So a little background on me to preface this: I am a policy analyst and have been one for about five years. This includes time working as a housing policy analyst for the city of Rockville, Maryland where I worked on revisions to the municipal inclusive zoning ordinance.
In my experience people like Teachout tend to get the order of operations backwards. There's this idea that politicians are empty squishes swaying in the wind of powerful interest groups, but in my experience the interest groups tend to be more tools of rhe politicians than the reverse. The basic chain I have seen is that there's a subset of politicians that are true believers who use interest groups who agree with them to persuade the public and less ideologically committed politicians.
We can use Monthomery County's rent control bill as an example of this. The bill was EXTREMELY heavily pushed by CASA of Montgomery County - in fact CASA saw the HOME Act (the precursor to the existing bill) before I did and I was a housing policy analyst working for the city that served as the county capitol - but it was clear that they were chosen BY councilmembers Jawondo and Mink as well as County Executive Elrich specifically BECAUSE those three all strongly supported rent control.
They worked with CASA and got CASA members to fill up every single public meeting, creating the impression that the public demanded rent control. As a result the members with less of a structured opinion on rent control voted to support a weaker version of the HOME Act. So while the bill ended up weaker than Jawondo, Mink, and Elrich wanted they ultimately got what they wanted. To people outside the loop it can look like CASA forced a bill through, but that's not the case. It was Jawondo, Mink, and Elrich who did. CASA was merely a tool of persuasion used by politicians who already agreed with them to convince their colleagues.
None of what I'm going to say will be a surprise given what you know about me, but I'll say it anyway.
If I'm understanding your argument, it goes like this: there is no "singular, shadowy evil" that is causing all of society's woes because to be responsible for even part of the Bad Things, there would have to be a sufficiently large enough group that agrees on (enough) things to make that happen. But when we look for such a monolith, we find only an abundance of smaller groups, none of which agree on specific issues strongly enough to form a unified block (google and apple; musk and gates, etc.). Since there is no Big Power behind the scenes, we have to look at how things really are, and what we see when we look at the micro level is a bunch of disparate groups, all of which are vying for their particular political goals, and who occasionally enter into opportunistic coalitions to move their agendas forward. The theory of power, then comes in analyzing this micro phenomenon.
If I have that right, then the objection I'd raise concerns the first part of the argument and the fact that you're not availing yourself to the concept of class. It seems quite obvious to me that the mysterious Big Oligarchy that you're struggling to find is the capitalist *class*. At least as far as Marxists are concerned at least, class is not a category that is constructed out of the preferences and goals of individuals aggregated into groups, but are rather define on the macro level in reference to the process of social reproduction. Crucially, nothing about the Marxist concept of class means that everyone (or every group) within the class has to agree on the same goals, or that they can't make opportunistic alliances between factions within the class. The theory of power, then, comes from looking at the struggle *between* classes. And from that perspective, there's nothing puzzling about the estate tax example that requires a new analysis of power--there is nothing surprising about capital leaning into its Black millionaire cohort, or making alliances with the gay and lesbian petit bourgeoisie. All those groups are on the same side in the class struggle.
From that angle, the leftist criticism of abundance is that they ignore *capitalism* and the *capitalist class* (why Teachout doesn't just do that and sticks narrowly to monopoly is beyond me, but the consensus amongst the Bernie progressives seems to be that they get more bang for their buck by talking about oligarchy rather than capitalism. Best of luck to them). Does that mean that the abundantists don't have a theory of power? No, and I think that's where Teachout is wrong; they *do* have a theory of power, but it's a very narrow, ahistoric, and mistaken one. Consequently, the proposals they offer are misguided and the examples they use are misleading (it turns out the problem with that broadband proposal that never got anywhere had something to do with the interests of the cable company. curious). In turn, and with all due respect, I think your view of power is also too narrow to see the limitations of those abundantists. Maybe it's a theory of power-as-it-operates-within-the-capitalist-class, and maybe that's good enough for your purposes (if one truly believes There is No Other Alternative, then this theory of power is just flattened to a realist theory of power, but I tend to think that rests on quite a bit of reification). But if you really want to understand why the left thinks this shit is dumb, I'd look to Marx and class analysis.
