Reviewed: Grace Blakeley. Vulture Capitali$m: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom. New York: Atria Books, 2024. 360pp. $30.00
In popular twenty-first-century economic discourse, there are, paradoxically, two bad words: “capitalism” and “socialism.” The former term, “capitalism,” conjures up a host of unpleasant images in the popular imagination: nineteenth-century robber barons ordering the army to fire on striking miners; twentieth-century overconsumption of goods and raw material, and twenty-first-century tech oligarchs ruling over a mass of baristas living off of credit cards and student loans. The latter term, “socialism,” similarly raises images of ironically both brutal and incompetent Soviet totalitarianism, third-world banana republics wherein a corrupt kleptocracy siphons both foreign aid and tax money to fund their own wealthy lifestyle, and, in the United States, increasingly inefficient and even dangerous government organizations.
Progressively, since at least the Clinton era (but with roots in the New Left and what has been called Cultural or Frankfurt School Marxism), the left has been concerned with the issues of race and gender, all but forgetting the working class, whose interests the Old Left claimed to champion. However, in recent years, the left’s preoccupation with “wokeism” has produced disappointing electoral results and has only fueled the rise of the far right. As a result, there appears to be an effort to shift gears back to economic issues. In the past two years, several major left-wing anti-capitalist works have been released, including George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison’s Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis’s Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, and Grace Blakeley’s Vulture Capitali$m: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom.
The left’s preoccupation with “wokeism” has produced disappointing electoral results and has only fueled the rise of the far right. As a result, there appears to be an effort to shift gears back to economic issues.
Much of today’s left-wing critique of capitalism is largely in the key of Naomi Klein’s famous 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which takes aim at the newly revived bête noir of the left: neoliberalism. Blakeley’s Vulture Captitali$m is no exception to this trend. Moreover, as Klein did, Blakeley attempts to link neoliberalism with fascism and authoritarianism.
Blakeley begins Vulture Captitali$m with a bleak portrait of post-millennial Western life, wherein individuals are caught in a web of addiction to digital devices and guiltily pursue a life of endless work and consumption of goods produced around the globe (by workers toiling away in unpleasant conditions). Blakeley attributes the miserable situation to neoliberalism, which, she attempts to argue, has created an authoritarian as opposed to a truly liberal economic and social structure across the globe. Blakeley argues that Friedrich von Hayek and the Mont Pelerin society’s (largely successful) attempt to roll back Keynesian economics in the 80s, 90s, and now twenty-first century has led not to more freedom but less, as the allegedly benign state control of Keynesian democratic socialism has led to the, in Blakeley’s view, malicious and totalitarian rule of corporations.
In Blakeley’s view, increasingly monopolistic capitalism does not lead to innovation, trickledown economics, or increased productivity; rather, it leads to low productivity, low wages, and social misery.
Furthermore, in Blakeley’s view, increasingly monopolistic capitalism does not lead to innovation, trickledown economics, or increased productivity; rather, it leads to low productivity, low wages, and social misery in line with what Marx would call “alienation.” Drawing from other left-wing thinkers, Blakeley even argues that the consumer choice feted by (especially American capitalists) is itself an illusion. While the “Walmart cereal aisle” is a topic of boasting for some and an object of ridicule and even fear (especially among Europeans), it is, in Blakely’s view, an illusion: all the cereals, are, in fact, the same, made with the same ingredients by the same companies. Blakeley further takes aim at the “carousel” or “revolving door” of intimacy between corporations and politicians—a topic of concern for those on both the left and the right. Capitalism, for Blakely, is not the rule of free markets but the rule of capital.
In her criticism of capitalism as essentially tending toward monopoly, Blakeley is, obviously, influenced by Karl Marx, whom she occasionally references in the book. Like Marx but contrary to libertarian figures like Ayn Rand—and in our own day, Peter Thiel—Blakeley believes that socialism will bring about true economic and even personal and creative freedom. This is a point with which a whole host of figures (and not only neoliberals or libertarians) might take issue.
