuals –​racists, drug addicts, revolutionaries and
rats –​comply with economic logic, always taking account
of future costs and benefits.”

4 Creative Destruction
163 In 1959, Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev met at an
American exhibition in Moscow and the vice president
extolled the virtues of American affluence by praising
American home appliances on display in the exhibition.
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 Notes to Pages 45–47 159

See the transcript of their conversation at www.cia.gov/​

library/​readingroom/​docs/​1959-​07-​24.pdf.
164 On the virtues of growth, see Benjamin Friedman, The Moral
Consequences of Economic Growth (New York: Vintage, 2006).
165 Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles, The Captured
Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down
Growth, and Increase Inequality (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2017), pp. 179–​180.
166 Philipsen, The Little Big Number, p. 93.
167 That both Keynesians and monetarists favor
maintenance of demand is a central message of David
W. Noble, Debating the End of History: The Marketplace,
Utopia, and the Fragmentation of Intellectual Life (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
168 The efficacy of pumping up supply, even before it is
demanded, was championed especially by Arthur Laffer.
His “Laffer Curve” was described and praised by the Wall
Street Journal’s Jude Wanniski, The Way the World Works
(New York: Touchstone, 1978), pp. 97–​107, et passim. See
a later explanation of that curve from the conservative
Heritage Foundation at www.heritage.org/​taxes/​report/​
the-​laffer-​curve-​past-​present-​and-​future.
169 Breaking with his colleague President Ronald Reagan,
President George H. W. Bush called the supply-​side view
“voodoo economics.” See www.washingtonpost.com/​
business/​economy/​before-​trumps-​tax-​plan-​there-​was-​
voodoo-​economics-​hyperbole/​2016/​12/​21/​c37c97ea-​c3d2-​
11e6-​8422-​eac61c0ef74d_​story.html?noredirect=on&utm_​
term=.7d57477c120c.
170 Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment (orig., 1992;
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 84.
171 See Robert Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in
Postwar America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000),
pp. 166–​213, on how important the supply-​side concept
was to Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party.
172 These presidents should be noted because supply-​side tax
cuts for the well-​to-​do have reduced government revenues
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 160 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 7 – 4 8

and therefore limited the provision of social services that

might ease the costs of living born by resentful citizens.
That thesis is a central theme in Jacob S. Hacker and Paul
Pierson, Off Center: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion
of American Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2006); Jacob S. Hacker, The Great Risk Shift: The New
Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Jacob
S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-​Take-​All Politics: How
Washington Made the Rich Richer –​and Turned its Back on the
Middle Class (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).
173 The American Dream story appears today in, among
other places, inspirational literature written by,
or commissioned by, people who have been very
successful economically. Recent examples include (Koch
Industries) Charles G. Koch, Good Profit: How Creating
Value for Others Built One of the World’s Most Successful
Companies (New York: Crown Business, 2015); (Amway)
Rich DeVos, Simply Rich: Life and Lessons from the Cofounder
of Amway: A Memoir (New York: Howard Books, 2016);
(Dollar General) Cal Turner, My Father’s Business: The Small-​
Town Values That Built Dollar General into a Billion-​Dollar
Company (Nashville, TN: Center Street, 2018); and (Home
Depot) Ken Langone, I Love Capitalism: An American Story
(New York: Portfolio, 2018).
174 The counter-​argument, from outside of mainstream
economics, is that success in life is only partly due
to “individualism” but also to a political, social, and
economic environment, friendly to commercial success,
which is built and maintained by many people, including
taxpayers, other than the entrepreneur. We will return to
this alternative view, promoted by books such as Stephen
J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr., The Meritocracy Myth,
3rd edn (New York: Roman and Littlefield, 2014), and
Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth
of Meritocracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2016). See also n. 248.
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 Notes to Pages 48–49 161

175 These terms come from John Lanchester, How to Speak

to Money: What Money People Say –​and What It Really Means
(New York: Norton, 2014), pp. 65–​229.
176 On empathy, one can assume that people who work in
finance are accustomed (when they work) to think of
things in economic rather than human terms, in which
case one can argue that the government officials who
handled the Crash of 2008 may have understood that
there were millions of “mortgages” at risk but not that
there were millions of “mortgage-​holders” –​that is,
“homeowners” and “households,” desperate men and
women –​also at risk, that is, on the edge of bankruptcy,
which if it occurred would impose on them terrible
and perhaps irreparable personal costs. On this point,
see Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, How Much is
Enough? Money and the Good Life (New York: Other Press,
2012), p. 41.
177 See Rana Foroohar, Makers and Takers: How Wall Street
Destroyed Main Street (New York: Crown Business,
2017), pp. 165–​188. See also Neil Barofsky, Bailout: How
Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street
(New York: Free Press, 2012). Those who left most small
debtors in the lurch were less critical than Foroohar of
what they did, emphasizing their goal of preventing
a systemic meltdown and overall depression. On this
score, see Timothy F. Geithner, Stress Test: Reflections on
Financial Crises (New York: Broadway Books, 2015), written
by the Secretary of the Treasury after the Crash of 2008,
“Epilogue: Reflections on Financial Crises,” pp. 492–​528,
but esp. 505: “[As to helping Wall Street more than Main
Street, there was]… no other way to prevent a financial
calamity from crushing the broader economy.” See also
Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and
its Aftermath (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), written by
the economics professor who was Chairman of the Federal
Reserve Bank during the crisis, which notes that there was
little political support for helping homeowners, which
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 162 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 9 – 5 0

notes that the Fed had little jurisdiction over the subject of
home ownership debt, which devotes 6 out of 579 pages to
home mortgage foreclosures, and which provides no figures
on how many foreclosures occurred on Bernanke’s watch.
178 Many working Americans are too poor to participate
creatively in the modern economy and therefore,
except to protest about being treated badly by it (as
some Trump voters did), center their lives mainly on
family, tradition, and community. For example, see
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by
in America (New York: Owl Books, 2001); David K. Shipler,
The Working Poor: Invisible in America (New York: Vintage,
2005); Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in
Crisis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015); Arlie Russell
Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning
on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2016);
J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture
in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016); Eliza Griswold,
Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018); and Sarah
Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being
Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (New York: Scribner,
2018). See also Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New
Dangerous Class (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
179 John Patrick Leary, Keywords: The New Language of
Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018), argues that
neoliberalism rules public conversation in America and
the English-​speaking world. Therefore he lists, defines,
and analyzes the vocabulary of neoliberalism, that is,
hundreds of everyday (p. 180) “terms that celebrate profit
and the rule of the market…”
180 On this point, one can compare (professor of economics)
Avinash K. Dixit and (professor of management) Barry
J. Nalebuff, The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to
Success in Business and Life (New York: Norton, 2008), to
(professor of history) John Lewis Gaddis, On Grand Strategy
(New York: Penguin, 2018). The first book sees economic
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 Notes to Pages 50–52 163

factors as underlying almost every human transaction,

and the second describes cultural, political, and economic
reasons in history for making some of the world’s
greatest strategic decisions concerning war and peace.
181 Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, pp. 81–​86.
182 For example, Paul A. Samuelson and William
D. Nordhaus, Economics, 19th edn (New York: McGraw-​
Hill, 2010), ­chapter 25: “Economic Growth,” pp. 501–​
518. See also N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics,
6th edn (Mason, OH; Andover: South-​Western, 2012),
­chapter 25: “Production and Growth,” pp. 531–​553.
See also Moore McDowell, Rodney Thom, Ivan Pastine,
Robert Frank, and Ben Bernanke, Principles of
Economics, 3rd edn (New York: McGraw Hill, 2012),
­chapter 20: “Economic Growth, Productivity and Living
Standards,” pp. 499–​524.
183 This point is discussed in Lanchester, How to Speak Money,
p. 53, which notes that neoliberals insist that inequality
is not just the outcome but also the necessary condition
for economic growth and consequent prosperity. See also
n. 237.
184 A good example of economic thinking that regards
innovation (creativity) and entrepreneurship (creative
people) as essential to economic progress is William
J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, and Carl J. Schramm, Good
Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and
Prosperity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007),
passim, but esp. pp. 1–​14.
185 As a matter of “framing” after World War II, the phrases
“creative destruction” and “free enterprise,” which are
both presumably driven by “entrepreneurs,” served in
the Cold War as American substitutes for “capitalism”
and “capitalists.” The aim was to avoid negative
connotations that some people attached to the latter.
186 Reich, Saving Capitalism, pp. 206–​207: “When Instagram …
was sold to Facebook for about $1 billion in 2012, it had
thirteen employees and thirty million customers. Contrast
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 164 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 2 – 5 3

this with Kodak, which had filed for bankruptcy a few

months before. In its prime, Kodak had employed 145,000
people.”
187 See www.aei.org/​publication/​the-​netflix-​effect-​is-​an-​
excellent-​example-​of-​creative-​destruction/​.
188 The relentless process of economic change is plainly
described by (non-​mainstream) economist Robert
L. Heilbroner, The Nature and Logic of Capitalism
(New York: Norton, 1985), p. 36, et passim. The formula
is M-​C-​M¹, where M, capital-​as-​money, is invested to
produce C, capital-​as-​commodities, which are sold to
produce M¹, capital-​as-​more-​money (including profit). M¹
may then be used to finance innovation, otherwise the
original capital of M will become obsolete and worthless
when its traditional usage is undermined by the process
of creative destruction.
189 In the service of creative destruction, Facebook officers
offered euphemisms instead of war slogans with their
early motto of “Move fast, break things.” When critics
began to regard that sort of Facebook behavior as
reckless and irresponsible, Facebook eventually softened
its motto to “Move fast with stable infrastructure.”
190 See Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, The
Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
(Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), pp. 31–​65,
on the (recommended) “disruptive innovation model.”
Recommending the same process of ceaseless economic
change, see also business administration professor
Gary P. Pisano, Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained
Innovation (New York: Public Affairs, 2019). In fact,
creative social media such as Facebook and Twitter may
have already disrupted the American political process –​
elections, parties, campaigning, etc. –​to the point where
democracy as we knew it may no longer continue.
For Jill Lepore’s criticism of Christensen’s praise for
disruption, see www.newyorker.com/​magazine/​2014/​06/​
23/​the-​disruption-​machine.
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 Notes to Page 53 165

191 Thus economic growth is often described mainly as an

outpouring of welcome consumer products, and we are
reminded by economist Diane Coyle, GDP, p. 63, that
“Meyer Rothschild, the richest man in the world of
his time, died in 1836 for want of an antibiotic to cure
an infection.” Alternatively, Louis Hyman, Temp: How
American Work, American Business, and the American Dream
Became Temporary (New York: Viking, 2018), explains
a great downside of economic growth by showing
how many American companies creatively increased
their profits by turning full-​time jobs, which included
social benefits, into temporary jobs that paid little
but increased personal and financial insecurity for
many workers. In that critical vein, Barry C. Lynn,
End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global
Corporation (New York: Currency Books, 2005), describes
how innovations in management and organization
decentralized great corporations, which are now more
profitable than previously but no longer provide long-​
term jobs in production, research, and development like,
for example, General Motors, General Electric, Motorola,
and Bell Telephone used to provide.
192 One sees this in some literary descriptions of
competition. Thus the sixteenth-​century proverb:
“Everyman for himself, and the Devil take the
hindmost.” Or, from Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted
Village,” an eighteenth-​century poem against land
enclosures in England: “Ill fares the land, to hastening
ills a prey. Where wealth accumulates, and men
decay.” In www.poetryfoundation.org/​poems/​44292/​
the-​deserted-​village. Or Alfred Lord Tennyson, In
Memoriam, canto LVI, “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”
In https://​babel.hathitrust.org/​cgi/​pt?id=uc2.ark:/​13960/​
t2r49rk91;view=1up;seq=60. Proponents of economic
growth might quote, in response, the mixed blessings
described in Bernard Mandeville’s poem, The Grumbling
Hive: or, KNAVES turn’d Honest (1705): “The worst of all the
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 166 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 3 – 5 4

Multitude, did something for the common Good … Such

were the Blessings of that State; Their Crimes conspired
to make ‘em Great … Thus every Part was full of Vice,
Yet the whole Mass a Paradice.” See https://andromeda
.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/hive.html.
193 Accordingly, the business world is replete with tough-
minded self-help books. For example, Antony Jay,
Management and Machiavelli: A Prescription for Success in Your
Business (Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996). And, of
course, Donald Trump and Bill Zanker, Think Big and Kick
Ass in Business and Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).
194 Climate change, as a downside of affluence and GDP
prosperity, is already killing coffee bushes and causing
Central American coffee farmers to emigrate. See www
.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/world/americas/coffee-climate-
change-migration.html.
195 See David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why
Some Are so Rich and Some so Poor (New York: Norton, 1999),
pp. 290–291.
196 Martin Ford, The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat
of Mass Unemployment (New York: Basic Books, 2015),
pp. 169–186, speaks explicitly of the downside of creative
destruction and discusses both 3D printing and driverless
cars as examples of foreseeable destruction. See also Sam
Schwartz, No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of
the Future (Boston: Public Affairs, 2018).
197 Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites
and Their War on the Industrial Revolution (New York: Basic
Books, 1996).
198 A good example of optimism on this score is Thomas
Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding
Globalization (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), pp. 101–
111, where Friedman, exercising his talent for rhetorical
creativity, explains that in the maelstrom of globalization,
countries are, to their own benefit, constrained by a
“golden straightjacket.” That is, they should change their
ways (in effect, abjure Ludditism) to fit into a worldwide
process that is beyond their control, whereby doing so
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 Notes to Pages 54–55 167

will assure them prosperity. For examples of damage

from creative destruction, together with firm support
for it because although sometimes painful it also fuels
commendable progress, see also W. Cox and Richard Alm
at www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CreativeDestruction.html.
199 See “The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894” in www
.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-
Manure-Crisis-of-1894/.
200 The reasoning might be as follows. Neoliberals believe
that people are responsible for finding a job and working
hard to make their way in the world. In other words,
we are not ethically obliged to help them. Many social
scientists regard life as more complicated than that. For
example, they know that various talents and abilities are
naturally distributed according to normal curves, which
means that some people are destined, through no fault
of their own, to maneuver in life less successfully than
others. Apart from individual talents and achievements,
though, there is a question of why some communities
more than others create new jobs and prosperity for their
members. This question is discussed by Timothy P. Carney,
Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
(New York: Harper, 2019). Carney argues that communities
that remain faithful to traditional religions, which
promote marriages and tight families rather than divorces
and anchorless children, which disdain Big Government
and Big Business, and which foster the little platoons of
civil society, are most likely to “thrive” and reject populist
politics. In other words, Carney, writing as a visiting
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that
America’s main problem is cultural rather than economic.
See esp. pp. 29–46, chapter 3: “ ‘They’ve Chosen Not to
Keep Up,’ Is it Economics or Culture?”
201 I should qualify what I said here. Some economists are
writing about destruction. My argument is not that
there are no such writings but that there are too few. For
an excellent example of focusing on the downside, see
Nobel Prize (economics, 2001) winner Joseph E. Stiglitz,
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 168 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 5 – 5 6

Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for

Growth and Shared Prosperity (New York: Norton, 2016),
p. 169: “The American economy no longer works for
most people in the United States.” Notice, though, that
even in his title, Stiglitz wants to promote growth, if only
a somewhat more benign growth.
202 Reich, Saving Capitalism, p. xiv.
203 Law students will recognize here the reasoning that led
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to issue his dissent in the
case of Lochner v. New York 198 U.S. 45 (1905), when he
famously (but to no avail) criticized the Court majority
for, in effect, accepting as legitimate arguments made
by the economic theory of laissez-​faire in favor of
unregulated markets (the Court struck down a New York
State law which limited bakery employee work to ten
hours per day and sixty hours per week).
204 In truth, many trades involve bystanders who may be
hurt when a trade is consummated. Economists refer
to what those people gain or lose as “externalities,” or
“external costs.” But if those externalities are undesirable
(although the Coase Theorem, in mainstream economics,
is not outraged by externalities), economists leave it to
other people to repair the damage by, say, enacting laws
that will permit government to forbid business deals that
impose external costs on third parties. And if government
does not make such laws, it is politicians rather than
economists who are culpable for the damage. This is the
sort of argument made by people who blame a lack of
government regulation rather than greedy bankers and
brokers for the Crash of 2008. On the Coase Theorem,
which says that a person who causes external costs (say,
downstream pollution) should be enabled to negotiate
permission to do so by agreeing to compensate the
aggrieved party (the theorem is taught via a “thought
experiment” where there is one offender and one victim),
see Moore McDowell, Rodney Thom, Ivan Pastine,
Robert Frank, and Ben Bernanke, Principles of Economics,

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 Notes to Pages 56–58 169

3rd edn (New York: McGraw Hill, 2012), pp. 313–​315.

The Coase Theorem exemplifies economic rather than
moral reasoning, that is, the pursuit of what economists
call efficiency rather than what a political philosopher
like Michael J. Sandel might call decency. Largely for his
authorship of this theorem, Coase received the Nobel
Prize in economics in 1991. For Sandel’s view of this sort
of notion, see Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits
of Markets (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012).
205 Thus Thomas Sowell, Markets and Minorities
(New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 4: “[In this book,] by
‘market’ transactions are meant such transactions as are
voluntarily made on terms chosen or negotiated by the
transacting parties themselves.”
206 Philosophers might say that Walmart’s offer is “rational”
but not “reasonable.” See John Rawls in n. 115. See also
the hypothetical, unjust land rental case described
in Jason Stanley, How Propaganda Works (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 105.
207 Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, ch. 8, pp. 66–​67.
208 On the dog that did not bark in the night, see https://​
sherlock-​holm.es/​stories/​pdf/​a4/​1-​sided/​silv.pdf.
209 For example, when Marx and Engels, in The Communist
Manifesto (1848), called on workers “to unite” and throw
off their chains, few if any workers throughout the
world, either in home countries or in colonies, had a
right to complain against capitalism via the ballot box.
Nevertheless, many later Marxists, including Lenin and
Stalin, interpreted Marx and Engels to mean that armed
rebellion against even elected, later-​day governments is
legitimate.
210 Within America’s somewhat monolithic Liberal tradition
(which we will explore in Chapter 7), not just many
economists but most American social scientists have
never used or promoted Marxian concepts. Nevertheless,
within political science, some Marxian works appear
in the journal New Political Science. That journal grew
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 170 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 8 – 6 0

out of the Caucus for a New Political Science, which

was founded in 1967. And Charles E. Lindblom, APSA
president in 1981, in his presidential address entitled
“Another State of Mind,” American Political Science Review
(March, 1982), pp. 9–​21, very gingerly suggested (p. 20)
that his conventional colleagues would do well to “call
more heavily on radical thought,” which in Lindblom’s
lexicon included Marxism. The fact that many poor white
citizens approve of Donald Trump has encouraged some
writing and talk about the significance of what Marxists
regard as “class” in America. For example, on working-​
class characteristics and consequences, see Smarsh,
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the
Richest Country on Earth (2018).
211 American conservatives criticize American liberals for
promoting modern social practices that sometimes push
aside traditional principles and practices. But some of the
damage is done by capitalism, which many conservatives
admire even though it constantly innovates. See Daniel
Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (orig., 1976;
New York: Basic Books, 1996), which points out, among
other instances of displacement, how credit cards mock
the traditional (Protestant) virtues of prudence and
frugality.
212 On the damage in Port Clinton, Ohio, see Putnam,
Our Kids.
213 A 2018 report, from Brown University’s Watson Institute
for International and Public Affairs, estimates the cost
of American Middle East wars at $5.9 trillion in current
dollars (spent and obligated) after 9/​11. The report
appears at https://​watson.brown.edu/​costsofwar/​files/​
cow/​imce/​papers/​2018/​Crawford_​Costs%20of%20War%20
Estimates%20Through%20FY2019.pdf.
214 For an example of how American economists, basing
themselves on mainstream orthodoxies, describe life in
America as a non-​Marxian story, see George A. Akerlof
and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology
Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism
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 Notes to Pages 60–62 171

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

This book was written by two Nobel Prize winners
(economics, 2001, 2013); it was published by one of
the leading academic publishers of our generation; it
appeared just after the calamitous Crash of 2008, when
huge banks and brokerage houses had bought and sold
securities they knew were over-​priced; it attributes the
terrible failure of capitalism in that moment of crisis to
personal frailty (human nature) rather than to greedy
institutions (group behavior); in short, it is based on
methodological individualism rather than sociological
and anthropological realities. When I read Animal Spirits,
I felt like I was looking at America through the wrong
end of a telescope.
215 That mainstream American economics slights
democratic-​socialist principles and practices –​say as they
are epitomized in the public life of Norway and Sweden –​
is described in Offer and Soderberg, The Nobel Factor.

