Democracy against domination

257 Pages·2017·1.72 MB·English

by  Rahman

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Democracy Against Domination
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Democracy
Against Domination
K. Sabeel Rahman
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© Oxford University Press 2017
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Rahman, K. Sabeel, 1983– author.
Title: Democracy against domination / K. Sabeel Rahman.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016022380 | ISBN 9780190468538 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: United States—Economic polic—2009– |
United States—Economic policy—Citizen participation. |
Democracy—Economic aspects—United States. | Capitalism—Political aspects—United States. |
Equality—Economic aspects—United States. |
Financial services industry—Law and legislation—United States. |
United States—Economic conditions—2009
Classification: LCC HC106.84 .R34 2016 | DDC 338.973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022380
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet … it is a word the
real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the reso-
nance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come,
from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history … remains unwritten,
because that history has yet to be enacted.
— Walt Whitman, “Democratic Vistas” (1871)
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1. Democracy, Domination, and the Challenge
of Economic Governance 1
2. Managerialism and the New Deal Legacy 31
3. The Progressive Critique of the Market 54
4. Economic Domination and Democratic Action 78
5. Structuring Democratic Agency 97
6. Anti- Domination as Regulatory Strategy 116
7. Democratic Agency as Regulatory Process 139
8. Democratic Freedom in the New Gilded Age 166
Notes 181
Bibliography 211
Index 227
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PREFACE
On January 3, 2008, Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus, kicking off what
would become one of the most remarkable and surprising primary seasons
in American politics. As he took the stage late that night to thank his sup-
porters, he set aside the symbolism of his role as an African- American can-
didate with a multi- racial and global background. “I know you didn’t do this
for me,” he told his supporters. “You did this because you believed in the
most American ideas—t hat in the face of impossible odds, people who love
this country can change it.” His campaign slogan, “HOPE,” was to Obama,
not a plea for blind faith but rather a call to action:
Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire. What led the great-
est of generations to free a continent and heal a nation. What led young women and
young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and
Montgomery for freedom’s cause… . Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that
our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are
not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it
should be… . [the belief that] brick by brick, block by block, callused hand by callused
hand, … ordinary people can do extraordinary things.”
It was a thrilling moment, and a singular political experience for me as I sat
with friends huddled in the bitter cold of another Cambridge winter listen-
ing on the radio. Over the next few months, I, along with millions of other
Americans, watched in fascination and growing excitement as Obama’s
campaign marched from state to state. In the protracted battle with Hillary
Clinton over the Democratic nomination, it became a campaign not just for
an individual but for this aspiration to transformational, rather than incre-
mental, change—t o collective democratic action.
Meanwhile, trouble was already brewing in the American economy. The
collapse of Bear Stearns marked an increasingly panicked effort by regula-
tors and financiers to stave off a larger financial collapse, which came in full
force that September with the fall of Lehman Brothers. Often overlooked