Woke capitalism

THE PQ BOOK CLUB REVIEW

Woke, Inc. Inside the social Justice Scam by Vivek Ramaswamy (Swift Press, Ā£20)

When did it become the job of the big corporations to shoulder the injustices that befall some groups and people in society?

Woke, Inc author Vivek Ramaswamy believes even honest woke capitalists fail to see how much harm they are doing to democracy when business elites tell ordinary citizens what causes they are supposed to prioritise. His real worry though is when we create a system in which business leaders decide moral questions, they open the floodgates for all their unscrupulous colleagues to abuse that newfound power. Ramaswamy says there are far more CEOs who are eager to grab money and power in the name of justice than there are CEOs who are agnostic about money and power and care only about justice. Under the guise of doing good he says the corporate con artists hide all of the bad things that they do every day. ā€œCoco-Cola fuels an epidemic of diabetes and obesity among black Americans through some of the products it sellsā€¦and implement anti-racism training that teaches their employees to be less white.ā€ None of this is by accident, he claims, itā€™s by design!

Ramaswamy once worked for Goldman Sacks and he doesnā€™t have anything nice to say about them either. He claims Goldman only said it would refuse to take companies public unless they had at least one ā€˜diverseā€™ member when they knew every S&P 500 company could say they met the standard.

He argues his case well for the integrity of capitalism, but it is difficult to believe that the move to more stakeholder power has not been a good thing.

PQ rating: 5/5 I loved this book, and while I donā€™t totally agree with the premise I agree too many are jumping on the Woke bandwagon for private gain.