5 Targeting Neoliberalism
216 Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic
Origins of Our Time (orig., 1944; Boston: Beacon, 1957),
p. 33. Polanyi extended this passage by saying that “Such
household truths of traditional statesmanship, often …
reflecting the teachings of a social philosophy inherited
from the ancients, were in the nineteenth century erased
from the thoughts of the educated by the corrosive of a
crude utilitarianism combined with an uncritical reliance
on the alleged self-​healing virtues of unconscious growth.”
217 Between the American Civil War and World War I,
“Social Darwinists” assumed that “survival of the fittest”
was a law of natural behavior, enjoining implacable
competition, in which case that behavior should be
encouraged by society so that the nation would progress.
Critics –​later called “Reform Darwinists” –​responded
with exactly Polanyi’s argument, insisting that although
we have some aggressive instincts, it is entirely possible
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 172 N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 2 – 6 3

to progress by creating a civilization that mutes those

instincts. See the two points of view described in
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought
(orig., 1944; New York: Beacon, 1955). See a discussion
of neoliberalism as a “rebirth” of Social Darwinism
in Robert Reich, Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong
with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It
(New York: Vintage, 2012), pp. 67–​76.
218 Keeping Polanyi in mind helps us to understand the
arguments of, for example, Martin Wolf, Why Globalization
Works (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004),
pp. 24–​25. Wolf says that the “fundamental value”
of a “free society” (he means a “market economy”) is
“individual freedom” (which is not “the welfare of the
community” to which Polanyi refers). Then he goes on to
maintain that “Liberalism means perpetual and unsettling
change. Most of its enemies have, at bottom, hated it for
that reason.” Wolf shows little sympathy for critics (in his
category of “enemies”) who do not “hate” liberal markets
but only want them to do a better job (less destructive)
for everyone (in the “community”). We should note
that Wolf’s book was published by the prestigious Yale
University Press, which indicates that his views will
receive special weight within the academic community.
219 It seems to me (I cannot prove this) that, in America’s
public conversation, creative destruction doesn’t
draw as much criticism as it should because it fuels
economic growth, and that growth is assumed to
be a project that improves social life year after year.
There is a sense, though, in which economic growth
is not part of the solution but actually part of the problem.
After all, constant growth means constant change,
and constant change undermines the conditions that
maintain society itself. These are the circumstances that
Avner Offer describes as “the conventions, habits, and
institutions of commitment.” In his formulation, these
circumstances crumble because “affluence [resting on
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 Notes to Pages 63–66 173

economic growth] is driven by novelty [creativity], and

that novelty unsettles [destroys].” See Offer, The Challenge
of Affluence: Self-​Control and Well-​Being in the United States
and Britain since 1950 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2006), pp. vii and 358.
220 Robert D. Putnam, “The Public Role of Political Science,”
Perspectives on Politics (June, 2003), pp. 249–​250. This was
Putnam’s 2002 presidential address to the APSA.
221 For example, (anthropology) David Harvey, A Brief History
of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press,
2005); (global studies) Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy,
Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010); (economics) Philip Mirowski,
Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism
Survived the Financial Meltdown (New York: Verso,
2014); (political science) Wendy Brown, Undoing the
Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone
Books, 2015); (psychology) Ehrenreich, Third Wave
Capitalism; and (history) Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The
End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
222 See John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929 (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1961).
223 The Glass-​Steagall Act of 1933 banned any bank from
engaging in all these activities; the Gramm-​Leach-​Bliley
Act of 1999 repealed the Glass-​Steagall prohibition.
224 On the rise of conservative organizations, see Thomas
B. Edsall, Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition
and the Drive for Permanent Power (New York: Basic Books,
2006), and Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-​
Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power
(New York: Union Square Press, 2008). The Citizens United
v. Federal Elections Commission (2010) case, in which the
Supreme Court overruled government limitations on
campaign contributions from organizations, was brought
to court by the conservative Citizens United organization,
founded in 1988. Republican federal judgeship candidates,
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 174 N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 6 – 6 9

such as John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh,

are now vetted by the conservative Federalist Society
organization, founded in 1982.
225 This is a central theme in Brown, Undoing the Demos, esp.
pp. 79–​111.
226 Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, ch. II, p. 13.
227 On the nineteenth-​century origins of the term homo
economicus, see Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven
Ways to Think Like a 21st-​Century Economist (New York:
Random House Business Books, 2018), pp. 95–​99.
228 For Kant, it is a “categorical imperative” that people
should not use other people as means to someone else’s
ends but should relate to them as ends in themselves.
See Immanuel Kant, The Philosophy of Kant: Immanuel
Kant’s Moral and Political Writings, ed. Carl Friedrich
(New York: Modern Library, 1949), “Metaphysical
Foundations of Morals (1785),” pp. 176–​178.
229 For example, Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, The Start-​
Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, And Transform
Your Career (New York: Random House, 2013).
230 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of
a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (orig., 1651; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1960), Part 1, ­chapter 13, p. 82.
231 Some scholars refer to this neoliberal approach to
economic success as “the portfolio society.” See Gerald
F. Davis, Managed by the Markets: How Finance Re-​Shaped
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), esp.
“Chapter 6: From Employee and Citizen to Investor: How
Talent, Friends, and Homes Became ‘Capital’,” pp. 191–​234.
232 Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory, pp. 125–​156. Megan
Erickson, Class War: The Privatization of Childhood
(New York: Verso, 2015), pp. 70–​80, et passim, describes
how American public schools have been shaped, in
recent decades, according to neoliberal notions of
educating children to compete for work in a market-​
driven society, starting with the Reagan-​era report,
sponsored by Secretary of Education Terrel Bell,
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 Notes to Pages 69–70 175

entitled A Nation at Risk: The Imperative of Educational

Reform (Washington, DC: United States Government
Printing Office, 1983). For example, see Governor
Rick Scott, Florida: “If I’m going to take money from
a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take
that money to create jobs … Is it a vital interest of
the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think
so.” And see President Barack Obama: “I promise
you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with
skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might
with an art history degree.” Scott and Obama are
quoted in www.insidehighered.com/​news/​2014/​01/​31/​
obama-​becomes-​latest-​politician-​criticize-​liberal-​arts-​
discipline. See also David Skorton, president of Cornell
University, delivering the university’s commencement
address in 2014: “Each of you starts the next portion
of your life’s journey with the tremendous benefit of
a Cornell education. I hope that you’ll carry with you
… a continuing commitment to build human capital
so that more will have opportunities to pursue their
dreams.” At http://​news.cornell.edu/​stories/​2014/​05/​
build-​human-​capital-​skorton-​tells-​2014-​graduates.
233 The phrase is from Thoreau’s Walden in Brooks Atkinson
(ed.), WALDEN, And Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau
(New York: Modern Library, 1937, 1950), p. 7. On life in
the modern economy, see Richard Sennett, The Corrosion
of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New
Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1998), and Richard Sennett,
The Culture of the New Capitalism (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2006). See also Jules Henry, Culture Against
Man (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), as a forerunner
to Sennett’s ideas on the inhumanity of much modern
economic activity.
234 See Moshe Adler, Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the
Science That Makes Life Dismal (New York: The New Press,
2011), pp. 113–​150. Adler discusses what economists
call the theory of wages. Classical economists such as
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 176 N O T E S T O PA G E 7 0

Smith and Ricardo said that wages are determined by

the bargaining powers of employers (capital) versus the
bargaining powers of employees (labor). Neoclassical
economists, starting with John Bates Clark, rejected
Smith and Ricardo on this point and said that wages are
determined by the marginal utility contribution of each
person to the final product. Adler insists, however, that
it is impossible to calculate any person’s VMP (value
of marginal product) because it is impossible to isolate
one person’s contribution to a collective project. For
example, remove the taxi driver, and the taxicab will
stand still, generating no fares. Remove the taxicab,
and the driver will stand still, generating no fares. So
who contributed what, or did each contribute 100-​
percent utility to the rides and fares? (On the difficulties
of measuring VMP, see also Schlefer, The Assumptions
Economists Make, pp. 99–​120.) Let’s put that another
way. From the total sum of fares, how much should
the employee driver be paid and how much should
the taxicab owner take home? For social purposes, the
bottom line here is that, if bargaining power is really
the key factor to setting wages, then modern society,
which does not limit how many investors can get
together to form powerful corporations, should also not
limit how many workers can unite to form powerful
labor unions. But neoliberals usually regard labor
unions unfavorably, to the point where they prefer
that workers bargain separately with their employers.
And neoliberals who praise banks and “entrepreneurs”
for their contributions to economic growth make no
objection to CEOs awarding themselves, while in control
of their boards of directors, salaries and benefits which
are hundreds of times more generous than what they
are willing to pay average rank-​and-​file workers in the
same corporations. On CEO pay in 2017 at S&P 500
Index firms, see the research reported in Forbes Magazine

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 Notes to Page 70 177

at www.forbes.com/​sites/​dianahembree/​2018/​05/​22/​ceo-​
pay-​skyrockets-​to-​361-​times-​that-​of-​the-​average-​worker/​
#67c2b203776d.
235 The common-​sense answer to how much people earn is
that it mostly depends on their bargaining power. Having
less power, one earns less. Having more power, one earns
more. Which is why Walmart designates its salespeople
“associates” instead of “workers,” because the latter have
a legal right, according to the National Labor Relations
Act of 1935, to organize and join labor unions, whereas
the former (as part of the company’s “management”) can
legally be fired by Walmart for doing either. In short,
“workers” can acquire bargaining power by uniting with
other workers, so Walmart tries to prevent them from
doing that by calling them “associates.”
236 Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New
Gilded Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2008), p. 29.
237 This is the main argument in Friedman, Capitalism and
Freedom. It is also sometimes implied, as in Lindsey and
Teles, The Captured Economy, where the title assumes that
the economy is simply there (not created by society) to be
captured or otherwise distorted.
238 Market-​based decisions produce inequality of incomes.
But neoliberals assume that this uneven distribution of
economic rewards is necessary, because they believe that
only large rewards can motivate the entrepreneurs who
produce the economic growth that counts for neoliberals
as progress. For a discussion of this point –​as if “no
pain [for the weak], no gain [for society]” –​see Raworth,
Doughnut Economics, pp. 163–​170. Religion inspired an
earlier pro-​market approach to inequality, as in Mark
14:7: “… the poor you always have with you.” Thus
Edmund Burke didn’t need secular theories to conclude
that it is not “within the competence of Government,
taken as Government, or even of the rich, as rich, to

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 178 N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 0 – 7 1

supply to the poor, those necessities which it has pleased

the Divine Providence for a while to with-​hold from
them.” See Burke, “Thoughts and Details on Scarcity”
(1795), p. 32, at https://​quod.lib.umich.edu/​e/​ecco/​
004903053.0001.000?rgn=main;view=fulltext.
239 John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism
(New York: New Press, 2000), pp. 17–​18, 23–​24, 26–​34. See
also Dean Baker, Taking Economics Seriously (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2010), pp. 1–​17.
240 Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville
House, 2012), pp. 21–​41.
241 The central thesis of neoliberalism, as expressed by
Friedrich Hayek and like-​minded colleagues, is that
government should protect natural markets so that
democratic forces will not prevent them from functioning
efficiently. This point, on the “encasement” of “states, laws,
and other institutions to protect markets,” is explained
throughout Slobodian, Globalists, but see esp. pp. 2–​6. For
a scholarly claim that neoliberalism’s central thesis, of
keeping capitalism safe from democracy, underlies the
libertarian theories of economist James Buchanan and the
anti-​government political philanthropy of businessmen
Charles and David Koch, see MacLean, Democracy in
Chains, esp. pp. 74–​87. On leading neoliberal economists,
see Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek,
Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). For a recent example
of this neoliberal approach, see Raghuram G. Rejan, Fault
Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 228: “It
is when democratic government … tries to use modern
financial markets to fulfill political goals, when it becomes
a participant in markets rather than a regulator [of natural
markets], that we get the kind of disasters [the Crash
of 2008] that we have just experienced.”
242 On the importance of entrepreneurs, see Nobel Prize
winner (economics, 2013) Robert J. Shiller, Finance and
the Good Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
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 Notes to Pages 71–72 179

Press, 2012), p. 13: “Financial innovation is an

underappreciated phenomenon.” Moreover, according to
Shiller, the people who practice it and earn great wealth,
should (p. 235) extend “enlightened stewardship” to
those who are less successful financially. The notion of
rich people as enlightened administrators of great wealth
was famously promoted by Andrew Carnegie, in his “The
Gospel of Wealth” (1889), reprinted in Andrew Carnegie,
The Gospel of Wealth, ed. Edward C. Kirkland (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 14–​49.
243 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why
Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
(New York: Crown Business, 2012), pp. 32, 430.
244 Supply-​side economics is described in n. 168. This
theory rejects the Keynesian notion that (a) government
(politicians) can enact policies to avoid recessions and
generate prosperity. Instead, it favors a notion, rejected
by demand-​side economists, that if government will
just get out of the way, (b) private industry and commerce
(entrepreneurs) will make such extensive investments
(and consumers will buy whatever additional goods are
produced) as to avoid recessions and generate prosperity.
245 On the golden straightjacket, see n. 198. An earlier
wordsmith portrayed less favorably the strictures of
economic growth and globalization. Thus, in Hard
Times, Charles Dickens described Thomas Gradgrind,
Victorian and Utilitarian schoolmaster: “He sat writing
in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving
something no doubt –​probably, in the main, that the
Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist.” See Dickens,
Hard Times (orig., 1854; London: Penguin Classics, 1994),
p. 192.
246 Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank,
and Their Borrowers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2006) offers analysis and constructive criticism.
Richard Peet, Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO
(New York: Zed Books, 2003), provides a hostile overview
of the globalizers.
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 180 N O T E S T O PA G E 7 2

247 Thus Max Weber’s essay, “Science as a Vocation” (1917),

in David Owen and Tracy B. Strong (eds.), Max Weber: The
Vocation Lectures (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004), pp. 1–​31.
248 See Baumol, Litan, and Schramm, Good Capitalism, Bad
Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity,
pp. 263–​268.
249 Some philosophers use the term “interdependence” or
related terms to indicate that any one person’s success
depends on what he or she receives from others. For
example, see John Dewey, Individualism Old and New (orig.,
1933; New York: Prometheus, 1999) and Liam Murphy
and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice
(New York: Oxford, 2001). See also the case of Walmart,
which makes great profits at least partly by paying its
workers so little that many of them live in poverty and
must use government food stamps. On Walmart and its
more than $6 billion of annual government assistance,
see www.forbes.com/​sites/​clareoconnor/​2014/​04/​15/​
report-​walmart-​workers-​cost-​taxpayers-​6-​2-​billion-​in-​
public-​assistance/​#4dd18666720b. On government’s
contributions to private, high-​tech productivity and
profitability, see Linda Weiss, America Inc? Innovation and
Enterprise in the National Security State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2014), and Mariana Mazzucato, The
Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths
(New York: Public Affairs, 2015).
250 Many Americans deplore the course of Native American
history. But they all automatically, and mostly
unthinkingly, enjoy the outcome of their predecessors’
forcibly occupying approximately 3.8 million square
miles of land (including Alaska and Hawaii) that were
once home only to indigenous people. Thus Irving Berlin,
who was a white, Jewish, Russian, Yiddish-​speaking
immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island in 1893 (the
Apache chief Geronimo was last captured by US cavalry
soldiers in 1886), wrote and sang, while leaving out the
natives, “God bless America … From the mountains to
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 Notes to Pages 72–73 181

the prairies, to the oceans white with foam, God bless

America, my home sweet home.” And Richard Rogers
and Oscar Hammerstein, for their quintessential 1943
Broadway musical show “Oklahoma,” composed an
inspiring story about the former Indian Territory (which
is still home to scores of tribes), without placing Native
American characters on the stage.
251 After the battle of Omdurman in 1898, where British
soldiers fielded Maxim guns (recoil-operated machine
guns), British dead were listed as 47–48, while Mahdist
(Muslim) dead were estimated at 12,000. See www
.britishbattles.com/war-in-egypt-and-sudan/battle-of-
omdurman/. See also Hilaire Belloc on the Maxim gun
in https://archive.org/stream/moderntraveller00belluoft/
moderntraveller00belluoft_djvu.txt.
252 See Gaddis, On Grand Strategy, p. 288: “[FDR’s country
emerged from the war] with half the world’s
manufacturing capability, two-thirds of its gold reserves,
three-fourths of its invested capital, its largest navy and
air force, and its first atomic bombs.”
253 The “story” cited in this quotation was told by David
Ricardo in David Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy
and Taxation (orig., 1817; London: Dent & Sons, 1962),
pp. 81–83 ff. The quotation itself comes from Krugman,
The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches from the Dismal
Science (New York: Norton, 1998), pp. 113–114. See also Ian
Fletcher, Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and
Why (Sheffield, MA: Coalition for a Prosperous America,
2011), p. 3: “Ninety-three percent of American economists
[professors?] surveyed [in 2003] support free trade.”
254 See Krauthammer at www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/
save-obama-on-trade/2015/05/14/aabaf342-fa65-11e4-9ef4-
1bb7ce3b3fb7_story.html?utm_term=.298f9067086b.
255 See this optimism underlying Wolf, Why Globalization
Works, p. 157: “… it makes more sense to focus on what
has happened to poverty than to inequality.” This is a
financial argument, where rising GDP does not account
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 182 N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 3 – 7 4

for what economists call “externalities.” For example,

Indonesian workers may now make more money than
previously (that is, they may be further than previously
from poverty because they receive money from their
country’s growing GDP). But the environment in which
they live –​rainforests, coral reefs, freshwater resources,
etc. –​is deteriorating because it is being exploited to
push up GDP. On the environmental costs of Third World
economic success, see Elizabeth L. Cline, Over-​Dressed: The
Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion (New York: Portfolio/​
Penguin, 2013), pp. 123–​125.
256 Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House together
voted for NAFTA 166–​114, while Democrats in the Senate
and the House voted against NAFTA 182–​129.
257 Clinton should be classified as neoliberal on this point
because labor unions protested strongly against NAFTA
but Clinton signed it into law anyway. On the economic
and global implications of NAFTA, see Greg Grandin, The
End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the
Mind of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019),
pp. 233–​248. As Grandin says (p. 233), “Clinton was
Reagan’s greatest achievement.”
258 Dickens noted the ambiguity of average gains in Hard
Times, pp. 50–​51, where in Coketown the Utilitarian
schoolmaster, Mr. M’Choakumchild, observes to “Sissy”
Jupe, his student, that “in this nation, there are fifty
millions of money. Girl number twenty, isn’t this a
prosperous nation? and a’n’t you in a thriving state?
‘What did you say?’ asked Louisa. ‘Miss Louisa [said Sissy],
I said I didn’t know. I thought I couldn’t know whether it
was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a
thriving state or not, unless I knew who got the money,
and whether any of it was mine.’ ”
259 See Gabriel Zucman, Global Wealth Inequality (Cambridge,
MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, January,
2019), Figure 1, p. 36, at https://​papers.nber.org/​tmp/​
38195-​w25462.pdf. See also Chuck Collins and Josh
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 Notes to Pages 74–75 183