(It's also worth mentioning that the desiderata you list at the end are fundamental principles of Marxist analysis. Always dynamic, never flat, and categorically opposed to reification.)
1) Agreed that class is a big deal, and you make a good point about class being the unifying factor in the estate tax repeal.
2) I don't think class should *only* be defined in terms of owning capital. Homeowners are a kind of class, too. They have shared interests (in high housing prices), lots of power ("local control"), and structural advantages in flexing their power (SF homeowners can coordinate more easily than can *wannabe* SF homeowners, who live all over the place). This isn't to downplay the power of people who own productive assets or equities. It's just to say: we should be open to the possibility, which I think is very real, that homeowners as such are using their money and political clout to protect their "investments."
3) The cable example is an interesting one. I think you're right that cable companies were able to press on Republican Senators to slip a poison pill in the bill. But then the Democrats shouldn't have gone ahead with it. Either they should've fought to get rid of the poison -- or if there was really no way to do so, they should've walked. The worst option is to throw a lot of money at a process that nominally helps people but actually does nothing. That just reinforces the narrative that government can't solve problems.
4) About Marxist analysis specifically. There's a kind of cartoon Marxism, which I would never impute to you, that looks like this:
a) The capitalists have shared interests, which they always work together to promote at the expense of workers.
b) The workers have shared interests, which they *could* promote as a united bloc, but they've mostly been unable to unite so far because of (i) false consciousness created by the ideas of the capitalists, (ii) superficial conflicts of interests and ideology exploited by the capitalists, and (iii) the disproportionate political power enjoyed by the capitalists.
But as the real Marx often pointed out, capitalists don't always work together. (E.g. they're forced by market forces to implement new technologies and compete down the rate of profit.) So (a) is an oversimplification. I myself would add that (b) is an oversimplification, since I think that workers often have genuine conflicts of interests and values (e.g. over immigration) that can't be explained away as false consciousness. I know Marx is often clear-eyed about divisions among the working class, but my impression -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- is that Marxists are pretty optimistic that these divisions will prove to be temporary and relatively superficial. Whereas I think they're a permanent political problem.
The upshot of this is that "capitalists have the power" is not a theory. But if that's not the theory, what's wrong with saying that "homeowners have some power, too"?
(Since you object to reification, you clearly don't accept the "capitalists have all the power" theory. So I don't really see where we disagree.)
2) there's a methodological question here that I'm not able to fully do justice to which concerns how class should be defined. There's one way of treating classes as simple means of categorization that arise as aggregates based on shared traits between people. And given that choice, you can construct a class based on shared interests, relative power, and structural advantages. You can talk about "white people" or "beer drinkers" as being a class. Homeowners would be a fine example of that kind of class.
Another way is the Marxist way in which class is treated as a very technical term that specifically relates to the process of production. In that respect, beer drinkers isn't a class at all since that group of people--whatever other traits they have--doesn't stand in relation to the processes of production. Why you would want to stick to the latter rather than the former will have to do with certain things that you accept from the Marxist perspective (e.g., that the fundamental relation between people concerns the reproduction of material society, that owning the means of production isn't a thin way of categorizing the world, the importance of historical materialism as a means of getting at the truth, etc.). I can't give a two-minute defense of why you should accept it, but if you want to seriously engage with the left and the critiques they have, then I think it's worth considering the different frameworks and methodologies that Marxist analysis (as the most sophisticated leftist position, imo) uses. Now, maybe there's a reason to think of homeowners as a class--but I think something more must be done to get common ground before that can be established. I'm sure there's something about it written somewhere. If not, given how important land reform was as a topic for marxists, there must be some means of extrapolating positions about small land-owners too. And if not, you've got a whole other flank open to criticize those dirty commies.
