Thread by @doctorow

Peter Thiel styles himself a defender of liberty, and every time he does, someone points out this article he wrote in which he said that democracy is incompatible with freedom (and also women shouldn't be allowed to vote).

cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/pet…

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He's right: the capitalist freedom - to have dominion over how your capital is worked by laborers - is in tension with democracy. @profwolff's "Why capitalism is in constant conflict with democracy" lays it out with admirable clarity.

alternet.org/2020/08/why-ca…

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The owner of a business is the dictator of the business. They have the final say over who is hired and fired, and what workers must do on the job.

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Workers can quit (assuming they haven't been coerced into noncompete clauses and that they aren't trapped in a monopsonic market for their labor), but they don't get a vote.

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But they DO get a vote when they're not on the job - they get a vote at the ballot box, where it's one person, one vote. There are a LOT more workers than bosses, so, in theory, workers can vote for laws that make workplaces more democratic.

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They can vote for pro-union laws, for labor protections, for antidiscrimination laws, for health and safety rules, for rules banning sexual harassment and discrimination based on race, sex, politics, sexuality, age, etc.

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The boss's freedom to be the boss can be taken away by the workers' freedom to vote for laws that boss the bosses around. Socialists have said this for centuries, but capitalists usually pretend it's not true. Thiel just said the quiet part aloud.

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In a democracy, the freedom of bosses is dependent on getting workers to vote against their freedom to boss bosses around. When this fails, bosses often back military dictatorships, in the name of (boss) freedom.

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That's why "freedom advocates" like Hayek and Friedman flew to Chile to help Pinochet kidnap and murder his political opponents. The opposition's freedom to advocate for democracy was in conflict with bosses' freedom to be bosses.

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But military dictatorships are the last resort. Before we get to military dictatorships, bosses just try to get turkeys to vote for Christmas.

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They might tell the turkeys that they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and any anti-boss laws will bite them in the ass when they, too, become bosses.

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But when decades of wage stagnation, declining standard of living, and precarity make the story of future millionairedom harder to believe, bosses usually just start smashing the racism button.

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"Turkeys of America! If you want to keep the chickens, ducks and other undeserving foreign poultry out of the farmyard, VOTE FOR THE CHRISTMAS PARTY THIS NOVEMBER!"

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Republicans are better at getting turkeys to vote for Christmas than Democrats are, though both parties try. Also, Republicans really throw amazing Christmas feasts with a lot of really delicious turkey for the invited guests: tax cuts, deregulation, anti-union laws.

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But when the GOP loses elections, the farmer class simply switches sides and backs pro-Christmas Democrats. The Democratic party has a strong pro-turkey/anti-Christmas faction, and suppressing that wing becomes the Dems' major project - moreso even than defeating the GOP.

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This all gets a lot hotter during crises, and this is the worst crisis in a century (though worse ones are ahead of us, thanks to the climate emergency).

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Wolff: "Endless political maneuvers around hegemonic blocs with alternative sections of the employees allowed capitalism to survive. However, eventually those contradictions would exceed the capacity of hegemonic maneuvers to contain and control them.

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"A pandemic combined with a major economic crash may provoke and enable progressives to make the break, change U.S. politics, and realize the long-overdue social changes."

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(In case you were wondering, Thiel thinks women shouldn't be allowed to vote because they're more likely to want to keep children from starving and so they'll vote to make rich people feed them).

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Image:
Chetsford (modified)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coro…

CC BY-SA
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa…

eof/