In the past 50 years, capitalism has grown ever more “responsive to what we want as individual purchasers of goods,” writes Robert Reich, former secretary of the treasury, “but democracy has grown less responsive to what we want together as citizens.”
In Supercapitalism, Reich paints a disturbing portrait of a world in which corporations have become our quasi-government. He comes to some surprising conclusions, though: Rather than spearhead a protest, he urges citizens to stop appealing to companies in the way they would our government of yore and instead to put their efforts behind getting corporate money out of Washington. If these fiscal versions of church and state can be kept separate, he argues, our democracy will flourish again.
Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life
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Robert B. Reich
Knopf, $25