Levers of Power. Kevin A. Young

Akin, Ahmad Al-Sholi, Kenneth Andrews, Florencia Arancibia, Diana Baldermann, Fred Block, Vivek Chibber, the late Dan Clawson, Mary Ann Clawson, G. William Domhoff, Barry Eidlin, Louis Esparza, Crystal Fleming, Gabriela González Vaillant, Jeff Goodwin, Sebastián Guzmán, Tiffany Joseph, Wallace Katz, Richard Lachmann, Prita Lal, Clarence Lo, Matt Mahler, John Marciano, Mike Miller, Joya Misra, Aldon Morris, Joshua Murray, Fernanda Page Poma, Joseph Peschek, Frances Fox Piven, Charlie Post, Christopher Rhomberg, S.M. Rodríguez, Magali Sarfatti Larson, Kim Scipes, Diana Sierra Becerra, Marc Steinberg, Juhi Tyagi, Arnout Van de Rijt, Nancy Whittier, the late Jeffrey Young, and Gilda Zwerman; the attendees at conferences of the American Sociological Association, Eastern Sociological Society, Stony Brook University’s How Class Works, and the NYU Economic and Political Sociology workshop, where we presented early drafts of pieces of the book; and editors and reviewers at the journals Mobilization, New Labor Forum, and Politics and Society, where some of the material appeared in print. Finally, our argument about social movement strategy is indebted to numerous organizers, most of whom are not famous, who developed keen analyses of power and how oppressed people could reclaim it.

Abbreviations Used in the Text and Footnotes

ACA	Affordable Care Act
AFL	American Federation of Labor
AHIP	America’s Health Insurance Plans
CAA	Community Action Agency
CAP	Community Action Program
CBA	Cost-benefit analysis
CDGM	Child Development Group of Mississippi
CFPB	Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
CFR	Council on Foreign Relations
CFTC	Commodity Futures Trading Commission
CIO	Congress of Industrial Organizations
CORE	Congress of Racial Equality
CRP	Center for Responsive Politics
DADT	“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
DoD	Department of Defense
DoJ	Department of Justice
EPA	Environmental Protection Agency
FCC	Federal Communications Commission
FDIC	Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
FERC	Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
GM	General Motors
HELP	Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
HMO	Health Maintenance Organization
ICE	Immigration and Customs Enforcement
MAP	Mississippi Action for Progress
NAACP	National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NAFTA	North American Free Trade Agreement
NBCH	National Business Coalition on Health
NCHC	National Coalition on Health Care
NLF	National Liberation Front (Vietnam)
NLRB	National Labor Relations Board
NYPD	New York Police Department
OCC	Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
OEO	Office of Economic Opportunity
OIRA	Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
OTC	Over-the-counter (derivatives)
PhRMA	Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
ROTC	Reserve Officers’ Training Corps
SCLC	Southern Christian Leadership Conference
SEC	Securities and Exchange Commission
SFC	Senate Finance Committee
SNCC	Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
TARP	Troubled Asset Relief Program
TPP	Trans-Pacific Partnership
UAW	United Auto Workers
USCAP	US Climate Action Partnership

      Publications

AB	American Banker
AJS	American Journal of Sociology
AP	Associated Press
APSR	American Political Science Review
ASR	American Sociological Review
BW	Bloomberg Businessweek (“Businessweek” up to 2009)
FT	Financial Times
LN	Labor Notes
NLF	New Labor Forum
NYT	New York Times
PAS	Politics and Society
TNY	New Yorker
WP	Washington Post
WSJ	Wall Street Journal

Introduction: Shadow and Substance

In 1931, the philosopher John Dewey lamented that “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.” Government “in general is an echo,” and at times a direct “accomplice, of the interests of big business.”¹ Dewey was writing in the early years of the Great Depression, as unchecked capitalism had plunged the world into crisis and his government was doing nothing to solve the problem. Today, as in Dewey’s time, big business’s control over the US government is an open secret. We have formally democratic institutions, but the 1% exercises preponderant control over government policymaking. Statistical studies show that the preferences of non-wealthy people have little or no influence on policy.² The 99% are well aware of this fact. In polls, over three-quarters of the public consistently says that government is “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves,” namely large corporations and the rich. In the years following the economic crash of 2008, around two-thirds agreed that the government’s response had benefited “large banks and financial institutions,” “large corporations,” and “wealthy people,” and that the rest of the population had benefited “not too much” or “not at all.”³

Critiques of plutocracy—rule by the rich—are not new. Even in Dewey’s time, the insight was hardly original. Marxists and anarchists had long denounced capitalists’ influence over government. Some liberals like Dewey had voiced similar critiques, dating back at least to Adam Smith’s complaint in 1776 that England’s “merchants and manufacturers” were “the principal architects” of economic policy, their interests “so carefully attended to” by politicians.⁴ And as polls suggest, the idea that government is “the shadow cast by big business” is old news to most of the public today.

But Dewey added a further insight: “The attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.”⁵ In other words, electing politicians critical of business will not eliminate business’s power to shape government policy. History supports Dewey’s point. Governments elected with a strong progressive mandate, from Chile in the early 1970s to Venezuela and Greece more recently, have faced massive economic disruption—and often military coups—when their reforms pose a threat to the profits and privileges of capitalists. Less ambitious would-be reformers like Barack Obama have also incurred the wrath of business despite taking enormous pains to accommodate corporate interests.

      The Roots of Corporate Power

Why is business so powerful? Most analysts attribute its political influence to campaign donations and lobbying. But campaign finance is just one means by which business influences government. We argue that the problem goes far beyond money in politics, to the very structure of the economy. The political power of banks and corporations ultimately derives from the power that they wield over the economy itself—what some call their “structural power.”⁶ They control most of the crucial resources on which society depends, including investment capital (and thus jobs and loans) as well as food, transportation, medicine, healthcare services, and countless other things. The investment decisions made in corporate boardrooms help determine employment levels, the location of jobs,