3) Yep, totally. But you know what I'm going to say: the democrats are a bourgeois party, and especially since jettisoning the last of their new deal commitments to the working class (thanks, Bill!) are not a party that actually has positions on virtually anything. Things are working well enough for them as the left wing of the capitalist party regardless of whether they win or lose to where they don't have to risk taking on any actual position whatsoever (this is also where I disagree with the abundantists in their earnest advice for democrats--I don't think they understand the game that's being played. But I'm cynical). I think the party is dead and is on its way of the Whigs.
4) Yeah, this sounds more like the post '68 crisis reading of things that I certainly wouldn't support. I don't think the question of why the revolution didn't happen is a matter of ideology and the dastardly ways in which capitalists put self-defeating ideas in the heads of the working class. But you're absolutely right, Marx does point out that capitalists DO fight one another (it's a system based on hostility!)--but what they don't fight each other on is on the matter of, say, whether private property is sacred, whether the state should protect it (and the profits that come from it), etc.
Some Marxists are optimistic about it. I'm one of those. I think that a lot of the problems that people think of as permanent and "natural" are relatively recent arrivals on the scene, are contingent, and large portions of them can be addressed. I think many national questions are of that type (one must remember that concern with the nation and the nation state is not a fundamental feature of human psychology). But I could be wrong.
Thanks for this, Pavel. Super clarifying. I have some follow up questions—like, I wonder what you think about Trump gutting the BLS to get the “correct” stats. That seems to me like a case of a government attacking propertied interests (for the sake of holding on to power). But that’s just my first impression, and I’d be keen to hear your take.
Also I like having friends who are more optimistic than me on some dimensions. It would be bad to be too complacent with the status quo. And it’s easy to get that way if everybody around you seems to share all the same assumptions.
yeah, man, let's do it. there's some interesting stuff about the present moment, how trump is to be analyzed from a marxist perspective, and how to understand, for example, the alliance between tech and the facsist right.
As for whether "this shit is dumb," I don't know what "shit" you're referring to.
Is it dumb to notice that homeowners are blocking construction to protect their investments? Is it dumb to want San Francisco to build public toilets and public housing for a reasonable price? Is it dumb to want the US to build clean energy ASAP instead of wasting years having to lawyer-proof every project?
Let me respond to this one first before the other, longer one. My apologies for using the term "shit". The "shit" in reference, here, is the abundance shit. Leftists are frustrated with it not because it doesn't identify a serious problem, but because its analysis of that problem doesn't get to the root of what causes it, and, hence, it's proposed solutions are unable to adequately address it. It sometimes seems like asking someone "don't you think that climate change is a problem? if so, why aren't you with me in supporting carbon buy-backs or tax incentives for corporations to play along?" The response to those questions is, "yes, of course" to the first one and "because I have good theoretical and practical reasons for why *that* won't touch the actual issue."
It also seems apparently obvious to me that the abundance thing is rewarmed trickle-down economics, but that's just me being cheeky :p
Correct. Bernie and AOC are really hitting on a nerve. Capitalism is fine and Marxist class theory is BS. We need to focus on the real negative consequences of in inequality of income which eventually leads to an inequality of power.
I also just really enjoy this general direction- trying to think about public policy while using the existing tools of the domain (like economics) while also using some philosophical tools and the general clarity of thinking that goes with Philosophy. And avoiding reflexive 'market = bad' thinking.
I was going to say "If this sort of thing had been a significant part of analytical philosophy when I studied it, I might not have dropped out", but probably I would have ignored and stayed stuck trying to get engaged in baroque philosophy of logic and language stuff, and would still have burned out/lost interest. But anyway... love this stuff. More, please!
I really appreciate that, Marcus. It’s funny—I’ve sometimes had a similar feeling. It would have been great to be exposed to economics and political theory much sooner, but probably I wasn’t ready back then, for whatever reason.