Hoxie, Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes and the Rest of Us

(Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 2017) at
https://​inequality.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2017/​11/​
BILLIONAIRE-​BONANZA-​2017-​Embargoed.pdf. Collins and
Hoxie claim that the three richest Americans –​Bill Gates,
Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett –​“now own more wealth
than the entire bottom half of the American population
combined, a total of 160 million people or 63 million
households.”
260 www.cnbc.com/​2018/​07/​19/​income-​inequality-​continues-​
to-​grow-​in-​the-​united-​states.html.
261 See his “The Social Responsibility of Business is to
Increase its Profits” (1970) in http://​umich.edu/​~thecore/​
doc/​Friedman.pdf: “[T]‌here is one and only one social
responsibility of business –​to use its resources and
engage in activities designed to increase its profits so
long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is
to say, engages in open and free competition without
deception or fraud.” For early scholarly support of this
notion, see Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling,
“Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs
and Ownership Structure,” Journal of Financial Economics
(October, 1976), pp. 305–​360.
262 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney
was a successful venture capitalist with the firm of
Bain Capital. For a positive view of venture capitalism’s
role in American life, see Edward Conard, Unintended
Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About
the Economy is Wrong (New York: Portfolio/​Penguin,
2012). Conard is a former managing director of Bain
Capital. For critical views of venture capitalism, see
Louis Hyman, Temp: How American Work, American
Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary
(New York: Viking, 2018) and Eileen Appelbaum and
Rosemary Batt, Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street
Manages Main Street (New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
2014). Appelbaum and Batt offer a briefer version of
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 184 N O T E S T O PA G E 7 5

their book’s argument in http://​prospect.org/​article/​

private-​equity-​pillage-​grocery-​stores-​and-​workers-​risk.
263 Sloan is cited in David Farber, Sloan Rules: Alfred
P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors, 2nd edn
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005), p. 59. Sloan was
a harbinger. The massive historical shift of business
organizations after 1970 in Sloan’s direction (via
outsourcing, hiring temporary workers, pressuring
suppliers, exploiting consumers, and more) to fulfill the
theory that companies exist in order to make money
rather than things (or even progress) is described in
Hyman, Temp, passim. See also Hyman, Temp, pp. 180,
184: “The patriotic pride that GE’s Ralph Cordiner could
feel in the 1950s at being the head of an ‘American
manufacturing company … devoted to serving the
United States’ had been replaced [in late-​twentieth-​
century America] by the pride in a rising stock price …
Only suckers made commodities.”
264 In American constitutional law, see Charles River
Bridge v. Warren Bridge 36 US (11 Pet) 420 (1837). On
the declining power of the idea that corporations are
chartered to serve the public, see Shoshana Zuboff, The
Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at
the New Frontier of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2019),
pp. 40–​41.
265 Appelbaum and Batt, Private Equity at Work,
p. 15: “Shareholder-​value maximization represents
a fundamental shift in the concept of the American
corporation –​from a view of it as a productive enterprise
and stable institution serving the needs of a broad
spectrum of stakeholders to a view of it as a bundle
of assets to be bought and sold with an exclusive goal
of maximizing shareholder value.” The older, larger
view of corporation responsibilities to the community
is at odds with the modern notion, going back to the
late nineteenth century, that corporations should be
regarded as real (not artificial) individuals possessing
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 Notes to Pages 75–77 185

constitutional rights and therefore in some respects not

to be restrained by government regulation. One of the
Supreme Court’s recent decisions to that effect, in Citizens
United v. Federal Election Commission, is disputed by Jeffrey
D. Clements, Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have
More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It (San
Francisco, CA: Barrett-​Koehler, 2012).
266 See this in Julia C. Ott, When Wall Street Met Main Street: The
Quest for an Investors’ Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2011), pp. 4–​5, et passim.
267 For the New Deal outlook, see Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner
C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, 2nd edn
(orig., 1932; New York: Routledge, 1991). For the pro-​market
view, see Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of
the Great Depression (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008) and
Kim Phillips-​Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade
Against the New Deal (New York: Norton, 2009). For the day-​to-​
day endorsement of a shareholder-​values set of validations
and justifications by financial workers in Manhattan,
see the anthropological study by Karen Ho, Liquidated, An
Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2009), pp. 122–​212.
268 Mankiw, Principles of Economics, p. 4.
269 Blinder, Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, pp. 16–​17.
270 Famine (scarcity of food), for example, does not occur
because society lacks the capacity to produce enough food
but because we do not distribute enough of it to people
who are hungry. See Nobel Prize winner (economics,
1998) Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement
and Deprivation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
271 For a neoliberal argument along these lines, see James
R. Rogers, “The Inescapable Tragedy of Postliberalism” at
www.lawliberty.org/​2019/​07/​24/​the-​inescapable-​tragedy-​
of-​postliberalism/​?utm_​source=LAL+Updates&utm_​
campaign=0c39d6e790-​LAL_​Daily_​Updates&utm_​
medium=email&utm_​term=0_​53ee3e1605-​0c39d6e790-​
72492621. There, Rogers cites “tragically scarce
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 186 N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 7 – 7 8

resources” to claim –​without distinguishing between

needs and wants –​that only the pursuit of endless
economic growth can comfortably “sustain a world of 7.9
billion souls.”
272 When technology in the twentieth century led to
factories and farms that could produce more things than
people needed, desires had to be evoked, via advertising,
to buy up the surpluses. That is the story told in William
Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New
American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1993). See also Susan
Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American
Mass Market (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1989).
273 See Fred Hirsch, The Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), passim, on
“positional goods,” which, when achieved, become
unavailable to others.
274 Schor, True Wealth, pp. 27–​48, calls this situation the
“materiality paradox,” in that we are addicted to material
items not because they are functional (necessary) but
because they are culturally attractive (desirable).
275 In the context of the concept of consumer sovereignty,
one may envision corporations as if they were like
Gulliver, a giant (say, Google) flat on its back tied
down with many small strings by tiny Lilliputians
(consumers).
276 Personal costs would include bad health due to fracking.
See Griswold, Amity and Prosperity.
277 See Kate Ervine, Carbon (New York: Polity, 2018).
278 In David M. Ricci, Why Conservatives Tell Stories and Liberals
Don’t: Rhetoric, Faith, and Vision on the American Right
(Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2011), pp. 37–​38, I call
this thesis “the dollar fix.”
279 Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman, Climate
Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 46.

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 Notes to Pages 78–79 187

280 I say “in strictly economic terms” because a carbon tax,

like the existing federal gasoline tax, could be collected
and enforced by relatively few government workers and
would do its work automatically rather than require the
creation and administration of numerous government
regulations. In other words, a carbon tax is more of an
economic than a political instrument, favored by people
who regard most governmental activities as fallible and
potentially tyrannical.
281 Wagner and Weitzman, Climate Shock: The Economic
Consequences of a Hotter Planet, pp. 6, 23–​28, 46, 75–​
79. By using the word “economic,” this book’s title
unintentionally reveals that its authors are addressing
secondary consequences of climate change.
282 Klein, No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and
Winning the World We Need (Chicago: Haymarket Books,
2017), p. 81.
283 Paradoxically, James Kwak, Economism: Bad Economics
and the Rise of Inequality (New York: Pantheon, 2010),
p. 10, points out that neoliberalism (whose economic
beliefs he calls “economism”) is “influential” in America
precisely because it is not a formal ideology but a
diffuse (and therefore hard to formally disprove) set
of values, assumptions, inclinations, preferences, and
interpretations. Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To
Waste, passim, also finds no catechism for neoliberalism
and therefore analyzes a set of values, assumptions,
expectations, etc., which he calls the Neoliberal Thought
Collective. See also Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe
(eds), The Road From Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal
Thought Collective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2015), esp. pp. 433–​440, which lists eleven
neoliberal tenets.
284 That different groups or classes have distinctive and user-​
friendly ways of seeing the world is canonically discussed
in Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to

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 188 N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 9 – 8 1

the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Harvest Books, 1936),

passim, but esp. pp. 55–​59.
285 On the ideology of the modern American middle class,
see Noble, Debating the End of History, passim, but esp. p. 1.
286 Conard, Unintended Consequences, pp. 40–​43.
287 Bain Capital was co-​founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney,
who was governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007,
was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, and
was elected to the Senate from Utah in 2018.
288 Nassau Senior, An Outline of the Science of Political Economy
(orig., 1836; London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1951), p. 58.
289 What is called “economics” today was originally called
“political economy” (as in David Ricardo, The Principles of
Political Economy and Taxation, 1817, and John Stuart Mill,
Principles of Political Economy, 1848), because it was widely
understood that governments regulate economic activity
in order to promote political ends. National budgets, for
example, are used by political leaders to set nation-​wide
priorities, with some economic activities fostered and
others discouraged. That economic thinkers managed to
drop the “political” from “political economy” gradually,
in the decades before World War I, made it seem like
there were two separate realms, one of “economics”
and the other of “politics.” In which case modern
“economists” sound like they are being scientific about
what is, in reality, a matter of subjective priorities that
are still heavily influenced by political considerations.
290 I am using the term “public good” as economists use it,
to describe a good, like a public park or no-​fee bridge
or clean water or the American Air Force, which comes
into existence and thereafter is available to be used by, or
provide a benefit to, everyone. That is, public goods are not
like private goods, because the latter, for example my car,
cannot be used by anyone else unless the owner gives
that person permission.
291 Neoliberals would disagree with my assertion that they
are weak on public goods. They would say that they
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 Notes to Pages 81–82 189

favor using government taxes to provide law and order

(domestic tranquility) and armed forces (national defense)
in order to enable the competitive market to facilitate
prosperity (in the pursuit of happiness). Then they would
say that, for so long as that market is maintained, every
individual will receive what he or she deserves (justice),
and private property earned in the market will make
citizens financially strong enough to resist government’s
tendency to become tyrannical (ergo, liberty will reign).
292 See Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public
Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1965), esp. pp. 5–​52.
293 Conard, Unintended Consequences, p. 266. In favor of charging
user fees for many services now provided by government
agencies, see Lawrence W. Reed (ed.), Private Cures for Public
Ills: The Promise of Privatization (Irving-​on-​Hudson, NY: The
Foundation for Economic Education, 1996).
294 The philosophical issue around public goods is
discussed in Gamble, Can the Welfare State Survive?, p. 3,
et passim, and Offer and Soderberg, The Nobel Factor,
pp. 4–​7, et passim. Both of these books explain that
most American economic thought differs in principle
from social democratic thought in Europe, epitomized
in Nordic countries. In America, most economic
thinkers regard individuals as morally obliged to work
hard to achieve their own economic security (there is
the rational, utility-​seeking individual of mainstream
economics), whereas in Nordic countries, most
economic thinkers expect that economic risks threaten
everyone, if only in old age, should be handled by
pooling some resources and thereby providing security
for the entire community. In that case, goods like
welfare and child support in Norway and Sweden are
allocated to all citizens as benefits that they deserve
as members of society, whereas in America welfare
and child support are described as services provided
only to the poor, in which case many prosperous
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 190 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 2 – 8 3

people have no self-interest in them (the services) and

don’t support them politically. For example, William
Voegeli, Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State
(New York: Encounter Books, 2012), who is a senior
editor at the conservative Claremont Review of Books,
promotes the view that regards “welfare” programs
as intended not for society at large, as in Nordic
countries, but for the poor and less successful in
America.
295 For example, see William Kristol, “The 1993 Kristol
Memo on Defeating Health Care Reform,” addressed
to “Republican Leaders” on the subject of “President
Clinton’s health care reform proposal” and warning that
Clinton’s plan, if enacted, would persuade many voters
that the Democratic Party is “the generous protector of
middle class interests.” At www.scribd.com/document/
12926608/William-Kristol-s-1993-Memo-Defeating-
President-Clinton-s-Health-Care-Proposal.
296 See Robert H. Frank and Phillip J. Cook, The Winner-
Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get so Much More
Than the Rest of Us (New York: Penguin, 1996). The same
economy is sometimes called “the casino economy,”
which is particularly apt vis-à-vis Sheldon Adelson, a
major Republican donor, much of whose $40-billion
fortune comes from casinos in Las Vegas, Macau, and
Singapore.
297 See www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/
12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-
countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/
?noredirect=on&utm_term=.60b09dca4a83.
298 For Sanders’ view, see a long version in Sanders, The
Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the
Decline of Our Middle Class, 2nd edn (New York: Nation
Books, 2015) and see a short version in his 2015
Georgetown University speech at http://inthesetimes
.com/article/18623/bernie_sanders_democratic_socialism_
georgetown_speech.
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 Notes to Pages 83–84 191

299 See Ehrenreich, Nickle and Dimed, passim, trying to pay for
basic needs by working as a waitress, hotel maid, house
cleaner, nursing home aide, and Walmart salesperson.
See also Shipler, The Working Poor.
300 The transformation of wealth into political power
is summed up in Nobel Prize winner (economics,
2001) Joseph Stiglitz, “Of the 1%, By the 1%, and For the
1%,” Vanity Fair (May, 2011) at www.vanityfair.com/​news/​
2011/​05/​top-​one-​percent-​201105. Stiglitz writes more
about the One Percent and its powers in his The Price of
Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future
(New York: Norton, 2012).
301 Many books describe the impact of money on politics.
For example, see Frank R. Baumgartner, Jeffrey M. Berry,
Marie Hojnacki, David R. Kimball, and Beth L. Leech,
Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Lawrence
Lessig, Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress –​and
a Plan to Stop It (New York: Twelve, 2011); Zephyr
Teachout, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s
Snuff Box to Citizens United (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2014); Martin Gilens, Affluence and
Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); Wendell
Potter and Nick Penniman, Nation on the Take: How Big
Money Corrupts Our Democracy (New York: Bloomsbury,
2016); and Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and
Matthew J. Lacombe, Billionaires and Stealth Politics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).
302 For political science, that money talks is summed up
in Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory
of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-​Driven Political
Systems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Roughly speaking, “the golden rule” says that whoever
has the gold, rules. In popular culture, see the ABBA
song, “Money, Money, Money” –​“All the things I could
do, if I had a little money, it’s a rich man’s world.”
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 192 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 4 – 8 5

303 On what major “donors” get in return for their

political money, see Richard Hasen, Plutocrats
United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the
Distortion of American Elections (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2016), pp. 37–​59. On the endless
hours that candidates spend raising money rather than
serving the voters, see Potter and Penniman, Nation on
the Take, pp. 8–​9, 48–​50.
304 Kenneth P. Vogel, Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One
Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp –​On the Trail of the Ultra-​Rich
Hijacking American Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2014),
and Jane Mayer, The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind
the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Anchor Books, 2016).
See also Alma Cohen, Moshe Hazan, Roberto Tallarita,
and David Weiss, The Politics of CEOs –​a study of 3500
CEOs of S&P 1500 companies from 2000–​2017, showing
CEOs are between 2.6 and 3.2 times more likely to
contribute to Republicans than to Democrats. At https://​
corpgov.law.harvard.edu/​2019/​04/​02/​the-​politics-​of-​ceos/​.
305 Orwell, Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (London: Penguin, 1945),
p. 114.
306 On this score, consider the anecdote about Henry Ford II
and Walter Reuther. While touring a Ford assembly
plant in the 1950s and seeing there many early robots,
the CEO of Ford asked (triumphantly) UAW President
Reuther, “Walter, how are you going to organize [into
the United Automobile Workers union] those machines?”
Whereupon Reuther replied, “Henry, how are you going
to get them to buy your Ford automobiles?”
307 Early warnings about the decline of the middle class
appeared in Katherine S. Newman, Falling from Grace: The
Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class
(New York: Vintage, 1989) and Katherine S. Newman,
Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream
(New York: Basic Books, 1993).
308 Reich, Saving Capitalism, p. xi.

