By Philip Klein
Thursday, May 27, 2021
When an article recently popped up on my Twitter feed with the headline, “Americans Need to Break the Chains of Corporate Slavery,” my first thought was that it sounded like something appearing in MIM Notes — a publication that a group known as the Maoist International Movement used to distribute on my college campus back in the 1990s. But in reality, it was a headline at the pro-Trump website American Greatness, which arose out of the 2016 primary with the aim of being the “leading voice of the next generation of American Conservatism.”
To be sure, the article, authored by Saurabh Sharma and Nick Solheim of the group American Moment, was not in fact an argument for a Maoist revolution. It made the case that by directing their energies elsewhere and embracing “free-market absolutism,” conservatives had allowed the Left to intimidate and infiltrate the world’s most powerful corporations. “We passed a series of tax cuts for the wealthy and repealed some meaningless regulations, calling that victory,” the authors lamented. “At the same time, the Left’s allies in government threatened corporations that didn’t march to their progressive tune.”
These arguments are part of a growing movement on the right challenging the longstanding commitment of conservatives to limited government and free enterprise. Such arguments proliferate on cable news, talk radio, and social media. They are also gaining steam while examples of “woke capitalism” become more abundant. Unless major corporations change course, such anti-free-market sentiment will only grow, presenting a potentially fatal threat to the conservative movement as it has existed for decades as well as to the cause of limited government.
In the second half of the 20th century, the conservative movement was built around a loose collection of intellectuals and activists who found some common ground on social and economic matters. In National Review, the legendary Frank Meyer made the case for what became known as fusionism, roughly understood as an alliance between traditionalists and libertarians based on shared interests. This general idea took on other forms and descriptions, such as “three-legged-school” conservatism (a reference to the bond among social, economic, and national-security conservatives), or Reaganite conservatism (named after the most politically successful adherent to this ideological approach).
The popularly accepted view is that fusionist ideas were a product of the Cold War, when conservatives of various stripes were willing to set aside their differences in the name of fighting the common enemy of Communism. The fall of the Soviet Union, according to this version of events, led to a fracturing of this alliance. Yet this perspective does not actually stand up to much scrutiny.
Conservatives were largely united during the Clinton years and early on during the War on Terror. While it is true that George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was an effort to merge social conservatism with a broader acceptance of government, it’s also true that some of the most passionate Republican opponents of this turn (such as Mike Pence in the House and Tom Coburn in the Senate) were also some of the most staunch social conservatives. During the Obama era, Evangelicals played a dominant role in the limited-government protest movement, with three-quarters of those who identified with the Tea Party considering themselves Christian conservatives.
Trump’s ascension in 2016 created well-documented fissures among conservatives, especially on issues such as trade and immigration. Yet for as much as Trump was a disruptive force, it’s possible to view him as a functionally fusionist president. As odd as this may sound to Trump skeptics, the reality is that for four years, he appointed Federalist Society–approved judges, ran a pro-life administration, and pursued a policy of corporate tax cuts and deregulation that could have been enacted by Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, or any Republican. Trump may have fumed against Big Tech on Twitter and made noises about regulating them, but he never took any real actions to rein in Google, Apple, Facebook, or Twitter. While Trump’s traditional conservative critics see his presidency as one of populism run amok, to those who actually want to see a more muscular anti-corporate conservatism, his administration was a tremendous missed opportunity. Trump gave them symbolism, not tangible victories. His bombastic rhetoric placated the populist mob while his policies helped large corporations. This crowd is less likely to settle for empty words in the future.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson stirred up a hornet’s nest in 2019 with a series of monologues taking aim at capitalism and what he saw as conservatism’s uncritical embrace of the free market. He argued that, far from capitalism being the savior that conservatives often treated it as, it had hollowed out small towns and rural communities, promoted drug addiction, and destroyed families. Such critiques of capitalism by conservatives have only become fiercer and more frequent as corporations have become more “woke.”