Great piece, I think this is an important argument.
I also think that even though you are correct, this is actually not what Teachout is really arguing. I listened to the podcast when Klein had her on, and her point was not really that to make progress against the powerful, we should see them as a monolithic entity. In fact, her point wasn’t really at all about how we should go forward. I think she agreed with Klein on many of these issues.
What I remember very clearly was that she wanted to be sure that _blame_ was allocated correctly. What she doesn’t like about the abundance movement is it isn’t blaming the appropriate “bad guys.” Teachout’s point is: the bad guys here are the monopolists. They have caused the problem. And while excessive regulation may have helped them do that in some cases — she acknowledges this — blaming the “good guys” who tried to stop the “bad guys” is wrong. It’s not understanding “power.” And by “power” I think she means the moral badness of the powerful.
I sense this in part because I have a similar argument with other (liberal) friends all the time, and also face similar arguments in my research (which is about misinformation and other ailments online). Liberals/progressives get very upset when you “blame” the good guys for not stopping the “bad guys.” They feel that you should _blame the bad guys_. I don’t see it that way at all. Like, I’m a Knicks fan. I don’t “blame” the Celtics for beating the Knicks. That’s what the Celtics are there to do.
Similarly, the regulation regime we choose, and the way we build coalitions of power as you describe, should be precisely designed to push back our opponents. What are their strengths, what are their weaknesses, in the current political, social and technological moment?
This, to me, is where “Abundance” gets it very right. The oligarchs are real, and they have adapted to the Ralph Nader/Rachel Carson inspired regime of liberal pushback. They watched tape on, scouted us, tried new strategies, and found what works. So now, we need to change. Specifically, we need to re-empower central authority against special interests, not because central authority is ALWAYS more democratic — more reflective of the people’s will and needs — than special interests, but because that has how things have become in 2025.
It just completely numbs my mind that “theory of power” has become a stock phrase for people saying “I would rather you think less systematically and more in terms of teams.” I want to call it Orwellian because I can’t think of another term to describe so precisely inverting the meaning of something, though obviously that carries connotations of power which don’t apply to Teachout etc.
My sense is that progressives and most liberals do this because they fail to see the fundamentally agonistic nature of politics. That we have politics, and therefore need a fair process for conducting it, because people do _not_ agree. They have different interests and different values. But they are also stuck with each other, because small groups and poorer than larger ones Etc.
So they imagine that, deep down, there's the one true good way. Their way, which aligns with justice. Therefore, to be persuasive in a dispute, you try to show which side is the one good way. It follows by logical deduction that if the other side is bad, then you are good.
But if you see politics as inherently a struggle between competing forces, a system that has to "find" a temporary equilibrium, this makes no sense. The other side always looks bad in that it's trying to overpower you. That's a premise of the interaction, not a conclusion to be demonstrated as proof of something
For every issue, there is a small group that is able to stop progress on that issue. Very different from there being a small group that is able to stop progress on every issue!
And on the last point, I think that it's very useful to see corporations, unions, governments, and other organized groups, as artificial intelligences like any other, with their own means of operating, and their own structuring interests, that may be more or less aligned with the interests of any particular group of humans: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/machines-bureaucracies-and-markets-as-artificial-intelligences/
Wonderfully written! You might like this old New Yorker piece by Nicholas Lemann on pluralism, where he articulates a similar theory of dispersed/coalitional power, which he credits to Arthur Bentley back in the early 20th century. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/11/conflict-of-interests
The five most terrifying words: I’m from the Republican Party “ . And you know help is being clawed back so the oligarchs can have their fair share.🤨😆🤨😁
So a little background on me to preface this: I am a policy analyst and have been one for about five years. This includes time working as a housing policy analyst for the city of Rockville, Maryland where I worked on revisions to the municipal inclusive zoning ordinance.
