is capitalism in retrograde?

Capitalism is like mercury retrograde, but without a time limit. We can blame it for everything it seems. Gun violence? Capitalism. My depression? Capitalism! Straight men not giving women enough orgasms? C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-M. It’s always been pretty easy to inculpate our dysfunctional economic system for everything that’s wrong with society but lately it’s been extra easy.

But has capitalism always been this bad? According to my pal David Gelles, the answer is resounding no. While he recently became a correspondent on The New York Times’ climate desk, he spent most of his career as a business reporter which means he’s spent hundreds of hours interviewing and studying the world’s most influential corporate leaders. His new book The Man Who Broke Capitalism just hit the NYT bestseller list and focusses one of the most famous CEO’s of all time, Jack Welch. During his time at the helm of General Electric, David argues, Welch made a series of brutal decisions that set the tone for Elon Musks and Donald Trumps of the world. Apparently, American corporations didn’t used to be this bad. To me that means the cruelty of America’s cost-cutting and layoff culture doesn’t have to be this way…what a perfect conversation subject for Airplane Mode!

David took some time out of his busy book tour to answer a few questions for our community. I mostly wanted to get into a gendered lens when it comes to the complicated conversation about how to unbreak capitalism and free ourselves from its oppressive shackles. David said he’s done a ton of press for the book but that he really enjoyed the angle of the questions so I hope you enjoy them too. You can read a slightly edited version of our conversation and order the book from Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or through Simon & Schuster.

David and friends recently celebrating a certain Pisces’ birthday.

LP: In your book, you describe Jack Welch as “the personification of American, alpha-male capitalism” because he encapsulated the rugged, cutthroat system where CEO's place shareholders over their employees, which we have now really come to accept as the norm. It didn't use to be like this though… You used to start a job and knew it could last a lifetime, but you write about how Welch normalized cruel practices like mass layoffs and downsizing, which we've now just come to accept as part of life. I think capitalism is a lot of like masculinity, where we just assume that an unhealthy expression of it is inherently normal and natural, omitting the ways that it's definition has shifted and therefore isn't fixed at all. A lot of people will say, well of course CEOs have to put profits over their employees, but actually, that's a fairly recent thing! Can you speak to why we believe the worst version of capitalism is inevitable? 

David Gelles: I don't think the worst version of capitalism is inevitable! But unfortunately it is the world we live in now, thanks to men like Jack Welch. 

Welch took over as CEO of GE 1981 and completely rewrote the rules of business. Before Welch, companies didn't do mass layoffs just to improve profit margins. Before Welch, there was no race to the bottom when it came to corporate taxes. Before Welch, bosses didn't delight in terrorizing their underlings.

Welch was a bully, and an effective one for much of his career. And is the case with bullies, a lot of people got out of his way for fear of drawing his wrath, while others mimicked his toxic behavior in hopes of gaining some power of their own. 

But it's important to remember that Welch was a man who made choices, and that other men and women making better choices, at one company at a time, can undo some of the damage that's been wrought. 

I get that a lot of people under the age of 40 today might not have ever heard of Jack Welch, but it's important to understand that he is literally the guy who changed the way our economy works. There was one man who upended just about everything about the corporate world, and it was him. 

LP: I'm also curious if you can speak to your choice of the words "alpha-male capitalism" and define it for us. The vast majority of CEOs are in fact male and we associate some of the worst facets of capitalism with men, especially the white ones. Do you think it’s because men get rewarded almost exclusively via capitalism which makes them more committed to it?

David Gelles: Welch was aggressive, impulsive, rude, and often used violent, sexist, homophobic language to get his way. What's more, he acted with a real sense of impunity, and even when he failed, rarely faced any real consequences. Because this toxic blend served Welch so well, it became the default way of doing business for much of corporate America in ways that are still with us today (see: Travis Kalanick, Adam Neumann, Elon Musk). As for where all of this comes from, I think a lot of this comes back to incentives. At almost no level are CEOs incentivized to take better care of their employees -- not by the Wall Street analysts and investors who determine whether their stock is going up or down, not by the terms of their compensation plans, and not by the media, either. For the most part, CEOs are rewarded exclusively based on financial performance, and as a result, they do whatever they can to increase profits, with little mind paid to the broader consequences of their actions.

LP: We often hear about the fact that women “do capitalism differently.” There’s a bazillion think pieces and buckets of research showing that female CEOs behave differently than their male counterparts. Is that what you’ve noticed in your career as a veteran business reporter? Or do you think it’s overstated? I always feel weird about this argument because I don’t think women or men are “naturally” good at anything, I think we just incentivize and reward them very differently, but have you found an inherent gendered difference? Would adding more female CEOs really fix anything?

David Gelles: I understand the argument that there are stereotypically "masculine" and "feminine" styles of leadership and I think there's some truth to that. But it's also the case that there are many male CEOs who are these days embodying more traditionally feminine qualities -- such as emotional intelligence, empathy, deep listening, etc. -- while it's also the case that some women have, and continue to adopt so-called masculine management qualities -- callousness, hustle culture, etc — as they pursue their careers. I'm all for adding more female CEOs to the ranks of big business for a whole host of reasons, from closing the wealth gap to giving us new heroes — but I'm not sure that alone is going to "fix" our problems, which run very very deep. 

LP: Do you think there is possibility for ethical consumption in the current capitalistic form that we have?

David Gelles: I think we can be more ethical in our consumption, but I think it basically means consuming LESS. We buy so much stuff we don't need, which has all sorts of negative consequences for the planet, animals and beyond. Buy high quality goods that last a long time. Learn to live with fewer things. Spend more on experiences. Give away more money. It's hard to change these habits — I get it, especially as a dad of two kids who always want more more more stuff — and as a human who is constantly bombarded with advertising. And I'm not sure I believe in some platonic ideal of ethical consumption. But we can all do better, and I think we all know it.

LP: One of the first lessons I learned reading my favorite feminist authors like Angela Davis or bell hooks was that gender equality was impossible under capitalism. I think the cost of capitalism to women is abundantly clear especially after a pandemic where most of the job losses were experienced by women of color and that mothers particularly carried the weight of a society that does not value the mental and physical tax of all their unpaid domestic and care work, but can you tell us what the costs or capitalism are for men?

David Gelles: So many men pay a spiritual, emotional and psychic toll for their participation in and devotion to the capitalist system. When I think of the fathers I know who spend their lives toiling away at midtown office buildings and rarely see their kids, and the degree to which ambitious professional men fetishize material wealth while completely losing touch with their wives, it's clear to me that they are anything but rich.

LP: If capitalism is broken, how can we…unbreak it?

David Gelles: Companies should.... pay workers (a lot) more, pay CEOs (substantially) less, offer better benefits, give more stock to employees, stop spending so much on share buybacks and dividends, end the race to the bottom on corporate taxes, invest more in R&D and rethink outsourcing and offshoring. And lawmakers should pass policies that encourage those things to happen, while consumers should vote with their dollars and support companies that are moving in the right direction. 

LP: What was the last thing that gave you hope? 

David Gelles: As a Buddhist who grew up in Berkeley, Calif., I have a lot of hope! I'd like to believe I'm clear-eyed about the magnitude of the challenges we're facing. And I'm not pollyannaish about the chance that things are going to get better super fast. But something has definitely shifted in the ethos of business in the past.