Just this year, we’ve seen Twitter ban Trump and other conservatives while allowing Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei to use the platform to incite rocket attacks on Israelis. We watched as Major League Baseball moved its all-star game in reaction to the Georgia voting law that also drew blowback from hundreds of corporations. We witnessed large companies pressure Republican governors to veto transgender legislation passed by Republican legislatures. And we had reports on “critical race theory” being peddled to employees at major corporations.
In the current environment, when you see somebody railing against how the system is rigged to benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the working class, you have to double-check to see whether it’s coming from somebody on the far left or the populist right. On any given day, Senator Elizabeth Warren or Senator Josh Hawley can be talking about targeting Big Tech. When J. D. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy author and possible Ohio Senate candidate, was asked by Carlson recently about regulating Google, given that it is a private company, he responded, “I just don’t care.” He explained, “I don’t care that Google is a private company, because it has too much power. And if you want to have a country where people can live their lives freely, you have to be concerned about power, whether it’s concentrated in government or concentrated in big corporations.” When companies lined up against the Georgia voting law, Vance tweeted, “Raise their taxes and do whatever else is necessary to fight these goons. We can have an American Republic or a global oligarchy, and it’s time for choosing.”
There have always been tensions among different factions on the right. Sometimes the debates have boiled down to emphasis, with more economically minded conservatives wishing that Republicans would downplay social issues, and social conservatives often feeling neglected whenever the party gained power. There have also been fierce debates over whether — and to what extent — it is appropriate to use government to promote moral values. Despite these very real debates, the movement remained largely intact for decades. Yet the phenomenon of “woke capitalism” presents a much different and more acute threat to conservative cohesion than even Trump did.
In the past, it was easy enough for conservatives to unify when the enemies in the culture war were Washington, Hollywood, the media, and academia. But with large businesses increasingly viewed as the enforcement arm of the cultural Left, the competing schools of conservatism are moving beyond tension and toward direct conflict. When companies try to bludgeon a state over laws passed by its Republican legislature, it’s hard to convince angry conservatives that they should oppose retaliatory action. When conservatives heed the calls to form their own social-media platform, only to see it crippled by powerful tech companies, lectures about free-market principles carry little resonance. When conservative books are being eliminated from the largest online bookseller without explanation, it’s hard to clap back with “Start your own Amazon!”
Another factor that is creating a special threat to fusionism is that right now, the cancel culture and anti-PC debates have become more animating for a lot of conservatives than traditional social issues. For example, there was a lot of rage on the right over the cancellation of some Dr. Seuss books and about Gina Carano’s losing her Mandalorian gig over social-media posts. But when Democrats passed a $1.9 trillion COVID-relief bill that broke with longstanding consensus by leaving out language preventing federal funding for elective abortions, it didn’t draw as much attention. This poses a threat, because while conservatives can reconcile being pro-life and economically libertarian, backing retaliatory taxes against corporations that aggressively oppose laws conservatives like is incompatible with limited-government principles.
Those of us who still believe in preserving limited-government principles must contend with the reality that, to many conservatives, espousing free-market ideas in an era of woke capitalism is hard to differentiate from unilateral disarmament. While the Left has no qualms about threatening and intimidating corporations into moving leftward culturally, limited-government principles make conservatives reluctant to do so. In practice, many conservatives have come to feel that they are in an abusive relationship. Corporations can take aim at conservative values and still can count on tax cuts and deregulation when Republicans take power.
This having been said, there are a number of problems that anti-corporate conservatives have not fully grappled with. One is the practical effects of their proposed solutions. Forged out of a sense that “we have to do something,” many ideas that have been presented in the interest of fighting back against woke corporations are half-baked.
For instance, Hawley, who is the most prominent elected Republican on the issue of combating Big Tech, introduced a Senate bill called the “Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act” that targets Section 230, which protects social-media companies from litigation stemming from statements made by users. Under the bill, companies would lose immunity but could apply to the Federal Trade Commission every two years for an immunity certificate to be rewarded if they can show that they are removing content in a politically neutral manner.