In my experience people like Teachout tend to get the order of operations backwards. There's this idea that politicians are empty squishes swaying in the wind of powerful interest groups, but in my experience the interest groups tend to be more tools of rhe politicians than the reverse. The basic chain I have seen is that there's a subset of politicians that are true believers who use interest groups who agree with them to persuade the public and less ideologically committed politicians.
We can use Monthomery County's rent control bill as an example of this. The bill was EXTREMELY heavily pushed by CASA of Montgomery County - in fact CASA saw the HOME Act (the precursor to the existing bill) before I did and I was a housing policy analyst working for the city that served as the county capitol - but it was clear that they were chosen BY councilmembers Jawondo and Mink as well as County Executive Elrich specifically BECAUSE those three all strongly supported rent control.
They worked with CASA and got CASA members to fill up every single public meeting, creating the impression that the public demanded rent control. As a result the members with less of a structured opinion on rent control voted to support a weaker version of the HOME Act. So while the bill ended up weaker than Jawondo, Mink, and Elrich wanted they ultimately got what they wanted. To people outside the loop it can look like CASA forced a bill through, but that's not the case. It was Jawondo, Mink, and Elrich who did. CASA was merely a tool of persuasion used by politicians who already agreed with them to convince their colleagues.
Sorry for the late reply, but I wanted to say: this is a fascinating example. Thanks for sharing.
None of what I'm going to say will be a surprise given what you know about me, but I'll say it anyway.
If I'm understanding your argument, it goes like this: there is no "singular, shadowy evil" that is causing all of society's woes because to be responsible for even part of the Bad Things, there would have to be a sufficiently large enough group that agrees on (enough) things to make that happen. But when we look for such a monolith, we find only an abundance of smaller groups, none of which agree on specific issues strongly enough to form a unified block (google and apple; musk and gates, etc.). Since there is no Big Power behind the scenes, we have to look at how things really are, and what we see when we look at the micro level is a bunch of disparate groups, all of which are vying for their particular political goals, and who occasionally enter into opportunistic coalitions to move their agendas forward. The theory of power, then comes in analyzing this micro phenomenon.
If I have that right, then the objection I'd raise concerns the first part of the argument and the fact that you're not availing yourself to the concept of class. It seems quite obvious to me that the mysterious Big Oligarchy that you're struggling to find is the capitalist *class*. At least as far as Marxists are concerned at least, class is not a category that is constructed out of the preferences and goals of individuals aggregated into groups, but are rather define on the macro level in reference to the process of social reproduction. Crucially, nothing about the Marxist concept of class means that everyone (or every group) within the class has to agree on the same goals, or that they can't make opportunistic alliances between factions within the class. The theory of power, then, comes from looking at the struggle *between* classes. And from that perspective, there's nothing puzzling about the estate tax example that requires a new analysis of power--there is nothing surprising about capital leaning into its Black millionaire cohort, or making alliances with the gay and lesbian petit bourgeoisie. All those groups are on the same side in the class struggle.
From that angle, the leftist criticism of abundance is that they ignore *capitalism* and the *capitalist class* (why Teachout doesn't just do that and sticks narrowly to monopoly is beyond me, but the consensus amongst the Bernie progressives seems to be that they get more bang for their buck by talking about oligarchy rather than capitalism. Best of luck to them). Does that mean that the abundantists don't have a theory of power? No, and I think that's where Teachout is wrong; they *do* have a theory of power, but it's a very narrow, ahistoric, and mistaken one. Consequently, the proposals they offer are misguided and the examples they use are misleading (it turns out the problem with that broadband proposal that never got anywhere had something to do with the interests of the cable company. curious). In turn, and with all due respect, I think your view of power is also too narrow to see the limitations of those abundantists. Maybe it's a theory of power-as-it-operates-within-the-capitalist-class, and maybe that's good enough for your purposes (if one truly believes There is No Other Alternative, then this theory of power is just flattened to a realist theory of power, but I tend to think that rests on quite a bit of reification). But if you really want to understand why the left thinks this shit is dumb, I'd look to Marx and class analysis.
