Episode Details

Professor Michael Rectenwald, who prevailed in a free speech fight at NYU a few years ago, recently published “Woke Capitalism is a Monopoly Game.” It begins:

“In 2018, Ross Douthat of the New York Times introduced the phrase ‘woke capital.’ Essentially, Douthat suggested that woke capitalism works by substitut­ing symbolic value for economic value. Under woke capitalism, corporations offer workers rhetorical pla­cebos in lieu of costlier economic concessions, such as higher wages and better benefits. The same gestures of woke­ness also appease the liberal political elite, promoting their agendas of identity politics, gender pluralism, transgender rights, lax immigration standards, climate change mitigation, and so on. In re­turn, woke corporations hope to be spared higher taxes, in­creased regulations, and antitrust legislation aimed at monop­olies. Although woke capitalism alienates cultural conservatives, the Republican Party remains procorporate, making woke capitalism a win-win strategy for corporations…”