The Sudden Unpopularity of Neoliberal Centrists written by Uri Harris
https://quillette.com/2019/03/14/the-sudden-unpopularity-of-neoliberal-
On Friday, Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator and 2020 presidential candidate, pledged that her administration would, “make big, structural changes to the tech sector to promote more competition — including breaking up Amazon, Facebook, and Google.” This would consist of two steps, she wrote.
First, large tech platforms would be, “designated as ‘Platform Utilities’ and broken apart from any participant on that platform.” Platform Utilities, “would be required to meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users,” and, “would not be allowed to transfer or share data with third parties.” In practice, this would designate Amazon Marketplace, Google’s ad exchange, and Google Search as Platform Utilities, thus requiring them to be split off from the rest of Amazon’s and Google’s services, respectively.
Second, her administration, “would appoint regulators committed to reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers.” She specifically mentions Amazon’s ownership of Whole Foods and Zappos, Facebook’s ownership of WhatsApp and Instagram, and Google’s ownership of Waze, Nest, and Doubleclick.
In an article in the Washington Post, tech and policy writers Tony Romm and Brian Fung note that Warren’s pledge, “sent shock waves through Silicon Valley, where for years, tech companies enjoyed close ties to national Democrats who wanted to burnish their digital credentials and benefit from tech executives’ deep pockets.” This is rapidly changing, Romm and Fung note, suggesting that tech experts, “fear other Democratic presidential hopefuls soon would follow her lead.”
In an appeal to these ties, The Computer and Communications Industry Association, “a trade group that represents Amazon, Facebook and Google,” according to Romm and Fung, published a response saying that Warren’s pledge, “is misaligned with progressive values, many of which are shared within the tech industry.”
There’s nothing unusual historically about progressives wanting to break up powerful corporations, of course. And while some conservatives have criticised the early Democratic primary discourse for being mired in political correctness, there’s none of that in Warren’s pledge, which is more old-school progressive. So why were tech leaders so surprised? Well, part of the reason seems to be, as the CCIA response alludes to, that many of them think of themselves as progressive, and therefore as allies.
A similar dynamic appeared to play out earlier this year, when former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz came under heavy attack by progressives after announcing he was considering a presidential bid as an independent. Some of the animosity towards Schultz stems from the possibility of him drawing votes from the Democratic candidate and thus helping Donald Trump get re-elected—a reaction he might have expected—but it’s evident that the dislike of him goes beyond that, and surely took him by surprise. After all, not only was Schultz until recently a lifelong Democrat, but as Fortune’s Beth Kowitt points out, he was, “one of the early leaders of the CEO activist movement,” championing a number of progressive causes.
It seems clear that the type of progressivism that Schultz and many tech leaders subscribe to, one that seeks to combine social progressivism with relatively laissez-faire capitalism, is quickly going out of fashion. In fact, what’s especially interesting is the extent to which this position has become disliked across the political spectrum. A poll of Schultz’s candidacy revealed a remarkably consistent negative opinion of him across not just Democrats and Republicans, but Independents as well.
It’s easy to think of social progressivism as the pursuit of a set of relatively independent causes: gay marriage, gun control, universal health care. This is presumably how Schultz, for example, thinks of it. In that case, one’s position of various socially progressive issues would seem to have little to do with one’s support for capitalism. One might even say that capitalism provides the resources for these things to be pursued, and therefore that social progressivism and laissez-faire capitalism are mutually supportive. This is essentially the Third Way argument.
The problem with this view, though, is that it takes a highly simplistic view of what social progressivism entails. The vast majority of social progressivism done by corporations, for example, does not involve the pursuit of specific political issues. Rather, it’s discursive. When Nike makes Colin Kaepernick one of the faces of its brand, when Gillette develops an ad critical of toxic masculinity, when Disney puts out social justice-oriented movies, they’re not so much pursuing specific political issues as lending their financial and cultural power towards the promotion of socially progressive norms. In many cases, these initiatives are tied to their brand and products.
For every ad a corporation runs encouraging people to vote for a political initiative, it runs a hundred ads presenting a product or service through the lens of a socially progressive narrative, say, of female empowerment or racial diversity or sexual liberation or some other broad social norm. Corporate involvement in social progressivism, for the most part, is about changing society through social norms.
This is also true for individuals. The socially progressive culture at elite American colleges that writer and former lecturer William Deresiewicz describes in a 2017 essay for The American Scholar, for example, has very little to do with specific political policies. It’s almost entirely about broad social norms for speech and behaviour, especially relating to race, gender, and sexuality, that students impose on themselves and each other. READ IT ALL AT SITE
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