I’ve been intending to write a review of ‘Evil Geniouses: the unmaking of America: a recent history’ by Kurt Anderson (2020) since I was like half way in, but am only getting to writing this now, a few months later. To begin, Anderson’s analysis of neoliberalism is good. It is good to understand the conspiracy to make neoliberal ideas seep into all parts of society. He lays out the great material changes since the Keynesian era with the rise of the wealth gap well. His cultural nostalgia and stagnation theory is interesting. He has done his research well in these aspects. I like how he points a out how not only republicans, but democrats are neoliberals, and they facilitated the rise of the phenomena. It was interesting to revisit the start of Covid a few years later.

That is where my support for the book ends. The book is in essence Social democratic theory, and thus falls into the errors of many social democrats. Anderson does not understand that the state is an instrument of class rule. The United States were established by a revolt of bourgeois colonists and the government has been a mechanism for rule by the propertied ever since. Anderson acts like everything was great after the new deal and up to the ‘80s. He lacks the context that the new deal reforms were only concessions by the capitalist class in reaction to militant communists and unionists, and a look to the alternative rising in the east (the USSR not only did not face the capitalist crisis of the Great Depression, but they benefited from people defecting from capitalist countries there). The government made reforms to protect capitalism.

Another aspect missed from the author’s analysis is imperialism and the falling rate of profit. The American empire’s wealth was built on colonialism and imperialism. The wealth used to create the decent living standards of the white labor aristocracy was taken from those genocided to take this land along with those in the third world through unequal exchange. Anderson mentions how everyone in the US would be millionaires if the wealth were split equally, but that ignores the fact that we have no right to that wealth. It suggests that in his ideal system the United States would continue to benefit from exploitation and theft, only it would be shared more fairly internally (similar to the New Deal era).

Some other things Anderson is missing is the falling rate of profit and the post-war economy. The rate of profit objectively has the tendency to fall thanks to some things related to competition and average necessary labor time. The US became the global imperialist hegemon after WWII taking the spot of Britain. Thanks to a relatively high rate of profit and a position of prime exploiter the US economy could afford to not intervene significantly beside anti-trust regulations. Unlike how many (including Anderson and the neolibs themselves) suggest, neoliberalism is actually an era of great government input into the economy. The whole world is capitalist so exploitation can hardly be raised to increase the rate of profit, so the government steps in. There are many great subsidies to companies. There are tax cuts. The banks are bailed out when they crash.

Kurt Anderson does not have a viable solution to capitalism. He is right that “socialism” and big government should be normalized, but he doesn’t know what socialism is. Europe is not socialist, they are just propped up on the wealth of the global south too, they are faltering and affected by capitalist crises too. If his solution is to return to the new deal era, then we got to this mess from there, so it would be easy to again. It would be immense work to bring social democracy to the US, so why not use that energy to build actual socialism? Worker ownership of the means of production and a working class government. Unfortunately he does not understand actual socialism. He does not evidence his claims against AES they are just assumptions. He favorably portrays the Nordic countries against Venezuela, but Venezuela is not suffering of their own causing, it is thanks to great sanctions the US placed because they’re mad they couldn’t successfully coup them. Venezuela is built on the people’s hard work while the Nordics benefit from imperialism.

Kurt Anderson has a section calling for “non-binary” politics. He is right that most people don’t align with either major US political party. However, that is because the Overton window has shifted so far to the right. What 95% of people want is never carried out by the government. What people need is not some kind of compromise, but a radical left solution. Most people will agree with communism until they hear the buzzwords associated with it that they’ve been told to be scared of.

He is historically illiterate when it comes to Korea. The Koreans were split, but it wasn’t by their own will, it was the US. It was the US who killed a fifth of the north’s population. It was the north that (thanks to socialism) had far better living conditions than the south under a violent US backed dictatorship. He juxtaposes the North’s poverty to the south’s riches without the context that the north was devastated by the fall of the USSR and brutal US sanctions while SK’s economy was artificially propped up. This was not a result of the Korean people’s will in an “inflection point,” it was outside meddling.

Anderson mentions as a positive example of Alaska allowing everyone to earn money from the sale of oil. Public ownership is good, but people need to be able to put an end to fossil fuel extraction, and not be materially relying on it. He mentions that it decreased the native poverty rate, but the indigenous people there deserve more than a little oil money, they deserve that stolen land back. A similar example of everyone benefiting from their natural resources is Gaddafi’s Libya. But, of course it was for that reason of oil profits going to North Africans (which was going to be expanded with a regional currency) rather than imperialists that Hillary Clinton pushed NATO to bomb Libya. Now Libya is a devastated fail state. Of course, it’s no surprise that Anderson doesn’t use Libya as a positive example because most liberals at the time just fell for the atrocity propaganda against Gaddafi and forgot about it. Not to mention he gives Hillary a shoutout for considering having “Alaska for America” on her platform.

In conclusion, Kurt Anderson has done his research when it comes to the history of the rise of US neoliberalism, but he doesn’t understand underlying facts about the nature of capitalism. His source-cited information is solid, it’s when he relies on his own assumptions and biases that Evil Geniouses becomes problematic.