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Review of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracyby Quinn Slobodian (Metropolitan, 2023)

After reading historian Quinn Slobodians new book, you are not likely to think about capitalism the same way. As one blurb aptly put it, the story is head-spinning, and, by the way, great fun to read. Slobodian is a professor of the history of ideas at Wellesley College and bearer of one of my favorite Pynchonesque names on the internet, along with Match Esperloque and Con Skordilis. His style and subject matter call to mind the recently departed Mike Davis.

Slobodians book gets off to a great start, because it speaks to one of my pet peeves about the US left: we tend to think of public policy in exclusively national terms, as if we were a unitary state like France. The reality is that the US federal system, with over ninety thousand local governments, is the most decentralized in the world save for Switzerland. US states are sovereign entities with substantial independent authority; local governments are creatures of their respective state governments.

The key governmental unit in Crack-Up Capitalism is the zone, a space set apart from a countrys standard taxes and business regulations. The archetypal zone is Hong Kong, a favorite model of Milton Friedman and his Chicago School colleagues. Contrary to laissez-faire nostrums, Friedman appreciated the militant defense of free markets by the Hong Kong government.

There are thousands of zones throughout the world. The United States put its toe in the water in the 1980s during the Reagan Administration, proposing enterprise zones as a solution to urban blight. These have never amounted to much, though not for state and local governments lack of trying. Enterprise zones have mostly been an opportunity for business firms to practice locational arbitrage, moving in operations they would have carried out elsewhere for the sake of tax breaks and lax regulation. In fact, such arbitrage is part of the plan, the idea being to erode state restrictions by presenting competitive advantages in zones.

It turns out there is a vast intellectual history behind this libertarian gambit, which Slobodian ably documents. As you might expect, the Mont Pelerin Society (founded in 1947 by a group of right-wing intellectuals famously worried that socialism would engulf the world) is a key player, and neoliberalism (the subject of Slobodians previous book, Globalists) is shown to be a deeply libertarian project, in the anarcho-capitalist sense.

Its a bit disconcerting to learn that all the tech billionaires, not just Peter Thiel, betray some weakness for this hard-right worldview. Our new economic elites are not your grandpas. As Slobodian notes, A hundred years ago, the robber barons built libraries. Today, they build spaceships.

The idea of a market for government itself, founded on a multitude of locational choices, underlies the libertarian dream. Freedom, in this would-be utopia, flows from the ability of individuals to choose the laws under which they live. Businesses unshackled from government restrictions grow without limit, and citizens prosper. Economic islands of a global archipelago flourish by trading with each other.

Commitment to this hypercapitalist model has been much more concerted in other parts of the world. Crack-Up Capitalism features stories of Singapore, Somalia, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and the Bantustans of South Africa. In each case, national governments put substantial weight behind the formation of zones.

Perhaps the most novel form of the zone is one that exists completely in cyberspace. Think about the transformation of Facebook into Meta, or virtual currency like Bitcoin (originally intended to sidestep the government-regulated banking sector). Blockchain technology used for a wide variety of trading and contracting fits the bill too. Virtual zones freedom from government regulation stems from policymakers difficulty in keeping pace with new technologies, as well as the enormous sums of money the tech mammoths can use to influence public decisions.

Returning to planet earth, the joker in the deck of free libertarian enclaves is the absence of competition in the labor market. Zones are rife with exploitation of migrant workers who are taken in but afforded no citizenship rights, shipped to work by buses with barred windows, and returned to residential camps enclosed in barbed wire. The worst cases are found in places where democratic institutions are weak or absent to begin with. The working classes of the world have their hands tied when capital is concentrated in deregulated zones that prohibit labor groups of any kind, even social organizations. Zones snuff out civil society.

Zones are not, cannot be, economic autarchies, completely isolated from commerce with outside economic entities. In particular, as noted above, they rely on imported, captive labor and are largely the location for trade in goods produced elsewhere. (Cryptocurrency and virtual worlds like Meta are based on server farms that operate in metaspace.)

