Republican Devotion to Authoritarianism

 

This post won’t be just about the Republican devotion to autocrat Donald Trump. Their authoritarianism problem is much broader and deeper than that. Trump is a symptom rather than the source of this problem. What I want to talk about is the enduring Republican preference for a particular kind of capitalism and connect that preference to our current predicament.

If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning (wow, it’s been almost ten years now), you know that I often criticize what I call corporate capitalism, a form of capitalism that is far removed from what Adam Smith and other early economic theorists envisioned. But corporations are not the only or even primary problem. The real problem is how we divvy up ownership of capital. William Greider said it best in his classic One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. “The problem,” says Greider, “is not that capital is privately owned, as Marx supposed. The problem is that most people don’t own any.”¹ The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans now hold 93 percent of all corporate stock, and the percentage is steadily increasing. By contrast, the bottom 50 percent of Americans hold just 1 percent.² This is based on Federal Reserve statistics for third quarter 2023.

It is no secret that a vast majority of businesses in America—from the largest multinational corporation to the smallest sole proprietorship—are not democratic institutions. They may resemble any number of governmental types: monarchies, oligarchies, plutocracies, dictatorships, aristocracies, fiefdoms, or theocracies. But almost never can they be described as democratic republics. In essence, we have embraced an economic system that is almost totally incompatible with our political ideals and our constitutionally mandated governmental structure. Put another way, free enterprise may exist between businesses, but it rarely exists within them.

If you are employed, take a close look at the business you work for. Do you have a real voice in vital decisions? Are you able to elect your leaders in the business? Likely not. I worked for the LDS Church and BYU for over 30 years. They are good places to work but are definitely authoritarian in structure and practice. You might argue that in the Church we vote for our leaders. Hardly. Our sustaining vote is more an indication that we will follow our leaders than a real opportunity to select them. When was the last time you saw a Church leader at any level removed because the congregation (or entire Church) voted him out? Right. Joseph Smith may have called the Church a “theo-democracy,” but it is really a theocracy in practice.

The tendency of businesses to favor authoritarian forms of internal governance is not surprising. It is literally baked into their DNA by the way their ownership was initially established. It is virtually impossible to have workplace democracy when ownership is concentrated in the hands of either one individual, a small group of individuals, or a more broadly dispersed group of wealthy investors (in which case, a board of directors chooses top management). The only way to ensure workplace democracy is through worker ownership of the business.

I’ve covered this issue extensively elsewhere on this blog, but today I want to explore the political implications of authoritarian ownership structures.

There are many differences between the two major American political parties, but one significant difference is where they generally line up regarding management and labor. Although neither party has come out strongly in favor of worker ownership (except for Bernie Sanders), Democrats generally side with the workers, in favoring a higher minimum wage, supporting unions, and passing legislation to protect workers from injury and abuse. Republicans, on the other hand, are usually aligned with management, through such policies as tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, lax regulation of pollution and worker safety, and the undermining of easily accessible health care and other social benefits.

Republicans have often yearned to have a “businessman” in the Oval Office, assuming that a capitalist executive would be able to manage government more efficiently. In recent elections, they have put forward men such as George W. Bush and Mitt Romney (John McCain was an exception), who made their fortunes in the business world. Donald Trump, of course, is the Republican capitalist dream candidate. He purports to be a billionaire, although his particular road to riches has traversed bankruptcies, tax evasion, fraud, stiffing workers and subcontractors, and skirting the law in a variety of ways. But Republicans love the idea that he owns his own business and doesn’t answer to anybody.

What Republicans expect from these business types may be an efficient and well-run government, but what they actually get is government directed by someone who is used to behaving as an autocrat. So, we should not be surprised at Trump’s authoritarian plans for his next administration. It is all he knows. He knows virtually nothing of the actual workings of a constitutional democracy, with built-in checks and balances, something that is second nature to someone like Joe Biden, who has spent his life in public service and knows how a democracy can and should work. And what is worse, unlike, say, George W. Bush, Trump has little interest in learning anything new, unless it adds to his power and wealth. He would rather bend the constitutional democracy to his whims and habits (or break it in the process) than learn to operate within the parameters of a system that has given Americans guaranteed freedoms and opportunities for self-rule for more than two centuries.

Our democracy is both resilient and fragile. The worst mistake we could make at this point is placing at its head a businessman whose authoritarian instincts have been honed for decades, who demands loyalty above country from his subjects, and who has never believed that any laws or rules apply to him. America survived one Trump presidency, when he was surrounded by a staff that often prevented him from following through on his worst ideas. I’m not sure it can survive a second go-around, this time without any guardrails, especially since we have a spineless Republican Congress and a subservient Supreme Court.

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1. William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 416.

2. Jennifer Sor, “The Wealthiest 10% of Americans Own 93% of Stocks Even With Market Participation at a Record High,” Business Insider,, January 10, 2024, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFvwl70qwZWMfXiDrz01pi6Zr2O5Gpfa0w7MaSmMfcZGg4Skuj9ADr0OdG7BPe0LYoWFGJDknk6Ye4twFUuWRX3QHtqiQPIg8K3uvL02rPDBX5a8_T1b4yiHK86KXpiwSyb8mcWSoG7HjI0js7PVld1eC7EYyr1XYeOPaT3-_d3r.