(It's also worth mentioning that the desiderata you list at the end are fundamental principles of Marxist analysis. Always dynamic, never flat, and categorically opposed to reification.)
Thanks for reading, Pavel.
1) Agreed that class is a big deal, and you make a good point about class being the unifying factor in the estate tax repeal.
2) I don't think class should *only* be defined in terms of owning capital. Homeowners are a kind of class, too. They have shared interests (in high housing prices), lots of power ("local control"), and structural advantages in flexing their power (SF homeowners can coordinate more easily than can *wannabe* SF homeowners, who live all over the place). This isn't to downplay the power of people who own productive assets or equities. It's just to say: we should be open to the possibility, which I think is very real, that homeowners as such are using their money and political clout to protect their "investments."
3) The cable example is an interesting one. I think you're right that cable companies were able to press on Republican Senators to slip a poison pill in the bill. But then the Democrats shouldn't have gone ahead with it. Either they should've fought to get rid of the poison -- or if there was really no way to do so, they should've walked. The worst option is to throw a lot of money at a process that nominally helps people but actually does nothing. That just reinforces the narrative that government can't solve problems.
4) About Marxist analysis specifically. There's a kind of cartoon Marxism, which I would never impute to you, that looks like this:
a) The capitalists have shared interests, which they always work together to promote at the expense of workers.
b) The workers have shared interests, which they *could* promote as a united bloc, but they've mostly been unable to unite so far because of (i) false consciousness created by the ideas of the capitalists, (ii) superficial conflicts of interests and ideology exploited by the capitalists, and (iii) the disproportionate political power enjoyed by the capitalists.
But as the real Marx often pointed out, capitalists don't always work together. (E.g. they're forced by market forces to implement new technologies and compete down the rate of profit.) So (a) is an oversimplification. I myself would add that (b) is an oversimplification, since I think that workers often have genuine conflicts of interests and values (e.g. over immigration) that can't be explained away as false consciousness. I know Marx is often clear-eyed about divisions among the working class, but my impression -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- is that Marxists are pretty optimistic that these divisions will prove to be temporary and relatively superficial. Whereas I think they're a permanent political problem.
The upshot of this is that "capitalists have the power" is not a theory. But if that's not the theory, what's wrong with saying that "homeowners have some power, too"?
(Since you object to reification, you clearly don't accept the "capitalists have all the power" theory. So I don't really see where we disagree.)
yeah, good!
1) dope -- we're in agreement there
2) there's a methodological question here that I'm not able to fully do justice to which concerns how class should be defined. There's one way of treating classes as simple means of categorization that arise as aggregates based on shared traits between people. And given that choice, you can construct a class based on shared interests, relative power, and structural advantages. You can talk about "white people" or "beer drinkers" as being a class. Homeowners would be a fine example of that kind of class.
Another way is the Marxist way in which class is treated as a very technical term that specifically relates to the process of production. In that respect, beer drinkers isn't a class at all since that group of people--whatever other traits they have--doesn't stand in relation to the processes of production. Why you would want to stick to the latter rather than the former will have to do with certain things that you accept from the Marxist perspective (e.g., that the fundamental relation between people concerns the reproduction of material society, that owning the means of production isn't a thin way of categorizing the world, the importance of historical materialism as a means of getting at the truth, etc.). I can't give a two-minute defense of why you should accept it, but if you want to seriously engage with the left and the critiques they have, then I think it's worth considering the different frameworks and methodologies that Marxist analysis (as the most sophisticated leftist position, imo) uses. Now, maybe there's a reason to think of homeowners as a class--but I think something more must be done to get common ground before that can be established. I'm sure there's something about it written somewhere. If not, given how important land reform was as a topic for marxists, there must be some means of extrapolating positions about small land-owners too. And if not, you've got a whole other flank open to criticize those dirty commies.