At the same time, zones hollow out the economic basis for welfare states by segregating and shielding capital from taxation. Wages are ground down and themselves provide limited sources of public revenue.

In an important respect, the libertarian bona fides of really existing zones are ambiguous. To be established and defended, zones require states. The governments role in the economies of zones can be considerable. In Singapore, for instance, all land is owned by the state. Elsewhere, enclaves can require protection from the outside world. In China, state direction of economic activity is ubiquitous. Basic infrastructure in some zones essential to economic life is provided by the state.

More broadly, however, beyond nation-states, big international alliances and national governments seem as strong as ever. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is fortifying the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Brazilian states show no sign of dissolution. The same can be said for the European Union. Brexit could be looked at as an attempt to zone the entire UK. It was certainly spoken about in that fashion by Leavers, going back to the leading Euroskeptic, Maggie Thatcher. But the UKs post-Brexit experience has not been a happy one.

We could reconcile this reality with zone fever by pointing out that there is a division of labor in the interests of capital. The top-level alliances maintain fiscal and monetary regimes that block the advance of social democracy. The local zonal authorities prevent democratic agitation at the base. (It doesnt always work, as the uprising against plans for zones in Honduras attests, but similar schemes remain afoot in neighboring crypto-crazy El Salvador.)

We can also apply this framework to the United States. Elite pressure keeps the brakes on social welfare of all types and substitutes culture war battles for elementary needs for health care, education, and the like. A cheap welfare state leaves more income for the wealthy to nourish their own gated communities and central business districts. Meanwhile, the superrich are said to be building luxurious bolt-holes in remote places like New Zealand, when theyre not fantasizing about leaving the planet altogether. It all adds up to economic segregation, which in the United States is also racial segregation. Actually existing libertarianism happens to be pretty racist.

The crack-up of capitalism is really the dissolution of the state and, along with it, the capacity of a democratic polity to engage in collective action against real threats, such as pandemics and climate change. Such a capability is not easily replaced. As Slobodian recounts, that was the ambition of the deeper thinkers behind Donald Trump, such as Steve Bannon, and we could say it is the program of Floridas execrable governor, presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis.

Crack-Up Capitalism is an important guide to the current struggle over how the ruling class rules. And Slobodian ultimately raises the question of whether there are cracks in the system, or whether the cracks are the system.

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Free-Market Idolatry and Hatred of Democracy Go Hand in Hand - Jacobin magazine

MADISON, Wis. The dueling contenders in Wisconsins consequential and costly Supreme Court race collided on Tuesday in their lone debate, a hostile affair that illustrated their stark disagreements over cultural issues and the role of a justice on the states high court.

The candidates, Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, and Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice, have such personal animus that they did not shake hands before or after the debate, repeatedly called each other liars and argued that electing the other would lead to a demise of Wisconsins democracy.

It was an in-person encapsulation of the enduring dynamics of the last two decades of Wisconsin politics, with meaningful factions in both parties convinced of the necessity not merely of winning but of destroying their opponents.

I am running against probably one of the most extreme partisan characters in the history of this state, Judge Protasiewicz said of Justice Kelly, who was ousted in a 2020 election. He is a true threat to our democracy.

Justice Kelly slammed Judge Protasiewicz for making a muscular defense of abortion rights and calling the states gerrymandered legislative maps rigged the two issues that sit at the centerpiece of her campaign.

She just told you that shes going to steal the legislative authority and use that in the courts, Justice Kelly said. Political questions belong in the Legislature we all know that since grade school with Schoolhouse Rock.

For a State Supreme Court debate, even in a race that has become the most expensive judicial election in American history, with $29 million spent on TV ads alone, the event turned into something of a political circus. Outside the debate, which was hosted by the State Bar of Wisconsin in an office park on the east edge of Madison, a woman dressed as a uterus reminded attendees of the stakes of the election: If Judge Protasiewicz wins, the court will be likely to overturn Wisconsins total ban on abortion, which was enacted in 1849.

