(Image from villanova.edu).
By Kyle Scripko
“It has become ever more obvious that American politics are in profound crisis, both in Washington and the states, hurtling downwards as we meet,” stated Nancy MacLean in the opening lines of her talk, “Democracy in Chains,” for the 11th Annual Lore Kephart Lecture. [1] The crisis MacLean referred to that night is a developing and long-planned attack on American democracy by the radical right. In her talk, MacLean primarily addressed what has gone mostly unnoticed in recent American political history: the billionaire-funded Libertarian Right and, more specifically, the influence of Charles Koch and James McGill Buchanan. Nancy MacLean spoke to her audience that night to inform them of her argument; the capitalist right has been working on a “stealth plan” over the last fifty years to fundamentally change the modern democratic system of governance of the United States of America.
In her recent book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, MacLean grapples with what she calls a possible “fifth-column assault on American democratic governance.”[2] MacLean states in her book that the term “fifth column” invokes the idea of “stealth supporters” who engage “in propaganda and even sabotage to prepare the way for its conquest.”[3] MacLean argued in her lecture that Charles Koch, the billionaire CEO of Koch Industries, is currently funding a movement within the Libertarian Right with a “cold-eyed calculated strategy.” She claimed that Koch learned from the rhetoric of the academic economist, James Buchanan, and that Koch hopes to transform our modern political institutions into a system that runs on what MacLean called, “free-reign capitalism and economic liberty.” However, there is a danger that lingers within this type of rhetoric. For Koch’s “stealth plan” to work, he must follow Buchanan’s advice very closely; “democracy must be enchained.”
The argument Nancy MacLean proposes in her book has stirred up serious controversy in both the political and academic spheres. Jennifer Burns from Stanford University calls MacLean’s book, “not a book of scholarship, but of partisanship, written to reinforce existing divides and confirm existing biases.”[4] Burns believes that MacLean enforces a strict binary political system rather than promoting a more open conversation of intellectual and political thought. On the other hand, Mel van Elteren of Tilburg University calls MacLean’s book “timely and highly relevant for a deeper understanding of the current political scene,” and claims that Democracy in Chains “adds a crucial storyline to the complex and multicausal conservative counterrevolution.”[5] No matter how controversial her argument may be, MacLean’s book carries serious implications for the future of American democracy.
During the lecture, MacLean followed a path similar to her book and gave much attention to Buchanan’s work during the late 1950s and 1960s. She stated that, when learning about Buchanan and Libertarianism, she came to learn about their perception of “public interest” and the “common good” of democracy. In the lecture, MacLean quoted Buchanan from a 2007 interview where he claimed, “‘that’s what I wanted to tear down, the hypocrisy of calling something in the public interest.’” She continued with the idea of “destroying” the public interest with her perception of Libertarianism. She argued that, for a Libertarian like James Buchanan, “there is no such thing as the common good.” MacLean went on to draw from an exemplary case that highlights the dangers of Buchanan’s rhetoric: Chile. In 1980, Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean government invited James Buchanan to Santiago to help create the “Constitution of Liberty;” a constitution that MacLean claimed to be made up of “locks and bolts” and that protects capitalists from government. She went on to warn the audience that this system of “locks and bolts” is coming to the United States thanks to Charles Koch and the billionaires who fund the Libertarian Right.
As for Charles Koch, MacLean is clearly worried about the scope of Koch Industries’ reach. MacLean claimed in her lecture that, when all connected, the “Koch Project” involves hundreds of organizations around the world that are “working to radically alter government and society, to bring this kind of free-reign capitalism into being without being honest with the people.” She argued that the type of government Koch is pushing for is that of mid-twentieth-century Virginia, one defined by oligarchy and racial segregation. MacLean believes that Koch’s vision would be a Libertarian’s dream, one laced with “rigged rules” of gerrymandering and voting suppression. This is the system, promoted by the Libertarian Right, which MacLean believes will leave our modern “democracy in chains.”
Toward the end of the lecture, MacLean told the audience that she discovered this topic through a series of circumstances. After reading reports of public-school closings in Prince Edward County, Virginia during the 1950s, MacLean came across James Buchanan. He was the Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Virginia, and MacLean was surprised to find that he was in full economic support of the opening of what she called “white segregation academies,” or privatized schools, in Virginia. In 2013, Buchannan died and MacLean was given access to the historian’s dream, Buchanan’s untouched private archive at George Mason University. In this archive, she found files that revealed a complex system of collaborations headed by Charles Koch. MacLean discovered that this system used Buchanan’s ideas and involved politically engaged donors looking to change public policies with what MacLean referred to as a “stealth strategy.” By connecting the puzzle pieces she found in that archive, MacLean presents her audience with a new, shocking, and unsettling story.
Many of MacLean’s critics think her analysis was meant to spark divisiveness in an already desperate and tumultuous political climate. Although her work has faced criticism, MacLean has uncovered a system that has been in the making since the 1950s and has been progressing relatively undetected since then. Charles Koch, James Buchanan, and their influence on contemporary national and international politics is not something to dismiss. Her argument is one that anyone concerned with politics and American democracy needs to consider. Nancy MacLean concluded the lecture with a question that left the audience in an unnerving silence: “Is what this cause seeks, the kind of world that we want to live in, and bequeath to our children and our grandchildren?”
You can watch the entirety of Nancy MacLean’s Lecture, “Democracy in Chains,” here.
[1] Nancy MacLean, “Democracy in Chains,” The Lore Kephart ’86 Distinguished Historian Lecture Series (Lecture, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, September 26, 2019).
[2] Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Penguin Books, 2018), xxxii.
[3] MacLean, xxxiii.
[4] Jennifer Burns, “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America By Nancy MacLean,” History of Political Economy 50, no. 3 (2018): 648, http://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-7023786.
[5] Mel van Elteren, “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America Nancy MacLean. Viking, 2017,” Journal of American Culture 41, no. 2, (2018): 225, https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.12881.
Historically Speaking 