3) Yep, totally. But you know what I'm going to say: the democrats are a bourgeois party, and especially since jettisoning the last of their new deal commitments to the working class (thanks, Bill!) are not a party that actually has positions on virtually anything. Things are working well enough for them as the left wing of the capitalist party regardless of whether they win or lose to where they don't have to risk taking on any actual position whatsoever (this is also where I disagree with the abundantists in their earnest advice for democrats--I don't think they understand the game that's being played. But I'm cynical). I think the party is dead and is on its way of the Whigs.
4) Yeah, this sounds more like the post '68 crisis reading of things that I certainly wouldn't support. I don't think the question of why the revolution didn't happen is a matter of ideology and the dastardly ways in which capitalists put self-defeating ideas in the heads of the working class. But you're absolutely right, Marx does point out that capitalists DO fight one another (it's a system based on hostility!)--but what they don't fight each other on is on the matter of, say, whether private property is sacred, whether the state should protect it (and the profits that come from it), etc.
Some Marxists are optimistic about it. I'm one of those. I think that a lot of the problems that people think of as permanent and "natural" are relatively recent arrivals on the scene, are contingent, and large portions of them can be addressed. I think many national questions are of that type (one must remember that concern with the nation and the nation state is not a fundamental feature of human psychology). But I could be wrong.
Thanks for this, Pavel. Super clarifying. I have some follow up questions—like, I wonder what you think about Trump gutting the BLS to get the “correct” stats. That seems to me like a case of a government attacking propertied interests (for the sake of holding on to power). But that’s just my first impression, and I’d be keen to hear your take.
Let’s get a beer sometime and catch up!
Also I like having friends who are more optimistic than me on some dimensions. It would be bad to be too complacent with the status quo. And it’s easy to get that way if everybody around you seems to share all the same assumptions.
yeah, man, let's do it. there's some interesting stuff about the present moment, how trump is to be analyzed from a marxist perspective, and how to understand, for example, the alliance between tech and the facsist right.
As for whether "this shit is dumb," I don't know what "shit" you're referring to.
Is it dumb to notice that homeowners are blocking construction to protect their investments? Is it dumb to want San Francisco to build public toilets and public housing for a reasonable price? Is it dumb to want the US to build clean energy ASAP instead of wasting years having to lawyer-proof every project?
Let me respond to this one first before the other, longer one. My apologies for using the term "shit". The "shit" in reference, here, is the abundance shit. Leftists are frustrated with it not because it doesn't identify a serious problem, but because its analysis of that problem doesn't get to the root of what causes it, and, hence, it's proposed solutions are unable to adequately address it. It sometimes seems like asking someone "don't you think that climate change is a problem? if so, why aren't you with me in supporting carbon buy-backs or tax incentives for corporations to play along?" The response to those questions is, "yes, of course" to the first one and "because I have good theoretical and practical reasons for why *that* won't touch the actual issue."
It also seems apparently obvious to me that the abundance thing is rewarmed trickle-down economics, but that's just me being cheeky :p
“Trickle down economics is bad” is our Arnold/Carl Weathers handshake.
Correct. Bernie and AOC are really hitting on a nerve. Capitalism is fine and Marxist class theory is BS. We need to focus on the real negative consequences of in inequality of income which eventually leads to an inequality of power.
I really enjoyed this piece.
I also just really enjoy this general direction- trying to think about public policy while using the existing tools of the domain (like economics) while also using some philosophical tools and the general clarity of thinking that goes with Philosophy. And avoiding reflexive 'market = bad' thinking.
I was going to say "If this sort of thing had been a significant part of analytical philosophy when I studied it, I might not have dropped out", but probably I would have ignored and stayed stuck trying to get engaged in baroque philosophy of logic and language stuff, and would still have burned out/lost interest. But anyway... love this stuff. More, please!