Like other (near) contemporary critics of capitalism such as Fredric Jameson and the late Mark Fisher, Blakeley sees capitalism as having a radically transformative effect on every element of society. Blakeley provides the example of “commodification,” the process by which everything has a price and is viewed principally and perhaps even exclusively in economic terms. She notes that politics is now largely indistinguishable from economics.
Moreover, like other twenty-first-century Marxist critics like George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison, Blakeley sees capitalism’s power as being largely invisible. While the power of Communist and right-wing authoritarian regimes was manifested in the open, capitalism’s power is hidden. According to this line of thought, people think they are free to choose in a capitalist society, but they are not. Additionally, in Blakeley’s argument, capitalists project the laws of capitalism as being identical to laws of nature, and thus capitalism is simply economics functioning rightly.
Blakeley sees neoliberalism as being racist and anti-immigrant…This is another issue with which some readers might object. The contemporary dissident right, for instance, also critiques neoliberalism. But it argues contra Blakeley that neoliberalism encourages open borders and open markets—to the alleged detriment of European and other Western countries.
Blakeley does admit that the world’s major corporations do not control everything, and she does warn that there are extremists and conspiracy theorists who might misuse her depiction of the enormous power resting in the hands of only a few capitalists. In addition to labeling capitalism as essentially illiberal and authoritarian, Blakeley sees capitalism and twenty-first-century neoliberalism as being racist and anti-immigrant. Blakely provides examples of migrants in the United Kingdom denied social services or were deported due to the neoliberal system. This is another issue with which some readers might object. The contemporary dissident right, for instance, also critiques neoliberalism. But it argues contra Blakeley that neoliberalism encourages open borders and open markets—to the alleged detriment of European and other Western countries.
Like Christopher Nolan’s climate change-themed sci-fi film, Tenet, Grace Blakeley places the future in the hands of her audience. Like many left-wing thinkers of the past decade, Blakeley argues for a return to a more democratic, empathetic, and communal way of living, which will allegedly create a happier and more prosperous future. This is a final point that may draw some criticism from readers. One of the defining features of the twenty-first century is the sense of pessimism and the “lifting of the veil” of polite social norms that defined the twentieth century. Much of the world’s population—especially the younger generations—has grown world-weary and cynical. Thus, it is not entirely wrong to argue for a return to more communal and empathetic forms of living. However, achieving this will be an extremely difficult task (outside of a natural disaster or some cataclysm that will reset society).
What the last twelve years of politics prove is that anything is possible. This summer, Donald J. Trump looked as if he may have been headed to prison. Now, he is about to begin his second term as president of the United States of America. The reactionary, anti-capitalist right, once a marginal phenomenon, is now influencing White House political decisions. Wokeism, a rebranding of earlier Clinton-era political correctness, has consumed itself and alienated many of the ethnic groups that it claimed to represent. There is little doubt that something is very wrong with the global economy. For some left-wing thinkers such as Grace Blakeley neoliberalism, or “vulture capitalism,” is the culprit. For others on the left such as Yanis Varoufakis, it is the new “technofeudalism” of social media, online retail, and monopolization of servers that is to blame. The right offers a whole list of reasons, including declining birth rates, diminishing practice of religion, immigration, and, of course, the disfunction of socialism and the planned economy. The big question is, however, whether those on the left who are genuinely concerned with the global common good and the flourishing of the global economy can work collaboratively with those on the right who likewise seek true economic and human flourishing.
Jesse Russell is the author of The Political Christopher Nolan: Liberalism and the Anglo-American Tradition. He has also published in scholarly journals such as Politics and Religion and Political Theology.
Image made by John Chrobak using “Turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) in flight,” by Sharp Photography licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International; and “Lower Manhattan from Jersey City November 2014 panorama 3,” by King of Hearts licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0