George Soros, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, what do they have in common? They are multibillionaires, who in varying degrees, are on the liberal or progressive side of the political spectrum, a place where one doesn’t normally find billionaires.I anticipate skepticism about these examples, indeed of the very idea that the super-rich are capable of thinking and acting against their class interests. Michael Bloomberg, for instance, is defensive of Wall Street, but on a range of issues such as gun control, climate change and healthcare his record is exemplary. To be sure, none of these issues speak directly against the Bloomberg’s class interests, short or long, but it is hardly news that character is not invariably a reflex of class. Class consciousness did not prevent Friedrich Engels the son of a wealthy manufacturer, from joining Karl Marx in raising the specter of communism and providing funds to Marx, an impoverished member of the middle class. The American billionaires listed above may be exceptional in their sympathies, but there are other very wealthy capitalists like them who are relatively speaking benign presences on the political scene unappreciated by fellow liberals and progressives. Their association with wealth and in particular the Street on which their wealth accumulates make them suspect as allies. They are part of the 1 percent that is or perhaps already has turned the country into a plutocracy. Should they be viewed simply in class terms?
None of these 1 percenters has renounced capitalism. There is no Engels among them. Steyer’s agenda in his pursuit of the Democratic nomination for president attacks the corporatism that contributed immensely to his wealth, which at the same time he proudly speaks of as a mark of his success as a businessman, contrasting it to Trump’s business failures. But the emphasis of his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president is on the work he has done on such causes as climate change, the fight against corporatism and, on the practical side, the cofounding with his wife of a bank that reinvests at low interest rates in the needs of communities. I cite Steyer, not because I support his candidacy (I don’t) or because I think he is above criticism. His run for the presidency is a case of misplaced vanity. He could have found other fruitful places to spend the millions he is spending on his campaign, but there seems no reason to doubt the sincerity of his convictions. He is an example of the existence of members of the uppermost class willing to do the good work of the world. That class as a whole has been rightly viewed as the enemy of progressive and liberal causes, for its role in the gross inequality that afflicts our society and for the Great Recession. Are times changing? An editorial in The New York Times {Sept. 17} “Forcing Companies to Be Good Citizens,” begins by noting the response of the CEO of Walmart to the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio: “It’s clear to me that the status quo is no longer acceptable.” “Walmart announced that it would stop selling assault rifles, remove handguns from Alaska—the only Walmart still carrying them.“ Momentous, not as an action, but as representing a significant change in viewing gun control. More significant is the fact that 145 large American companies {including Levi Straus, Royal Caribbean and Bain Capital} have come out in support of background checks on gun purchases and of “red flag” laws. The editorial goes on to cite the statement of the Business Roundtable, “acknowledging ‘a fundamental commitment to all stakeholders,’ including workers and communities.” Again, these are words, not actions, but they may be signs of the times. We’ll see if actions support the words. According to the Times, “there are now more than 1,200 American B Corporations–companies certified and audited by a non-profit B lab as meeting its standards for labor, social and environmental policies.” The editorial is right to note that the political process directed at the executive and legislative branches have “the advantage of scale,” but is also right to remind us that “political victories have grown more difficult to win.” The main motive of a company is profit for its investors. The source of profit are the consumers, who by and large these days favor gun control and climate regulation. Investors such as states that invest the pension money of their employees are potentially a great force for applying pressure on companies to enact policies that serve the social good. At a time when the federal government, normally the resource of liberal parties in redressing the excesses of free market capitalism, is the captive of perhaps the most reactionary administration in our history, the business community may be in process of becoming a source of support for liberal and progressive causes.
The question is whether Steyer and his fellow thinking super wealthy fellows should be welcomed into the ranks of the non-revolutionary left. The answer of the radical progressive left is generally NO. In their eyes, the wealth and its origins tend to be all defining. An instance from the not so recent past: when Obama nominated Antonio Weiss to a position in the Treasury Department, he was forced by Elizabeth Warren to withdraw the nomination because of Weiss’s role as an executive on Wall Street. If his actions in the position he held were evidence against his appointment, they were not made public, at least not to my knowledge. It was simply his employment on Wall Street that was held against him. The skepticism, if not downright hostility to the billionaire class, is, to repeat, understandable given its performance in the period that led up to the Great Recession. It is for this reason, paradoxically, that the progressive response seems counterproductive. If corporations such as those listed in the editorial are beginning to see the light shouldn’t they be welcomed into the progressive fold rather than simply demonized? The main adversary of progress these days is the federal government, particularly the executive branch and The Supreme Court. Under Republican administrations, the federal government has normally supported corporate culture; under Democratic administrations, the story is ambiguous. FDR’s New Deal sponsored regulation of corporations and financial organizations; Bill Clinton, a Democrat, continued the deregulating policies inaugurated by Ronald Reagan. Progressives generally look to central government for solutions with mixed success or outright failure. Success or failure is determined by the disposition of the party in power and its relative strength to the opposition party. The distinction of the Trump administration is the extremism with which they have deregulated the economy in the interests of the super wealthy all in the name of populism and, so far, gotten away with it. What then should liberals and progressives do? One answer is the formation of social movements advocating causes like the reduction of gross inequality, combatting climate warming and the strengthening of trade unions. What I would call the corporate option for allies has not been open to the progressive side for an obvious ideological reason, corporatism is the enemy. Perhaps the reason needs rethinking. As the Times editorial suggests, progressives may find allies in corporations and the financial services to compensate for the failure of federal government. Here is an instance that cuts across received ideological understanding in two ways. The Trump administration through executive action reversed the high automobile carbon emissions standards for automobiles enacted by the Obama administration only to be countered by California’s restoration of those standards in what might be called an exercise of states rights, normally a conservative cause, and the automakers joined the state in support of the standards.
Progressives view capitalism as a scene of conflict between capitalism and labor. They should continue to be skeptical about the good intentions of corporations and the executives that run them in the short-term interests of investors at the expense of the long-term interests of society, skeptical but open to evidence of change. So long as capitalism or the mixed economy of the welfare state stays in place (a socialist revolution being an alternative), corporations will remain an essential part of the economy and trade unions will be the main agents of struggle for the working classes. Unfortunately, the trade union movement has been in serious decline for decades. Its strengthening is or should be a major progressive task, but it need not preclude alternative strategies, even the acquiring of allies in the camp of the adversary. It means overcoming an ideological aversion to what is an essential part of capitalist culture, Business, in particular its corporate form. This is not to say that its excesses and greed should not be the target of criticism. But it means, or should mean, the effort to draw in sympathetic leaders on the business and corporate side in the fight for a living wage, climate health, gun control and universal health care and for reform of the predatory aspect of corporate culture. In the time of Trump, we need allies wherever we may find them.