Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy

by Matt Stoller

Overview

A startling look at how concentrated financial power and consumerism transformed American politics, resulting in the emergence of populism and authoritarianism, the fall of the Democratic Party—while also providing the steps needed to create a new democracy.

Americans once had a coherent and clear understanding of political tyranny, one crafted by Thomas Jefferson and updated for the industrial age by Louis Brandeis. A concentration of power, whether in the hands of a military dictator or a JP Morgan, was understood as autocratic and dangerous to individual liberty and democracy. This idea stretched back to the country’s founding. In the 1930s, people observed that the Great Depression was caused by financial concentration in the hands of a few whose misuse of their power induced a financial collapse. They drew on this tradition to craft the New Deal.

In Goliath, Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism have returned to American politics for the first time in eighty years, as the outcome of the 2016 election shook our faith in democratic institutions. It has brought to the fore dangerous forces that many modern Americans never even knew existed. Today’s bitter recriminations and panic represent more than just fear of the future, they reflect a basic confusion about what is happening and the historical backstory that brought us to this moment.

The true effects of populism, a shrinking middle class, and concentrated financial wealth are only just beginning to manifest themselves under the current administrations. The lessons of Stoller’s study will only grow more relevant as time passes. Building upon his viral article in The Atlantic, “How the Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul,” Stoller illustrates in rich detail how we arrived at this tenuous moment, and the steps we must take to create a new democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501183089
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	608
Sales rank:	261,419
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Matt Stoller is a Fellow at the Open Markets Institute. Previously, he was a Senior Policy Advisor and Budget Analyst to the Senate Budget Committee. He also worked in the US House of Representatives on financial services policy, including Dodd-Frank, the Federal Reserve, and the foreclosure crisis. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Vice, and Salon. He lives in Washington, DC. Goliath is his first book.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Chapter 1 1912 1

Chapter 2 Mellonism 25

Chapter 3 The Impeachment of the Old Order 52

Chapter 4 Populists Take Power 84

Chapter 5 Trustbusters Against Hitler 120

Chapter 6 A Democracy of Small Businesses 155

Chapter 7 The New Deal Constitution 173

Chapter 8 Corporatists Strike Back 196

Chapter 9 The Free Market Study Project 224

Chapter 10 The Rebirth of Wall Street 257

Chapter 11 Wriston Versus Patman 282

Chapter 12 Penn Central 297

Chapter 13 The Collapse of the New Deal Consensus 312

Chapter 14 Watergate Babies 332

Chapter 15 The Liberal Crack-Up 348

Chapter 16 The Reagan Revolution 371

Chapter 17 The Morgans, the Mellons, and the Milkens 390

Chapter 18 Tech Goliaths and Too Big to Fail 407

Conclusion 441

Acknowledgments 457

Bibliography 463

Notes 479

Index 565

Editorial Reviews

08/19/2019

An excessive concentration of power in a few hands has undermined the U.S.’s well-being, according to this passionate, ill-focused history of the country’s economic policy. Stoller, a journalist and former Senate Budget Committee analyst, recounts the rise of antimonopoly policy, culminating in the New Deal regime of regulation and antitrust action to tame or break up overmighty banks and corporations. The result, he contends, was a postwar economy of independent farmers, mom-and-pop retailers, and mid-level manufacturers—a paradise of populist, human-scale capitalism championed by Democratic Congressman Wright Patman, who fought epic legislative battles against Wall Street from the House Banking Committee, and about whom Stoller writes admiringly. Then Stoller traces the emergence of his villains—antiregulation “Chicago School” economists, new Wall Street empire-builders such as Citibank’s Walter Wriston, monopoly-friendly liberals such as John Kenneth Galbraith, and post-Watergate Democratic Congressmen—who dismantled antitrust and financial regulations to create today’s monopolistic economy of giant banks, agribusiness empires, social media behemoths, and Amazon. Stoller attacks “the beast of monopoly,” pillorying chain retailers for lowering prices too far and dismissing the Chicago critique of antitrust regulation as “pseudoscience.” Ultimately, he lapses into a baggy jeremiad that blames “concentrated power” for everything from fascism to obesity. This account of once-potent populist politics probably won’t convince those who aren’t already in sympathy with Stoller’s worldview, but it’s lively history. Agent: Farley Chase, Chase Literary. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Goliath is a meticulously researched, powerfully argued and beautifully written book. Every thinking American must read it." —The Washington Book Review

"Deeply researched . . . Insightful." —Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times

"An engaging call to arms at a time when corporate power is increasing and that of the middle class evaporating." —Kirkus

"Goliath shows that a history of antitrust in the United States is ultimately a story about who we are as Americans, the limits we can place on private power, and government's ability to be a force for fairness and justice. The breadth and depth contained in this book is unlike any book written on the topic in recent memory—it is the kind of big economic history that the moment needs." —Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and co-chairman of the Economic Security Project

"Here is the secret history of economic democracy in America. 'Secret' because it’s a story that will trouble everyone: conservatives and liberals, Silicon Valley and Big Oil. But it’s also a story that gets at the heart of who we were and who we might be again. What Matt Stoller reminds us, in his perceptive and brilliant and at times startling way, is that the desire for economic equality is utterly American; that it is one of the oldest of American political traditions; and that in a slightly altered context, the people we love to scorn as “populists” might have proven even more radical than the wokest activist in the #Resistance." —Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?