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 Notes to Pages 85–87 193

309 See www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​monkey-​cage/​wp/​

2016/​03/​29/​how-​wall-​street-​became-​a-​big-​chunk-​of-​the-​
u-​s-​economy-​and-​when-​the-​democrats-​signed-​on/​?utm_​
term=.9c4c12e71b2a.
310 On the rise of temporary work and its effects, see Louis
Hyman, Temp.
311 A decline in living standards was postponed by many
families taking on debt to pay for even ordinary
commodities. Many of them were therefore bankrupted
by the Crash of 2008. On the growth of debt in America
since the 1970s, see Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation: The
History of America in Red Ink (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2011), pp. 173–​287, and Louis Hyman,
Borrow: The American Way of Debt (New York: Vintage,
2012), pp. 180–​247. See also Graeber, Debt.
312 Quart, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America
(New York: Ecco, 2018), passim. Quart was preceded by
Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warrent Tyagi, The Two-​
Income Trap: Why Middle-​Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going
Broke (New York: Basic Books, 2003).
313 Ganesh Sitaraman, The Crisis of the Middle-​Class Constitution:
Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic (New York:
Knopf, 2017), passim, but esp. pp. 111–​160, 223–​232.
314 Ibid., pp. 274–​302. Sitaraman is a law professor. Among
political scientists, but without projecting the same
historical analysis, much of Sitaraman’s concern and
many of his findings are matched by Bartels, Unequal
Democracy and by Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba,
and Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political
Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). See also Jeffrey
A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, “Oligarchy in the United
States?” Perspectives on Politics (December, 2009), pp. 731–​
751. From philology and literature, see Emily Katz Anhalt,
Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). Anhalt contends

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 194 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 7 – 8 8

that Greek epics such as the Iliad, and Greek tragedies

such Ajax and Hecuba, help us to understand that humans
should control rage, should practice critical reflection,
should improve political institutions, should realize that
tolerance, rather than war, is good for both sides in a
confrontation, and should accept responsibility for earthly
events because the gods accept none.
315 Joseph E. Stiglitz, with Nell Abernathy, Adam Hersh,
Susan Holmberg, and Mike Konezal, Rewriting the Rules
of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared
Prosperity (New York: Norton, 2016), p. 169. Note that,
while Stiglitz makes this claim, he leaves open the
possibility that the American economy may be working
well for some people outside the United States, which
is what angers some Americans whose jobs were
outsourced to other countries.
316 See Gray, False Dawn, pp. 194–​208.
317 Reich, Beyond Outrage, Part I, “The Rigged Game,”
pp. 2–​63, offers a liberal explanation of their plight.
Baker, Rigged, passim, does the same. Carlson, Ship of Fools,
passim, offers a conservative explanation.
318 This is, I believe, a simple but roughly accurate
explanation for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. For
scholarship on this point, see Suzanne Mettler, The
Government-​Citizen Disconnect (New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 2018), which is based on survey research,
and which explains why many pro-​Trump voters, even
while they received substantial income and services from
the federal government, disliked that government and
would therefore hold candidates like Hillary Clinton
responsible for what they regarded as Washington’s
shortcomings. For journalism on this point, see Thomas
Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won
the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004),
which argues that, spurred by conservative thinkers and
candidates, many Kansas voters fear cultural deterioration
more than they seek economic improvement.
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 Notes to Page 88 195

319 I am arguing that “creative destruction” and

“neoliberalism,” among other trends, especially underlie
the Age of Populism. Using different terms, something
very similar appears in Zito and Todd, The Great Revolt.
Zito and Todd interviewed self-​declared Trump voters
particularly in the Great Lakes and Rust Belt states of
Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa,
because those states swung to Trump in 2016 and assured
his victory in the Electoral College. Their book reports
(passim, but esp. p. 237) on widespread resentment
expressed by people who felt that they worked hard,
paid their taxes, volunteered at church, attended PTA
meetings, and still were called racists and ridiculed
by elites from large metropolitan areas. Summing up
their findings (p. 5), the authors claim that polling
experts and opinion pundits wrongly predicted the 2016
presidential election outcome because they ignored “the
… changes wreaking havoc in every other [non-elite, non-​
metropolitan] part of American society.”
320 Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in
the Age of Trump (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018).
321 This process of stimulating demand appeared, for
example, when Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said that
customers “don’t know what they want until we’ve
shown them.” See www.forbes.com/​sites/​chunkamui/​
2011/​10/​17/​five-​dangerous-​lessons-​to-​learn-​from-​
steve-​jobs/​#3c44fd5f3a95. On the general problem
of advertisements corrupting language and making
coherent thinking difficult if not impossible, see Jean
Kilbourne, Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the
Way We Think and Feel (New York: Torchbooks, 2000),
passim, but esp. pp. 74–​75.
322 See Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public
Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin,
1986), p. 128: “A McDonald’s commercial, for example,
is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions.
It is a drama –​a mythology, if you will –​of handsome
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 196 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 8 – 8 9

people selling, buying, and eating hamburgers, and being

driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. No claims
are made, except those the viewer projects onto or infers
from the drama. One can like or dislike a television
commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it.”
323 Colbert is cited in Farhad Manjoo, True Enough: Learning to
Live in a Post-​Fact Society (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,
2008), pp. 188–​189.
324 The mainstream economic view of life uses this rule
of thumb. But in real life, it is clear (and I think most
economists would agree) that just because people want
something does not mean that their preference cannot
and should not be challenged ethically and socially.
For example, if alcoholics drink a great deal, we do not
regard that as good for them because they are willing
to pay. See Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish (London: Pluto
Press, 2003), p. 12.
325 See the philosophical point described in the text above
n. 116. One wonders what Bentham would have thought
of plastic bags and bottles.
326 See Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin. Spin is so prevalent
today as to encourage many people to believe that they
are surrounded by dissembling, that no institutions are
trustworthy, and that everyone is trying to manipulate
everyone else. A ubiquitous example of such dissembling
is how internet websites use “cookies” to invisibly
vacuum up information about our habits and preferences
and then sell that information to commercial interests
who use it, profitably, to influence our thinking. This is
a ruthless process of exploitation (which Facebook uses
on more than 2 billion participants), which is usually
covered up by deceptive explanations –​mostly misleading
and often false –​such as: “Like many other sites, The
Globalist uses cookies to enable us to track your use of our site
and make it more useful to you …” [emphasis supplied]. At
www.theglobalist.com/​. Is the tracking really “useful to
you” or is it instantly valuable to The Globalist? Or, from
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 Notes to Page 89 197

Politico, “To give you the best possible experience [of

what?], this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing,
you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy
policy to find out more about the cookies we use.” At
www.politico.com/​. Actually, you can “review” Politico’s
“privacy policy” but you won’t understand it or its legal
implications. Such announcements are grammatically
correct but do not describe the situation they reference
plainly, fully, and accurately. For example, what exactly
does this sentence, from The Walrus, mean? “This website
or its third-​party tools use cookies to improve functionality.”
[emphasis supplied] At https://​thewalrus.ca/​in-​defence-​
of-​hate/​. Do ordinary browsers know what “third-​party
tools” or “functionality” are?
327 One classic anecdote on this point is that German
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck is reported to have said
(not disapprovingly) that politics (making laws) is like
making sausages (salami, hot dogs, etc.). That is, you
don’t want to look too closely into exactly how it is done
and what ingredients are used.
328 Unlike in President Donald Trump’s tweets, truth as
a public good (although without using that term) is
recommended in the opening sentences of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933). As
Roosevelt put it, “I am certain that my fellow Americans
expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will
address them with a candor and a decision which
the present situation of our Nation impels. This is
preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth,
frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly
facing conditions in our country today.” See the speech at
http://​avalon.law.yale.edu/​20th_​century/​froos1.asp.
329 Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 71: “To abandon facts is to abandon
freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize
power, because there is no basis on which to do so. If
nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet
pays for the most blinding lights.”
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 198 N O T E S T O PA G E 9 0

330 Reality shows and advertisements are both “pseudo-​

events” according to Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to
Pseudo-​Events in America (New York: Harper Colophon, 1964).
Pseudo-​events purport to reflect reality as it is embodied
in real events. But the former fashion invent what only
appear to be “facts” and then use those to displace the
truth (real facts). In Donald Trump’s world, campaign
rallies, speeches, press conferences, and Twitter tweets
are powerful pseudo-​events, where almost nothing real
actually happens even though the main character, who is
enormously talented at this sort of thing, draws attention
by performing on stage. Boorstin on pseudo-​events and
the displacement of truth are discussed in Chris Hedges,
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle (New York: Nation Books, 2009), pp. 47–​53.
331 www.nbcnews.com/​storyline/​meet-​the-​press-​70-​years/​
wh-​spokesman-​gave-​alternative-​facts-​inauguration-​crowd-​
n710466. See Carlos Lozada, “Can Truth Survive This
President?” at www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​book-​party/​
wp/​2018/​07/​13/​feature/​can-​truth-​survive-​this-​president-​an-​
honest-​investigation/​?tid=a_​inl_​manual&tidloc =5&utm_​
term=.a8f58da33b09). Lozada argues that “[President George
W.] Bush [by attacking Iraq] wanted to remake the world.
President Trump, by contrast, just wants to make it up as he
goes along.” Lozada’s intimation of a false narrative matches
Michael Gerson’s description of Trump as a man who
lives in “the eternal now –​no history, no consequences.”
www.nytimes.com/​2018/​10/​18/​us/​politics/​donald-​trump-​
foreign-​leaders.html. See also Peter Pomerantsev, This is Not
Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality (New York:
Public Affairs, 2019), p. 119: “There is nothing new about
politicians lying, but what seems novel [today] is their acting
as if they don’t care whether what they say is true or false.”
332 Because some truths emerge from the study of history,
Jo Guldi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), insist
in their opening sentence that historians should speak
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 Notes to Pages 90–91 199

truth to power. Aaron Wildavsky made the same point

for political scientists. See his Speaking Truth to Power: The
Art and Craft of Policy Analysis (Boston: Little Brown, 1979).
On the indispensability of truth in democratic societies,
see Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth, passim.
333 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951), passim. Arendt’s
basic thesis (pp. 340–364) was that the erasure of
truth was the primary aim of “propaganda” promoted
by totalitarian regimes. See also Arendt, “Lying
in Politics: Reflections on The Pentagon Papers,”
New York Review of Books (November 18, 1971), on how
when “National Security Managers” in the Johnson
Administration separated their thinking (public relations,
in fact, to drum up electoral support for the war) about
Vietnam from reality (what was really happening in the
war), they wound up (mistakenly) “using excessive means
to achieve minor aims in a region of marginal interest.”
334 Orwell, 1984 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949), p. 69.
Perhaps with Winston Smith’s formulation in mind,
former CIA Director Michael Hayden in 2018 updated
Orwell’s warning by noting President Trump’s scorn
for intelligence briefings and by suggesting that, in
his opinion, Donald Trump is unable to differentiate
between truth and fiction. See Hayden at
www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/opinion/sunday/the-end-
of-intelligence.html. Or, as the president’s lawyer Ruddy
Giuliani declared, cryptically but confidently, while
hinting that the president should avoid talking to special
counsel Robert Mueller, “Truth isn’t truth.” At www
.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/us/giuliani-meet-the-press-truth-
is-not-truth.html.
335 Mill, Principles of Political Economy, With Some of Their
Applications to Social Philosophy (orig., 1848; New York:
Augustus M. Kelly, Bookseller, 1961), p. 748.
336 Ibid., p. 748. For modern discussions of what Mill
called the “stationary state,” see Herman Daley,
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 200 N O T E S T O PA G E 9 1

Steady-​State Economics (Washington, DC: Island Press,

1991); Serge Latouche, Farewell to Growth (Malden,
MA: Polity Press, 2009); Richard Heinberg, The End of
Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality (Gabriola
Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2011); Tim Jackson,
Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy
of Tomorrow, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2017); and
Paul Craig Roberts, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism
(Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2013). For opposition to the
stationary-​state notion, that is, opposition to the thesis
that innovation and change should be restrained or
mitigated, see Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How
Prosperity Evolves (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011),
esp. pp. 349–​359. In Ridley’s estimation, pessimists
say that if current trends will continue, disaster will
strike. But current trends will not continue, says
Ridley, because human creativity and innovation (and
economic growth) will solve all problems as they arise.
Therefore, p. 281, “The real danger comes from slowing
down change.”
337 The relation between change and progress is an
enormously fraught philosophical subject, for which
we have no space here. But see Jill Lepore, These
Truths: A History of the United States (New York: Norton,
2018), pp. 735–​738, for a discussion of (1) how belief
in “progress” in the nineteenth century assumed
that “change,” flowing from science and technology,
contributes to social improvements that are morally
justifiable, whereupon (2) economists like Schumpeter,
in the mid-​twentieth century, moved to favoring change
(creative destruction) because it boosts economic growth
whose index of social improvement is an ever-​rising GDP.
In such a view, economist Alan Blinder does not need to
ponder complex moral characteristics of “progress” but
can simply stipulate, with GDP in mind, that “more is
better.” Along these lines (see n. 190), business professors
Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor sculpted
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 Notes to Pages 91–94 201

Schumpeter’s concept of “creative destruction” into their

concept of “disruptive innovation.”

6 Humanism
338 Hacker and Pierson, Off Center, argues that American
public policies, enacted and maintained by elected
officials, have shifted to the right even though the
national voting majority has not. At least part of that
shift is caused by uneven political contributions.
339 The book you are holding is a product of qualitative
research, although its source materials were
quantitatively extensive. My guide on this score is
historian William McNeill, who described his “method”
as follows: “I get curious about a problem and start
reading up on it. What I read causes me to redefine
the problem. Redefining the problem causes me to
shift the direction of what I’m reading. That in turn
further reshapes the problem, which further redirects
the reading. I go back and forth like this until it feels
right, then I write it up and ship it off to the publisher.”
McNeill is quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape
of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), p. 48.
340 I have discussed this dilemma in Ricci, The Tragedy of
Political Science, esp. pp. 291–​300.
341 Much that is bleak appears or is implicit in, for example,
Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values,
2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963);
Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Downsizing
Democracy: How America Sidelined its Citizens and Privatized
its Public (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2002); Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why
Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2007); Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and
Slow (2011); Nadia Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion,
Truth, and the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

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 202 N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 4 – 9 5

Press, 2014); Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels,

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce
Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2016); and Ilya Somin, Democracy and Political
Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2016).
342 Marc J. Hetherington and Thomas J. Rudolph, Why
Washington Won’t Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the
Governing Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2015), p. 1.
343 Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Policy State: An
American Predicament (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2017), passim, but esp. pp. 192–​198.
344 For theory, see Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of
Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities,
2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). For
details, see James A. Thurber and Antoine Yoshinaka (eds),
American Gridlock: The Sources, Character, and Impact of Political
Polarization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
345 Jason Brennan, Against Democracy (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), esp. pp. 172–​230.
During World War II, when Germany and the Soviet
Union were governed by dictators who insisted that they
should rule because they alone knew the right path, Karl
Popper rejected the notion of rule by those who claim to
know. He wanted leaders who were not absolutely sure
but open-​minded enough to learn new truths when those
might be discovered. For a summary of Popper’s view, see
Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science, pp. 114–​125.
346 This side of the Enlightenment is explored by Jonathan
Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and
the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Anthony Pagden, The
Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters (New York: Random
House, 2013); and Pinker, Enlightenment Now.
347 Paine, “Common Sense” (1776), in Howard Fast (ed.),
The Selected Work of Tom Paine and Citizen Tom Paine
(New York: Modern Library, 1945), p. 18: “In the following
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 Notes to Page 95 203

pages, I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain

arguments, and common sense…”
348 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The
Federalist (New York: Modern Library, 1937), No. 1, p. 3: “It
has frequently been remarked that it seems to have been
reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct
and example, to decide the important question, whether
societies of men are really capable or not of establishing
good government from reflection and choice.”
349 See FDR’s fireside chat on April 28, 1935: “We have
survived all of the arduous burdens and the threatening
dangers of a great economic calamity. We have in the
darkest moments of our national trials retained our faith
in our own ability to master our destiny. Fear is vanishing
and confidence is growing on every side, faith is being
renewed in the vast possibilities of human beings to
improve their material and spiritual status through the
instrumentality of the democratic form of government.”
www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​ws/​index.php?pid=15046. That is,
improvement may come not because of the invisible hand
of the market but through deliberate (humanistic) politics.
350 Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth
Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1998), p. 101. A similar notion inspires Bob
Herbert, Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled
America (New York: Anchor Books, 2012), p. 245: “America
needs to be reimagined.” Optimism inspired Abraham
Lincoln, the greatest republican, and Republican, of
them all. As he put it in 1854, “They said that some men
are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government.
Possibly so, said we; and by your system, you would
always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed
to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow
stronger, the ignorant, wiser; and all better, and happier
together. We made the experiment; and the fruit is
before us.” Lincoln is quoted in Lepore, These Truths,
p. 151. An opposing view is proposed by Jay W. Richards,
Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not
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 204 N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 5 – 9 6

the Problem (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), passim, but

esp. p. 6, which says that we should not judge the present
by utopian standards and then lists them.
351 For an example of not factoring in optimism, Downs,
An Economic Theory of Democracy, argues that parties try
to ascertain where voters stand ideologically and then
position themselves close to those points in order to
win votes. A great deal of political science research has
followed Downs over the years. What his theory misses
is that occasionally, new leaders and new movements
can inspire significant numbers of voters to change their
ideological positions, in which case officials can serve
new interests and even initiate social improvement. On
Downs’ narrow definition of leadership, see pp. 87–​88.
352 Lowi, “The State in Political Science: How We Become
What We Study,” American Political Science Review (March,
1992), pp. 1–​7, but esp. p. 5. Lowi’s appeal for his
colleagues to “join a more inclusive level of discourse”
is similar to my recommendation for some political
scientists to participate in the public conversation about
neoliberalism.
353 Judith N. Shklar, “Redeeming American Political Theory,”
American Political Science Review (March, 1991), p. 7. This
article is an APSA presidential address.
354 On this point, see the update on Burke’s conservatism
(by name) in Roger Kimball, “Mill, Stephen, and the
Nature of Freedom,” in Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball
(eds), The Betrayal of Liberalism: How the Disciples of Freedom
and Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal Politics of Coercion and
Control (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), pp. 43–​69. Kimball,
editor of The Spectator and publisher of Encounter Books,
criticized Mill’s On Liberty (1859) for praising change in
principle but not warning, like Burke did, that some
changes can undermine social order and morality.
For an additional Burkean sentiment, see Fox News
anchor Tucker Carlson who, in his Ship of Fools, pp. 9–​
12, complains that “elites” (he probably means mainly

