Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What to Do About It
By Sohrab Ahmari. Forum Books. 2023. 261 pages.

The publication of Sohrab Ahmari’s hotly-anticipated new book — Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What to Do About It  is —another landmark moment in the career of one of the most important intellectuals on the American right.

Where his previous well-known works focused on his journey to Catholicism (From Fire, by Water, 2019) and the value of tradition (The Unbroken Thread, 2021), Tyranny Inc. shifts the focus to the realm of government policy.

It is in this space that Ahmari has been focusing much of his efforts since launching Compact magazine last year. Compact’s position on the political spectrum can be understood from its mission statement endorsing “a strong social-democratic state that defends community — local and national, familial and religious  against —a libertine left and a libertarian right.”

In his new book, Ahmari takes aim at the expansion of corporate power and the impact which he claims this is having on individual rights as well as the general welfare of American society.

Ahmari’s professional background with high-profile outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and First Things demonstrates his right-of-centre credentials.

What sets him apart in these circles is his view that the key problem plaguing America is not the expansion of centralised government, but the gradual growth of a corporate power that is unhindered by democratic checks and balances.

“We have succumbed to a generational effort, mounted by some of the world’s wealthiest individuals, most powerful corporations, and their ideologues for hire, to make us forget what used to be taken for granted: that private actors can imperil freedom just as much as overweening governments; that unchallenged market power can impair our rights and liberties; that there are finally such things as private tyrannies and private tyrants,” he writes.

Oligarchy

The issue of coercion is of paramount importance, for Ahmari regards the libertarian world vision in which free individuals prosper by entering into mutually beneficial transactions (including offering their labour to employers for an agreed wage) as something of a fairytale in today’s reality.

Instead of working within a relatively balanced playing field, Ahmari highlights how economic changes have resulted in economic power resting in the hands of the few.

At the very same time, he argues that the power of workers has been greatly diminished by the weakening of trade unions, changes in work conditions and a rolling back of the government protections which were introduced in the New Deal era in the 1930s.

Ahmari contends that this has resulted in a return “to the conditions of the pre-reform nineteenth century, characterised by vast disparities in power between the wealthy few and the asset-less many.”

Among the negative side effects he identifies when it comes to the rise of ‘precarious employment’ (like Uber driving contracts) are increased financial insecurity and increased difficulties in balancing work and family life.

Employers benefit in other ways from the current status quo, and Ahmari notes the increased restrictions on employee speech, the ability of employers to compel workers to attend political events and the increasing tendency for American workers to be forced into private arbitration proceedings rather than public courts when seeking any redress of grievance.

He also criticises the tendency for public services — like fire-fighting — to be privatised across parts of the United States, as well as drawing attention to the destructive role of private equity firms across a range of sectors, including local journalism.

Woke capitalists

One of the key recent developments in the American economy has been the rise of ‘woke capitalism:’ the tendency of companies to engage in political and social activism, invariably in support of socially liberal and left-wing causes.

We see examples of this worldwide, for example: the increased pressure on employees to attend questionable Diversity & Inclusion sermons; the ubiquity of rainbow paraphernalia and the coercive efforts to ensure all workers display it; and theatrical professions of deference to the radical Black Lives Matter movement.

All of this is having a major impact on the political Right internationally, and parties that were previously instinctively pro-business are beginning to adopt a more sceptical approach.