Friday, April 23, 2021

Why Are So Many Corporate Executives Acting Woke?

Any thinking person looking over the current social, political and corporate landscape is sure to be asking: Why are so many top corporate executives acting woke?

Stephen R. Soukup, in a new book, The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business, has taken a major step toward answering the question. 

The book provides an overview of the problem from its historical-philosophical foundations to current day major woke players

From the historical-philosophical perspective, Soukup provides an excellent overview of all the major influencers from Antonio Gramsci and György Lukács to the Frankfurt School and the media-savvy Herbert Marcuse.

He also provides an excellent outline of the role played by Richard Ely, especially his influence on Woodrow Wilson.

He then explains how concern for stakeholders took over concern for shareholders.

And then he moves in on current-day players who are at the forefront of the woke movement. 

He especially singles out Larry Fink of Black Rock. 

Black Rock has $8.7 trillion under management. That is power. Fink being a true believer of wokeism, has enormous sway over corporate heads with his position as CEO of Black Rock which holds massive stock positions in most of the major publicly traded companies in the United States.

Soukup states, "Larry Fink is a religious fanatic; a believer in the pure fundamental practice of his faith... [That is]Fink aligned himself with and placed himself at the forefront of the 'ESG' movement, an investment trend focused on Environmental, Social and Governance matters in assessing a company's long-term value. He placed himself in the position to be crowned king not just of the financial services world but also of 'woke capital,' the top down, anti-democratic means by which some of the most powerful and best-known men and women in American business are endeavoring to change capitalism, the securities markets in the fundamental relationship between the state and its citizens – – and save the world." Fink is playing a major role in all this.

On top of that Soukup explains, Black Rock has been named the administrator and manager of significant portions of the emergency COVID-19 debt-buying program of the Federal Reserve which allows the Fed to lend directly to corporations. That is power.

Sokup also discusses in his book the roles of State Street, Calpers and Bridgewater Associates as major woke influencers

On the individual investor front, he points to, among others, the woke activism of the widow of Steve Jobs. 

Lurene Powell Jobs (worth $20 billion) is a member of the Climate Leadership Council and has bought a majority stake in The Atlantic and Axios. She has been a major money funder of lefty voter registration programs.

It goes on. The book is encyclopedic in coverage and narrative in style concerning the major woke influencers and how they get their fangs into corporate America and elsewhere.

If you want to understand the woke influences, this is the book for you.

The only weakness in the book is the ending where Soukup attempts to discuss how we get out of the current woke mess. Like the rest of us, he hasn't figured that program out yet, but to understand what is going on in terms of woke in corporate leadership and why, there is no better resource than The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business.

 -RW

8 comments:

  1. See statement at front page of NY Fed website

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  2. If you criticize Larry Fink you're an antisemite.

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  3. "The only weakness in the book is the ending where Soukup attempts to discuss how we get out of the current woke mess. Like the rest of us, he hasn't figured that program out yet..."

    Sorry to say, but violence is going to be the only way out. Putting their heads on a pike is a surefire way to send a message to anyone else who would subvert society.

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    1. No one and I mean no one wants to acknowledge that gorilla in the room Paul. There is no reform to change this.

      Monopoly and generational concentrated social power cannot be leveraged away. Enough oligarchs will have to die horribly to remotely get the attention of any of the others.

      Solutions still today are not disconnected from barbarism.

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    2. As Ian hunter so aptly put it in 1973 while heading Mott The Hoople - Violence is the only thing that will make you see sense

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  4. I think the smart ones see ESG for what it is, a scam on shareholders. Its a good cover for poor performance. "Sure, we missed our top and bottom line numbers this Q and year, but our ESG score went up 6pts and we're now in the top quintile". My favorite part of ESG is the concept of a sustainable business. That used to mean one that had a sold capital structure built on a strong brand with great selling profitable products. Under ESG none of that hardly matters for being labeled as "sustainable". Talk about a misleading concept.

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  5. Because they are psychopaths and wokesterism offers them path to even more power over other people.

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  6. Scary stuff. Bizarre to someone as old as me, who grew up with the sense of relief as the commies collapsed under their own ideology and the Cold War ended. Yet the Frankfurt School and such kept going, and it looks like the commies are winning.

    Logic, historical experience, common sense, pft. Hopeless in the face of the brain-washed morons that support the current brand of Communism.

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