In practice, this would lead to less speech, not more, as companies would be reluctant to allow any controversial comments that could open them up to liability or endanger their ability to earn immunity. Meanwhile, the immunity certificates are likely to create more consolidation in social media, because only the biggest players with the resources to monitor comments and hire lawyers to represent them to the FTC would survive. Furthermore, leaving it up to a government body to determine bias would mean that a Democratic-controlled commission could use the certificates against alternative conservative platforms. It would also pave the way for Democrats to push for further intervention elsewhere, such as bringing back the Fairness Doctrine and effectively eliminating conservative talk radio.
Conservatives have also called for various retaliatory measures against companies, such as those who lined up against the Georgia election law. Yet this is constitutionally questionable and certainly against the spirit of the First Amendment. It’s one thing to oppose various corporate favors for all businesses, but it’s another thing to set different policies for different companies based on their political activism.
Beyond the specifics, there is a more fundamental issue at stake. For much of its history, American conservatism has held that individuals, the economy, and society are better off when the government stays out of their lives as much as possible. To credibly make this argument, conservatives have to be able to accept that this can sometimes lead to outcomes they may not like. Once conservatives enter the realm of discarding principles in order to produce their preferred outcomes, they have fundamentally surrendered to the Left.
If the argument is that Big Tech has become too powerful and dominant and needs to be reined in, it’s hard to see what the case is against Senator Warren’s efforts to go after Wall Street. If the government has a role in making sure conservatives don’t get banned from Twitter, it’s harder to argue against Senator Bernie Sanders’ call for government intervention to make sure everybody has health insurance. If conservatives endorse the practice of taking retaliatory actions against companies that oppose their preferred policies, Democrats will use the same tactics to coerce companies into adopting their positions.
The comeback to this argument, of course, is that Democrats will go scorched earth whenever they are in power, so conservatives should never hesitate to go after their ideological enemies by any means necessary. The problem with this view is that over time, the Left will benefit to a much greater degree than conservatives from the breakdown of institutions and the erosion of checks on government power. If both ideological movements are committed to outcome-based governance, the Left will be able to do more damage because they are the side that has many more ideas about how the government ought to intervene and how Americans ought to be living their lives.
So one of the main challenges to fusionism in the coming years will be to consider whether there is a way to respond to the boiling anger that many conservatives have toward corporate America while preserving the principles of limited government. Stated frankly, it may be impossible. The desire for drawing blood against Big Tech and other large corporations may be too great among the populist Right to allow for any return to embracing free-market economics.
Yet if the conservative coalition is going to survive this challenge, one possibility is a reconsideration of the sort of libertarian populism that was percolating on the right before Trump appeared. That is, conservatives shouldn’t rethink their support for capitalism; instead, they should recognize the distinction between being pro–free enterprise and pro–Big Business. My former colleague Tim Carney has spent much of his career warning about crony capitalism, explaining how big corporations often work to expand government to advance their business interests and hurt the little guy.
Rather than target specific corporations for embracing cultural liberalism, conservatives would be much better served by eliminating all tax breaks, government subsidies, and special-interest regulatory carve-outs for Big Business in general. For instance, rather than target MLB after the fact for boycotting Georgia, it would be better if conservatives everywhere took a firm stand against taxpayer subsidies for sports stadiums. Rather than calling for the elimination of special tax breaks for certain companies in response to them taking political stances, it would be much better to avoid special tax breaks in favor of a predictable and neutral tax system. Conservatives should not reward “pro-business” Republican governors who stumble over themselves to woo companies to open offices in their states; they should reward governors who maintain a reasonable tax and regulatory environment that is the same for all comers. Conservatives should see themselves more as champions of small business than of large corporations that successfully lobby for regulations that stifle competition and that ask for handouts when things go south.
Such an approach to governing would be consistent with the anti-corporate sentiment of many conservatives while being compatible with free-market beliefs. A shift away from cronyism would also have an ancillary benefit of signaling to corporations that they can no longer treat conservatives as cheap dates, who will howl about wokeness but ultimately do corporate bidding when push comes to shove.
Whatever the ultimate answer, conservatives who still believe in the idea of free markets and limited government will have to have a response to the growing anti-corporate movement on the right, because it isn’t going away.
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