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One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It was the age of the focus group, of the vox populi transformed into flesh, descended to earth and holding forth majestically in poll results,..." (more)
Key Phrases: cult studs, populist reflex, market populism, Wall Street, Tom Peters, United States (more...)

3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (52 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

After nearly a decade of bull markets, Americans have come to equate free markets with democracy. Never one for mincing words, social critic Thomas Frank, editor of The Baffler and author of The Conquest of Cool, challenges this myth. With his acerbic wit and contempt for sophistry, he declares the New Economy a fraud. Frank scours business literature, management theory, and marketing and advertising to expose the elaborate fantasies that have inoculated business against opposition. This public relations campaign joins an almost mystical belief in markets, a contempt for government in any form, and an "ecstatic" confusion of markets with democracy. Frank traces the roots of this movement from the 1920s, and sees its culmination in market populism as a fusion of the rebellious '60s with the greedy '80s. The overarching irony is the swapping of roles--suddenly Wall Street is no longer full of stodgy moneygrubbers, but cool entrepreneurs "leaping on their trampolines, typing out a few last lines on the laptop before paragliding, riding their bicycles to work, listening to Steppenwolf while they traded." Meanwhile, "Americans traded their long tradition of electoral democracy for the democracy of the supermarket, where all brands are created equal and endowed by their creators with all sorts of extremeness and diversity." Frank's close reading of the salesmen of market populism nails such financial gurus as George Gilder, Joseph Nocera, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas Friedman. Their writings, he contends, have served to make "the world safe for billionaires" by winning the cultural and political battle--legitimizing the corporate culture and its demands for privatization, deregulation, and non-interference. Frank's incisive prose verges on brilliant at times, though his yen for repetition can be exasperating. In either case, his boisterous reminder that markets are fundamentally not democracies is worth repeating as the level of wealth polarization in America reaches heights not seen since the 1920s. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly

An incisive and incendiary survey of today's cultural, political and economic landscape, social critic Frank's latest salvo conclude, that the New Economy is a fraud, management literature and theory are nothing but self-serving forms of public relations, and that, despite its self-congratulatory commercials, business is not cool. During the recent economic boom, he argues, our nation's hallowed tradition of political populism has morphed into market populism, a reverence for financial success in the marketplace as the ultimate authority of all that is good and true. Frank, founding editor of the Baffler magazine and author of The Conquest of Cool, thinks he knows who is to blame and he names names. The list is long and makes irresistible reading. Distilling vast research into highly readable volleys, he backs up his rage against the received orthodoxies of the New Economy, globalization and free markets with hard facts. He shows the resemblance between the banking crisis of the 1930s and present banking practices and demonstrates that income inequality is on the rise with the richest 10% controlling over 70% of the nation's wealth. Heaping contempt on those he views as old-fashioned hucksters turned out in hipsters' clothing, he nominates such self-proclaimed pundits as George Gilder, the Motley Fools, best-selling author Spencer Johnson and the Body Shop's Anita Roddick to his personal Hall of Shame. A fierce and informed advocate for core American political values, Frank offers a critique of the way business has taken over American society that is especially resonant in this election year. (Nov. 1)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (October 17, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 038549503X
ISBN-13: 978-0385495035
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (52 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #196,277 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category: (What's this?)
#78 in Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Free Enterprise

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
It was the age of the focus group, of the vox populi transformed into flesh, descended to earth and holding forth majestically in poll results, in town hall meetings, in brand loyalty demographics, in e-mail buletin boards, in website hits, in browser traffic. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
cult studs, populist reflex, market populism, market populists, populist consensus, public journalism, digital citizens, mass culture critique, business revolutionaries, grand argument, cultural populism, business thinkers, corporate soul, management theorists, culture warriors, liberation management

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Wall Street, Tom Peters, United States, New Deal, Charles Handy, Merrill Lynch, Bill Gates, Peter Senge, George Gilder, Peter Lynch, Third World, Ronald Reagan, World War, Bill Clinton, Fast Company, Frankfurt School, Silicon Valley, Third Millennium, Beardstown Ladies, Berlin Wall, Body Shop, Newt Gingrich, Norman Rockwell, Soviet Union, Warren Buffett

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 56 books:

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge on 8 pages
Liberation Management by Tom Peters on 6 pages
The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy on 5 pages
Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel on 5 pages
No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture by Andrew Ross on 4 pages

