April 01, 2001
The end is near: one dollar, one vote, and the dying breath of democracy
"That a peasant may become a king does not render the kingdom democratic." Woodrow Wilson, 1910 (88)
To imagine Thomas Frank standing on a street corner wearing a large sign announcing the end of the world would not be inappropriate, especially if you picture him yelling in a hoarse voice at passersby, say, in downtown Seattle during the World Trade Organization protests. Hair shirt and locusts included, of course.
This is not to say that you have to imagine Thomas Frank—author of One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy—just like that, but it takes considerably more imagination not to do so.
Here's the situation: Frank is upset, justifiably perhaps, at what he sees as the market's continuing conquest of the civil sector, replacing, in effect, democracy with plutocracy. He's upset that the "limousine liberal" has been cast the great villain of American history (35). He's upset that the fall of Communism has been used as an excuse to lower regulations for multi-national corporations (63). He's upset that a "polo populism" has been sold to the American people in place of the traditional populism associated with the labor movement and civil rights (73). But mostly he's just upset.
The problem is that I want to be upset too, upset at corporate abuses, upset at the apathy of American democracy, and upset at the cheap spirituality sold as management theory; but I don't want to just be upset. Being upset is not enough. And Thomas Frank, unfortunately, has nothing else to offer us in One Market Under God.
A case in point: key to Frank's analysis is the finding that the success of what he calls "market populism" depends upon an ideology that equates Adam Smith's "invisible hand" with democracy itself, equates being a good consumer with being a good citizen. Take television, for instance:
"So wondrous are these devices' properties, in fact, that when people watch TV, they are actually 'voting' for the laissez-faire way, for Madonna and Benetton, Pepsi and Prince—but also for democracy, free expression, free markets and free movements of people and money" (55).
So should we turn off the TV? Should we limit ourselves to PBS? Should we produce our own programming for public access? Frank does not say.
In other portions of the book, Frank notes how the fields of public relations and account planning consciously align themselves with the academic disciplines of anthropology and cultural studies (280ff). The market has so centralized itself in the American psyche that even the accoutrements of counter-cultural identity are regularly co-opted by marketers, who push their new wares as a way to purchase the authenticity of rebellion. The role of manufactured demand is acknowledged to be central:
"In The Great Crash, John Kenneth Galbraith observed that manic bull markets require not just sound numbers but relentless 'incantation,' a veritable army of pundits and PR men to engage the public in a 'process of reassurance'" (104).
Worse, criticism of these methods is not allowed by current market orthodoxy, because the market's alter ego as democracy makes any criticism undemocratic (xvi, 280), or worse still, French (73).
Let them eat stock
Yet when I managed to pull myself away from Frank's cranky tone, his point does have a certain resonance, and he is not the first to make these points. Harvard theologian Harvey Cox covered similar points in an Atlantic Monthly essay, "The Market as God: Living in the New Dispensation" (March 1999).
In his essay, Cox was surprised to discover the familiar mechanics of theology very much at work in business literature. At first relieved that the world of business would not be as opaque as he had feared, Cox found himself wondering, "in this era of Market religion, where the skeptics and freethinkers [have] gone. What has happened to the Voltaires who once exposed bogus miracles, and the H.L. Menckens who blew shrill whistles on pious humbuggery?" He finds that "The Market" has not yet achieved the omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence of the monotheistic God, but he remains cautious because
"the real clash of religions (or even of civilizations) may be going unnoticed. I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as a religion."
In a similar vein, Marjorie Kelly, founder of the journal Business Ethics, charges that the market has exceeded its bounds in "The Divine Right of Capital," published in the July issue of Tikkun. Kelly accuses shareholders of operating as an aristocracy, an unmerited elitism because the purchase of stock-except for IPOs-contributes no capital to the corporation. Kelly asks, then, on what grounds shareholder can demand their "divine right" to profit when maximizing returns to shareholders encourages CEOs to cut "extravagances" like company daycare, health benefits, or even staffing.
Kelly names this belief in the "divine right" of shareholders "wealthism." In its place, she suggests the democratization of the economy, just as government was democratized over the last few centuries. Cox encourages adherents to the traditional world religions to reassert their own claims about human nature over against a "market theology" that reduces people to mere consumers. Even financier George Soros has criticized what he names "market fundamentalism," calling for reform of global capitalism and retention of the US estate tax.
But the merits of Cox's, Kelly's, and Soros' proposals are a subject for another discussion.
Unlike Frank, however, they do propose solutions. For over a decade, Thomas Frank has been positioning himself as the chief Gen-X critic of hyper-capitalism, through his founding of the alternative journal The Baffler and his publication of such self-described salvos as Commodify Your Dissent (Norton, 1997) and The Conquest of Cool (University of Chicago, 1997).
But in the absence of a political or economic proposal, what are we to do with Frank's critique? A departure from his earlier work, One Market Under God is not a collection of short essays, and Frank's contentious tone cannot help but feel overwhelming in the longer form. His critique is important to hear, but it requires a patient reader willing to suspend the desire for a solution.
One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy.
By Thomas Frank. (Doubleday, 2000) 414pp. $26.
One last word
Thomas Frank, meet Jedediah Purdy. Enjoy the cartoon adventure "Me & My Shadow of Irony: An American Tragedy" and try to hold both Gen-X authors in your mind at the same time.
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