I really appreciate that, Marcus. It’s funny—I’ve sometimes had a similar feeling. It would have been great to be exposed to economics and political theory much sooner, but probably I wasn’t ready back then, for whatever reason.
Great piece, I think this is an important argument.
I also think that even though you are correct, this is actually not what Teachout is really arguing. I listened to the podcast when Klein had her on, and her point was not really that to make progress against the powerful, we should see them as a monolithic entity. In fact, her point wasn’t really at all about how we should go forward. I think she agreed with Klein on many of these issues.
What I remember very clearly was that she wanted to be sure that _blame_ was allocated correctly. What she doesn’t like about the abundance movement is it isn’t blaming the appropriate “bad guys.” Teachout’s point is: the bad guys here are the monopolists. They have caused the problem. And while excessive regulation may have helped them do that in some cases — she acknowledges this — blaming the “good guys” who tried to stop the “bad guys” is wrong. It’s not understanding “power.” And by “power” I think she means the moral badness of the powerful.
I sense this in part because I have a similar argument with other (liberal) friends all the time, and also face similar arguments in my research (which is about misinformation and other ailments online). Liberals/progressives get very upset when you “blame” the good guys for not stopping the “bad guys.” They feel that you should _blame the bad guys_. I don’t see it that way at all. Like, I’m a Knicks fan. I don’t “blame” the Celtics for beating the Knicks. That’s what the Celtics are there to do.
Similarly, the regulation regime we choose, and the way we build coalitions of power as you describe, should be precisely designed to push back our opponents. What are their strengths, what are their weaknesses, in the current political, social and technological moment?
This, to me, is where “Abundance” gets it very right. The oligarchs are real, and they have adapted to the Ralph Nader/Rachel Carson inspired regime of liberal pushback. They watched tape on, scouted us, tried new strategies, and found what works. So now, we need to change. Specifically, we need to re-empower central authority against special interests, not because central authority is ALWAYS more democratic — more reflective of the people’s will and needs — than special interests, but because that has how things have become in 2025.
It just completely numbs my mind that “theory of power” has become a stock phrase for people saying “I would rather you think less systematically and more in terms of teams.” I want to call it Orwellian because I can’t think of another term to describe so precisely inverting the meaning of something, though obviously that carries connotations of power which don’t apply to Teachout etc.
Yes, I agree.
My sense is that progressives and most liberals do this because they fail to see the fundamentally agonistic nature of politics. That we have politics, and therefore need a fair process for conducting it, because people do _not_ agree. They have different interests and different values. But they are also stuck with each other, because small groups and poorer than larger ones Etc.
So they imagine that, deep down, there's the one true good way. Their way, which aligns with justice. Therefore, to be persuasive in a dispute, you try to show which side is the one good way. It follows by logical deduction that if the other side is bad, then you are good.
But if you see politics as inherently a struggle between competing forces, a system that has to "find" a temporary equilibrium, this makes no sense. The other side always looks bad in that it's trying to overpower you. That's a premise of the interaction, not a conclusion to be demonstrated as proof of something
For every issue, there is a small group that is able to stop progress on that issue. Very different from there being a small group that is able to stop progress on every issue!
And on the last point, I think that it's very useful to see corporations, unions, governments, and other organized groups, as artificial intelligences like any other, with their own means of operating, and their own structuring interests, that may be more or less aligned with the interests of any particular group of humans: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/machines-bureaucracies-and-markets-as-artificial-intelligences/
lol the title alone is worth the price of admission
Wonderfully written! You might like this old New Yorker piece by Nicholas Lemann on pluralism, where he articulates a similar theory of dispersed/coalitional power, which he credits to Arthur Bentley back in the early 20th century. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/11/conflict-of-interests
Superb essay; much needed clear thinking . Thanks!
The five most terrifying words: I’m from the Republican Party “ . And you know help is being clawed back so the oligarchs can have their fair share.🤨😆🤨😁