Kevin A. Young - Levers of Power

Levers of Power

Levers of Power

How the 1% Rules and What
the 99% Can Do about It

Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee,
and Michael Schwartz

First published by Verso 2020

Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz 2020

This book contains excerpts from the following previously published articles: Kevin Young and Michael Schwartz, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: How Corporate Power Shaped the Affordable Care Act, New Labor Forum 23, no. 2 (2014): 3040 2014 The Murphy Institute, City University of New York; Kevin Young and Michael Schwartz, A Neglected Mechanism of Social Movement Political Influence: The Role of Anticorporate and Anti-Institutional Protest in Changing Government Policy, Mobilization 19, no. 3 (2014): 239260 2014 Mobilization: An International Quarterly; Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz, Capital Strikes as a Corporate Political Strategy: The Structural Power of Business in the Obama Era, Politics and Society 46, no. 1 (2018): 328 2018 Sage Publications.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-096-9

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-099-0 (LIBRARY)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-097-6 (UK EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-098-3 (US EBK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Young, Kevin A., author. | Banerjee, Tarun Kumar, 1948 author. | Schwartz, Michael, 1942

Title: Levers of power : how the 1% rules and what the 99% can do about it / Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz.

Description: London ; New York : Verso, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: Levers of Power argues that corporations influence ultimately derives from their control over the economic resources on which society depends. When business goes on a capital strike by refusing to invest in particular locations or industries, it imposes material hardship on specific groups or even the economy as a whole. For this reason, even politicians who are not dependent on corporate campaign cash must strive to keep capitalists happy Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020006826 (print) | LCCN 2020006827 (ebook) | ISBN 9781788730969 (paperback) | ISBN 9781788730990 (library binding) | ISBN 9781788730983 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Business and politicsUnited States. | Corporate powerPolitical aspectsUnited States. | CapitalismPolitical aspectsUnited States.

Classification: LCC JK467 .Y68 2020 (print) | LCC JK467 (ebook) | DDC 322/.30973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006826

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006827

Typeset in Minion Pro by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

Contents

This book is the result of more than a decade of research and discussion. The conversations began in late 2009, motivated by an emergent pattern that we began calling The Obama Conundrum. Though the new Obama administration had been elected with a strong mandate for Change We Can Believe In and enjoyed filibuster-proof control of Congress, it was not delivering major progressive reforms. We began to see this pattern as reflective of a much bigger theoretical question: what are the obstacles to progressive political change in modern-day societies, and how might we overcome them?

Our answer has been shaped by our research and by an ongoing discussion among the authors, with input from a large circle of friends and colleagues. We wish to acknowledge the help, in one form or another, of Gilbert Achcar, Idil Akin, Ahmad Al-Sholi, Kenneth Andrews, Florencia Arancibia, Diana Baldermann, Fred Block, Vivek Chibber, the late Dan Clawson, Mary Ann Clawson, G. William Domhoff, Barry Eidlin, Louis Esparza, Crystal Fleming, Gabriela Gonzlez Vaillant, Jeff Goodwin, Sebastin Guzmn, Tiffany Joseph, Wallace Katz, Richard Lachmann, Prita Lal, Clarence Lo, Matt Mahler, John Marciano, Mike Miller, Joya Misra, Aldon Morris, Joshua Murray, Fernanda Page Poma, Joseph Peschek, Frances Fox Piven, Charlie Post, Christopher Rhomberg, S.M. Rodrguez, Magali Sarfatti Larson, Kim Scipes, Diana Sierra Becerra, Marc Steinberg, Juhi Tyagi, Arnout Van de Rijt, Nancy Whittier, the late Jeffrey Young, and Gilda Zwerman; the attendees at conferences of the American Sociological Association, Eastern Sociological Society, Stony Brook Universitys How Class Works, and the NYU Economic and Political Sociology workshop, where we presented early drafts of pieces of the book; and editors and reviewers at the journals Mobilization, New Labor Forum, and Politics and Society, where some of the material appeared in print. Finally, our argument about social movement strategy is indebted to numerous organizers, most of whom are not famous, who developed keen analyses of power and how oppressed people could reclaim it.