Although the substantive material they cover is far from identical, Heather Gautney’s The New Power Elite and Stephen Amberg’s A Democracy That Works have a great deal in common. Both are ambitious, synthetic books, based on a wide reading of an astonishing number of secondary works. Most importantly, these two books share a focus on the political economy of neoliberalism in the United States: the emergence of the neoliberal order and its consequences for both the economy and the polity. Both outline the economic transformation of the last half-century—including such developments as the conceptualization of workers, like raw materials, as just another cost center and the consequent growth of economic inequality; the decline of manufacturing; financialization; and economic concentration. And both consider these interrelated developments to be the result of the operations of both markets and democratic politics, rather than the result of economic forces alone.
Furthermore, both books emphasize the primary significance of the policies of the Reagan era with their emphasis on market freedom from government regulation and on efficiency and “shareholder value” as principal corporate objectives. However, in citing such examples as Jimmy Carter’s support for airline deregulation and Bill Clinton’s signing of the legislation repealing Glass-Steagall, both authors make clear that Democrats have played a role as well. Both see the neoliberal project as undermining democracy, with implications for who governs and how. The authors share an admiration for Bernie Sanders, although neither one fully addresses that, despite his surprising and impressive performances in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, Sanders does not command majority support among Democrats, much less within the electorate as a whole.
Gautney’s The New Power Elite takes as its point of departure C. Wright Mills’s classic analysis published in 1956. She argues that “the United States is more and more displaying the characteristics of authoritarian capitalism that [Mills] predicted, yet with less popular resistance and less of a sense of alternatives” (p. 10) and that “while the American state remains an essential site of contestation—over fiscal policy or law enforcement, for example—its principal function today is to serve the interests of capital and operate on its behalf” (p. 11). Gautney covers an impressive amount of ground. She has an eye for the telling detail; for example, that many of those clad in MAGA T-shirts who cheered Donald Trump as he descended the escalator to declare his candidacy were paid actors (p. 65) or that, just before Colin Powell delivered his infamous WMD speech at the UN, a large blue curtain was placed over the tapestry replica of Picasso’s “Guernica” (on loan, ironically, from Nelson Rockefeller) that hangs on the wall of the entrance to the Security Council (p. 113).
Unfortunately, Gautney does not always make the strongest case for her thesis. Although the decline of unions over the last half-century would seem to be an important part of the economic and political aspects of the story she tells, she pays scant attention to organized labor. The evolution of the rules governing campaign finance, another development that is of a piece with the overarching theme of the book, merits only brief attention, and some of it is misleading (see, for example, the discussion on pp. 56–58). This discussion, which does not take account of relevant historical background, emphasizes that the decision in Citizens United conferred personhood on corporations and traces that concept of corporate personhood to a memo written by Lewis Powell before he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Gautney does not mention that versions of corporate personhood date back to the nineteenth century and that the Supreme Court ruled in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which refers to “persons,” applies to corporations. Furthermore, although the immediate reception of Citizens United involved fear of a deluge of corporate contributions, the flood of corporate campaign money has not materialized. Instead, the interpretation that money is speech when it comes to campaign finance has lifted the lid off the limits on what rich individuals can donate, and very big givers are responsible for an ever-increasing share of campaign contributions.
Gautney’s singular focus on the neoliberal project leads to a narrow view of American politics over the period since Mills wrote. Historically, political conflict in America has been structured not only by economic issues but also by cleavages along other axes; in particular, race and region. Gautney barely recognizes such alternative bases of political contestation in our era. Race is hardly mentioned, nor does she acknowledge issues like same-sex marriage, gun rights, or abortion that engage deeply held values and generate heated political conflict. Anxious to demonstrate that both Democrats and Republicans have been partners in neoliberalism, she often glosses over party differences. Politics today is characterized by intense conflict between ideologically distinct parties that are evenly matched in strength on a national basis.
The Democratic compromises that Gautney interprets as “an indicator of where [Biden’s] party’s loyalties truly lie” (p. 170) may reflect political constraints imposed by such factors as narrow legislative majorities, the anti-majoritarian rules of the Senate, and the preferences of a few renegade partisans, rather than a wholehearted embrace of neoliberalism. Sometimes her judgments seem unbalanced. For example, her bottom-line assessment of the Obama presidency (p. 64) asserts that “his biggest accomplishment involved providing major cover for Wall Street and corporate forces when they were on the ropes,” omitting any reference to the Affordable Care Act—a piece of legislation that, for all its imperfections, was strongly opposed by Republicans and is hardly at the top of a neoliberal wish list.
In contrast to Gautney, Stephen Amberg places labor at the center of his analysis of the neoliberal order and emphasizes the many ways that workplace control, economic wherewithal, and the political power of workers have eroded with neoliberal advances. He argues that “democracy thrives when working people are organized to participate in the decisions that govern their work lives with the support of political parties headed by leaders who advance participative and accountability commitments” (p. 3). This is consistent with his assertion that “there is no inevitability to class politics; there is not likely to be class voting without solidarity at work” (p. 128). The erosion of union strength—originating perhaps with the passage of Taft-Hartley in 1947 and the eventual passage of right-to-work laws in a majority of states—is a focal concern in the book. Another important subtheme is the fundamental role of race and Jim Crow in shaping the politics of the South, party conflict on a national level, and the history of the labor movement. He emphasizes the importance of “electoral rules as constitutive of projects of industrial order” (p. 74).
These multiple themes are threaded through a series of dense and detailed case studies bookended by, first, a consideration of the implications of multiparty politics in New York for union growth and progressive policies and, last, a history of the auto industry in the United States, culminating in its rescue by the Obama administration during the Great Recession. Amberg’s analyses are nuanced, informed by an understanding that “the development of the American political economy is considerably less neat than the usual image” (p. 73), a willingness to acknowledge alternative interpretations, an appreciation that “the formation of interests” (p. 76) is part of the process, and an awareness that the variety of local circumstances and concerns undermine the utility of national generalizations. In many ways, Amberg is a fox to Gautney’s hedgehog. He handles a remarkable number of themes deftly—so many that it is sometimes hard to retain sight of the big picture.
A puzzling omission is the neglect of pink-collar workers. We hear a lot about auto workers, garment workers, and construction workers but nothing about the legions of customer service reps, secretaries, hotel clerks, and receptionists. These are workers who are not likely to be unionized, are not especially well paid—and are disproportionately female. And there are a lot of them. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2022 there were nearly as many workers in the category of “office and administrative support occupations” as in the disproportionately male categories of “construction and extraction occupations” and “production occupations” combined. I was curious about how Amberg’s concerns and categories would have applied to the numerous pink-collar workers. Why did unions make so few efforts to organize them? Have these workers lost control over their work like blue-collar workers? Did they ever have control? Would the way that the workplaces employing pink-collar workers are structured ever facilitate the conditions that foster democratic citizenship in the way that Amberg envisions?
Amberg’s acknowledgments make clear that his book was long in the making. A cost of this protracted process is that he does not include certain recent relevant developments. I would love to know what he makes of organizing victories in such nontraditional settings as art museums and Planned Parenthood, as well as the union–management conflict at Starbucks. Should he undertake an investigation of these developments, I am convinced it would be thoroughly researched, dense, and challenging.
These books are complementary. They share a focus on one of the defining economic and political developments of recent decades, the neoliberal project, but differ in their substantive coverage. Taken together, they will raise the hackles of some readers, reinforce the predispositions of others, and leave all better informed.
