In the left-wing anti-capitalist imagination, corporations are faceless, soulless engines of exploitation and greed. Their scale makes them dangerous and their pursuit of profit makes them immoral and oppressive. To the extent that anti-capitalists see actual people in corporations at all, those people are dismissed and denounced as either rapacious billionaires or shills in suits.
I have some good news. That view of multinational corporations is an inaccurate caricature in which all of big businesses faults are magnified while all of its more attractive features are minimized. Have some large corporations in some contexts behaved poorly? Definitely. Is the shareholder-value philosophy ethically blinkered? You bet it is. Do some U.S. firms wrongfully kowtow to and abet China’s authoritarian government? Without question. But these flaws notwithstanding, on the whole, big business is good and there is in fact a strong progressive case for big business.
That case rests on five foundations. First, small-scale businesses only make sense in some sectors of the economy. Mom-and-pop restaurants are often fantastic. Niche retail shops are frequently a delight. Local service providers like plumbers and electricians are great. But in some sectors, economies of scale are so important that small just doesn’t make any sense. It is simply not feasible to imagine a mom-and-pop small business operating a semiconductor fab or building an aluminum smelter or successfully manufacturing airplanes. For the modern world to function, we need those areas of the economy to perform well and performing well means scale. For progressives to deride businesses in these industries for being big is simply unrealistic.
Second, consumers often love big business. Free two-day shipping from Amazon is super convenient. Costco has lots of fans for many reasons and virtually all of them relate to scale. IKEA makes furnishing a home affordable. As a Vermonter, I am required by unwritten law to say that farmers’ markets are great (and they are!) but without large-scale agriculture, families struggling to put food on the table would struggle even harder to do so.
Even apart from people’s consumption, big business delivers huge benefits to them as workers. Large firms tend to pay better, give better benefits, create more durable jobs, and be more productive.[1] They also have a better record on environmental protection, worker safety, and employment diversity than many people imagine.[2]
Perhaps for these reasons, most Americans are not as instinctively anti-business as anti-capitalists suppose. In a 2019 Pew public opinion poll, big business roughly broke even and almost twice as many people said they have a positive view of capitalism as a negative view. When framed as entrepreneurship or free enterprise, support becomes overwhelming. Progressives should note too that the s-word polls markedly worse than all of the other terms asked about. Opposing business and capitalism is thus not just wrong on the merits; it is also a political loser.
Third, corporations were not and are not responsible for the worst excesses of Trump’s populist nationalism. Whatever you think about big business, it was not big business who put children in cages. That was the state in the form of ICE. It was not big business who intentionally inflamed an aggrieved backlash politics. That was the state in the form of President Trump and his various accomplices. It was not big business that knelt on George Floyd’s neck. That was the state in the form of a police officer. And it was not big business who ransacked the Capital.
In all these areas, it was quite the contrary. Big business wants more immigrants. It has recently shown an increased willingness to support racial justice as well as LGBT rights, and it was horrified by January 6th. The National Association of Manufacturers statement on January 6th really is worth a read. It says in part, “Throughout this whole disgusting episode, Trump has been cheered on by members of his own party, adding fuel to the distrust that has enflamed violent anger. This is not law and order. This is chaos. It is mob rule. It is dangerous. This is sedition and should be treated as such. The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy.”
On these and many other issues, the business community is not just no longer reliably conservative, they actively support a more internationalist, more modern, more classically liberal set of political values. The idea that big business today works behind the scenes to promote reactionary politics is a canard.
Commentators like Oren Cass have noted the divorce happening between the Chamber of Commerce and conservatives. He is correct in that observation. Progressives should cheer on that divorce and welcome the Chamber, libertarians, and others like them into the Democratic coalition. They will make useful allies against the right-wing populists and nationalists. Whatever else they disagree on, progressives, libertarians, and the business community should be united on the unacceptability of people like Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance, and their ideological fellow travelers. They, and the NatCons more generally, are an illiberal menace to this country. If defeating them requires odd bedfellows for a period of time, then so be it.
