AMY GOODMAN: So, finally, Matt Stoller, you’ve written a lot about what’s coming to be called coronavirus capitalism —
MATT STOLLER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: — and about how the pandemic is really exposing the economic structure in this country and how it made us more vulnerable to what’s happening right now. Explain your analysis.
MATT STOLLER: Yeah, so, I wrote a
piece in
The Nation in 2011 on the fragility of our supply chains. And my book,
Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, is really focused on the physical nature of production, how we actually defeated the robber barons to build up the arsenal to democracy prior to World War II, a chapter in there called “Trustbusters Against Hitler,” you know, really trying to return us to the questions of how we make things, how we distribute things, how we sell things, what’s behind the supermarket shelf.
So right now we’re in this weird moment of consumer-oriented politics. And what we’re starting to see with the coronavirus is shortages, because we have mismanaged, consolidated our supply chains into monopolies and then offshored those, often to China, but not exclusively to China. And so now, when we need to make things, we can’t. A lot of us have been warning about this problem for quite a long time. It was fairly obvious in the early 2000s that it was happening. There were really serious problems that almost destroyed us after Sandy. New York was on the brink of starvation, and the food system came back just in time. We have had medical shortages for since 2005. We know about this problem. It has nothing to do with capitalism. That’s just kind of a brand that like a lot of the lefties like to throw around, because they don’t want to actually think about the physical nature of production. But it has to do with the fact that we used to make things in this country, and we did it in a decentralized way by using our antitrust laws, our banking laws, our regulatory power, to make sure that you didn’t have concentrated control. And then, in the 1970s and 1980s, the left decided that all they cared about was consumer rights and low consumer prices, and the right said the same thing: “That’s good, as long as we can concentrate corporate power.” And so, for the last 40 years, we’ve been concentrating power, consolidating power, and that means that you consolidate the supply chains, as well. And then they’ve been been — when you pool production, you also pool risk. And so, that’s what we’ve done.
And you’re starting to see we’re revisiting that. On the right, you’re seeing a much more aggressive approach to medical supply chains. So you’re seeing Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley, Mike Gallagher, Tom Cotton saying, “Hey, why is all our medicine made in China?” You see Tucker Carlson talking about it. I think, on the left, you’re seeing some members, like Mark Pocan, saying, “Hey, this is kind of weird.” You’re seeing a real debate now about how we do antitrust enforcement, because antitrust is the tip of the spear for a lot of the consolidation problems that we’ve faced. I mean, I think you’re going to see a real — you’re going to see a lot of changes in the foreign policy community, in the Pentagon, as they all of a sudden realize that they’re heavily dependent on China for all sorts of vital goods and services and weapon systems.
So, this is largely not a left-wing reimagining of our corporate system. This is actually more of a right-wing business and national security world reimagining of where we are. The left is largely not paying attention to this stuff. So I’m really glad you’re bringing me on and talking about it, because it’s actually really important. And we have to move away from that kind of weird consumer-oriented way of thinking and move back towards thinking about the physical nature of production. And that’s what we’re starting to do because of the supply chain problems.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Stoller, I want to thank you for being with us, research director at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of
Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. To see
Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
