When we first sat with Anand Giriharadas, few could have predicted the staunch optimism with which he approached our questions. Dressed from head to toe in black and known by most for his trenchant critique of crony capitalism and the elite in Winners Take All, one would have expected a more sombre tone from the interview. Despite conducting a one-stop tour of a range of some of the world’s most pressing issues – from extreme inequality to identity politics – the underlying tone of the interview was one of cautious and consistent optimism: one where Anand recognised the dangers of our world but believed firmly that we had the potential to make things better.
Putting problems before solutions
In Winners Take All, Anand delivered a wrecking ball to the neo-liberal ideal of philanthropy, outlining the corrupt power structures that keep the “winners” at the top and the “losers” at the bottom. The elite having been responsible for many of the existential crises of today, from extreme inequality to climate change, has rebranded itself as the solution to these crises. The winners take all, profiting from making the problems and profiting from fixing them, leaving the losers in their wake.
Critics of Anand’s book from left, right and centre were quick to jump on his seeming decision to not recommend any solutions to the problems he raises. Thus we probed Anand on his praxis. In response to our question on whether he saw his attitude as excessively defeatist; his prognosis too limited, Anand retorted with a simple metaphor:
“Imagine you went to a doctor and listed a dozen of your symptoms. Without hesitation, he gives you a pill, saying that it will make everything better and sends you on your way. This is alarming, and analogous to those who seek to offer solutions to problems without careful diagnosis beforehand. ”
“Diagnosis often means implicating power.” Anand draws upon his political thought background in channelling a sentiment that has historically been expressed by thinkers from Foucault to Horkheimer’s identification of power in our perceptual and interpretive processes. He views thedesire to have an immediate answer to such questions as part of the very neo-liberal culture he is seeking to undermine. Being thorough and comprehensive means that the powerful and the structures that keep them their might be questioned. Knowing that the more thought is given to solutions, the likelier their position is questioned, those who have benefitted from the system are eager to discredit those who raise problems yet would perhaps hesitate in providing clearly delineated solutions. Something can be corrupt, immoral, and oppressive regardless of whether a solution exists – and those who continually engender and have everything to gain from the system’s preservation have every incentive to obscure the truth here.
With that said, the broader solution suggested by Anand is clear. Extreme wealth inequality is a zero-sum game. There is no promise of a better life for the 99% if the life of the 1% does not get slightly worse. Democratic action must be restored to solve the most pressing issues through public institutions, not by the elite.
“The solution to Winners Take All is a world where winners take less”
Systemic change
The system needs change, but that is easier said than done. We asked Anand whether such a change was possible in the capitalist system – his book is not a disavowal of capitalism but of the specific form of capitalism practiced in the West today. For him, the first thing that is changed must be the power equations of society. Companies and rich people cannot be in charge of reforming the system since they are the ones who stand to lose the most.
“That’s one way to understand the moment we’re in now, it’s not whether capitalism should exist or whether business should exist but that the ecosystem is unbalanced, and everything right now has become a property of capitalism.”
A fixation on the idea of capitalism, however, is a distraction. Business has existed throughout history and it is hard to imagine a society without it. The issue is one of balance – the world has reached a point where the “humours” of society are fundamentally unbalanced, and everything revolves around generating wealth for the ultra-rich. To illustrate this, Anand drew a historical comparison. There were many times in history where the humours were unbalanced in a different way: the church, the landed gentry, and the state have had moments where they were too powerful relative to other institutions. Today, capital and its owners are at the top of this unequal system. For Anand, the core problem is not the idea of capitalism itself, but the existence of any such totalism.
We focused in on Anand’s argument about the elite’s stranglehold on political influence, asking about the natural tension between a desire for reducing elite power and the barrier to doing so due to their influence. In this answer, his optimism shone through, a profound belief in the power of individuals, politicians and thinkers to fight against the power imbalance previously described.
An immediate practical suggestion was “insane” disclosure requirements to crack down on lobbying. Anand suggested that the first step was making lobbying by companies no longer worth it. The step, by itself, is not a revolution, but is essential in laying the groundwork for reversing power imbalance. Senator Warren has suggested in a similar vein that the first priority in reducing inequality must be a step against corruption, whether through lobbying, special interests or otherwise.
These proposals are not just sensible – they are popular. With public support high for some form of campaign finance overhaul, it is difficult to see what individuals can do when their representatives fail to represent them. For Anand, the answer is political skill. Those campaigning for change must be able to rally a movement that makes it politically impossible for those who oppose it to cling to power. In the United States, it was done in 2016 by Donald Trump. The Republican Party cast away its decades-long free trade obsession because they were shown that the political capital lies elsewhere.
The expansionary game of politics
Both left and right are vying over the same sentiment among voters. A large proportion of the population – rightly or wrongly – have a vague sense that society is no longer serving their interests. They were promised the fruits of globalisation, technology, and free trade. The left has failed, however both in effectively selling ideas to the electorate and in preventing the successes of identity politics to be dampened by a loss of popularity. Meanwhile, the “bad guys”, the Trumps and Farages, have grasped this sentiment and capitalised on it.
