Thread by @nathansnewman

"Capitalism dumps its financial dead in corporate bankruptcy courts–-and Elizabeth Warren knows where the bodies are buried."

My take on why Warren has a more radical critique of capitalism than her left critics recognize. /1

alternet.org/2020/01/thirty…

Warren is decidedly on the radical side of democratically reshaping the economy BEFORE inequality grows, rather than the liberal side of just trying to build a safety net AFTER inequality runs riot to deal with the victims of an unequal economy. /2

alternet.org/2020/01/thirty…

Hardly recent, as early as 1987 Warren was campaigning to remake the very legal rules that embed inequality in the economy - and dismissing market solutions as dealing with the democratic need for a greater voice by workers and consumers in writing those rules. /3

It's not an accident that Trump got rich even as many of his firms went bankrupt; Warren's broad analysis centers on how corporate bankruptcy is the often-undiscussed center of capitalism - and a key driver of inequality. /4

Warren's focus on bankruptcy court is key- since it is where capitalist owners of firms disappear as key powerbrokers and instead the government bia bankruptcy judges directly mediate multiple stakeholders interests threatened by the disolution of a firm. /5

Law is no neutral umpire over markets - but is a key redistributor of wealth, usually to those already wealthy and powerful, as Warren repeatedly argued over the last thirty years - a radical dismissal of neoliberal economics and law. /6

Industrial planning is a bugaboo for the Right and even many moderates - but Warren makes clear markets fail to take into account of many community interests lacking contract rights - and why government needs to act to save firms that the market might let die. /7

Thirty years ago, Warren made her reputation as a savage critic of the Federalist Society law and economics types, where she dismissed their economic models imposed by courts as "illusory" rhetoric that ignored non-market economic interests. /8

"At the heart of Warren’s ideological vision is a clear demand that the market and property rights be subordinate to the human needs and democratic will of the community." /9

Many on the left ignore or even don't understand the multiple ways legal rules structure inequality in the economy - but Warren would bring one of the sharpest understandings and program for overturning that rightwing legal structure to the Presidency. /10