Private Tyranny, Public Negligence

by The Prudentialist

This essay appears in Issue 4 of the Mars Review of Books. Visit the MRB store here.

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Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It

by Sohrab Ahmari

Forum Books, 288 pp., $24.52

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Today organized labor and corporate power are topics that rarely make headlines. It is taken for granted that labor unions will vote for democrats, and that we will dismiss the crimes of large corporations with a simple it is what it is. Sohrab Ahmari’s latest book, Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty and What To Do About It takes one back to a time when these were more serious political concerns.

I will admit it was difficult to read Ahmari’s book—not because of its complexity, but out of the temptation to stop every few pages and talk back to the text, in the same way one might find their parents or grandparents yelling at their televisions and radios when the news is on. Readers will have a firm expectation of what they’re in for if they are familiar with Ahmari’s take on politics and the economy. Ahmari, an Iranian immigrant and convert to Roman Catholicism, is, alongside the writers Adrian Vermuele and Patrick Deneen, one of the intellectual powerhouses of common good conservatism with a Roman Catholic twist. While not as fixated on culture war issues, the three tend to aim their critiques on the liberal project wholesale. Tyranny, Inc. offers an ideological, political, and theological lens through which to look at the problems of corporate power and overreach. Its prescribed solutions aren’t too far off from the progressive orthodoxies of Elizabeth Warren and New Deal–era thinkers. In fact this is something that Ahmari touts. When The Economist  wrote of his book, “[t]his is a recipe for slower growth and less innovation. Indeed, it is often hard to distinguish Mr Ahmari’s economic proposals from those of Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders on the Democratic left,” Ahmari commented, “Hell Yes.”