The End of Protest: How Free-Market Capitalism Learned to Control Dissent

by Alasdair Roberts

The United States has just gone through the worst economic crisis in a generation. Why was there not more protest, as there was in other countries? During the United States’ last great era of free-market policies, before World War II, economic crises were always accompanied by unrest. “The history of capitalism,” the economist Joseph Schumpeter warned in 1942, “is studded with violent bursts and catastrophes.” In The End of Protest, Alasdair Roberts explains how, in the modern age, governments learned to unleash market forces while also avoiding protest about the market’s failures.

Roberts argues that in the last three decades, the two countries that led the free-market revolution—the United States and Britain—have invented new strategies for dealing with unrest over free market policies. The organizing capacity of unions has been undermined so that it is harder to mobilize discontent. The mobilizing potential of new information technologies has also been checked. Police forces are bigger and better equipped than ever before. And technocrats in central banks have been given unprecedented power to avoid full-scale economic calamities.

Tracing the histories of economic unrest in the United States and Great Britain from the nineteenth century to the present, The End of Protest shows that governments have always been preoccupied with the task of controlling dissent over free market policies. But today’s methods pose a new threat to democratic values. For the moment, advocates of free-market capitalism have found ways of controlling discontent, but the continued effectiveness of these strategies is by no means certain.

Genres: Nonfiction, Public Policy, Economics

122 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 30, 2013

About the author

Alasdair Roberts is a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A broad-strokes overview of how police and politicians have declawed political protest over the past century. It’s always good to be reminded that the police had to be invented as an institution, that its very point was to be different than the military, and that its trajectory has been to become more and more indistinguishable from an occupying military force. Also appreciate the point that large, disruptive gatherings of ppl in England and America were often tolerated as part of political life (not a threat to it) and that jamming up public market places has only recently become something seen as outside of acceptable political action. And while Roberts observation that the working class has shifted from participating in rowdier forms of protests to fearing it and worshiping law and order is convincing, his explanation for why—the perception that disorder was steadily rising—is a bit mushy. For me, this falls flat in framing protest and crack-downs as purely an expression of people vs the market. It means it breezes past important protests against oppression along the axes of race, gender, and/or sexuality. Accordingly, it also leaves out of its analysis the huge asymmetries in the force politicians and police apply to dissent as it relates to these categories and who the dissenters are. Like, hey, what’s the role of racism in the criminalization of dissent? Give it a shot Alasdair. Some folks propose that the expansion of the police state has been the paranoid response to the expansion of who the state affords full rights as citizens (citation sorely lacking). What ho?
Appreciated the observation that G-8 & G-20 meetings are gradually relocating themselves to authoritarian states or remote locations.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

First. There is no Capitalism. With so much land, and resources, including humans, locked for future use by the Government, it should be clear there is no Capitalism.

Second. There are no Free-Markets. People exchange goods and services on a narrow list approved by the Government. In some cases the prices are controlled. Or the quantities. Or who can buy. Or who can sell.

Of course, one can argue the American Markets are a lot more free than in North Korea, and probably they are more free than in Cuba, or Venezuela, or this is one of the main reasons why there is much more wealth in the US, than in those other countries.

As for controlling dissent, a rapid examination of the news will show militarized police in all major towns of the World. Real Life Robocops ready to beat and maim any dissenter who lacks proper authorizations to expression stamped at City Hall. So what has the exchange of dairy products have to do with armed thugs beating up protesters in preparations for say a G7 Summit?

Oh, but it all makes sense. Roberts is a governmental bureaucrat living off the taxes collected off the population, dissenters or not. And his job is to convince the reader that the paddy wagon paid by the taxes, and the violent tugs in armor, are all emanating from the ”capitalists”, ensuring the faster transfer of power from the population to the State that feeds Roberts' leech clan.

[Sheldon · Rating 3 out of 5]

In years past, severe economic downturns and unfair political practices led to protests and riots. In The End of Protest, author Alasdair Roberts asks why there aren't more protests now, particularly after the economic crash of 2008. This is a question I have asked as well. Where was the outrage? Sure, we saw people talking on television, saw posts on the internet, but why hadn't people taken to the streets with pitchforks and torches the way they had in the past? Roberts attempts to answer this question.

Now, full disclosure: I read this book a little a while ago with the intent to review it then, but due to unforeseen circumstances, it has taken me quite a while to get around to writing this review. It turns out that this time has changed my initial perspective on the book and has provided much more valuable insight into Roberts' message, and ultimately I feel that I can provide a much better review now than I initially could have.

Roberts' prose is a little confusing at first. While he seems very direct and straight to the point, there are times when it feels more like he's stalking the point and takes forever to actually get there. Still, it is clean with few errors and easy to read, making it easy for the layman to pick up and understand.