See all 56 books this book cites

29 books cite this book:

The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies by Michael B�rub� on 4 pages
The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies by Michael B�rub� on 4 pages
The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System by Siva Vaidhyanathan in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory for Cultural Studies (Cultural Spaces) by Shane Gunster in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy by Lisa Duggan on page 75, and Back Matter

See all 29 books citing this book

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	56% buy the item featured on this page: One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy 3.7 out of 5 stars (52)
	25% buy The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule 4.3 out of 5 stars (52) $7.96
	14% buy What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America 3.9 out of 5 stars (387) $10.88
	3% buy The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism 3.9 out of 5 stars (17) $13.13

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Customer Reviews

52 Reviews

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3.7 out of 5 stars (52 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

108 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tom Frank has it right., January 3, 2001

By	Richard Du Brul "richard_dubrul" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

I'm a Republican, sort of, and I've known and usually disagreed with Tom Frank for several years. Disagreed partly because of his and my age, educational, and career differences. But, as an older market research professional, disappointed with the ethos and ethics of our time, I heartily agree with Tom in his view that the American public has been sold a wrongful message on the state and - more importantly - the future of our economies. Plural is important, domestic plus export and import sales. I disagree with him on the unions' role, because he does not look at work rule problems. But otherwise, Tom Frank is right: The democratization of capital is largely a myth. Really, this is a thoughtful and - How did he have the time and stomach to read all that junk blah-blah management literature? - a very well researched and written book. The newspaper reviews, like the Chicago Tribune's, are right. Tom's written an important book about our futures.

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89 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What's the fuss all about?, July 11, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (Paperback)

This thoughtful, well researched, highly praised, and cogently written book was published three years ago, so why all the recent vitriol from negative reviewers? In fact, these harshly negative reviewers are *really* annoyed at the favorable response to the author's new book (see the just-published WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?). And in their zeal to trash the author and his useful discussion of how conservative voters have ceded their own true economic interests to calculated -- but essentially dead-end -- appeals to conservative values, these frustrated rightwing critics have extended their campaign to all things Tom Frank-related. If they actually read any of Frank's books, they might find much in his work that is sympathetic and fair-minded. Unfortunately, they have yielded to the right-wing preference for shrillness and black and white thinking over nuanced argument and real debate (but alas, that's what's the matter with liberals). Ignore the bombast and read this book -- and decide for yourself.

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65 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read critique of our obession with hyper capitalism, November 10, 2004

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (Paperback)

Before I say anything else about this book, I want to address the very strange claim made by a couple of reviewers that Thomas Frank doesn't understand economics. What is bizarre about that statement is that nowhere in the book does Frank talk about economics. If you look at most of the books by people like George Stigler or Gary Becker or Kenneth J. Arrow or any of a host of economists, you will find few of the issues discussed in this book. What is closer to the truth is that Frank discusses some of the assumptions that people make about business and the market. But this is largely unrelated to economic theory. When Milton Friedman argues for a radically free market economy, he has ceased speaking as an economist and has become a political philosopher, just as when Amartya Sen ceases writing about economics and begins talking about issues of justice and fairness in a political system, he has become a political philosopher. One speaks as an economist when stating what the effect of strong central regulation has on foreign investment, but one speaks as a political scientist when saying that deregulation is a bad or a good thing.

Nonetheless, Frank is very definitely concerned with the assumptions that underlie much free market-oriented policy of the past decade or so. In a sense, Frank is trying to revive questions that progressives such as Teddy Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt asked about the fairness of a society in which the needs of the many could be ignored in favor of the needs of the few. These individuals, like Frank, were deeply concerned with issues of economic equality. In the past two decades, a revival of Social Darwinism has occurred, with the result that we are in the midst of the most dramatic concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite at the expense of the middle class and the impoverished. A whole litany of statistics can be marshaled here. Frank notes that according to Federal Reserve numbers in 1979 20% of the wealth was in the hands of the top 1%, a number that strikes me as far too large. Yet by 1999 37% of the wealth was in the hands of the top 1%. After several rounds of tax cuts for the wealthy and investor classes, what would that percentage be today? 43%? 45%? 48? Clearly it is a pattern that has that been reversed. All economic indicators reveal that in the past twenty-three years there has been a dramatic shift in the wealth of the nation from the middle class to a small economic elite. Real wages for the middle class have fallen, while we are experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires. Frank clearly thinks this is completely messed up, and I doubt if many Americans would disagree.

