Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom
Grace Blakeley
Atria Books, £14

ANIMUS towards the state long predates the conclusion of Marx and Engels that it would “wither away” in a socialist society. They were not alone — most radicals foresaw the disappearance of the state in some form, but mainly in terms of its seizure by workers in the same way that one regime would topple another.

However, Marx, and in particular Engels, were imagining the state not as a discernible institutional structure governing our lives from above, but as a reflection of social relations — more chimera than entity. Over time their emphasis edged from expecting the active abolition of the bourgeois state when the class war is won by workers, to its passive dissolution when there is no requirement to enforce the strictures of capital — the state would simply cease to exist.   

It’s hard to get one’s head around this notion today in a world in which we defer in almost every aspect of our powerless lives to state intrusions — it is everywhere. But doing so is important to understanding what the state really is, and the possibility of radical change. That is because of the state’s relationship with capital, a theme at the heart of Grace Blakeley’s exciting reminder that in our conceptual imprisonment not only do we reify both the “market” and the “state,” we forget that they represent two sides of the same coin.

One of the principal illusions of capitalism, reiterated ad nauseam by neoliberals, has been that the “state” is a centralised source of planning locked in fatal historical tension with the free market — its nemesis. Vulture Capitalism examines this capitalist narrative to demonstrate that this could not be further from the truth. Capitalism is not what you think it is, Blakeley reminds us — markets are not free, and states do not sit above them as a discrete higher power.

“Actually existing capitalism,” she says, is a hybrid system based on a balance between markets and planning — a nefarious double act featuring capital and the captured state.

“This is not a glitch resulting from the incomplete implementation of capitalism, or its corruption by an evil, all-powerful elite,” she writes. “It is simply the way capitalism works.”

The author argues that while markets may be an inescapable part of any capitalist society, capitalism is not defined by the “free market” — which is as mythical as the unicorn — but by the class division between owners and workers. Hence what really defines capitalism is the domination of society by capital — a social relationship — and this in turn explains why the state is in reality little more than “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

Blakeley examines this relationship in practice by exposing how the state either enables or disregards the worst aspects of corporate capitalism, whose tendrils reach deep into the body politic. She explores the degree to which planning itself distinguishes capitalism, an often invisible process involving complex, concealed networks and relations.

Capital planning has found its most mature form under neoliberalism, which has been dedicated to curtailing the corporatism of the postwar years — co-operation between workers and bosses mediated by states.

From the massive bailouts and loans that followed the 2008 financial crisis which benefited paragons of US “capitalism” — Ford, Chrysler, GM — to the deregulation that lies beneath the deadly woes grounding Boeing, the captive state empowers corporate abuse. Blakeley points to the scandalous corruption that underpinned corporate and business loans during the pandemic in both the US and Britain. 

She examines the “crooked co-ordination” behind the scenes that characterised the US mortgage crisis and how fortunes have been made by a few powerful actors during the supply chain squeeze and the corresponding inflationary “cost-of-living” crisis.

And all the while, big banks have hovered in the background, feeding the beast while being nurtured, protected and whitewashed by compliant states. 

The apex predator dominating this swamp is a modern form of concentrated capital that seeks to escape the strictures of competition, not to worship them — monopoly capitalism. Today, “market power” is the power to control the market, rather than be controlled by it.

“Ultimately,” she writes, “these corporations have become sovereign actors within our society — capable of delivering punishment, governing life, and making and breaking the law in much the same way as states. The effects for everyone else have been disastrous.”

To make the point, Blakeley lists a roll-call of names we will all have become familiar with in the global hall of shame — from Bernie Madoff and Monsanto to ExxonMobil and Greensill Capital, David Cameron’s lucky wishing well. 

The author revisits the work of thinkers who have considered the role of the state in capitalist society from Gramsci to Baran, Sweezy and Miliband. The latter’s efforts to understand why elites always acted in the service of capital concluded that their common social origins nurtured common outlooks, something those rightly abandoning the Labour Party today will recognise. 

Blakeley’s prescriptions are not unexpected. They number democratic planning by workers, participatory budgeting, social planning at scale, and the democratisation of finance etc. But offering solutions is not the purpose of her book: it is a Marxist aide-memoire to help us focus our attentions on the most important explanation for our current malaise: the falsehood of sovereign statehood.

It is easy to assume that our powerlessness is caused by the impersonal and anonymous “free market,” she says, but capitalism is not a free-market system, but one based on planning. This planning reflects the insidious marriage of corporate and political power and is reflected in the defence of corporate capitalism by the state. But it is our state, and one that we must take back.

Blakeley writes: “Rather than seeing the world in which we live as emerging from mystical market forces beyond our control, we must realise that capitalism results from the conscious choices of those operating within it. When we are able to view it in these terms, the space for conscious, democratic design of our world expands.”