Meet the economist behind the one percent’s stealth takeover of America By Lynn Parramore May 30, 2018 – INET Ask people to name the key minds that have Carolina, where a Tea Party-dominated shaped America’s burst of radical right-wing Republican Party got control of both houses of attacks on working conditions, consumer the state legislature and began pushing through rights and public services, and they will a radical program to suppress voter rights, typically mention figures like free market- decimate public services, and slash taxes on champion Milton Friedman, libertarian guru the wealthy that shocked a state long a beacon Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists of southern moderation. Up to this point, the Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. figure of James Buchanan flickered in her peripheral vision, but as she began to study his James McGill Buchanan is a name you will work closely, the events in North Carolina and rarely hear unless you’ve taken several classes also Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker in economics. And if the Tennessee-born was leading assaults on collective bargaining Nobel laureate were alive today, it would suit rights, shifted her focus. him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many Could it be that this relatively obscure economics students have little understanding economist’s distinctive thought was being put of his work. forcefully into action in real time? The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean MacLean could not gain access to Buchanan’s contends that his philosophy is so stark that papers to test her hypothesis until after his even young libertarian acolytes are only death in January 2013. That year, just as the introduced to it after they have accepted the government was being shut down by Ted Cruz relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. & Co., she traveled to George Mason (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans University in Virginia, where the economist’s really knew what Buchanan thought and papers lay willy-nilly across the offices of a promoted, and how destructively his vision is building now abandoned by the Koch-funded manifesting under their noses, it would dawn faculty to a new, fancier center in Arlington. on them how close the country is to a MacLean was stunned. The archive of the man transformation most would not even want to who had sought to stay under the radar had imagine, much less accept. been left totally unsorted and unguarded. The That is a dangerous blind spot, MacLean historian plunged in, and she read through argues in a meticulously researched book, boxes and drawers full of papers that included Democracy in Chains, a finalist for the personal correspondence between Buchanan National Book Award in Nonfiction. While and billionaire industrialist Charles Koch. Americans grapple with Donald Trump’s That’s when she had an amazing realization: chaotic presidency, we may be missing the key here was the intellectual linchpin of a stealth to changes that are taking place far beyond the revolution currently in progress. level of mere politics. Once these changes are A theory of property supremacy locked into place, there may be no going back. Buchanan, a 1940 graduate of Middle An unlocked door in Virginia Tennessee State University who later attended MacLean’s book reads like an intellectual the University of Chicago for graduate study, detective story. In 2010, she moved to North started out as a conventional public finance 2 economist. But he grew frustrated by the way slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits in which economic theorists ignored the of Liberty. political process. Does that sound like your kindergarten Buchanan began working on a description of teacher? It did to Buchanan. power that started out as a critique of how The people who needed protection were institutions functioned in the relatively liberal property owners, and their rights could only be 1950s and ‘60s, a time when economist John secured though constitutional limits to prevent Maynard Keynes’s ideas about the need for the majority of voters from encroaching on government intervention in markets to protect them, an idea Buchanan lays out in works like people from flaws so clearly demonstrated in Property as a Guarantor of Liberty (1993). the Great Depression held sway. Buchanan, MacLean observes that Buchanan saw society MacLean notes, was incensed at what he saw as a cutthroat realm of makers (entrepreneurs) as a move toward socialism and deeply constantly under siege by takers (everybody suspicious of any form of state action that else) His own language was often more stark, channels resources to the public. Why should warning the alleged “prey” of “parasites” and the increasingly powerful federal government “predators” out to fleece them. be able to force the wealthy to pay for goods and programs that served ordinary citizens and In 1965 the economist launched a center the poor? dedicated to his theories at the University of Virginia, which later relocated to George In thinking about how people make political Mason University. MacLean describes how he decisions and choices, Buchanan concluded trained thinkers to push back against the Brown that you could only understand them as v. Board of Education decision to desegregate individuals seeking personal advantage. In America’s public schools and to challenge the interview cited by MacLean, the economist constitutional perspectives and federal policy observed that in the 1950s Americans that enabled it. She notes that he took care to commonly assumed that elected officials use economic and political precepts, rather wanted to act in the public interest. Buchanan than overtly racial arguments, to make his case, vehemently disagreed — that was a belief he which nonetheless gave cover to racists who wanted, as he put it, to “tear down.” His ideas knew that spelling out their prejudices would developed into a theory that came to be known alienate the country. as “public choice.” All the while, a ghost hovered in the Buchanan’s view of human nature was background — that of John C. Calhoun of distinctly dismal. Adam Smith saw human South Carolina, senator and seventh vice beings as self-interested and hungry for president of the United States. personal power and material comfort, but he also acknowledged social instincts like Calhoun was an intellectual and political compassion and fairness. Buchanan, in powerhouse in the South from the 1820s until contrast, insisted that people were primarily his death in 1850, expending his formidable driven by venal self-interest. Crediting people energy to defend slavery. Calhoun, called the with altruism or a desire to serve others was “Marx of the Master Class” by historian “romantic” fantasy: politicians and Richard Hofstadter, saw himself and his fellow government workers were out for themselves, southern oligarchs as victims of the majority. and so, for that matter, were teachers, doctors, Therefore, as MacLean explains, he sought to and civil rights activists. They wanted to create “constitutional gadgets” to constrict the control others and wrest away their resources: operations of government. “Each person seeks mastery over a world of 3 Economists Tyler Cowen and Alexander with the Institute for New Economic Thinking Tabarrok, both of George Mason University, (INET), MacLean described Friedman and have noted the two men’s affinities, heralding Buchanan as yin and yang: Calhoun “a precursor of modern public choice “Friedman was this genial, personable theory” who “anticipates” Buchanan’s character who loved to be in the limelight and thinking. MacLean observes that both focused made a sunny case for the free market and the on how democracy constrains property owners freedom to choose and so forth. Buchanan was and aimed for ways to restrict the latitude of the dark side of this: he thought, ok, fine, they voters. She argues out that unlike even the can make a case for the free market, but most property-friendly founders Alexander everybody knows that free markets have Hamilton and James Madison, Buchanan externalities and other problems. So he wanted wanted a private governing elite of corporate to keep people from believing that government power that was wholly released from public could be the alternative to those problems.” accountability. The Virginia school also differs from other Suppressing voting, changing legislative economic schools in a marked reliance on processes so that a normal majority could no abstract theory rather than mathematics or longer prevail, sowing public distrust of empirical evidence. That a Nobel Prize was government institutions— all these were awarded in 1986 to an economist who so tactics toward the goal. But the Holy Grail was determinedly bucked the academic trends of the Constitution: alter it and you could increase his day was nothing short of stunning, and secure the power of the wealthy in a way MacLean observes. But, then, it was the peak that no politician could ever challenge. of the Reagan era, an administration several Gravy train to oligarchy Buchanan students joined. MacLean explains that Virginia’s white elite Buchanan’s school focused on public choice and the pro-corporate president of the theory, later adding constitutional economics University of Virginia, Colgate Darden, who and the new field of law and economics to its had married into the DuPont family, found core research and advocacy. The economist Buchanan’s ideas to be spot on. In nurturing a saw that his vision would never come to new intelligentsia to commit to his values, fruition by focusing on who rules. It was much Buchanan stated that he needed a “gravy better to focus on the rules themselves, and that train,” and with backers like Charles Koch and required a “constitutional revolution.” conservative foundations like the Scaife MacLean describes how the economist Family Charitable Trusts, others hopped developed a grand project to train operatives to aboard.