ONE MARKET UNDER GOD deals with the panoply of problems that result from the allied beliefs in market populism (which is one of the ultimate oxymorons) and extreme capitalism. The passion for making all roads straight for rampant capitalism, the mania for deregulation, the utter disregard for all criteria for the economic health of any nation other than how the markets are doing, are all unquestioned manias that dominate current social and political discourse. Yet FDR insisted that it was a shameful situation where we as a nation considered that the nation as a whole was doing well if the majority of the citizens were not doing well. But in the market craze of the past two decades, most Americans have not done well. Frank implies that we might want to rethink a society that thinks that America benefits from a company laying off 20,000 workers because their stock goes up as a result. As Frank points out, consideration for workers and the masses has largely dropped out of the picture.

Frank chronicles the obsession with extreme capitalism that characterizes our society (and continues to do so even after the bubble collapse suffered in 2001), and the vast array of prophets that harkens not its desirability (in fact, no one even thinks to argue that the hyper capitalism that has gripped our society is a good thing; they merely assume this as a given) but to its inevitability. Frank finds all this more than a little nutty and the obvious point of the book is to make us all stand back a bit and reconsider whether this turbo capitalism will truly result in a kind of world that we truly want.

Frank brings a number of strengths to the table in this book. First, he is a fine historian, with a much deeper grasp of trends and developments in American history than is needed for this study. Second, he is a fabulous writer. He isn't quite as funny as a comic such as Al Franken, but he is the equal of a Molly Ivins. So, in addition to being incredibly informative and to being crucial in making us rethink our national goals, it is also a pleasure to read.

I'll close with a personal anecdote. As I was reading this book (which I interrupted to read his more recent and equally superb book, WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?), I mentioned to some friends over Thai food that I was reading a great book by Thomas Frank. One of my friends remarked, "Oh, I had a friend at the U of C who had a brother named Tom Frank. They roomed together and threw some really great parties. He edits THE BAFFLER now." Well, the author of this book is the founder, of course, of THE BAFFLER, and I find it somehow comforting that such a pertinent and morally powerful book was written by someone who knows how to party.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, but a bit overstated
Thomas Frank's idea that the notion of free markets have essentially became a religion is a provactive one. Read more

Published 8 months ago by L. Lieb

3.0 out of 5 stars Totalicorporatism
This book was published in 2000 as an up-to-date expose on the then-ascendant corporate bubble which had not yet crashed and burned. Read more

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4.0 out of 5 stars revealing
although it seemed a bit repetetive at times, this book was right on. i guess it seemed that way to me because everything was so intertwined. Read more

Published on January 5, 2007 by Emily A. Vogt

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Worthwhile
If you want to know how the economy really works and who is really in charge, read this book. You don't need to agree with all of the author's conclusions, but the the facts and... Read more

Published on August 14, 2006 by J. A. Burrus

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid thoughtful, nails our national policy failures in a big way

This is a very serious book, one that any candidate for President would do well to read, especially so the centrist candidates willing to announce that both the Democratic... Read more

Published on August 2, 2006 by Robert D. Steele

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening romp through a decade of idiocy
From John Perry Barlow to Virginia Postrel, from _Liberation Management_ to _Who Moved My Cheese?_, from dot-com millionaires to cult stud academics, Thomas Frank summarizes,... Read more

Published on May 7, 2006 by Aaron Swartz

4.0 out of 5 stars The Democracy Bubble
If there were two overall themes guiding this book, I'd say it was these:
During the late 1990s, it was pretty obvious that a rising tide was not lifting all boats. Read more

Published on January 16, 2006 by M. Hogan

5.0 out of 5 stars Revelations
In ONE MARKET UNDER GOD, Thomas Frank brilliantly unpacks the self-serving ideology of the corporatocracy. Read more

Published on October 12, 2005 by Panopticonman

5.0 out of 5 stars The moral fabric of the marketplace
Frank is right on the money, no doubt about it. "Free-markets" and democracies aren't the same thing. Even the freest of markets can be bought, whereas democracies can't be... Read more

Published on October 9, 2005 by Headbang8

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!
Frank is verbose, but aside from this, his book is brilliant. In an age where Friedman and others are seen as "experts," Frank is extremely refreshing. Read more

Published on October 7, 2005 by L. Vila-Henninger

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