In the lobby before and after the debate, several current and former Wisconsin Supreme Court members mingled with reporters, lawyers and Madison lobbyists who munched on a spread of cookies, brownies and Rice Krispie treats.

The debate was the only scheduled joint appearance to which the two candidates have agreed during the six-week general election before voting ends on April 4. Early voting began Tuesday morning.

The race is formally nonpartisan, though the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has transferred $2.5 million to the Protasiewicz campaign and has directed its army of volunteers and staff members to turn out the vote for her. Justice Kelly said during the debate that he had refused financial donations from the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which lags far behind state Democrats in fund-raising, but that he had accepted in-kind contributions.

Whichever side wins the April 4 election will hold a four-to-three majority on the court, which along with rulings on abortion and gerrymandering is expected to decide an array of voting issues ahead of and during the 2024 presidential election. Judge Protasiewicz holds a single-digit lead over Justice Kelly in private polling conducted by groups on both sides of the race. No public polls have been released.

Justice Kelly agreed this month to participate in 10 other debates and candidate forums across the state, hosted by local news organizations, rotary clubs and county bar associations, but Judge Protasiewicz declined them all while agreeing only to Tuesdays midday debate. That event was set to air on a delay later in the afternoon on television stations in Madison and La Crosse but not in the states other markets, including Milwaukee, the largest by far.

Justice Kellys campaign has accused Judge Protasiewicz of hiding behind what has emerged as her colossal fund-raising advantage.

The Protasiewicz campaign has aired $9.8 million in television advertisements, while Justice Kelly began advertising only this past weekend.

He has spent $415,000, though conservative outside groups have spent $6.4 million on his behalf, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Outside groups backing Judge Protasiewicz have spent an additional $2.6 million.

Much of the debate centered on abortion and crime, the two issues that have dominated the television ad campaign in the race. Judge Protasiewicz gave no ground in her defense of abortion rights, even though Justice Kelly and the debates moderators suggested she had already made up her mind on how she would rule on a current legal challenge to the states abortion ban.

Abortion, which became illegal overnight in Wisconsin last summer after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, has become so central to the court campaign that even organizations that focus on other issues have turned to abortion rights.

Everytown, the gun control group funded largely by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, is broadcasting a 30-second TV ad in the state this week that spends half its time attacking Justice Kellys abortion stance before reminding voters he opposed background checks on new gun sales.

I think the electorate deserves to know what a persons values are rather than hiding them, Judge Protasiewicz said at the debate. Ive also been very clear that any decision that I render will be made based solely on the law and the Constitution. She went on, I can tell you that if my opponent is elected I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books.

Justice Kelly, who has been endorsed by Wisconsins leading anti-abortion organizations, argued that his association with them did not mean he would vote in their favor.

You dont know what Im thinking about that abortion ban, you have no idea, he responded. Justice Kelly said the anti-abortion groups had endorsed him after he explained to them his judicial philosophy. He said he made no promises about how he would rule on the case most important to their cause.

I explained to them at length the role of the jurist instead of talking about politics, which is all you do, he said.

Justice Kelly appeared to be a far more skilled debater, delivering prepared attack lines with ease. Judge Protasiewicz was less polished she flubbed her opening statement, instead asking how to decipher the clocks that showed how much time she had left to speak.

After nearly an hour, the moderators asked the two candidates how to best inspire public confidence in the states high court, given the nasty and partisan tone of this years campaign and past ugly headlines that included a 2011 episode in which one justice accused another of choking her during a debate in the courts chambers.

Judge Protasiewicz called for a re-examination of the courts recusal rules, which largely leave the call up to each justice, and more transparency before decisions are delivered.

But for Justice Kelly, the way to improve the Wisconsin Supreme Courts legitimacy was to place him back on it.

First, by winning, he said. When I say that my opponent has told sloppy and irresponsible lies, I mean that in every possible way.

