None of the candidates on November’s election ballot will be listed as totalitarians, but we know totalitarianism is between the lines. Unfortunately, it’s not the election’s only ugly “ism.” Donald Trump record and rhetoric includes racism, militarism, misogynism, amoralism and even MAGA militia terrorism against those who oppose him.
However, another “ism” gets too little attention even though it threatens the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness memorialized in the Declaration of Independence.
It’s neo-liberalism, an economic doctrine that has dominated business and industry since the 1930s. It posits that corporations have only one responsibility: earning profits for shareholders. It's a confusing label in the United States because it was born in Europe, where "liberalism" is usually applied to the right-wing rather than the left. Taken literally, it advocates corporate power unfettered by conscience, ethics or government regulations that protect the people from corporate excesses.
Neo-liberalism underpins much of Project 2025, which some believe is a conservative instruction manual for another Trump presidency, and the U.S. Supreme Court's recent rulings that give corporations more power by chopping away at the "administrative state."
Guardian columnist Stephen Metcalf calls it "the reigning ideology of our era – one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away all the things that make us human."
What does this have to do with our inalienable rights? The right to life depends on the right to resources and conditions that make life possible. They include the right to breathe without fear of fatal lung diseases, drink water uncontaminated by chemicals and pursue happiness on a planet with a livable climate.
Yet, 50 years after America's environmental decade, and despite quantifiable progress against pollution, people in the United States and around the world still die from polluted air, contaminated water and an increasingly violent climate.
This is not to demonize all businesses and corporations. Many have begun weighing their effects on the environment, society and governance (ESG). However, neo-liberals have pulled ESG policies into the culture wars; several large corporations are abandoning them under pressure from conservatives and red states that won't do business with ESG companies.
In New Hampshire, lawmakers are even trying to impose sentences of up to 20 years in prison for state money managers who knowingly incorporate ESG in their investment policies.
Neo-liberals are also attacking companies that have promised to eliminate the pollution responsible for climate change. Bloomberg notes they have come under "a wave of threats from the GOP, with Republican lawmakers, governors, and state attorneys general alleging that climate alliances represent a form of collusion that warrants antitrust lawsuits."
The fossil fuel sector has been fighting efforts to mitigate climate change for 50 years, determined not to leave any recoverable reserves of coal, oil and natural gas in the ground, even though burning them would make climate change catastrophic and irreversible. While we've procrastinated on fighting climate change, scientists have identified eight other life-sustaining planetary cycles and "safe operating spaces" threatened by human development.
If corporations have the rights of personhood, as the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, they should have the obligations of personhood, too. They must be part of the solution to protect the biosphere's life-sustaining systems. In fact, ecologist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken points out, "There is only one institution on earth large enough, powerful enough, pervasive enough, and influential enough to really lead humankind in a different direction. And that is the institution of business and industry."
Responsible companies don't mind reasonable government regulation because they regulate themselves. However, the Supreme Court has created a record of supporting the bad actors, giving corporations the right to make unlimited financial contributions to elections, limiting the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce environmental laws, extending the statute of limitations for companies to sue government regulators and allowing corporations and wealthy individuals to give elected officials "gratuities" after favorable official acts.
The attack on the "administrative state" reopens the debate about whether America is ruled by a plutocracy or a democracy. As the authors of one study put it, "if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
They concluded, "In the past, the broad middle classes of America had a strong say in determining the fundamental direction of American society. Today, they no longer do. The decisions of the U.S. Congress are not determined by the voters; they are determined by the funders. As a result, America is becoming functionally less and less of a democracy, where all citizens have an equal voice. Instead, it looks more and more like a plutocracy, where a few rich people are disproportionately powerful."
"While it may sound conspiratorial to say that big money controls the U.S. government, it is just about the most unhidden conspiracy ever," Al Jazeera columnist Belen Fernandez has written "Indeed, plutocratic operations have become so normalized a part of the political landscape that hardly anyone bats an eye when we talk about millions being flung around here and there in order to affect electoral outcomes."
So, among the many "isms" on the November ballot, neo-liberalism deserves much more scrutiny. We should elect a president and Congress that forces the Supreme Court to worry less about the rights of corporations and more about the inalienable rights of people, nature and future generations.
William S. Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project and a former regional director at the U.S. Department of Energy. He is author of several books on climate change and national disaster policies, including the “100-Day Action Plan to Save the Planet” and “The Creeks Will Rise: People Co-Existing with Floods.”
