{"id":35550,"date":"2020-06-03T14:42:29","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T13:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=35550"},"modified":"2020-06-10T09:39:36","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T08:39:36","slug":"bringing-the-ring-back-in-the-politics-of-booty-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2020\/06\/03\/bringing-the-ring-back-in-the-politics-of-booty-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing The \u2018Ring\u2019 Back In: The Politics of Booty Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This blog accompanies Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer\u2019s Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era<\/em> article<\/strong>
\nBringing The \u201cRing\u201d Back In: The Politics Of Booty Capitalism<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We live in an age of great political fortunes. It is hardly the first. During the 1860s and 1870s, party politics was an enticing way for the ambitious to get rich quick.<\/p>\n

\u201cRing\u201d rule was the popular Gilded Age term of art. The notion implied that a small group of partisan officeholders had encircled a political or financial institution to extract, and share among themselves, whatever profits might be wrung.<\/p>\n

Newspapers were filled with alleged conspiracies like the Tweed Ring, Gold Ring, Gas Ring, Whiskey Ring, Bank Ring, Canal Ring, and so on. None of these were minor episodes. They represented battles for control over the linchpins of modern political economy.<\/p>\n

For example, the Tweed Ring brought New York City, the country\u2019s commercial and financial hub, to the precipice of disaster. Fallout from the Gold Ring and Whiskey Ring drew scrutiny to circles around then-president Ulysses S. Grant. The Bank Ring out west entailed a protracted struggle over the Nevada Comstock Lode, the largest silver strike in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

\u201cRing\u201d talk emerged with the collision of mass politics and high-flying capitalism. Critics noted that career politicians were prominent among a sudden crop of \u201cnew rich.\u201d These political fortunes were highly contested because the property in question was often of public origin (via taxpayer money or by leveraging public authority). Private benefits, however grand, were distributed among select partisans largely beyond public view.<\/p>\n

Recent trends suggest that the \u201cring\u201d is a form of governance that recurs in American political development, rather than being confined to any single historical period. Two current examples are Paul Manafort\u2019s millions extracted from Ukraine during the Yanukovych government, and the Trump Organization\u2019s relationship to the American presidency.<\/p>\n

Paul Manafort\u2019s career began in the 1980s as part of the conservative turn during the Reagan era. Manafort later globalized the services of his politically influential consulting firm. After striking it rich in Ukraine (a \u201cblack ledger\u201d seized by protesters detailed tens of millions of dollars in payments), he returned to American politics during the 2016 election as a way to \u201cget whole\u201d with jilted foreign business partners.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump is the first billionaire to bring the full weight of a business empire directly into electoral politics. His 2016 presidential campaign became a major client of the Trump Organization. Since taking office, Donald J. Trump has opened a luxury hotel down the street from the White House, with both operations run by family members.\u00a0The novel approach circulates payments from party committees, lobbyists, and federal agencies through luxury properties owned by the family business.<\/p>\n

Central to any comparison with the Gilded Age is how entrepreneurs find ways to pay themselves through the party-state linkage, and thus, to accumulate wealth through electoral politics.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, the return of \u201cring\u201d governance evokes a historical dilemma. Is it legitimate to accumulate wealth from politics? After all, the courts and many in the public today regard private property as inviolable, regardless of its provenance. How we seek to answer this question is tied to the very meaning and substance of democracy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer\u2019s full article<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read all articles in the Special Issue: A Second Gilded Age?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Main image: Shutterstock ID: 238811329 \u2018This is not the New York Stock Exchange, it is the patronage exchange, called U.S. Senate\u2019. Print satirizing the machine politics of the Gilded Age. Color lithograph, 1881<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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