{"id":302851,"date":"2025-09-15T12:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T11:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=302851"},"modified":"2025-09-10T09:22:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T08:22:18","slug":"vulture-capitalism-corporate-crimes-backdoor-bailouts-and-the-death-of-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/09\/vulture-capitalism-corporate-crimes-backdoor-bailouts-and-the-death-of-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, Grace Blakeley, Bloomsbury Publishing 2025 (paperback), 2024 (hardback)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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Grace Blakeley\u2018s book<\/em>\u00a0critiques the alliance of corporations, finance, and states underpinning the capitalist system that drives inequality, stifles democracy and enriches elites. Brilliantly combining theory, analysis and practical solutions in engaging prose, this book offers a blueprint for reclaiming power through economic democracy.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Populist movements<\/a>\u00a0across the globe have expressed a chorus of complaints that national and\u00a0international<\/a>\u00a0political economies are\u00a0not being governed<\/a>\u00a0for the benefit of citizens. Instead, it seems that a narrow segment of wealthy, well-connected insiders reap the greatest gains during economic booms and are safeguarded and bailed out following a bust. Meanwhile, massive costs are imposed on everyone else.<\/p>\n

Grace Blakeley\u2019s new book Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom<\/em> provides a narrative that substantiates the populist sentiment. Indeed, she argues the logic of capitalism necessarily generates concentration of economic power. This concentration has been used to centralise political power, which in turn is used to pass regulations and policies that are highly favourable to Goliath multinational corporations and Titan financial institutions and further increase economic power. Blakeley is inspired and informed by a plethora of recent economic literature<\/a> documenting the \u201cdeath of competition<\/a>,\u201d rise of a \u201cnew gilded age<\/a>\u201d and \u201cnew monopoly capitalism<\/a>.\u201d It is a \u201cwar between monopoly power and democracy<\/a>,\u201d whereby it is argued oligopoly \u201ccompetition is killing us<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hundreds of economic studies have shown corporate concentration has increased persistently over the past century. The bulk of these have been conducted by advocates of capitalism concerned with the diminishing degree of competition and the lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws in recent decades. Blakeley embraces the mainstream concerns of economic concentration generating higher prices, fewer start-ups, lower productivity, less investment, lower wages, increasing income and wealth inequality, political polarisation, and withering democracy. However, she contends that monopoly power and economic concentration is an ontological feature of capitalism.<\/p>\n

Blakeley argues that it is a categorical error to identify the differentia specifica <\/em>of capitalism as free markets. First, this is because, as most recently argued by David Graeber<\/a>, all human societies have markets and exchange. Second, markets in capitalism are not<\/em> necessarily \u201cfree,\u201d but instead managed and planned. Thus, the notion of \u201cfree market\u201d capitalism is a rhetorical smokescreen, behind which lies the brutal, despotic power of Goliath corporations (29). Third, Blakeley fully embraces David Graeber\u2019s \u201ciron law of liberalism<\/a>,\u201d which contends that any extension of market activity, rather than reducing bureaucratic red tape, invariably increases regulations, the total amount of paperwork, and the total number of bureaucrats the government employs.<\/p>\n

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Modern corporations are not merely economic entities, but political entities without democratic accountability.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Part One of Vulture Capitalism<\/em> brilliantly unpacks four primary insights. (1) Market exchange is not unique to capitalism. (2) The differentia specifica <\/em>of capitalism is the specific relationship between employees and employers. (3) The relationship between the employee and employer is radically undemocratic, indeed totalitarian. (4) Historically, as capitalistic markets have been extended, nation-states get bigger and more involved in economic activity. For these reasons Blakeley subscribes to an insight of her mentors Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin<\/a>. Namely, the nation-state needs to be placed at the centre of the search for an explanation of what makes capitalism, capitalism. In contrast to mainstream myths, neo-liberal \u201cfree market\u201d policy does not constrain the nation-state. Instead, neo-liberal policies extend the reach of nation-state.<\/p>\n

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