At the end of World War I, everyone thought it was the war to end all wars. Not so. Along came Hitler. At the end of World War II, everyone thought hostilities would be over. Not so. Along came Stalin.
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At the end of the Cold War, everyone thought that the triumph of free-market capitalism and democracy meant the whole world would progress that way. Not so. Along came Putin and Trump.
Why didn't free-market capitalism and democracy spread to the peoples of the world who were so obviously desirous of it? That is a good question to ask at the beginning of 2025 and at the beginning of the second Trump presidency.
The short answer is that free markets and capitalism are hopelessly incompatible, as are capitalism and democracy. The three forces are working against each other, not in harmony. And through this gap, authoritarians have marched in. It is not the end of history but just another dialectical iteration of history ready to coalesce into a new normal. We cannot tell the nature of the new normal other than to worry that it might not be a democratic nirvana ensuring the peace and prosperity of all.
Two stand-out books of 2024 offer some explanation on the rise of authoritarianism and as to what happened and is happening to liberal democracy: Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom by Grace Blakeley and The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself - The History Behind Trump and JD Vance by Nick Bryant.
Blakeley is an English economics and politics commentator, columnist, journalist and author. Bryant is a former BBC correspondent to the US and now a journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald.
The theme of Vulture Capitalism is that the idea that free markets drive an efficient capitalist democracy is an illusion.
In capitalism, the big firms either swallow up or drive out competition. They behave as autocrats when dealing with their workers who do not enjoy any kind of liberty.
Sure, the book has a Marxist theme that capitalism has within it the seeds of its own destruction. Well, one may not share the hope of some sort of happy-clapping socialist nirvana, as this book proposes, but the book's intellectual strength is in gathering together the historical evidence that shows us that the big successes of capitalism (Ford, Musk, Zukerberg, Bezos, etc) are the enemies, not the friends, of the free market, liberty and democracy.
They snuff out start-up competition by either buying it or unfairly under-cutting it. They treat their employees as automatons, giving them no say in their working lives.
The levelling off of productivity in the past 20 years has coincided with the growth of oligopolies and monopolies. Healthy competition gives the dynamism of diversity. Smaller businesses, where employees have a greater say, become more efficient and productive. This is the true free market. Equating Amazon, Microsoft, Colesworth, the telecommunications giants, and other oligopolies as participants in a "free" market is absurd.
The theme of The Forever War is that Trump and his misogyny, authoritarianism, racism, incitement to violence and division, and lies are not some sort of recent aberration. Bryant explains with a tsunami of historic evidence that it was ever thus. America has never been a democratic light on the hill. From Day One the crafters of the constitution were determined that the masses should be restrained. They succeeded, as the Electoral College testifies.
He provides numerous examples of autocratic, undemocratic, racist, mendacious, violent, and misogynistic behaviour in leaders in politics and business throughout American history. The only difference with Trump, he suggests, has been the enablers and sycophants in the Republican Party.
Nixon was just as poisonous, but it was a Republican senator, Howard Baker, who famously asked: "What did the President know and when did he know it?" And it was Republican members of Congress who went to the White House to tell Nixon that he was finished.
Bryant's book is an exquisitely written and meticulously researched demolition of the myth that the US has always been a beacon of democracy and liberty for the rest of the world to emulate.
The guns, the hypocritical religiosity, and the misplaced exceptionalism run through the history of America. Trump is business as usual, not an aberrant blip.
Talk of civil war, especially on the 1860s scale, is far-fetched, but sporadic violence on, say, the scale of the Northern Ireland Troubles is not, Bryant suggests. But an encouraging view of America's forever war on itself is that its history enables it to cope with divisiveness and violence. Most likely there will be no civil war, but nor will there be a civil peace.
MORE CRISPIN HULL:
If you read only one book in 2025 about the US, make it this insightful and myth-busting one.
Maybe, the duality of human nature will make America's and the world's quest for universal, peaceful, liberal democracy an endless struggle with perpetual ebbs and flows rather than some destination that had been reached with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The greed of monopolistic capitalists (do you really need another billion?) and the power-hunger of authoritarians (do you really need to impose your will by force on everyone else?) are perhaps not the seeds of capitalism's and authoritarianism's destruction. Rather they are the seeds of their perpetual ebb and flow.
In any event, we should now know not to equate capitalism with free markets or democracy. Capitalism is not the vanguard of liberty and democracy. Unless it is bridled with regulation to foster the competition of genuinely free markets and regulation to protect the environment and employees' rights, and reasonable levels of effective taxation, capitalism will not be a force for progress, democracy and liberty.
And any idea that an authoritarian strongman leader will be good for any country is delusional.
- Crispin Hull is a former editor of The Canberra Times and regular columnist.
- crispinhull.com.au
Crispin Hull
regular columnist.
