How Free Market Ideology Perverts the Vocabulary of Democracy

by Jason Stanley

Citizens of the United States are quite taken with the vocabulary of liberal democracy, with
words such as freedom and democracy, which conjure key democratic values and distance
the nation from the Old World taint of oligarchy and aristocracy. It is much less clear, however,
that Americans are guided by democratic ideals. Or that ideology and propaganda play a crucial
role in concealing the large gap between rhetoric and reality.

In truth, the Old World systems have proved extremely difficult to shrug off. In their 2014 paper,
Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page argue that, as in an oligarchy, ordinary US citizens have no
substantial power over policy decisions [and] little or no independent influence on policy at all.

Moreover, the US regularly subscribes to a form of managerial aristocracy. In Michigan,

Governor Rick Snyder successfully replaced the mayors and city councils of several cities with
emergency managers supposedly able to negotiate financial emergencies better than elected
officials. In the current presidential race, Hillary Clinton advertises her managerial expertise via
the language of policy, while Donald Trump parades his via the language of business. Neither
language is democratic. Neither invites self-governance.

Why is there no outcry about these oligarchical and aristocratic methods? Is it because
plutocrats have power over the mechanisms of representation and repression? Is it, in short,
about power? In my view, power cant explain why voters are so enthusiastically voting for the
very people who promise the least democratic outcomes. Nor are Americans knowingly
rejecting democratic ideals. Instead, I see an anti-democratic ideology at work, inverting the
meaning of democratic vocabulary and transforming it into propaganda.

Consider the example of mass incarceration in the US. Black Americans make up around 13 per
cent of the population, but around 40 per cent of countrys ballooning prison population. Even if
we assume, falsely, that black American crime rates justify this disparity, why is the state so
punitive? Shouldnt citizens instead be motivated to address the underlying socio-economic
conditions that lead to such dramatic differences in behaviour between equals?
In The New Jim Crow (2010), Michelle Alexander argues that a national rhetoric of law and order
has long justified mass incarceration. President Richard Nixon used it to crack down on black
Americans under the cover of an epidemic of heroin use; this continued in the 1980s, as a
merciless war on drugs whose victims were all too often black men. In the US, the ideology of
anti-black racism takes the view that blacks are violent and lazy, thereby masking the
misapplication of the ideals of law and order.

Compare the war on drugs to the current heroin crisis among middle-class white Americans,
which has led to a national discussion of the socio-economic distress facing this class. Law and
order doesnt come into it. The new face of heroin is new because, unlike the old face, it calls
out for an empathetic response, rather than a punitive one. Now that heroin is ravaging white
communities not black ones, the language of law and order (deemed appropriate to keep blacks
in their place) has been retired. More significant still is that while the ideals of law and order
preclude their unequal application, the propaganda of law and order does not: Americans were
thus prevented from seeing the disguised gradient of law and order by racist ideology.

But what is the flawed ideology masking the misapplication of democratic ideals? Lets bring it
out by exploring the most cherished US democratic ideal, the ideal of freedom popularly
embodied in attacks on big government. Voters are repeatedly told that big government is
the primary source of coercion that limits freedom, which it certainly sometimes does, as the
Patriot Act reminds us. But corporations also limit civic freedom in significant ways.

For example, corporations are leading direct attacks on the freedom to collectively bargain. Via
outsourcing, free trade agreements allow corporations to move jobs to countries where labour
is cheap; meanwhile, as a result of pressure from the conservative non-profit Citizens United,
corporations can fund political candidates, thereby increasing corporate control of government.
The weaker a government is, the more power corporations have over it. Across the political
spectrum, there is anger that government is too influenced by industry lobbyists.

Voters concerned about government as opposed to corporate constraints on freedom are

under the grip of what I will call a free market ideology. According to that ideology, the world of
capital is by its nature free. All other substantial freedoms, including political freedom and
personal freedom, are made possible by the freedom of markets.
Why do citizens who cherish freedom as an ideal vote to constrain their own freedoms by
increasing the power of corporations? Its because free market ideology masks the ways in
which corporations deploy undemocratic modes of coercion. When a corporation bans
employees from expressing, outside of work, opinions it disapproves of, this is seen as a
legitimate protection of its economic interests. If workers have to sign non-disclosure contracts
that silence them after they are employed elsewhere, its accepted as the cost of doing
business.

The contradictions here are telling. If our most basic freedoms are self-expression and choiceful
action, then corporations frequently limit our most basic freedoms. In liberal democratic theory,
it is government that is regarded as the protector of such rights. But its precisely because
government is attacked in the name of freedom that corporations have vastly greater power to
constrain and shape it.

Free market ideology uses democratic vocabulary as propaganda, obscuring a non-democratic

reality. Take education. In a liberal democracy, education equips citizens with the tools and
confidence to weigh in on policy decisions and play a role in their own self-governance. Hence,
democratic education is at the very centre of democratic political philosophy, as the
philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, W E B Du Bois, John Dewey and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
attest. But the US rhetoric surrounding education is explicitly anti-democratic. Citizens prefer
efficient education systems that train children to perform vocational tasks, rather than
education that fosters community, autonomy and civic participation.

The rhetoric politicians use when running for office is usually explicitly anti-democratic.
Managerial culture is paradigmatically undemocratic: a CEO is like a feudal lord. But if markets
are zones of freedom, then CEOs ought to be its representatives. Free market ideology also
explains why, when politicians with great wealth run for office, voters are not put off by the
threat of oligarchy: wealth is acquired in markets which are the source of freedom. Finally,
free market ideology explains why voters so easily give up their right to hold institutions
accountable to experts who promise efficiency. Efficiency is the ideal of business, and business
is the engine of the market again the source of freedom.

Free market ideology has perverted democratic vocabulary, transforming it into propaganda
that, in turn, obscures an anti-democratic reality. Yet theres hope that voters have wised up to
this and begun to challenge party elites. Such moments of awareness feel dangerous but offer
great opportunities. Voters are using the proper tool elections to make their concerns heard.
Will anyone listen?