The wall is genius – it’s such a simple idea and it deals with eight anxieties at once. Whether its white anxiety, worker anxiety, or outside terrorism – it’s everything. Unfortunately, it’s a disastrous and racist idea”
Anand was adamant in his call for “the wall” for healthcare, for instance. Nuance and complexity, he argued, is great on the back end when the healthcare system is being designed. Getting it to Congress and past Congress requires simple, seductive ideas. Single payer sounds like insurance jargon and has failed to resonate with people for good reason. The idea of cradle-to-the-grave medical care, the idea of never having to worry about your health care has not been sold to voters, and that is a serious political failure.
Our conversation moved swiftly onto the question of identity politics – particularly in light of the increasing divisions over it within both American politics and progressive politics at large.
In eighth grade, Anand was in his middle school class, wiping tables as part of a chore-sharing system the whole class undertook. His teacher, Mr Hunter, seeing this, asked him “you’re really good, do your parents own a restaurant or something?” In the early 90s – there was no word to describe what happened. Anand knew something was wrong but there was no vocabulary to describe it to himself, to his friends, or to his parents. Today, an eighth grader could find out that this was a microaggression and that thousands experience similar things on a daily basis.
Identity politics has, in Anand’s view, done tremendous good in giving the oppressed the tools to understand their own oppression and fight against it. It has done great things for the LGBT community, women, people of colour. Even further, it has made white people better at being white and men being better ant being men. The conversation features on those who resist identity politics and the “PC culture” that comes with it. What remains forgotten is the majority who have learned from the identity politics and become better people. This is starkly obvious on a University campus like Oxford. The public conversation has pivoted to be more sensitive and understanding of forms of oppression that were ignored a decade or two ago – and that is a positive trend.
“Sometimes on the left there can be this tendency of the woke to make no space for the waking.”
Nonetheless, Anand highlighted the self-defeating tendency of the left to be unable to play the political “game”. For instance, there are many people who are comfortable and even embracing of gay and lesbian people. However, they are less understanding of transgender people, whether from ignorance or conservative tendencies. These are the “swing voters” of cultural politics. While the right is actively courting them and luring them to their side, the left refuses to do so, saying “call me when you figure it out”. The dilemma is a difficult one and requires balancing the need to champion diverse identities and understand the realities of oppression
This is a question of political talent. In our question about the upcoming American election Anand called it the art of talking to the “Trump curious” and the Trump haters at the same time. Despite being a difficult task, it is not an impossible one. He was firm in the belief that there are words that can be used to tell a story that could bring those people together.
Anand’s suggested example of such political talent was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has demonstrated an ability to talk about class without seeming like she doesn’t understand race or gender, an ability to talk about race that doesn’t make it seem like she does not care about white people. The key to telling the story is creative communication and connecting with people – not understanding the jargon of intersectionality but beingintersectional.
The young and the elite
The list of problems and possible solutions ever-growing, we were particularly interested in Anand’s vision for young people. Every Oxford student and no-doubt students in other Universities have experience the seduction of finance and consultancy. In Winners Take All, Anand describes how companies in the micro-sectors of finance and consultancy have capitalised on the psychology of being a 20-something-year-old to vacuum young talent into the sector. Promises of a “batch” or “class” to mimic the University years coupled with a generous salary and luxurious lifestyle. Consultancy companies also promise to give young idealists the tools and experience to make the world better, before sucking them into the industry that is actively making the world worse.
“If we could ever look back, if you could calculate it, the cost to society of thirty or forty years of talent diversion, was probably catastrophic.”
Having worked at McKinsey himself, Anand said unequivocally that he regretted it. In particular, he criticised the company’s tendency to thrust young, inexperienced consultants into doing things for which they were woefully underqualified. He recalled one of his first projects, advising a pharmaceutical company on setting up a “leadership development system” to evaluate its executives. He made up four criteria and led the process by which the company judged people. At just 21, McKinsey gave him the power to change people’s lives with little oversight, on a plan that was “of lower quality than anything [he] did in college”.
“If you want to use Harvard – a tax exempt institution – to train yourself to work at Goldman Sachs, I think there’s no problem charging double what we charge right now.”
Anand’s proposed solution is radical and innovative. He argued that overall tertiary education tuition should be dramatically increased overall, and those leaving University to work in the public interest should be given a huge discount or even a free ride. The logic is simple – if you use college to make a tremendous amount of money, you are both capable and deserving of higher payment. If you decide to become a teacher and teach thousands of children for the public good, the state and the public should shoulder the cost.
The world of Winners Take All starts before young people can realise it, when they become part of the machine that they one day vowed to destroy. The best and the brightest, or more accurately, the most privileged, get money and power while the rest of the world is left behind. The opportunities to change the system are out there, however, and Anand’s willingness to cast aside the status quo championed by elites in favour of a more collective approach to progress makes him a leading voice in the effort to fight extreme wealth inequality.