Fourth, one of the biggest challenges that the American middle-class faces is that, even setting aside recent inflation, four core purchases have become too expensive: housing, college, medical care, and child care. With the possible exception of medical care (and even that one is debatable), it is hard to make the case that multinational corporations are responsible in any meaningful sense for the high cost of the other three. Housing is too expensive because excessive zoning regulations make it more costly, and in some cases impossible, to build more housing where it is most in demand. Private sector businesses would happily fill that market space if not stymied by excessive government regulation. Childcare and college costs are driven by a myriad of factors, not the least of which is what a Steven Teles, Samuel Hammond, and Daniel Takash (author of LP #7) have recently dubbed “cost-disease socialism” in which government subsidies combine with supply constraints to push up prices. The unaffordability of these services is an important aspect of inequality in America and- whatever else one’s other qualms about multinational corporations- those corporations are not why housing, childcare, and college cost so much.
Fifth and finally, it remains the case that what is good for business is good for America. Getting pharma-produced COVID vaccines in less than a year was an absolute game changer in the midst of a global pandemic. Zoom and FaceTime help loved ones stay connected. American firms’ profits translate into higher wages, more generous pensions, greater tax revenue, and more investment. Firms also quietly provide a number of public services and engage in other forms of corporate social responsibility. As one recent article notes:
“Domino’s filled in potholes. Dawn’s dish soap saved ducks. American Express pitched in on historic preservation. Walmart started selling low-priced insulin. A slew of companies help workers pay for school. Much of America’s health care system is still handled through private insurers and your job. As people lose faith in government to act on sweeping issues such as climate change and guns, they’re increasingly looking to corporate America and asking whether there’s something they can do about it. If Congress won’t tackle gun violence, maybe Dick’s Sporting Goods can try.”
Moreover, American firms like Tesla, Moderna, and Google being at the leading edge of the technological frontier means that America itself is at the leading edge of the technological frontier. Which country or bloc of countries’ firms would we rather have forging the future? European firms? Europe is lovely. I am an unabashed Europhile but even I have to admit that it is also an aging, squabbling, over-regulated continent. Firms birthed there have trouble scaling up and even worse trouble doing groundbreaking innovation. Chinese firms? Whatever anyone’s misgivings about American big business, it is safe to say that Chinese firms are much, much worse. They are state tools in the hand of a tyrannical state. Perish the thought that they should lead in anything. Neither of those courses will do. The best future is one in which American business, rather than European or Chinese business, leads the way.
Now, none of this is to say that government should be doing crony favors for big business or artificially protecting them from competition via tariffs, but it is to say that progressives should rethink their knee-jerk hostility to multinational corporations and that instead of always attempting to cut them down to size, it would be better to reflect on the benefits of large-scale capitalism.
Relatedly, progressives need to recognize that any government power they create to cut down big business may ultimately come to rest in the hands of those who mean them great harm. Before progressives eviscerate the consumer welfare standard or hand the Federal Trade Commission broad new powers, they should consider what an FTC headed by Chris Rufo might do with those powers. Is there any doubt that, if given the ability to do so, the populist nationalist right would weaponize government in service of their culture war aims?
Finally, progressives need to ask themselves if they see politics as about aesthetics and signaling fealty to ‘the people’ or is it about problem solving? If it’s about the former, if all politics is about is role playing and vibes, then railing against big business makes some sense. Big business is an easy, faceless opponent and punching them allows progressives to pretend trade-offs don’t exist.
If it’s about problem solving though- and that’s what I think politics is supposed to be about- it makes sense to acknowledge that the private sector and the large-scale corporations that comprise it are actually both necessary and helpful. As this essay has argued, they are inevitable in some sectors, they help consumers tremendously, they deliver a range of other significant benefits to workers, they could be a useful ally against a populist nationalist right, they aren’t responsible for the main economic frustrations of the middle class, and they support the broader project of a modern, diverse, prosperous, ambitious America.
[1] Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind. 2018. Big is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business. MIT Press. 64-69.
[2] Atkinson and Lind. 2018. Big is Beautiful. 70-75.