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 Notes to Pages 96–98 205

liberals), by encouraging too much immigration, caused

massive “demographic change” and destruction in
America.
355 Burke’s skepticism about undisciplined change, echoed
by Polanyi, appears also in writings by economist
Thomas Piketty, who is not on the right, and who warns
against an increasing modern “divergence” of incomes
and wealth in his Capital in the Twenty-​First Century
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), passim,
but esp. pp. 1, 33–​36. See also Harvard Business School
professor Shoshana Zuboff, who condemns Silicon Valley
for embracing the concept of “inevitability,” that is, for
arguing that constant digital change is an irresistible
force that should not be challenged by “retrograde”
consideration for social values (Ludditism) even though
big-​tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft,
searching constantly for profits, are increasingly
manipulating our lives to serve their interests rather
than ours. See Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,
esp. pp. 221–​227.
356 Mozorov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of
Technological Solutionism (New York: Public Affairs,
2013), p. 1.
357 Quoted in Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power
of Talk in a Digital Age (New York: Penguin, 2015), p. 317.
358 Quoted in Eric A. Davidson, You Can’t Eat GNP: Economics as
if Ecology Mattered (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2000), p. 142.
359 Huntington, “One Soul at a Time,” American Political
Science Review (March, 1988), pp. 3–​4.
360 I don’t mean that, for ethical reasons, political scientists
should become more political in the sense of more
partisan. I do mean that they should look in many places
for the downsides of creative destruction and therefore
interact with both Democrats and Republicans who are
disadvantaged by the modern economy.
361 This search earned for Aristotle’s sort of political thought
the title of “master science” for many centuries. On this
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 206 N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 8 – 9 9

all-​embracing concept of politics, see Paul H. Rahe, “The

Primacy of Politics in Classical Greece,” American Historical
Review (April, 1984), pp. 265–​293.
362 Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (orig., 1935;
Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011).
363 The issue of distribution is one of the dividing lines
between political scientists and mainstream economists.
See James Kwak, Economism, p. 86: “For centuries, who
should get what has been a central political question.
Economism [Kwak’s term for mainstream economics
as expressed in Econ 101] removes the question from
the political sphere to the abstract realm of theory, in
which the competitive labor market provides the perfect,
indisputable solution.” That is, citizens (and mainstream
economists) don’t have to worry about who gets what
because the market will correctly decide that for them.
The issue is summed up by Binyamin Applebaum,
The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the
Fracture of Science (New York: Little, Brown, 2019), which
observes that, when promoting economic growth, most
economists “focus on the size of the pie rather than the
size of the pieces.”
364 Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, “Decisions and
Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework,” American
Political Science Review (September, 1963), pp. 632–​642.
365 Bartels, Unequal Democracy.
366 Hacker and Pierson, Winner-​Take-​All Politics.
367 Of course, this point can be disputed. The Founders
agreed to make a representative and anti-​tyrannical
government (for whites) but did not agree to abolish
slavery. If they had tried to do that, Southern-​state
delegates would have withdrawn from the Constitutional
Convention and no national government would have
emerged. From this point of view, the new government
was a great but imperfect achievement of the European
Enlightenment. It did some things very badly and
others very well. But beyond the details, some of them
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 Notes to Pages 99–100 207

unspeakably awful and others still inspiring, it has

provided, by historical and international standards, a
considerable measure of equality, progress, prosperity, law,
order, and loyalty for over 200 years. That is, I think,
something worth building on in our troubled times.
368 “ ‘The Divine Science’: Political Engineering in American
Culture,” American Political Science Review (March, 1976),
p. 140. Ranney is a good example of engaging with great
thinkers, because he cites John Adams, James Madison,
John Witherspoon, and Alexander Hamilton.
369 This strategy can be promoted without mentioning
the term “creative destruction.” For example, see
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the
American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are
Setting Up a Generation for Failure (New York: Penguin,
2018), passim, but esp. pp. 5–​14. Their thesis is that some
“good social changes” may lead to “bad consequences,”
but that in those circumstances, children should not be
“coddled.” That is, they should be taught to deal with
what Lukianoff and Haidt call “problems of progress.” In
“folk wisdom,” the authors say, this strategy is summed
up (on an un-​numbered page before the Introduction)
as “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the
child.”
370 See Nicole Aschoff, The New Prophets of Capital
(London: Verso, 2015), pp. 76–​106, on Oprah Winfrey, and
about how Winfrey hides economic, political, and social
“structures.” Aschoff claims that Winfrey’s programs,
focused on therapy and self-​healing, encourage their
audiences to adjust to the system rather than the other
way round.
371 See the 2018 book review essay on Shklar’s political
thought in Foreign Policy. At https://​foreignpolicy.com/​
2018/​07/​16/​whos-​afraid-​of-​judith-​shklar-​liberalism/​.
372 Judith N. Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” in Nancy
Rosenblum (ed.), Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 21–​38. Shklar
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 208 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 0 – 1 0 1

was a child refugee who fled to Canada with her family

from Riga to escape Nazism.
373 Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty: An Inaugural Lecture
delivered before the University of Oxford on 31 October 1958
(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1958).
374 By praising liberalism for continually opposing tyranny,
Shklar sidestepped the modern criticism of liberals that
complains that they embrace corrosive principles from
the Age of Reason but provide no replacement for the late-​
stage feudal order, which entailed clear social standings
and meaningful spiritual stories. That is, the critics say that
liberals provide no shared sense of what post-​eighteenth-​
century society should look like, whereas Shklar said
that that is simply not their job. Along these lines, recent
critics of liberalism include Charles Taylor, A Secular
Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007);
Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Steven
D. Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Brad S. Gregory, The
Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized
Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012);
and Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2018).
375 Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” p. 29. For a more
popular version of the thesis that liberalism is mainly
about combatting cruelty, see Adam Gopnik, A
Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
(New York: Basic Books, 2019), passim, but esp. pp. 30–​33,
80–​82, 134–​135.
376 See also Alan Dershowitz, Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory
of the Origins of Rights (New York: Basic Books, 2005), which
concludes that even if we do not manage to agree on what
are rights, we should at least agree on what are wrongs.
377 See the sources in n. 178. Thus there is justification for
observing that some American activists from East and
West Coast cities “fly over” the center of the country
and therefore never meet the Americans, sometimes
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 Notes to Pages 101–102 209

economically stressed, who live in states from

Appalachia to the Rocky Mountains. A visit to Detroit
would widen their horizons. Similarly, I tell some of my
academic friends that they should at least once browse in
a Christian bookstore.
378 See Katherine J. Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural
Consciousness and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2016), and Francis Fukuyama,
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018).
379 We live in a populist age epitomized by Donald Trump,
during which belief often overrides truth in politics,
finance, journalism, social media, advertising, and other
realms of communication. Therefore, I am assuming
that if political scientists will investigate the downsides
of creative destruction, they will report true findings
to their audiences. Proper scholarship should always
promote the truth, of course. (See n. 332.) In addition, we
should regard truth as vital to Judith Shklar’s insistence
on opposing tyranny. Thus “truth” is a powerful weapon
against “tyranny,” says Bernard Williams, Truth and
Truthfulness (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2002), pp. 206–​209, because tyrannical forces (Williams
speaks of “governments”) “are disposed to commit
illegitimate actions which they will wish to conceal, as
they also want to conceal incompetent actions.” Then he
adds that it is in liberal societies that citizens can most
easily speak the truth. Here, Williams cites Shklar, but
we can also link this point about anti-​tyrannical truth to
what Louis Hartz says, as we will see in Chapter 7, about
America being, thankfully, a traditionally Liberal, and
therefore democratic, society.
380 Shapiro, The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 40.
I am simplifying here, because Shapiro (esp. pp. 37–​41)
in some respects endorses “scientific realism,” which
is one point of view in an enormously complicated
philosophical debate familiar to political theorists. See
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 210 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 2 – 1 0 4

the essays in Matt Sleat (ed.), Politics Recovered: Realist

Thought in Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2018).
381 Ibid., pp. 86–​96. On how public “problems” get defined,
leading to public or private demands for new programs
to solve those problems, see Frank R. Baumgartner and
Bryan D. Jones, The Politics of Information: Problem Definition
and the Course of Public Policy in America (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2015).
382 Hacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
383 Mettler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
384 For example, Hoffman and Casnocha, The Start-​Up of You.
385 Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics,”
in Milton Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 1–​27. Mankiw,
Principles of Economics, posits utility-​maximizing, rational
individuals, who buy and sell according to indifference
curves, and then asks, p. 461: “Do people really think
this way?” No, Mankiw answers, they don’t. “The theory
of consumer choice [he says] does not try to present a
literal account of how people [the utility maximizers]
make decisions. It is a model … The best way to view
the theory of consumer choice is as a metaphor for how
consumers make decisions.” But, p. 462, “Just as the
proof of the pudding is in the eating, the test of a theory
is in its applications.” In other words, like Friedman says,
does the theory work? Is it useful? In sum, mainstream
economics does not focus on real people.
386 See Standing, The Precariat.
387 Assuming that epistemology is the philosophical study
of what justifies solid knowing rather than questionable
opinion, “epistemic rot” is an appropriate description of
the effect of constant lying and prevarications imposed on
America by President Donald Trump and his spokespeople
in and around the White House. The truth is, however,
that that “rot” has long plagued digital communications,
where to attract attention to themselves, many people say
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 Notes to Page 104 211

awful things. On anger, bitterness, isolation, and vulgarity

promoted by our digital instruments, see Jaron Lanier, Ten
Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2018). See also Siva
Vaidhyanathan, Anti-​Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects
Us and Undermines Democracy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2018).
388 Friedman said that if his “positive economics” model
predicts usefully, the nature of real people is irrelevant
to economic research. One reason why he said that was
defensive, because it was, and still is, easy to demonstrate
that in many cases real people are not the rational
calculators assumed by the model. (For showing that most
people are irrational, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman
received in 2002 the Nobel Prize in economics.) A quirky
demonstration of this point appears in Raymond Fisman
and Edward Miguel, Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence,
and the Poverty of Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2010), pp. 85–​94. Fisman and Miguel report on
the parking habits of foreign diplomats in Manhattan,
where their diplomatic immunity permits them to
ignore tickets assigned to them for parking violations.
In terms of mainstream economic theory, to park one’s
car conveniently, in violation of parking laws, when no
penalty will be enforced, is “rational” as an alternative to
paying expensive fees for parking in private lots. However,
this “rational” behavior is not exhibited by all of the
diplomats surveyed, as if scofflawing were a law of human
nature. Instead, diplomats who come from countries that
are known to be corrupt are frequent violators, whereas
diplomats who come from countries where citizens are
more law-​abiding incur fewer violations. Thus on an annual
basis, according to the research, Kuwaitis, Albanians, and
Pakistanis often parked illegally, while Norwegians, Swedes,
and Danes received no tickets at all. In which case, human
nurture (socialization) clearly influences human nature
(inherited), and the rational-​expectations model is obviously
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 212 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 4 – 1 0 5

unrealistic (which Milton Friedman says doesn’t matter

anyway).
389 William Graham Sumner, What Do Social Classes Owe Each
Other? (orig., 1883; Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1961),
who was a leading Social Darwinist, famously declared
that every social class is morally obliged to take care
of itself. Later, Tea Party activists criticized defaulting
homeowners who, the Tea Partiers said, recklessly took
out large mortgages and then wanted Washington (that
is, the taxpayers) to cover their losses. (The original call
for a modern “tea party,” made in 2009 by CNBC business
reporter Rick Santelli, complained about mortgage
defaults by irresponsible homeowners. See www.cnbc
.com/id/29299591.) More recently, Graeber, in Bullshit Jobs,
raises questions about how much we owe workers who
behave responsibly, but whose work earns for them so
little that they suffer in the affluent society. We might
even ask how much we owe some cities. That productive
communities like Detroit helped America win World
War II but later, when pressured by globalization, received
from Washington little help in return, is one of those large
puzzles we might think about. On what metropolitan
Detroit and its workers did for the nation – producing
between 1941 and 1945 an endless stream of tanks, guns,
trucks, jeeps, bombers, artillery, ammunition, and more –
see www.history.com/how-detroit-won-world-war-ii and
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-detroit-was-
arsenal-democracy-180962620/.
390 See Paul L. Wachtel, The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological
Portrait of the American Way of Life (Philadelphia, PA: New
Society Publishers, 1989) and Sennett, The Culture of the
New Capitalism.
391 Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, esp. pp. 98–117,
discusses the decline of vocational commitment and
craftsmanship.
392 Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2004), esp. pp. 9–44.
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 Notes to Pages 105–106 213

393 On the plight of such people –​artists, musicians, actors,

journalists, editors, architects, poets, book reviewers,
and more –​under the reign of neoliberalism, see Scott
Timberg, Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), p. 7: “The
price we ultimately pay [as a society] is in the decline of
art itself, diminishing understanding of ourselves, one
another, and the eternal human spirit.”
394 That people behave irrationally is a central message of
behavioral economics. On behavioral economics, see
n. 149. Richard Thaler received the 2017 Nobel Prize in
economics for his work on behavioral economics.
395 On personal “rationales” that go beyond “rationality”
defined by economists, see David Graeber, The Utopia of
Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
(New York: Melville House, 2016), pp. 38–​39. One obvious
case, not noted by Graeber, is when poor people bet
on lotteries. The rational economist (or the behavioral
economist) might call that betting irrational because the
odds on winning the lottery do not justify buying a ticket.
However, a particular individual may buy the ticket anyway,
on the outside chance of transforming his or her own life to
an extent that seems impossible in the gig economy.
396 Reich, Saving Capitalism, pp. 4, 8.
397 The classic case of over-​optimism on this score
in recent years is the so-​called “efficient market”
hypothesis, promoted by leading economists like
Alan Greenspan, long-​time Chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board, and Nobel Prize winner (economics,
2014) professor Eugene Fama, of the Chicago School
of economic thought. According to this hypothesis,
the American stock market was not a bubble but
an accurate indicator of economic values –​until
it collapsed in the Crash of 2008. If one takes into
account the colossal destruction caused by this failure
of mainstream economic theory, it is hard to speak of it
politely. On the losses resulting from the Crash of 2008,
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 214 N O T E S T O PA G E 1 0 6

estimated as high as $22 trillion (not billion), see www

.gao.gov/assets/660/651322.pdf. On the efficient market
hypothesis, see Justin Fox, The Myth of the Rational
Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street
(New York: Harper, 2009), passim.
398 Joseph E. Stiglitz, George A. Akerlof, and A. Michael
Spence were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in
economics (2001) for their theories of asymmetric
information in real markets.
399 Stock buybacks are made by companies with money that
might otherwise be invested to make more products and
sell them more cheaply than today. Buybacks are popular
with managers because buying up their company’s
paper assets drives up the price of those assets in the
stock market, whereupon the managers (and other
shareholders) can sell off the shares they own and profit
handsomely even though the buyback contributed
nothing to production and prosperity. See
www.cnbc.com/2019/03/25/share-buybacks-soar-to-
a-record-topping-800-billion-bigger-than-a-facebook-
or-exxon-mobil.html. Stock buybacks were mostly
illegal until the Reagan-era Securities and Exchange
Commission decided to permit them in 1982. See
https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/
stock-buybacks-were-once-illegal-why-are-they-legal-now-
sHh6HZjtyk2styG-qLgnQg/.
400 The Bank raises interest rates to head off inflation, because
inflation reduces the worth of loans made by creditors
such as banks, insurance companies, appliance stores, car
dealers, credit card companies, and more. But raising interest
rates reins in various kinds of business activity that require
loans, and that causes some hard-working employees to be
discharged for no fault of their own. See the process noted
offhandedly, without complaint, by Paul Krugman, who
observes that selling billions of dollars’ worth of arms to
Saudi Arabia will maintain a few tens of thousands of jobs
in America’s aerospace industries. But, says Krugman, “the
Federal Reserve believes that we’re at full employment, and
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 Notes to Pages 106–108 215

any further strengthening of the economy will [only] induce

the Fed to raise interest rates [to check inflation]. As a result,
jobs added in one place by things like arms sales will be
offset by jobs lost elsewhere as higher rates deter investment
or make the U.S. less competitive by strengthening the
dollar.” See this remark at www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/
opinion/khashoggi-saudi-trump-arms-sales.html.
401 On how some people, via politics, successfully perpetuate
their advantages, see Paul Starr, Entrenchment. On
employment advantages enjoyed by those who are already
ahead, see Lauren A. Rivera, Pedigree: How Elite Students Get
Elite Jobs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).
402 See Reich, n. 308.
403 Reich, Saving Capitalism, p. 8.
404 The phrase “autonomous vehicles” is a distortion of
grammatical truth fashioned by public relations experts
because they assume that the term “driverless cars” (and
trucks and trains and buses) would sound to many people
ominous.
405 There may be some, but not much, demand for such
vehicles. For example, some companies are probably
hoping to buy and deploy driverless trucks, which, unlike
truck drivers now employed by the same companies,
would not demand vacations or pensions or overtime pay.
406 For an example of this argument, see https://medium
.com/waymo/lets-talk-self-driving-cars-72743d39cad8.
407 On corporations being more interested in profit than
conscience, see Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological
Pursuit of Profit and Power (New York: Free Press, 2004).
Against this critical view of how large commercial
organizations behave, pro-market thinkers are likely to
emphasize the vocational sentiments of entrepreneurs
rather than the get-along-together skills of bureaucratic
managers. This is the approach in Michael Novak, Business
as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life (New York: Free
Press, 1996).
408 I am writing about cars and trucks. But of course this
class of entities includes also buses, trolleys, locomotives,
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 216 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 8 – 1 0 9

motorcycles, fork-​lift carts, and more. I am also writing

about America. Worldwide potential profits are far larger
than those forecast for America, because there are now
more than a billion people-​driven cars, trucks, and buses
in the world. See www.carsguide.com.au/​car-​advice/​
how-​many-​cars-​are-​there-​in-​the-​world-​70629.
409 See Ford, The Rise of the Robots, pp. 175–​186. The American
Trucking Associations estimate that there were
3.5 million truck drivers employed in the United States as
of 2016. See www.trucking.org/​News_​and_​Information_​
Reports_​Industry_​Data.aspx.
410 The benefits and costs, personal and social, of moving
to horseless carriages are discussed in Ann Norton
Green, Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), esp.
pp. 244–​274.
411 There is a terminological nuance here. One can speak
of “substitution” as when workers move from an old to
a new job and the main consideration is whether they
maintain or lose income. But one can also observe that,
when old jobs are eliminated and new ones created, the
new jobs will have characters different from the old,
requiring different skills and attitudes and providing
different satisfactions. In that case, even if the old rate
of pay is maintained in a new job, the transition may
generate substantial emotional costs. On this point,
see Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are
Changing Us (New York: Norton, 2014), p. 33. Ridley, The
Rational Optimist, p. 114, assumes that when creative
destruction destroys jobs, it creates new ones. However,
he does not discuss whether or not the new ones will be
similar or equal to the old ones, and in what respects.
412 Annie Lowrey, Give People Money: How a Basic Income
Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World
(New York: Crowne, 2018), p. 8. The logic here is that a
guaranteed income cannot be generous because a large
payment might tempt able-​bodied people away from
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 Notes to Pages 109–111 217

working at all. See also Phillippe van Parijs and Yannick

Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free
Society and a Sane Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2017).
413 When we see a disaster approaching, I believe it is
reasonable for scholars to study the situation, to teach
about it, and to publish suggestions, radical if necessary,
about how up-​coming damage might be avoided or
mitigated. Often, however, only mild generalizations are
offered, as in Ford, The Rise of the Robots, p. 285: “If … we
can fully leverage advancing technology as a solution –​
while recognizing and adapting to its implications for
employment and the distribution of income –​then the
outcome is likely to be … optimistic. Negotiating a path
through these entangled forces and crafting a future
that offers broad-​based security and prosperity may
prove to be the greatest challenge for our time.” A more
dramatic and ominous discussion of the personal and
social dislocations that automation has brought, and will
still bring, appears in Andrew Yang, The War on Normal
People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why
Universal Basic Income is Our Future (New York: Hachette
Books, 2018). As Yang says, p. 68, “The challenge we must
overcome is that humans need work more than work
needs us.” In classic political science terms, which Yang
does not use, what his book describes is the need for a
new “social contract,” to help what he calls the many
“normal people” who the modern economy is on course
to discard.