In this book, Roberts details the rise of protests, particularly with the Industrial Revolution, saying that at that time, protests had practically become an expected part of life, but had become disruptive to the establishment. This led to the creation of a standing police force. That's right. Roberts proposes that the original purpose of the police was not to serve and protect the people from crimes. The police were actually created to quell protests and keep the established order running without disruption and maintain free market principles. This was something that I met with skepticism. I did not consider it outside the realm of possibility, but also didn't feel that Roberts really provided enough evidence for this claim.

That is, until the happenings in Ferguson, Missouri last year. Observing not only the initial attack by the police, but the police response to the growing protests, not only there but in other places as more and more police-involved shootings occurred, immediately made me think of this book. Indeed, the police seemed to primarily be acting as an anti-protest unit with little or no concern for public safety. Life actually added weight to Roberts' argument.

Roberts continues, following other protests and responses to them, up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. He argues that Occupy Wall Street tried be different to avoid past protesting problems, and while it was the result of a seething and legitimate anger, failed primarily due to this lack of centralized leadership intended to combat the monitoring and intimidation tactics now used to quell protest and prevent organizing before they even get going. When no one could be on the same page, they couldn't even agree on a date for when the protest should take place until the Canadian firm Adbusters finally stepped up and said it would start on September 17, 2011. After the media refused to cover it initially and only did after the voices grew too loud, then began to sweep it under the rug and add more distractions to take people's attention away. Bread and circuses.

While a good study on the history protest and the responses to it, the book is ultimately lukewarm in its tone and rather myopic in the scope of protests it studies. Roberts focuses primarily on economic-based protests of the United States and Great Britain, and does not cover protests that started for other reasons or in other areas (like France; now the French are people that know how to riot!). In addition, this book is preaching to the choir. It's likely going to be read by people that already agree with the premise, and will probably be avoided by those who don't already agree with it.

It's an okay study, and Roberts makes and backs up his point well, but is ultimately a letdown and won't reach those that really should be reading it.

The End of Protest by Alasdair Roberts get 3 picket signs out of 5.

Note: A free copy of this book was provided to this reviewer by the publisher through NetGalley. This did not in any way affect the content of this review.

[Celia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this e-book thinking it would deal with the question of why there aren’t more peaceful protests such as boycotts, legal/nonviolent demonstrations, petitions, letter writing/e-mail and sit-ins. However, the author seemed to be focused on what he terms “crowd” action which could become a riot. While personally, I perplexed why there is not more anger about the economy, I am glad there are no riots and disruptive strikes.

However, I found the parts of the book about the history of the police very interesting. They were founded in both the US and Great Britain in the nineteenth century to control political crowd action and to stop riots due to economic stress. It has changed how I have seen the police. I do think there is something intimidating about the police in public gatherings even if everyone is quite peaceful.

However, the rest of the book is a disappointment. The author does not deal with the protests which I am old enough to remember that happened in both the US and Great Britain during the 1960’s about the Vietnam war, Civil rights, Women’s Rights and the environment. Why are things so much quieter now?

Part of the reason that the author does not deal with the protests of the 1960s is that he appears to be from the Left. It would undermine his argument that capitalism is what causes unrest when there were a lot of public protests when the welfare state was expanding.

It also explains his failure to deal with the Tea Party in the USA. Many people believe there are some similarities between the Occupy movement and the Tea Party in that they are populist movements attacking the unholy and probably corrupt alliance between corporations and government. However, the Tea Party was an attack from the right and the Occupy movement was an attack from the Left.

[Clay Wescott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This insightful work uses a historical lens to understand why there wasn't more protest in the US and UK over the global economic meltdown starting in 2008.

Police forces were first deployed in the 19th century first in the UK and US to protect businesses and other property from protesters angry at a series of economic slowdowns. This, combined with the increasing restructuring of urban space (wide avenues, placement of armories to defend places likely to be attacked), restrictions on unions and other organized protest, and a recent militarization of police combined with greatly increased funding for police and prison systems in the USA, and Keynesian policies a bit from governments and mostly from technocratic bodies insulated from politics like central banks. and the limitations of leaderless, network based protest movements have all worked to keep the peace, even in the face of the 2008 economic meltdown.

The predictions of instability of capitalism by Schumpeter (creative disruption) and Polanyi (need for a protective counter-movement for social protection for those worst affected by instability of capitalism) were ignored by neoliberal reformers who unleashed full-throated market orientation starting in 1980s in many parts of the world. Washington consensus advocates ignored the need in these countries for countervailing security and social protection measures led by un-elected technocrats that proved effective in the US and UK.

On the other hand, all is not lost. The example of gay rights in the USA shows that citizen action can achieve results, if you allow enough time, and can live through setbacks. Starting with the Stonewall riots in 1969 in Greenwich Village, NY, by 2006 only Massachusetts had legalized gay marriage, and half the states had passed constitutional amendments to ban same sex marriage. Yet today, about half the states have legalized it.