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Wisconsin Court Candidates Clash Over Abortion and Democracy - The New York Times

In partnership with the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy will host Brazilian historian and journalist Dr. Thiago Krause and former U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Michael McKinley to discuss similarities between the Jan. 8 insurrection in Brazil this year and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. This in-person event will be held on Thursday, March 30, at 6 p.m. at Scarritt Bennett Centers Laskey Great Hall.

Register here to attend; a recording of the event will be made available afterward in English and Portuguese. Celso Castilho, director of Vanderbilt Universitys Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and associate professor in history, will moderate the conversation.

On Jan. 8, 2023, hundreds of election-deniers stormed Brazils Congress building, Supreme Court, and presidential palace following the defeat of Brazils then-president Jair Bolsonaro to demand he had won the election. While this event happened under its own circumstances and within a different context, it begs questions about parallels and connections with the U.S. Jan. 6 insurrection.

Amid this hour-long event, Dr. Krause, Ambassador McKinley, and Dir. Castilho will explore what these two insurrections have in common, dispel misconceptions and help us all understand more clearly how interdependent, threatened, and resilient democracies are throughout our hemisphere.

Register to attend this in-person event.

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Dr. Thiago Krause is a Brazilian historian and journalist. He maintains an important public voice in Brazil, as a writer for the Folha de So Paulo, the Brazilian national paper of record. Dr. Krause is also a reference point for US-based discussions about Brazilian politics.

Ambassador P. Michael McKinley (ret.) served as the US Ambassador to Peru (2007-2010), Colombia (2010-2013), Afghanistan (2014-2016), and Brazil (2017-2018). His final posting was as senior advisor to the Secretary of State in 2018-2019. His earlier assignments included the United Kingdom, Mozambique, Uganda, Bolivia, and Belgium. Ambassador McKinley earned a doctorate from Oxford University in 1982 and is the author of an acclaimed study on colonial Venezuela. He joined The Cohen Group as a Senior Counselor after a 37-year career at the Department of State.

Celso Thomas Castilho is the director of Vanderbilt Universitys Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and an associate professor in the Department of History. Castilhos research focuses on the political, cultural, and intellectual histories of modern Latin America. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley, where he began work on slavery and abolition in Brazil; other interests include the public sphere, literary culture, and Afro-diasporic thought.

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REGISTER: Elections and Insurrections: Attacks on Democracy in ... - Vanderbilt University News

PHILADELPHIA Its just a few blocks on Arch Street between the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest art school and museum in the United States, and the African American Museum in Philadelphia, founded in 1976 to celebrate the achievements of African Americans from pre-colonial times to the current day. Yet rarely have visitors at one museum made the walk to the other. How do we create this corridor between us? posed Dejay Duckett, vice president of curatorial services at AAMP.

Now, an unusual collaborative exhibition has opened at the two institutions; together they commissioned 20 artists including Alison Saar, Hank Willis Thomas, Wilmer Wilson IV and Dread Scott to make new work and bring a multitude of perspectives to the knotty question Benjamin Franklin reportedly pondered in 1787, as the Constitution was being written: Was the sun rising or setting on American democracy?

Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America, on view through Oct. 8, was conceived during Donald J. Trumps tumultuous presidency by Jodi Throckmorton, then curator of contemporary art at the academy known as PAFA, in partnership with Duckett. They started conversations with artists in early 2020 that gestated throughout the pandemic lockdown, the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd that reignited a nationwide racial justice movement, and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, all buffeting the shows central query.

None of us had any idea how the world would change, and that is baked into the exhibition now, said Duckett, noting tremendous staff upheaval during this period that roiled both host institutions and the museum field at large. All the good and the bad of this project is a microcosm of what the show is about. Democracy is fraught and being able to make sure everyone is heard is difficult. AAMP is a smaller, less wealthy museum, and Duckett worked hard to maintain at every point that we were staying on a level playing field.