7 A Story for Political Science

414 On the list syndrome, see David M. Ricci, Politics Without
Stories: The Liberal Predicament (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2016), esp. pp. 40–​41, 132–​133.
415 Framing is necessary for “agenda setting.” According to
this social choice theory, problems and their solutions
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 218 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 1 – 1 1 3

will not move onto the agenda of political issues up

for treatment by leaders and activists if they (the
problems and solutions) will not be presented clearly
and persuasively. And one way of presenting them
successfully is to enclose them in stories of where the
nation has been, where it is now, and where it should
go in the future. On agenda setting, see John W. Kingdon,
Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies,
2nd edn (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), passim.
416 Politics Without Stories, pp. 37–​39, 139–​143.
417 I offer examples of such writings in ibid., pp. 114–​131.
418 Ibid., p. 40.
419 Ibid., pp. 63–​95.
420 Rogers Smith, Stories of Peoplehood, The Politics and Morals
of Political Membership (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), passim, and Frederick W. Mayer, Narrative
Politics: Stories and Collective Action (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), esp. pp. 27–​29, 101–​124, on
how stories create the solidarity needed for collective
action. Most lately, see Smith, That Is Not Who We Are!
(forthcoming).
421 See www.hillaryclinton.com/​issues/​.
422 Ricci, Politics Without Stories, p. 211. After the election,
some pundits argued that Clinton’s policy proposals
were aimed at groups animated by narrow “identity
politics.” That is, those groups did not regard themselves
as integral to the national community but sought to
improve their minority standings within the nation.
Consequently, Clinton responded with separate proposals
tailored to fit parts of America rather than the nation as
a whole. See Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal: After
Identity Politics (New York: HarperCollins, 2017).
423 Klein, No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and
Winning the World We Need (Chicago: Haymarket Books,
2017), p. 220.
424 Ricci, Why Conservatives Tell Stories and Liberals Don’t.
425 Ricci, Politics Without Stories, esp. pp. 189–​201.
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 Notes to Page 114 219

426 Along these lines, but using a different vocabulary,

William Greider wrote in 2003 about what he called “the
soul” of capitalism, which he described as a powerful
narrative justifying faith in markets and the belief
that efficiency is more important than community.
See Greider, The Soul of Capitalism, esp. pp. 23–48.
(For examples of the tension between efficiency
and community while New York City has fostered
gentrification in the last half-century, see www
.currentaffairs.org/2018/02/everything-you-love-will-
be-eaten-alive.) Greider did not describe the soul of
capitalism in terms of “neoliberalism.” Nevertheless,
what America lacks, he argued, pp. 299–324, is an
alternative narrative about what people should do
with themselves and their society after capitalism has
produced enough things to fulfill our needs. He asked, in
other words, according to what stories and standards will
we decide, after capitalism has satisfied our needs, what
we (rather than markets) actually want beyond that?
427 See Hedrick Smith, Who Stole the American Dream?
(New York: Random House, 2012), on how American
laws and institutions were politically realigned between
roughly 1970 and 2010 to favor employers and banks and
thereby shift a great deal of wealth to a small fraction
of the population. Some of Smith’s milestone events are
summarized in Ricci, Politics Without Stories, pp. 181–182.
428 John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1967), p. 408: “This is the modern
morality. St. Peter is assumed to ask applicants only what
they have done to increase the GNP.” Or, as Wolfgang
Streeck, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic
Capitalism, 2nd edn (New York: Verso, 2017), p. 58, says,
there are two “competing principles of distribution” in
democratic capitalism today, which are “market justice”
and “social justice.” Similarly, on dollar values versus
ethical values, see Robert Kuttner, Everything for Sale: The
Virtues and Limits of Markets (New York: Knopf, 1998); Raj
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 220 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 4 – 1 1 6

Patel, The Value of Nothing: Why Everything Costs so Much More

Than We Think (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009); Debra
Satz, Why Some Things Should Not be for Sale: The Moral Limits
of Markets (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); and
Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy.
429 President Donald Trump has perfectly expressed the
neoliberal position on market-​based morality. See his
statement assuring the American people that he will
maintain good relations with the government of Saudi
Arabia after a CIA report concluded that that government
was implicated in the murder and dismemberment, on
October 2, 2018, of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in
Istanbul. The main reason for continuing to maintain
relations as usual, according to the president, is that
Saudi Arabia is an excellent trading partner, whose
business he should not risk losing to other countries. In
other words, economic gain is the rule and ethics has
nothing to do with the matter. See Trump’s statement
at www.whitehouse.gov/​briefings-​statements/​statement-​
president-​donald-​j-​trump-​standing-​saudi-​arabia/​.
430 Luke 16:13. Some writers find no intrinsic conflict
between the pursuit of wealth and the service of God.
See Richards, Money, Greed, and God.
431 Matthew 19:24.
432 See Martin Ford, The Rise of the Robots, pp. 250–​251, on
how many skilled jobs are disappearing, to the point
where retraining people, in many cases, will simply
qualify them for jobs that are anyway being eliminated
by robots and algorithms.
433 Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, This
Used to be Us: What Went Wrong with America –​and How It
Can Come Back (Boston: Little Brown, 2011), c­ hapter 7,
“Average is Over,” pp. 133–​152.
434 For example, in his 2012 presidential campaign,
Republican candidate Mitt Romney said that “the
president [Barack Obama] starts out with 48, 49 percent
[of voters] … These are people who paid no income tax
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 Notes to Pages 116–117 221

[but enjoy government services] … So my job is not to

worry about those people [who will automatically vote
for Obama]. I’ll never convince them that they should
take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” At
www.politifact.com/​truth-​o-​meter/​statements/​2012/​sep/​
18/​mitt-​romney/​romney-​says-​47-​percent-​americans-​pay-​
no-​income-​tax/​.
435 President Donald Trump has raised and lowered some
tariff rates. But he did that on an ad hoc basis, aiming
to please constituents rather than to execute an overall
plan. Against most protection, see Daniel Griswold,
Mad About Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace
Globalization (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2009). For at
least some protection, according to a theory of recreating
an “industrial commons” in America, see Gary P. Pisano
and Willy C. Shih, Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs
a Manufacturing Renaissance (Boston: Harvard Business
Review Press, 2012).
436 On Amazon playing off states against one another to
receive tax concessions, see www.nytimes.com/​2018/​01/​
18/​technology/​amazon-​finalists-​headquarters.html and
see www.huffingtonpost.com/​entry/​amazon-​headquarters-​
hq2-​process_​us_​5beb6f28e4b0caeec2bf0ead. On the
general practice of states competing for business,
note that in 2010 the population of Delaware stood at
971,180. See http://​worldpopulationreview.com/​states/​
delaware-​population/​. Yet the Delaware State Division of
Corporations reported in 2011 that there were 1.1 million
business entities registered in the state, that is, there
were more business entities than residents. At that time,
55 percent of all publicly traded American companies
and 65 percent of the Fortune 500 were headquartered
in Delaware formally (but not actually domiciled there)
to take advantage of various business-​friendly Delaware
public policies. See https://​icis.corp.delaware.gov/​eCorp/​.
437 This sort of optimism pervades Jagdish Bhagwati, In
Defense of Globalization (New York: Oxford University
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 222 N O T E S T O PA G E 1 1 7

Press, 2007). See also Ridley, The Rational Optimist, and

John Plender, Capitalism: Money, Morals, and Politics
(London: Biteback, 2016).
438 This point is made in William Davies, Nervous
States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason (New York:
Norton, 2018), pp. 75–​79. Similarly, Roger Eatwell
and Matthew Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt
Against Liberal Democracy (New York: Pelican, 2018),
pp. 179–​222, but esp. pp. 212–​222, describe “relative
deprivation” as when, even in times of national
prosperity, some members of the nation feel that
they belong to groups that are losing ground, that are
becoming less prosperous or respected than others. In
those circumstances, resentment grows regardless of
“average” gains.
439 Zygmunt Bauman, Does the Richness of the Few Benefit
Us All? (Malden, MA: Polity, 2013) and Danny Dorling,
Do We Need Economic Inequality? (Medford, MA: Polity,
2018); both discuss (and reject) the pro-​market idea that
enormous gaps in income and wealth in market-​based
economies are necessary in order to encourage a few
efficient people to innovate and drive GDP up for the
many. In other words, they discuss the trickle-​down
idea, which claims that gaps in income and wealth (the
One Percent situation) are not intolerable but necessary
characteristics of economies committed to generating
economic growth.
440 These are technical considerations. There is also the
fact that, as a discipline, economists do not usually ask
whether the existing distribution of resources, income,
and wealth has been skewed by historical events and
actors and, if so, what should be done about it. On this
point, see Earle, Moran, and Ward-​Perkins, The Econocracy,
p. 76–​80. See also Geoffrey M. Hodgson, How Economics
Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social
Science (London: Routledge, 2001). Hodgson argues,
pp. 14–​16, that micro-​economics, which claims to explain
how individuals and firms act on the basis of rational
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 Notes to Pages 117–119 223

calculations, cannot accurately explain macro-economic

behavior, which can only assume that the sum-total of
small actors performs in ways that can be predicted in
theory. In truth, says Hodgson, no theory can make such
accurate predictions because collections of real economic
individuals behave as groups, which means that they
behave as (not entirely rational) historical, sociological,
and anthropological entities.
441 On “rent-seeking,” see Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality,
passim, but esp. pp. 28–52. On rents, see also Lindsey and
Teles, The Captured Economy, pp. 15–34.
442 For technical definitions of network effects, see www
.nfx.com/post/network-effects-manual. For a discussion of
leading examples of network effects, in Google, Facebook,
Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, and Airbnb, see Nick Srnicek,
Platform Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017).
443 In social science terms, one oddity here is that once
an adequate Word program was fashioned, producing
additional copies of it requires only that someone
in Microsoft will push a copy button on his or her
computer. In other words, once original expenses are
recovered, the marginal cost of the latest copy of such
a program, which may be priced at 100 or more dollars,
is actually close to zero. Some of the implications of
this situation, which does not fit well into conventional
economic theory, are discussed in Jeremy Rifkind,
The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things,
The Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism
(New York: St. Martin’s, 2015).
444 Thus Sitaraman, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution,
harked back to the advice of great thinkers like Polybius,
Cicero, Machiavelli, Harrington, Jefferson, and Madison,
and pointed out that the shrinking of America’s middle
class creates power imbalances that those thinkers
feared and that now threaten the nation’s constitutional
form of government.
445 Such players are targeted by name and their careers are
discussed in chapter after chapter of Jeff Madrick, The Age
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 224 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 9 – 1 2 0

of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America,

1970 to the Present (New York: Vintage, 2012).
446 See Christopher Witko, “The Politics of Financialization
in the United States, 1949–​2005,” The British Journal of
Political Science (April, 2016), pp. 349–​370. For the reverse
thesis, that the Crash was caused by government
policy errors rather than by “blind faith in laissez-​faire
capitalism,” see Richard Vedder, “A Financial Fairy Tale,”
in the Claremont Review of Books, at www.claremont.org/​
crb/​article/​a-​financial-​fairy-​tale/​.
447 Someone should write about how economic growth
enthusiasts usually make their case by citing examples
of useful creativity while ignoring profitable inventions
that turn out to be harmful. Thus computers are praised
but asbestos fireproofing goes unmentioned.
448 Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of
American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955), p. 3.
449 I will capitalize Liberals in the text above because Hartz
used that word to denote a sector of post-​Enlightenment
society rather than to describe liberals in a twentieth-​
century world of liberals versus conservatives, or modern
liberals as opposed to modern progressives. Similarly,
Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom
is in Danger & How to Save It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2018), pp. 25–​26, observes that George
W. Bush and Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and Bill
Clinton are all European-​style liberals by virtue of their
support for freedom of speech, separation of powers, and
the protection of individual rights.
450 I am writing about “late-​stage feudalism” in the text
above because even Hartz admitted (in The Liberal
Tradition in America, asterisk on p. 1) that “There is no
precise term for feudal institutions and feudal ideas as
they persisted into the modern period amid the national
states and economic movements which progressively
undermined them.”

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 Notes to Page 121 225

451 On Katznelson and Hartz, see Richard M. Valelly, “Ira

Katznelson: Toward a Useful Historical Political Science
of Liberalism,” PS: Political Science and Politics (October,
2005), pp. 797–​800.
452 James L. Kloppenberg, “In Retrospect: Louis Hartz and
The Liberal Tradition in America,” Reviews in American History
(September, 2001), pp. 460–​478, and Rogers M. Smith,
“Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal and Hartz: The Multiple
Traditions in America,” American Political Science Review
(September, 1993), pp. 549–​566.
453 See Corey Robin, “Louis Hartz at 50: On the Varieties
of Counterrevolutionary Experience in America,” at
https://​digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/​schmooze_​
papers/​19. See also Michael C. Desch, “America’s Liberal
Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in U.S.
Foreign Policy,” International Security (Winter, 2007), pp. 7–​43.
454 See Alan Wolfe in www.nytimes.com/​2005/​07/​03/​books/​
review/​nobody-​here-​but-​us-​liberals.html. See also Philip
Abbott, “Still Louis Hartz After All These Years: A Defense
of the Liberal Society Thesis,” Perspectives on Politics
(March, 2005), pp. 93–​109. While arguing in favor of
some of Hartz’s ideas, Abbott provides a wide-​ranging
survey of what many other scholars have said, mostly
critical, about Hartz’s work.
455 I agree with Wolfe that Hartz was mainly right. I also
agree with the scholars who say that Hartz did not get
everything right. But neither does any book that focuses
on “One Great Idea,” which in Hartz’s case was that
America’s dedication to Liberalism made the country
exceptional among most societies based in Europe. For
later-​day, mixed assessments of The Liberal Tradition,
see Mark Hulliung (ed.), The American Liberal Tradition
Reconsidered: The Contested Legacy of Louis Hartz (Lawrence,
KS: University of Kansas Press, 2010). On “One Great Idea”
books, see Alan Wolfe at https://​newrepublic.com/​article/​
152668/​francis-​fukuyama-​identity-​review-​collapse-​theory-​
liberal-​democracy.
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 226 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 1 – 1 2 2

456 On the point of homogeneity, Americans have not always

agreed on how to interpret the sentiments and principles
that Hartz called a Liberal tradition in America. Therefore,
his thesis deserves qualification, especially from historians
whose forte it is to remind us, from time to time, of
uninspiring details in American life. (See Lepore in n. 462.)
Nevertheless, Hartz’s intent was to argue that, compared
to a wide range of European political ideas and principles,
Americans had imported mostly a particular part of an Old-​
World spectrum, in which case the Americans were –​but
not always generously or consistently –​inspired by that
part, with certain logical consequences. In that sense, Hartz
was coming at American politics somewhat as an American
historian but even more as a comparative politics scholar.
457 Isaiah 49:6.
458 Matthew 5:14.
459 On the history of “America First” and Trump’s support
for it, see Sarah Churchwell, Behold America: The Entangled
History of “America First” and “The American Dream”
(New York: Basic Books, 2018), passim, but esp. pp. 272–​282.
460 At www.nytimes.com/​2019/​07/​14/​us/​politics/​trump-​
twitter-​squad-​congress.html. Among various groups
and individuals condemned by Donald Trump in his
promotion of America First, the president in August
of 2019 accused American Jews of disloyalty. Opinions
on Trump’s remarks to that effect are so polarized that
I leave readers to locate their own sources on Trump’s
charges. Just search for: Trump on disloyal Jews.
461 Hartz cannot testify on his own behalf now. But he was my
doctoral dissertation advisor and I know that when, after
World War II, he was comparing America favorably with
Europe, the sins of American Liberalism pained him deeply.
462 Generalizations on this point do not always suffice;
details are sometimes required. Therefore we need
historians to remind us of accounts that may still need
adjusting. For example, some Americans know that, in
the portrait which appears on the nation’s one-​dollar
bill, George Washington isn’t smiling because he suffered
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 Notes to Pages 122–123 227

from terrible tooth decay and wore ill-​fitting artificial

dentures. But it takes a historian like Jill Lepore, These
Truths, p. 120, to remind us that those dentures included
nine real teeth “pulled from the mouths of his slaves.”
463 Some conservatives may feel that on issues of identity,
difference, and gender, not too little but too much has
been done in recent decades. See Self, All in the Family. Self’s
thesis, approximately, is that most liberals seek to expand
personal rights (for example, the right to an abortion
and the right to denounce American wars) whereas most
conservatives seek to preserve existing rights (for example,
the right to belong to a man-​is-​the-​breadwinner family and
to live in a patriotic society). In which case, conservatives
believe that liberals are innovating too much and liberals
believe that conservatives are innovating not enough. On
the right side of this equation, Fox News anchor Tucker
Carlson, Ship of Fools, p. 10, complains that liberals have
promoted so much immigration into America that the
country now has “no ethnic majority, immense religious
pluralism, and no universally shared culture or language.”
464 Here is the argument. Adam Smith promoted capitalist
economics to discredit the late-​stage feudalism that
constrained many eighteenth-​century commoners in
the United Kingdom. But today, new constraints are
operating. They are sometimes called neoliberalism,
and they are, together, holding back the very Liberalism
that Smith promoted. Ironically, just as Hartz found
it difficult to describe Smith’s late-​stage feudalism
precisely, it is difficult today to get scholars to agree
on exactly what neoliberalism is. On that difficulty, see
Brown, Undoing the Demos, pp. 48–​50. For scholars who
have begun to refer to neoliberalism as “neofeudalism,”
see Milan Zafirovski, “ ‘Neo-​Feudalism’ in America?
Conservatism in Relation to European Feudalism,”
International Review of Sociology (October, 2007), pp. 393–​
427, and Alain Supiot, “The Public-​Private Relation in the
Context of Today’s Refeudalization,” International Journal
of Constitutional Law (January, 2013), pp. 129–​145.
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 228 N O T E S T O PA G E 1 2 3

