Benjamin Barber on ‘Supercapitalism’

Posted on Dec 13, 2007

By Benjamin Barber

According to Bill Clinton’s own labor secretary, his administration was “one of the most pro-business administrations in American history.” That labor secretary was Robert Reich, an old friend of the Clintons who was too controversial and radical a critic of business to be very influential in Clinton’s two-term presidency, dominated as it was by the Democratic Leadership Council, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and other business luminaries. Clinton’s presidency embraced market capitalism so ardently that “market democracy” became a synonym for the administration’s stance on big business. The book Reich wrote about his experience as labor secretary with the telling title “Locked in the Cabinet” displayed more spleen than political savvy, but it was a revealing and acute exposition of how much less progressive the administration was in its policies and practices than in its rhetoric.