72: Tyranny, Inc.

The PloughCast

The hosts speak with Sohrab Ahmari about how private power crushed American liberty.

Sohrab’s new book, Tyranny, Inc., is a thoroughly reported look at the way that private economic power, especially the conditions of employment, has taken away workers’ abilities to have agency over their own lives. How did we get here, and what can we do about it? Sohrab looks at the history of the last several hundred years, from the enclosure movement on, and looks as well at many stories of contemporary economic tyranny.

They discuss the tendency of conservative genealogies of social ills to focus on ideas to the exclusion of material forces, and discuss as well the connections between this book, Sohrab’s earlier work on liberalism, and his Catholic faith.

They end in discussing the conflict between neoliberalism and the Christian tradition, and Susannah recites a poem about a goose.