Throckmorton, who moved last year to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, in Sheboygan, Wis., as its chief curator, was inspired by the oft-told story of Franklins uncertainty as he looked toward George Washingtons chair, with its symbolic motif carved into the back a sun bisected by a horizon line. Franklin would conclude, Now I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.

Even at that really early moment with people who were true believers, they were questioning it that in fact it is patriotic to question, said Throckmorton, who in 2019 made the 15-minute walk to AAMP to bounce the idea of a collaboration off her colleague.

When Duckett heard the proposed title she responded with the line Facing the rising sun of our new day begun from James Weldon Johnsons Lift Every Voice and Sing, written in 1900. It would be almost impossible to consider an exhibition with that name without thinking about the Black national anthem, Duckett said.

The curators split a grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and compiled distinct lists of artists, which they refined together, with Duckett selecting Black artists exclusively, in keeping with her institutions focus. She conceded Wilson to PAFA, where he has made alternative kinds of monuments. All of us had to keep reminding ourselves this is one exhibition, she said.

At AAMP, which is turning over its more than 12,000 square feet of exhibition space to contemporary artworks for the first time, the nine artists include John Akomfrah, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Demetrius Oliver and Deborah Willis.

At PAFA, which has been diversifying the artists represented in its trove of American art dating from the 1760s, Throckmorton selected 11 artists, predominantly women, including Shiva Ahmadi, Lenka Clayton, Tiffany Chung, Rose B. Simpson, Sheida Soleimani and Saya Woolfalk, and got an upfront commitment by PAFA to acquire something by each in the show. I was looking for artists that I thought were already answering that question in their work, Throckmorton said. Galleries in the historic landmark building were emptied for the new exhibition.

The transformation at PAFAs ostentatious Moorish-style building, opened in 1876 when the city hosted the Worlds Fair, is striking. Throckmorton acknowledged it was a big ask of the institution to put its prized collection in storage. But what does it mean to really shake up peoples thinking?

At the top of the grand stairwell, in place of Benjamin Wests two 19th-century biblical paintings, Eamon Ore-Giron has made two monumental abstracted cosmic landscapes, each with black rays emanating from the center and a constellation of stylized orbs. One canvas could suggest dawn, the other dusk.

These works are meant to position the viewer in a space where they are interpreting dawn and dusk, said Ore-Giron, who has depicted both transitional moments as fundamentally similar rather than opposite. Americas filled with this weird duality. To me this two-part exhibition structure just reinforced the idea of perspective.

In a gallery at PAFA once filled with 19th-century marble figurative sculptures, Petah Coynes majestic black tree now holds the floor. Its boughs are weighted with more than a dozen white peacocks, as if in conversation. She described it as symbolic of her generation, whose members are now in their 70s and 80s. A lot of us are disappointed, Coyne said of the dream of democracy. My generation tried very hard but I think we failed.

Yet Coyne answers the exhibitions question with a vision of hope. Climbing a specially-built stair, viewers can poke their heads into the light-filled rafters where 11 glorious wax-dipped bouquets of silk flowers are suspended, with three bright blue peacocks perched in the wings. Looking to the next generations, I can see their hunger for solving so many of the problems, said Coyne.

At PAFA, Dyani White Hawk was inspired by Lift Every Voice and Sing for her meditative video and sound wall piece composed of mirrored glass panels. Viewers can see themselves reflected amid images of human, animal, plant and spiritual life projected on triangles, connected by letters spelling relative. I want the work to feel like an offering, she said.

As a Native American artist, acutely attuned to power dynamics, White Hawk said she hopes the partnership between PAFA and AAMP upsets the scales of perceived importance between the institutions. If theyre doing it right, PAFA has a tremendous amount to gain from the storytelling and listening and networking that can take place through the community that AAMP will inevitably bring.

At AAMPs brutalist-style modern building, La Vaughn Belle responded directly to the arc of the exhibition prompt. For her 35-foot lyric video spanning a ramp between floors, Belle shot the sunrise in St. Croix, the easternmost point of the U.S. territories, where she is based, and sunset in Guam, the westernmost territory.