“Goliath is an impressive and fun book telling the long-forgotten but critical history of how freedom, not just from coercive government but from coercive corporate monopolies, is an essential part of American business.” —Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp

“Imaginatively researched, cogently argued, and consistently engaging, Matt Stoller’s Goliath persuasively restores the antimonopoly tradition to its rightful place in the twentieth-century moral imagination. If you are concerned about the enormous power politically unaccountable corporations wield in everyday life, this book will help explain how we got to the fix we are in—and what we can do about it.” —Richard R. John, Columbia University and author of Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications

"Matt Stoller's Goliath is a remarkable and fun story about corporate power in America. Stoller brings to life pivotal political fights over banks and monopolies, fights that took place in board rooms, in hearing rooms, and in mass protests. Highly recommended." —Henry Waxman, former United States congressman

"Goliath deftly traces the last century of anti-monopoly politics, identifying the key figures and policy fights that have shaped how America organized its political economy. At a moment when Americans are once again questioning and pushing back against extreme concentrations of private power, Goliath illuminates a history that is critical for understanding how we got here. It couldn't be timelier or more relevant for current debates around the dangers of unchecked corporate power and the future of the Democratic party." —Lina Khan, author of "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox"

“Matt Stoller has written a fascinating, deeply researched and almost hypnotic tale of the often tense relationship between corporate power and democracy. It has obvious parallels to where we are today, and lessons to be learned as we work to once again make democracy work for the people. Stoller’s documentation of this lost history is more important than ever as we deal with the effects of the financial crisis and deep-seeded poverty, the growing power of technology companies and the extraordinary gap that exists today between the richest few and everybody else." —Pramila Jayapal, United States congresswoman

“Democrats who seek to revitalize their party would do well to study Matt Stoller’s Goliath and incorporate—in a complex and thoughtful manner—its central teachings.” —The American Prospect

“Though anti-monopolism has been dormant for decades, the corporate consolidation of this century has given Americans on both sides of the political spectrum reason to wonder if it should be awakened. And Stoller’s treatise is a good place to start in thinking through that question.” —National Review

From the Publisher

2019-08-18
A former Senate budget analyst writes of the long struggle between political democracy and economic monopoly.

Concentrated economic power has a deleterious effect on liberty: Those who are rich do not like to give up the privileges of their wealth. These privileges include outsize influence on the politics of the day, which is why earlier generations of Americans took pains to contain that power. In the 20th century, this included the provisions of the New Deal, put in place after a decade in which, Stoller writes, there was literal class war between, say, striking coal miners in West Virginia and "police who wielded the power of the state but who were paid by private interests." The New Deal "reorganized two fundamental economic units over which Americans had fought since the founding: farming and shopkeeping," small-scale enterprises that encouraged broad distribution of property and discouraged large political formations. To the minds of the New Dealers, this reorganization invoked the Jeffersonian ideals of privileging "the yeomanry" and helped improve the availability of credit to farming, democratizing lending power. Later developments included the expansion of health care coverage. Though Harry Truman, Stoller observes, failed to create the universal coverage system that is still argued over today, he did greatly reduce the health insecurity of previous generations. This all changed, writes the author, during the Carter administration, when a devil's-bargain decision was made to yield to the first expressions of supply-side economics, affording a great victory for the political right that the subsequent Reagan, Bush, and Trump regimes would exploit—and that even the Clinton and Obama White Houses would more or less go along with. "The real question," Stoller writes in closing, "is not whether commerce is good or bad. It is how we are to do commerce, to serve concentrated power or to free ourselves from concentrated power."

An engaging call to arms at a time when corporate power is increasing and that of the middle class evaporating.

Kirkus Reviews

09/01/2019

Journalist Stoller (Open Markets Inst. Fellow, former senior policy adviser and budget analyst, U.S. Senate Budget Committee) tackles a complicated story in this debut. He leads off by noting that, until the 1970s, Congress vigilantly protected Americans from the dominating effects of corporate and bank monopolies, seeing that competition was a way to prevent tyranny. But a new generation of legislators who had not lived through the Great Depression failed to understand the dangers of concentrating economic power, and unwittingly allowed, and even encouraged, the creation of monopolies. Stoller's insightful analysis shows how the composition and values of members of Congress on both sides of the political divide have allowed monopoly power to dominate American business and politics. VERDICT This book will strike a chord with those who lived through the Great Recession and experienced frustration at the injustice of bankers and corporations being bailed out while so many lost their homes and livelihoods.—Carol Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater Libs.

Library Journal