465 Our political vocabulary is inadequate here. Hartz’s

Liberal Tradition in America (a) commends Liberalism
for its freedom and individual rights, and (b) criticizes
Liberalism for its insularity (anti-socialism) and
oppressions (such as slavery). Which means that there
are two strands of political thought in Liberalism, one
more generous and the other less so. Which means that a
critic of what I have just written in the text above might
argue that the “new force” is not anti-Liberal but an
extension of Liberalism, in the sense of growing out of
undesirable (pro-market) Liberal qualities.
466 In the early 1970s, mental illness struck Louis Hartz.
He retired from Harvard University in 1974 and died in
Istanbul in 1986.
467 Ronald Reagan expressed this sentiment famously in his
first Inaugural Address. As he said then, “In this present
crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
government is the problem.” See www.presidency.ucsb
.edu/documents/inaugural-address-11.
468 This analogy between the Reaction and neoliberalism
can be inferred from what Corey Robin, using a different
vocabulary, describes in The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism
from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
469 The point here is that neoliberals (like Edmund Burke
earlier) doubt that citizens can solve great social
problems, whereas Hartzian Liberals (like Thomas
Paine) are actually humanists. This clash, between the
skepticism of neoliberalism and the humanism of the
Founders, is discussed by Brown, Undoing the Demos,
passim, but esp. pp. 220–222. See also Mettler, The
Government-Citizen Disconnect, esp. pp. 148–155, which
does not explicitly recommend “humanism” but argues
that anti-government sentiments in America prevent
citizens from using government to mitigate market-
based outcomes that presently generate inequality and
suffering. See also Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,
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 Notes to Pages 123–124 229

passim, which condemns neoliberalism and argues that

its great personal-​data-​mining companies like Google,
Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft manipulate digital
users for profit and thereby destroy their ability to
decide for themselves what sort of lives they want to live,
separately and together. At p. 513, Zuboff specifically
endorses Paine and rejects Burke.
470 To suggest that neoliberals are like barbarians for
permitting market-​based innovations to undermine
long-​standing democratic principles and practices may
evoke a conservative response that the real barbarians
in America today are universities, dominated by
liberals who irresponsibly assault long-​standing moral
truths and social virtues. Two classic examples of this
conservative thesis are William Buckley, God and Man
at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom” (orig., 1951;
New York: Gateway, 2002), and Allen Bloom, The Closing
of the American Mind (orig., 1987; New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2012). On this point, see Kim Phillips-​Fein,
“How the Right Learned to Loathe Higher Education,”
at www.chronicle.com/​article/​How-​the-​Right-​Learned-​to/​
245580.
471 See FDR’s Second Inaugural Address at http://​
historymatters.gmu.edu/​d/​5105/​.
472 Michaels, The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love
Identity and Ignore Inequality (orig., 2006; New York: Picador,
2016). For example, p. 76, “we prefer fighting racism to
fighting poverty.” Similarly, that American voters may
focus on culture rather than economic inequality is
discussed in Frank, What’s The Matter with Kansas?
473 Many economists and other thinkers (1) fear that
redistribution would require catastrophic confrontations
within society, and therefore (2) prefer that perpetual
economic growth will permit everyone to automatically
gain at least something so as to avoid feelings of
partisan deprivation flowing from zero-​sum political
decisions. For example, Thomas Byrne Edsall, The Age
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 230 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 4 – 1 2 5

of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics

(New York: Anchor Books, 2012), and Friedman, The
Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. On the other hand,
economist Thomas Piketty insists that his discipline
should place “distribution at the heart of economic
analysis.” See his Capital in the Twenty-​First Century, pp. 19–​
21. He is opposed by Mankiw, Principles of Economics,
p. 5: “When government redistributes income from the
rich to the poor, it reduces the reward for working hard;
as a result, people work less and produce fewer goods
and services. In other words, when the government tries
to cut the economic pie into more equal slices, the pie
gets smaller.” But see Nobelist (economics, 2019), Abhitjit
V. Banerjee and Nobelist (economics, 2019) Esther Duflo,
Good Economics for Hard Times (New York: Public Affairs,
2019), who recommended government intervention to
help victims of economic “disruption” – in other words,
government promotion of at least some redistribution.
474 Without scholarly elaborations, this is the story told by
Zito and Todd, The Great Revolt. (See n. 319.)
475 Robert W. McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism
is Turning the Internet Against Democracy (New York: The
New Press, 2013), pp. 12–​19, et passim, regards modern
capitalism as an “elephant in the room,” and insists that
people who write about whether digital technology –​
including computers, smartphones, the internet, and
social media –​will help or hinder democracy, should
remember always that technology does not stand on its
own but is shaped, for better or worse, by the system of
ownership that we call neoliberalism or capitalism.
476 On the need for restraint via government regulation,
see Tim Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded
Age (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2018). On
the power of private commercial entities to prevent or
resist government regulation, see David Rothkopf, Power,
Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government –​
and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead (New York: Farrar, Straus,
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 Notes to Pages 125–126 231

and Giroux, 2012), passim. See also Gordon Lafer, The One
Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One
State at a Time (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017),
which describes the work and influence of nation-​wide
business lobbies such as the Chamber of Commerce,
the National Association of Manufacturers, the National
Federation of Independent Business, Americans for
Prosperity, the Business Roundtable, the Club for
Growth, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
See also Page, Seawright, and Lacombe, Billionaires and
Stealth Politics, which reports on a study of the political
activity of 100 American billionaires and concludes (esp.
pp. 126–​138) that most of them fund political action by
parties, campaigns, candidates, and organizations that
oppose redistribution (except upwards, by reducing
estate taxes).
477 The likelihood of eventual dictatorial action against
the worst environmental downsides of affluence was
postulated by William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics
of Scarcity: A Prologue to a Political Theory of the Steady
State (San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman, 1977). The
book was updated and republished as William Ophuls
and A. Steven Boyan, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity
Revisited: The Unraveling of the American Dream (San
Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman, 1992).
478 Sennett, The Corrosion of Character.
479 We have noted that so-​called “natural markets” are a
theoretical fiction, because historians and anthropologists
say that only markets shaped by governments (or tribes,
or other social entities) have ever existed. If that is so,
“intervention” in modern markets may be regarded
as adjusting something that government has already
contrived rather than treading where politics has never
entered. This approach is taken by Baker, Taking Economics
Seriously, which assumes that using government to
promote equity would not be an innovation but merely
a revision of official marketplace arrangements that now
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 232 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 6 – 1 2 7

maintain a pattern of economic distribution favoring

successful, wealthy, and powerful people.
480 See her broadcast from the White House in 1986
inaugurating the“Just Say No” campaign, at www.history
.com/speeches/nancy-reagan-introduces-just-say-no-
campaign.
481 One can argue that a considerable measure of
government intervention and coordination, regulation
and services, in the modern and market-based economy,
is a practical necessity based on historical trends – in
transportation, education, housing, health care, internal
migration, commerce, and more – rather than a liberal
preference flowing from abstract ideological sentiments.
See John Kenneth Galbraith, The Good Society: The Humane
Agenda (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), pp. 14–22.
482 In 2016 Nabisco stopped producing Oreo cookies in
Chicago, fired 600 local workers, and moved their jobs
to baking facilities in Mexico. See www.chicagotribune
.com/business/ct-last-chicago-oreo-0709-biz-20160708-
story.html.
483 For liberal criticism of powerful agribusiness entities,
see F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden
Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (Montreal: Global Research,
2007); Frederick Kaufman, Bet the Farm: How Food
Stopped Being Food (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2012);
and Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for
the World Food System (New York: Melville House, 2012).
For a conservative approach to the same conditions,
which also criticizes large-scale corporate behavior
in this realm, see Austin Frerick, “To Revive Rural
America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System,” The
American Conservative (February 27, 2019), at www
.theamericanconservative.com/articles/to-revive-rural-
america-we-must-fix-our-broken-food-system/.
484 See “Trump Defends $110B US Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia,”
in https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/411271-
trump-defends-110-billion-us-arms-sale-to-saudi-arabia.
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 Notes to Page 128 233

485 An historical point is pertinent here. In the early

eighteenth century, thinkers like Bernard Mandeville, The
Fable of the Bees: Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714), began to
argue that virtuous behavior might not be economically
effective. The general idea was that personal greed is
not admirable but might be morally acceptable because
it gets channeled by economic interactions –​say by
Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of the marketplace –​
to produce results advantageous to society. That idea
was severely challenged by the Crash of 1929 and the
consequent Great Depression. Nevertheless, after World
War II, neoliberal thinkers revived and expounded the
“publick benefits” thesis for our times, as if the stunning
inequalities in modern society add up to the best of
all possible worlds. Gordon Gekko, played by Michael
Douglas in the 1987 movie Wall Street, insisted that “Greed
… is good.” Many people who saw Wall Street laughed,
perhaps bitterly, at the satire. But Gordon Gekko, in a
way, expressed Milton Friedman’s “shareholder value”
theory of corporate governance, which recommends that
CEOs will relentlessly pursue maximum profits. And the
terms of that theory fuel a good deal of respectable talk
in the Age of Populism. On the shareholder value theory
in corporate law and public debate, see David Yosifon,
Corporate Friction: How Corporate Law Impedes American
Progress and What to Do About It (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2018), esp. pp. 60–​95. For commentary
on a modern example of literary praise for economic
greed, see Lisa Dugan, Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of
Greed (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019).
In Marxian terms, which most American thinkers do not
endorse, one might describe the shareholder theory of
value as a capitalist recommendation for business people
to carry their hearts in their purses.
486 Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism (New York: Brentano’s, 1928), pp. 190–​191.
Of course, enforcement of government decisions
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 234 N O T E S T O PA G E 1 2 8

is also necessary, because some people will always

bend and stretch to avoid regulation. For example,
see Jack Ewing, Faster, Higher, Farther: The Inside Story of
the Volkswagen Scandal (London: Transworld, 2018), on
Volkswagen producing and selling diesel cars designed
to deceive government-​mandated pollution tests. If
we think of the Volkswagen case as constituting what
Shaw would have called a “social problem,” then
2013 APSA president Mansbridge, “What is Political
Science For?” (see n. 29) observes (in agreement with
Shaw) that problems of social action (she calls them
“collective action problems”) can only be solved by an
exercise of what she calls “legitimate coercion” –​that
is, by enforcement of serious governmental regulations
enacted politically.

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235

NAME INDEX

Abbott, Philip, 225n454 Barofsky, Neil, 161n177

Abernathy, Nell, 194n315 Bartels, Larry M., 99, 177n236,
Acemoglu, Daron, 179n243 193n314, 202n341
Achen, Christopher H., 202n341 Batt, Rosemary, 183n262, 184n265
Adelson, Sheldon, 190n296 Bauman, Zygmunt, 222n439
Adler, Moshe, 175n234 Baumgartner, Frank R., 141n75,
Akerlof, George A., 170n214, 191n301, 210n381
214n398 Baumol, William J., 163n184,
Algan, Yann, 154n135 180n248
Allais, Maurice, 155n139 Becker, Gary S., 44, 155n141,
Alm, Richard, 167n198 158n162
Almond, Gabriel, 14 Becker, Guity Nashat, 44
Anhalt, Emily Katz, 193n314 Bell, Daniel, 170n211
Appelbaum, Binyamin, 206n363 Bell, Terrel, 174n232
Appelbaum, Eileen, 183n262, Belloc, Hilaire, 72
184n265 Bentham, Jeremy, 33, 89
Arendt, Hannah, 90 Berle, Adolf A., 185n267
Ariely, Dan, 44 Berlin, Irving, 180n250
Armitage, David, 198n332 Berlin, Isaiah, 208n373
Aronowitz, Stanley, 142n82, Bernanke, Ben S., 49, 161n177,
174n232 163n182, 168n204
Arrow, Kenneth J., 201n341 Berry, Jeffrey M., 141n75,
Arum, Richard, 143n87 191n301
Aschoff, Nicole, 207n370 Bezos, Jeff, 53
Atkinson, Brooks, 175n233 Bhagwati, Jagdish, 221n437
Bismarck, Otto von, 197n327
Babones, Salvatore, 133n30 Blinder, Alan S., 37, 51, 76,
Bachrach, Peter, 98 185n269, 200n337
Backhouse, Roger E., 146n100, Bloom, Allen, 142n84, 229n470
147n105 Blumenthal, Sidney, 173n224
Baeyer, Adolf von, 54 Bok, Derek, 142n82
Bakan, Joel, 215n407 Boorstin, Daniel, 198n330
Baker, Dean, 30, 178n239, Boyan, A. Steven, 231n477
194n317, 231n479 Bradley, Michelle, 157n149
Banerjee, Abhitjit, 231n473 Brady, Henry E., 193n314
Baratz, Morton S., 98 Brennan, Jason, 202n345

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 236 name I nde x

Brown, Wendy, 173n221, 174n225, Coyle, Diane, 152n126, 165n191

227n464, 228n469 Cramer, Katherine J., 209n378
Brundtland, Gro, 97 Crenson, Matthew A., 201n341
Buchanan, James, 33, 150n118,
178n241 Daley, Herman, 199n336
Buckley, F. H., 132n30, 136n46 Dangerfield, Anthony, 142n82
Buckley, William, 229n470 Davidson, Eric A., 205n358
Burke, Edmund, 96, 177n238, Davies, William, 152n127,
205n355 222n438
Bush, George H. W., 159n169 Davis, Gerald F., 174n231
Bush, George W., 47, 224n449 Deneen, Patrick J., 208n374
Buskirk, Chris, 136n46 Deresiewicz, William, 142n84
Dershowitz, Alan, 208n376
Caplan, Bryan, 201n341 Desch, Michael C., 121
Carlson, Tucker, 132n30, 194n317, Deutsch, Karl, 9–10
204n354, 227n463 DeVos, Rich, 160n173
Carnegie, Andrew, 179n242 Dewey, John, 180n249
Carney, Timothy P., 167n200 Dionne, E. J., Jr., 137n48
Carr, Nicholas, 216n411 Dixit, Avinash K., 158n162,
Carroll, Lewis, 22 162n180
Casnocha, Ben, 174n229, 210n384 Dorling, Danny, 222n439
Christensen, Clayton M., 53, Downs, Anthony, 150n118,
164n190, 200n337 204n351
Churchwell, Sarah, 227n459 Dubner, Stephen J., 44
Clark, Eric, 157n152 Dugan, Lisa, 233n485
Clark, John Bates, 176n234
Clements, Jeffrey D., 185n265 Earle, Joe, 147n102, 222n440
Cline, Elizabeth L., 182n255 Easton, David, 9
Clinton, Bill, 74, 190n295, Eatwell, Roger, 222n438
218n422, 224n449 Edsall, Thomas Byrne, 173n224,
Clinton, Hillary, 88, 112 229n473
Cobb, Clifford, 152n126 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 162n178,
Cohen, Alma, 192n304 191n299
Cohen-​Cole, Jamie, 145n95 Ehrenreich, John, 31, 173n221
Colbert, Stephen, 89 Eichengreen, Barry, 8
Collins, Chuck, 183n259 Ellis, Joseph J., 138n58
Collins, Robert, 159n171 Engdahl, F. William, 232n483
Conard, Edward, 80, 183n262, Engell, James, 142n82
189n293 Engels, Friedrich, 169n209
Cook, Eli, 156n148 Epstein, Leon, 14
Cook, Phillip J., 190n296 Ervine, Kate, 186n277
Corsi, Jerome R., 136n46 Ewen, Stuart, 157n151, 196n326
Cox, W., 167n198 Ewing, Jack, 234n486

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 Name Index 237

Farber, David, 184n263 Giuliani, Rudy, 199n334

Fast, Howard, 202n347 Goldberg, Jonah, 136n46
Ferguson, Thomas, 191n302 Goldsmith, Oliver, 165n192
Fioramonti, Lorenzo, 38 Goldstein, Amy, 132n28
Fisman, Raymond, 211n388 Goodin, Robert E., 139n62
Fitoussi, Jean-​Paul, 152n126 Gopnik, Adam, 209n375
Fletcher, Ian, 181n253 Graeber, David, 70, 141n78,
Foley, Duncan K., 151n121 193n311, 212n389, 213n395
Ford, Henry, 192n306 Grandin, Greg, 182n257
Ford, Martin, 166n196, 216n409, Gray, John, 178n239, 194n316
217n413, 220n432 Green, Ann Norton, 216n410
Foroohar, Rana, 161n177 Gregory, Brad S., 208n374
Fourcade, Marion, 154n135 Greider, William, 153n130, 219n426
Fox, Justin, 214n397 Griswold, Daniel, 221n435
Frank, Robert H., 31, 44, 160n174, Griswold, Eliza, 162n178, 186n276
163n182, 168n204, 190n296 Guldi, Jo, 198n332
Frank, Thomas, 194n318, 229n472
Freeman, Donald M., 139n61 Hacker, Andrew, 42
Frerick, Austin, 232n483 Hacker, Jacob S., 99, 102, 160n172,
Friedman, Benjamin M., 159n164, 201n338
230n473 Haidt, Jonathan, 207n369
Friedman, Milton, 40, 46, 57, Halstead, Ted, 152n126
74, 104, 177n237, 211n388, Hamilton, Alexander, 203n348
233n485 Hamilton, Clive, 196n324
Friedman, Thomas L., 71–72, 116, Hamilton, Laura T., 143n87
166n198 Hammerstein, Oscar, 181n250
Fukuyama, Francis, 10, 209n378 Harford, Tim, 44
Hartz, Louis, 119–122, 123,
Gaddis, John Lewis, 162n180, 209n379, 227n464, 228n465
181n252, 201n339 Harvey, David, 173n221
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 41–42, 47, Hasen, Richard, 192n303
173n222, 219n428, 232n481 Hayden, Michael, 199n334
Galston, William, 8 Hayek, Friedrich, 178n241
Gamble, Andrew, 146n99, 189n294 Hazan, Moshe, 192n304
Geithner, Timothy F., 49, 161n177 Hedges, Chris, 31, 198n330
Gellner, Ernest, 144n93 Heilbroner, Robert L., 147n107,
Gerson, Michael, 198n331 164n188
Gilens, Martin, 16, 191n301 Heinberg, Richard, 200n336
Gillespie, Michael Allen, 208n374 Henry, Jules, 175n233
Gingrich, Newt, 136n45, 146n98 Herbert, Bob, 84
Ginsberg, Benjamin, 144n92, Hersh, Adam, 194n315
201n341 Hetherington, Marc J., 202n342
Giridharadas, Anan, 157n155 Hett, Benjamin Carter, 137n54

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 238 name I nde x

Hilberg, Raul, 138n57 Kellstedt, Paul M., 139n61

Hirsch, Fred, 186n273 Kerr, Clark, 19, 20, 21, 22, 61
Hirshleifer, Jack, 157n154 Keynes, John Maynard, 46, 65,
Ho, Karen, 185n267 151n122
Hobbes, Thomas, 174n230 Khrushchev, Nikita, 158n163
Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 162n178 Kilbourne, Jean, 195n321
Hochschild, Jennifer L., 140n66 Kimball, David R., 141n75, 191n301
Hodgson, Geoffrey M., 222n440 Kimball, Roger, 204n354
Hoffman, Reid, 174n229, 210n384 King, Gary, 139n64
Hofstadter, Richard, 172n217 Kingdon, John W., 218n415
Hojnacki, Marie, 141n75, 191n301 Kirkland, Edward C., 179n242
Holmberg, Susan, 194n315 Klein, Naomi, 79, 112, 155n138
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 168n203 Kloppenberg, James L., 121
Hulliung, Mark, 225n455 Koch, Charles G., 160n173
Huntington, Samuel P., 97, 137n53 Koestler, Arthur, 145n97
Hutchins, Robert Maynard, 142n84 Konezal, Mike, 194n315
Hutner, Daniel, 134n35 Kramer, Hilton, 204n354
Hyman, Louis, 165n191, 183n262, Krauthammer, Charles, 73
184n263, 193n310, 193n311 Kristol, William, 190n295
Krugman, Paul, 73, 214n400
Isaak, Alan S., 139n61 Kuttner, Robert, 219n428
Israel, Jonathan, 202n346 Kwak, James, 187n283, 206n363

Jackson, Andrew, 148n107 Labaree, David F., 143n86

Jackson, Tim, 200n336 Lacombe, Matthew J., 191n301,
Janis, Irving Lester, 149n112 231n476
Jay, Antony, 166n193 Lafer, Gordon, 231n476
Jay, John, 203n348 Laffer, Arthur, 159n168
Jefferson, Thomas, 96 Lanchester, John, 161n175, 163n183
Jeffrey, Terrence P., 136n46 Landes, David, 166n195
Jensen, Michael C., 183n261 Landsburg, Steven E., 44
Jobs, Steve, 195n321 Langone, Ken, 160n173
Johnson, Janet Buttolph, 139n61 Lanier, Jaron, 211n387
Jones, Bryan D., 210n381 Lasswell, Harold D., 98
Jones, Daniel Stedman, 178n241 Latouche, Serge, 200n336
Leach, William, 186n272
Kahneman, Daniel, 42, 201n341, Leary, John Patrick, 162n179
211n388 Leech, Beth L., 141n75, 191n301
Kakutani, Michiko, 195n320 Lepore, Jill, 164n190, 200n337,
Kalb, James, 136n46 203n350, 227n462
Kant, Immanuel, 174n228 Lessig, Lawrence, 191n301
Karabel, Jerome, 143n87 Levi, Margaret, 16
Katznelson, Ira, 120–121 Levin, Mark R., 136n46
Kaufman, Frederick, 232n483 Levitt, Steven D., 44
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 Name Index 239