So much of Manifest Destiny was about settling all these different places, she said. This is about unsettling the history and mythology about what America is.

When Rene Stout was approached to contribute, she had long felt pessimistic about the state of the country and her work is a form of escapism. At AAMP, she is showing drawn portraits from her series Hoodoo Assassins, of people of all races and genders, with lists detailing their special powers. Ive created an army who protect my parallel universe where all people were equal.

Unaware of how the others were responding to the mission, Stout wondered if all the optimists would be at PAFA: Hows the conversation between these two parts going to break down?

Mark Thomas Gibson tried to imagine a world without white supremacy. On the floor of a darkened gallery, he has made a gypsum-cast grave with a tombstone inscribed Klansman. Sprouting from the dark soil is an animatronic daisy, which moves searchingly to music that begins as a dirge and swells to something anticipatory. Im using elements with a little spectacle attached as bait on the hook, Gibson said.

During the height of the pandemic, Gibson felt museums were beginning to take an honest look under the hood but now are back to polishing the car, he said. Its up to the institutions to go beyond the lip service, he added.

Duckett hopes to be able to acquire some works from the exhibition for AAMPs permanent collection but wants community feedback before making strategic decisions. With an annual operating budget of less than $3 million and no endowment, AAMP is in a very different financial position than PAFA, which has a $20 million annual operating budget and a $52 million endowment.

We are partners but we are two very different institutions, Duckett said. For us to be able to talk candidly about equity and make sure at every step that was respected, it was very good for both institutions.

Throckmorton said the collaboration proved humbling in ways. It asked us to take a hard look at what we mean by partnerships, she said. Are we willing to share resources and come to the table again and again, and also let artists challenge us? The curators tried to let the artists voices lead the project.

Judith Tannenbaum, an independent curator brought in by Anna Marley, chief of curatorial affairs, stewarded the project on the PAFA side after Throckmorton moved to Wisconsin. Tannenbaum described the logistical challenges of group decision making: How do you write a wall text jointly?

Last month, two similarly disparate neighboring institutions the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of the African Diaspora announced the creation of a joint curatorial position to develop projects bridging both.

Monetta White, executive director and chief executive at the Museum of the African Diaspora, hopes that other institutions will look to these kind of partnerships, especially those that include Black institutions, as examples of what is possible, she said. The challenge, she said, lies in the vast difference in size and pocketbook. Historically Black museums are not coming to the table with apples to apples, White said, adding it takes a commitment from leadership to see how this could help both institutions.

So, is the sun rising on such mutually beneficial teamwork between historically white and historically Black museums?

Duckett laughed. If they dare.

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What Would Ben Franklin Say? Artists Weigh the Dream of Democracy - The New York Times

Are Stealth Democrats Really Committed to Democracy? Process Preferences Revisited

By Andrew J. Bloeser, Tarah Williams, Candaisy Crawford and Brian M. Harward, Allegheny College in Meadville

Scholarship on stealth democracy finds that many citizens want to avoid the debate and conflict that often come with democratic governance. This scholarship has argued that citizens adopt this posture because they are uncomfortable with disagreement and desire a more expedient political process that enables leaders to make decisions without discussion or compromise. We revisit this argument in light of recent political developments that suggest another reason why citizens may desire a more expedient political process. We examine the possibility that some citizens are not merely uncomfortable with disagreement but also want leaders who will aggressively protect them and champion their interests. Using a nationally representative survey, we ask citizens about their preferences for stealth democracy. We also ask questions that tap into their willingness to support leaders who would bend the rules for supporters and take aggressive action against political opponents. We find that a substantial component of the electorate continues to prefer a stealth version of democracy. However, we also find that many stealth democrats are willing to support leadership practices that would threaten or even undermine democratic norms. We argue that this evidence indicates that, in recent years, many citizens who appear to desire stealth democracy pose a threat to democracy itself.

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Are Stealth Democrats Really Committed to Democracy? Process ... - Political Science Now