Lewis, Michael, 133n31 Mettler, Suzanne, 102, 142n82,

Lilla, Mark, 218n422 194n318, 228n469
Lincoln, Abraham, 95, 203n350 Michaels, Walter Benn, 229n472
Lindblom, Charles E., 170n210 Miguel, Edward, 211n388
Lindsey, Brink, 159n165, 177n237, Milberg, William, 147n107
223n441 Mill, John Stuart, 90–91, 145n97,
Litan, Robert E., 163n184, 188n289, 204n354
180n248 Miller, Robert K., Jr., 160n174
Lowi, Theodore J., 95–96 Milosz, Czeslaw, 10–11
Lowrey, Annie, 216n412 Mirowski, Philip, 173n221,
Lozada, Carlos, 198n331 187n283
Lucas, Robert E., 154n137 Mishan, E. J., 154n132
Lukianoff, Greg, 207n369 Moran, Cahal, 147n102, 222n440
Luttwak, Edward N., 31 Morson, Gary Saul, 157n154
Lynn, Barry C., 165n191 Mounk, Yascha, 8, 10, 224n449
Mozorov, Evgeny, 96
MacLean, Nancy, 150n118, Murphy, Liam, 180n249
178n241 Mycoff, Jason D., 139n61
Madison, James, 96, 203n348
Madrick, Jeff, 146n100, 223n445 Nagel, Thomas, 180n249
Mandelbaum, Michael, 116 Nalebuff, Barry J., 158n162,
Mandeville, Bernard, 165n192, 162n180
233n485 Newfield, Christopher, 142n82
Manjoo, Farhad, 196n323 Newman, Katherine S., 192n307
Mankiw, Nicholas Gregory, 76, Nie, Norman H., 139n64
163n182, 210n385, 230n473 Nixon, Richard, 158n163
Mannheim, Karl, 187n283 Noah, Timothy, 31
Mansbridge, Jane, 132n29, Noble, David W., 159n167,
234n486 188n285
Marsh, David, 139n61 Nordhaus, William D., 156n144,
Marx, Karl, 58, 64 163n182
Mayer, Frederick W., 218n420 Novak, Michael, 215n407
Mayer, Jane, 192n304
Mazzucato, Mariana, 180n249 Oakeshott, Michael, 145n97
McChesney, Robert W., 230n475 Obama, Barack, 82, 175n232,
McClosky, Deirdre N., 155n140 224n449
McDowell, Moore, 163n182, Offer, Avner, 30, 35, 149n111,
168n204 171n215, 172n219, 189n294
McNamee, Stephen J., 160n174 Ollion, Etienne, 154n135
McNeill, William, 201n339 Olson, Mancur, 81, 202n344
Meacham, Jon, 133n32, 134n38 Ophuls, William, 231n477
Mead, Lawrence M., 137n49 Orrell, David, 146n100
Means, Gardiner C., 185n267 Orren, Karen, 202n343
Meckling, William H., 183n261 Orwell, George, 84, 90, 137n56
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 240 name I nde x

Ott, Julia C., 185n266 Raynor, Michael E., 164n190,

Owen, David, 180n247 200n337
Reagan, Nancy, 126
Packer, George, 31 Reagan, Ronald, 47, 65, 224n449,
Pagden, Anthony, 202n346 228n467
Page, Benjamin I., 16, 191n301, Reed, Lawence W., 189n293
193n314, 231n476 Reich, Robert B., 31, 56, 85, 107,
Paine, Thomas, 95 163n186, 172n217, 194n317,
Parijs, Phillippe van, 217n412 213n396
Pastine, Ivan, 163n182, 168n204 Rejan, Raghuram G., 178n241
Patel, Raj, 220n428, 232n483 Reuther, Walter, 192n306
Paulson, Hank, 49 Reynolds, H. T., 139n61
Peet, Richard, 179n246 Ricardo, David, 73, 175n234,
Penniman, Nick, 191n301, 192n303 181n253, 188n289
Philipsen, Dirk, 154n131, 159n166 Ricci, David M., 111, 134n37,
Phillips-​Fein, Kim, 185n267, 140n70, 140n73, 141n78,
229n470 142n80, 143n89, 186n278,
Pierson, Paul, 99, 144n91, 160n172, 201n340, 202n345, 217n414,
201n338 218n422, 218n424, 218n425,
Piketty, Thomas, 31, 205n355, 219n427
230n473 Richards, Jay W., 203n350, 220n430
Pinker, Steven, 134n38, 202n346 Ridley, Matt, 200n336, 216n411,
Pisano, Gary P., 164n190, 221n435 222n437
Plender, John, 222n437 Rifkind, Jeremy, 223n443
Plumb, J. H., 144n93 Rivera, Lauren A., 215n401
Polanyi, Karl, 61–62, 63, 68, 91, Roberts, Paul Craig, 200n336
205n355 Robin, Corey, 121, 228n468
Pontusson, Jonas, 30, 146n99 Robinson, James A., 179n243
Popper, Karl, 202n345 Rodgers, Daniel T., 138n58
Postman, Neil, 195n322 Rodrik, Dani, 148n107, 152n127
Potter, Wendell, 191n301, 192n303 Rogers, James, 186n271
Pozner, Jenifer L., 135n40 Rogers, Richard, 181n250
Purcell, Edward A., Jr., 134n37 Romney, Mitt, 183n262, 220n434
Putnam, Robert D., 64, 162n178, Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 5, 65,
170n212 124, 197n328, 203n349
Pye, Lucien, 15 Rorty, Richard, 95
Rosenblum, Nancy, 207n372
Quart, Alissa, 86 Rosenfeld, Sophia, 136n43,
199n332
Rahe, Paul H., 206n361 Rothkopf, David, 230n476
Ranney, J. Austin, 99 Rowe, Jonathan, 152n126
Rawls, John, 149n115, 169n206 Roy, Ravi K., 173n221
Raworth, Kate, 174n227, 177n238 Rudolph, Thomas J., 202n342

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 Name Index 241

Saez, Emmanuel, 31 Sitaraman, Ganesh, 86–87,

Sale, Kirkpatrick, 166n197 223n444
Samuelson, Paul A., 156n144, Skidelsky, Edward, 161n176
163n182 Skidelsky, Robert, 31, 161n176
Sandel, Michael J., 140n72, Skowronek, Stephen, 202n343
169n204, 220n428 Sleat, Matt, 210n380
Sanders, Bernie, 83, 112 Sloan, Alfred, 75
Santelli, Rick, 212n389 Slobodian, Quinn, 173n221,
Satz, Debra, 220n428 178n241
Sawhill, John, 97 Smarsh, Sarah, 162n178,
Schapiro, Morton, 157n154 162n210
Schlefer, Jonathan, 149n113, Smith, Adam, 34, 57, 70, 174n226,
176n234 175n234, 227n464
Schlozman, Kay Lehman, 139n64, Smith, Hedrick, 31, 219n427
193n314 Smith, Rogers M., 121, 218n420
Schor, Juliet B., 31, 146n100, Smith, Steven B., 138n59
157n153, 186n274 Smith, Steven D., 208n374
Schramm, Carl J., 163n184, 180n248 Snyder, Timothy, 10, 138n57,
Schumpeter, Joseph A., 51, 58, 197n329
132n27, 201n337 Soderberg, Gabriel, 30, 35,
Schwartz, Barry, 212n392 149n111, 171n215, 189n294
Schwartz, Sam, 166n196 Somin, Ilya, 202n341
Scott, Rick, 175n232 Sowell, Thomas, 169n205
Screcker, Ellen, 142n84 Spence, A. Michael, 214n398
Seawright, Jason, 191n301, Srnicek, Nick, 223n442
231n476 Standing, Guy, 162n178, 210n386
Self, Robert O., 227n463 Stanley, Jason, 169n206
Sen, Amartya, 31, 152n126, Starr, Paul, 215n401
185n270 Steger, Manfred B., 173n221
Senior, Nassau, 188n288 Stiglitz, Joseph E., 30, 31, 87,
Sennett, Richard, 175n233, 152n126, 167n201, 191n300,
212n390, 212n391, 231n478 214n398, 223n441
Shapiro, Ben, 136n46 Stoker, Gerry, 139n61
Shapiro, Ian, 102, 103, 112 Strasser, Susan, 186n272
Shaw, George Bernard, 127–128 Streeck, Wolfgang, 219n428
Shih, Willy C., 221n435 Strong, Tracy B., 180n247
Shiller, Robert J., 170n214, Summers, Lawrence, 49, 147n107,
178n242 155n138
Shipler, David K., 162n178, Summit, Jennifer, 144n94
191n299 Sumner, William Graham,
Shklar, Judith N., 100–101, 102, 212n389
103, 112, 204n353, 209n379 Sunstein, Cass R., 156n143
Shlaes, Amity, 185n267 Supiot, Alain, 227n464

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 242 name I nde x

Tallarita, Roberto, 192n304 Wanniski, Jude, 159n168

Taylor, Charles, 208n374 Ward-​Perkins, Zach, 147n102,
Teachout, Zephyr, 191n301 222n440
Teles, Steven M., 159n165, Warren, Elizabeth, 193n312
177n237, 223n441 Warsh, David, 154n137
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 165n192 Weber, Max, 180n247
Thaler, Richard H., 31, 149n114, Weintraub, E. Roy, 154n137
156n143, 213n394 Weiss, David, 192n304
Thatcher, Margaret, 151n124 Weiss, Linda, 180n249
Thelen, Kathleen, 141n77 Weitzman, Martin L., 186n279,
Thom, Rodney, 163n182, 168n204 187n281
Thurber, James A., 202n344 Whitten, Guy D., 139n61
Timberg, Scott, 213n393 Wildavsky, Aaron, 199n332
Todd, Brad, 195n319, 230n474 Williams, Bernard, 209n379
Trump, Donald, 1, 3–4, 7, 8, 25, Winfrey, Oprah, 207n370
47, 88, 89–90, 112, 166n193, Winters, Jeffrey A., 193n314
199n334, 210n387, 220n429, Witherspoon, John, 141n79
221n435 Witko, Christopher, 224n446
Tullock, Gordon, 150n118 Wolf, Martin, 172n218, 181n255
Turkle, Sherry, 205n357 Wolfe, Alan, 121
Turner, Cal, 160n173 Wolff, Michael, 133n31
Tyagi, Amelia Warrant, 193n312 Wolff, Robert Paul, 142n84
Woods, Ngaire, 179n246
Urbinati, Nadia, 201n341 Wu, Tim, 157n152, 230n476

Vaidhyanathan, Siva, 211n387 Yang, Andrew, 217n413

Valelly, Richard M., 225n451 Yeats, William Butler, 11
Vance, J. D., 162n178 Yoshinaka, Antoine, 202n344
Vanderborght, Yannick, 217n412 Yosifon, David, 233n485
Vedder, Richard, 224n446
Verba, Sidney, 193n314 Zafirovski, Milan, 227n464
Vermeule, Blake, 144n94 Zanker, Bill, 166n193
Voegeli, William, 190n294 Zito, Salena, 195n319, 230n474
Vogel, Kenneth P., 192n304 Zuboff, Shoshana, 184n264,
205n355, 228n469
Wachtel, Paul L., 212n390 Zuckerberg, Mark, 118
Wagner, Gernot, 186n279, 187n281 Zucman, Gabriel, 31, 182n259

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243

SUBJECT INDEX

academic imperialism, 43–​44 creative destruction, 2, 12, 17, 29,

advertising, 41–​43, 59, 88–​89, 50–​55, 62, 64, 91, 96–​97,
135n40, 156n144, 186n272 99–​100, 103, 118–​119, 125
Age of Populism, 3, 4, 22, 24–​25, economic growth, 12, 29, 45, 61,
89–​90, 91, 92, 102–​103, 125 101, 110–​111, 116, 173n219
agenda setting, 218n415 neoliberalism, 90, 119, 123,
America, 4–​7, 24, 72–​73 167n200
American democracy, 13,
16–​17, 94 Declaration of Independence,
American Dream, 7, 47–​48 122, 134n36
American exceptionalism, 24–​25, Delaware, 222n436
113, 119–​121, 122 demand, 46, 195n321
American Liberalism, 120–​123 democracy, 16–​17, 83–​84, 93–​94, 97
anxieties, 4–​6 disruption, 1, 53, 96, 164n190
autonomous vehicles, 107–​108, 109, innovation, 2, 35, 51, 52, 53–​54,
166n196 80, 85, 110–​111, 118–​119
driverless cars, 107–​108, 109,
bargaining power, 56, 176n234, 166n196
177n235
behavioral economics, 156n143, economic competition, 71, 106, 126
213n394 economic creativity, 45, 49, 57,
Brexit, 7, 135n41 101, 107–​109, 134n39
economic growth, 27, 36–​38, 43,
carbon tax, 78–​79 45–​47, 54, 56–​57, 61, 77–​80,
change, 200n337 85, 165n191, 166n192
citizenship, 16–​17, 93 creative destruction, 12, 29, 45,
climate change, 78–​79, 166n194 61, 101, 110–​111, 116, 173n219
Coase Theorem, 169n204 economics, 27–​28, 29–​32, 36–​37,
cognitive capture, 48–​49 38–​39, 45, 47–​48, 49–​50, 55–​56,
Cold War, 6, 11, 164n185 57–​58, 188n289, 223n440
comparative advantage, 73 Edgeworth Boxes, 40, 56, 85
Constitution, 17, 81, 84, 86, 96, efficient market hypothesis, 214n397
207n367 Elkins Act (1903), 150n119
consumer sovereignty, 41, empathy, 161n176
42, 77, 84 entrepreneurs, 71–​73, 80, 103, 115,
contrived markets, 70, 114 117, 119, 177n234

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 244 s u b j ect I n de x

epistemic rot, 211n387 list syndrome, 111–​112, 119

equilibrium, 34, 40, 43 Luddites, 54
externalities, 77–​78, 168n204,
182n255 mainstream economics, 29–​32,
34–​35, 43, 48, 61, 64, 153n129,
Facebook, 118, 164n189, 165n190 171n214, 171n215
famine, 186n270 economic growth, 36–​38
financial crisis, 161n176, 161n177, equilibrium, 34
171n214, 193n311, 214n397 GDP, 35
free trade, 73–​74, 116–​117 invisible hand, 34
markets, 36
GDP (gross domestic product), 35,
methodological
36, 37, 74, 87, 154n133
individualism, 32
Glass-​Steagall Act (1933), 174n223
prices, 33–​34
global warming, 78–​79
rational calculations, 32–​33
globalization, 71–​72, 116–​117,
self-​interest, 33
167n198
utility, 33, 34
greed, 233n485
marginal utility theory, 56, 70, 73,
gross domestic product (GDP)
83, 117, 153n127
see GDP (gross domestic product)
market-​based society, 69–​70
groupthink, 149n112
markets, 36, 105–​107, 114, 123,
health care services, 82–​83 124–​125, 126–​127, 168n203
homo economicus, 66, 67–​68, 69–​70, contrived, 70, 114
71, 103–​105, 115 natural, 70–​71, 105, 232n479
homo politicus, 66–​67, 93, 98 real, 106–​107
humanism, 94–​96, 99, 154n130, MarketWorld, 158n155
229n469 Marxism, 57–​60, 79
materiality paradox, 186n274
identity politics, 8–​9 McCarthyism, 6, 133n33, 134n35
ideology, 79–​80 methodological individualism, 32,
income distribution, 117–​118 39–​40, 42
inequality, 70, 83, 118, 124, 125 Microsoft Word, 118
inflation, 215n400 middle class, 28, 84–​87, 224n444
informed voluntarism, 40 multiversities, 19–​22, 61
see also voluntary exchanges.
innovation, 2, 35, 51, 52, 53–​54, Native Americans, 181n250
80, 85, 110–​111, 118–​119 natural markets, 70–​71, 105,
see also disruption. 232n479
interest rates, 215n400 neoliberalism, 12, 49, 79, 80, 87,
invisible hand, 34, 57, 114, 203n349 100, 103, 111, 115, 116–​117,
123–​124
late-​stage feudalism, 63, 120, 122 creative destruction, 90, 119,
liberalism, 63–​64, 100–​101, 120–​123, 123, 167n200
170n210, 170n211, 172n218 democracy, 83–​84
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 Subject Index 245

entrepreneurs, 71–​73, 177n234 scarcity, 38, 76–​77, 79–​80, 88

free trade, 73–​74, 117 science, 18, 22–​23, 25–​26
homo economicus, 62–​67, 68–​69 self-​interest, 33
homo politicus, 66–​67, 93, 98 shareholders, 74–​75, 109
market-​based society, 69–​70 social choice theory, 218n415
markets, 70–​71, 114 social contract, 18, 67, 218n413
public goods, 81, 82–​83 Social Darwinists, 172n217
scarcity, 76, 77, 79 spin, 42–​43, 196n326
shareholders, 74–​75 stakeholders, 75, 109
New Deal, 5, 65, 124 stock buybacks, 214n399
Nordic countries, 190n294 supply, 46–​47, 179n244

pluralism, 14–​15, 97, 136n47 Tea Party, 212n389

political action, 124, 125–​126 technology, 186n272
political contributions, 83–​84, Temple of Science metaphor, 22–​25,
201n338, 232n476 26–​27, 61
political economy, 188n289 truth, 31, 88–​90, 203n345, 209n379
political science, 2–​3, 9–​10, 11, tyranny, 100–​101, 103, 112
13–​16, 17–​18, 45, 63, 92–​94,
97–​100, 101–​102, 110, 114–​115 unemployment, 133n34
political stories, 59–​60, 74, United States, 4–​7, 24, 72–​73,
111–​114 207n367
populism, 1–​2, 6–​9, 12, 25, 87–​88 universities, 18–​22
positional goods, 186n273 utility, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40
power, 98–​99, 104
prices, 33–​34, 78 value, 36, 51, 89
progress, 200n337 venture capital, 184n262
pseudo-​events, 198n330 venue shopping, 116
public choice theory, 150n117, VMP (value of marginal product),
150n118 176n234
public goods, 17, 81–​83, 89 Volkswagen, 234n486
voluntary exchanges, 40,
rational calculations, 32–​33, 40, 41–​43, 56–​57
41, 213n395, 223n440
real markets, 106–​107 wages, theory of, 176n234
realism, 54, 102 Walmart, 177n235, 180n249
redistribution, 124–​125 wars, costs of, 171n213
resources, 38, 76–​77 welfare, 35, 36, 43
retraining programs, 115–​116 Winner-​Take-​All Society, 83

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