Democracy in Chains

The idea for the book came about by accident while MacLean was researching the topic of school segregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia. She was studying the closure of public schools by segregationists from 1959-1964 in reaction to the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) by the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional.[3][4]

The former Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. It is considered "the student birthplace of America's Civil Rights Movement".

MacLean learned that Prince Edward County refused to appropriate funds for the County School Board, effectively closing all public schools rather than integrate them, in a strategy known as massive resistance, an attempt to get Virginia’s white politicians to pass laws and policies to prevent public school desegregation. "Black students were locked out of any formal education while their white peers went off to private, segregation academies with school vouchers, essentially punishing the black community in Prince Edward for having been part of the Brown v. Board of Education case," she recalled.[4]

Her research, which spanned a period of about ten years,[5] led her to American economist Milton Friedman (1912–2006) and his defense of school vouchers, and to American economist James M. Buchanan (1919–2013). After Buchanan died in 2013, MacLean gained access to his papers at the Buchanan House at George Mason University. She soon discovered documents supporting Koch’s investment in Buchanan’s Center for Study of Public Choice, and this led her to developing her hypothesis about right-wing politics in the United States for the book.[6][3][4]

This book focuses on the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences-winning political economist James M. Buchanan and his work developing public choice theory, as well as the roles of Charles Koch and others, in nurturing the libertarian movement in the United States. MacLean argued that these figures undertook "a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and national levels back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation."[7] According to MacLean, Buchanan represents "the true origin story of today’s well-heeled radical right."[8]

The book received praise from liberal and progressive scholars and readers. In The Atlantic, Sam Tanenhaus called Democracy in Chains "A vibrant intellectual history of the radical right." Tanenhaus wrote that the book "is part of a new wave of historiography that has been examining the southern roots of modern conservatism" and it "untangle[s] important threads in American history [...] to make us see how much of that history begins, and still lives, in the South."[9] George Monbiot, climate science author and columnist for The Guardian, wrote that the book was "the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century."[10] Colin Gordon called the book "a revelation, as politics and as history."[11] MacLean was interviewed by Rebecca Onion in Slate,[8] Alex Shephard in The New Republic, and Mark Karlin Alternet about her "remarkable"[12] and "groundbreaking"[13] book. Bethany Moreton of Dartmouth College called the book "indispensable reading [that] adds a critical storyline to the complex and multi-causal conservative counterrevolution."[14] Writing in BillMoyers.com, Kristin Miller argued that "MacLean has unearthed a stealth ideologue of the American right" to whom Charles Koch has "looked to for inspiration."[15] In NPR, Genevieve Valentie said the book "feels like it was written with a clock ticking down" after a "sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself."[16] Marshall Steinbaum of the Roosevelt Institute, described himself as "in sympathy with MacLean’s characterization of the Virginia School as profoundly antidemocratic and anti-academic" and considered the book "an important warning, and it should be read by all despite its rhetorical shortcomings."[17] Luke Darby of GQ has called Democracy in Chains "one of the nine books to read before the next election."[18] MacLean has been an invited guest on several popular television and radio outlets, most notably Real Time with Bill Maher, where she has appeared twice (in August and November 2018) to discuss contemporary politics and the history of the far right.[19]

Democracy in Chains was also criticized by libertarian scholars and readers in a special Volokh Conspiracy series that ran through June and July 2017. David Bernstein disputed her portrayal of Buchanan and George Mason University, where Bernstein is and Buchanan was a professor,[20][21][22] and questioned the accuracy of her depiction of Buchanan's influence on the libertarian movement.[23] Jonathan H. Adler noted allegations of serious errors and misleading quotations in Democracy in Chains raised by Russ Roberts, David R. Henderson, Don Boudreaux and others.[24] Adler, Ilya Somin[25] and Georg Vanberg's[26] were all part of the Volokh Conspiracy series. Michael Munger, a libertarian political scientist at Duke University wrote that Democracy in Chains "is a work of speculative historical fiction"[27] Phil Magness argued that MacLean had "simply made up an inflammatory association" concerning Buchanan and the Southern Agrarians.[28][29][30][31] Steve Horwitz argued that it was "a book that gets almost everything wrong, from the most basic of facts to the highest of theory".[32] Brian Doherty argued, contra MacLean, that Buchanan had upbraided his colleagues who supported the Chilean dictatorship.[33][34][35] In response, MacLean said she was the target of a "coordinated and interlinked set of calculated hit jobs" from "the Koch team of professors who don’t disclose their conflicts of interest and the operatives who work full time for their project to shackle our democracy."[36][37][38] MacLean said that her book's ranking on Amazon was being spammed by negative reviews and rankings and urged people to post positive ones in response (this is against Amazon policy).[39] Adler, Bernstein, Carden, and Magness have responded to her, pointing out that any Koch relationship was already acknowledged.[40][41] In addition, Georg Vanberg noted two later private letters in which Buchanan discussed his work on school vouchers and condemned the "evils of race-class-cultural segregation."[42]

Others who fall into neither the "team Public Choice" or "team anti-Buchanan," offered mixed reviews. Henry Farrell and Steven Teles called the book a "conspiracy theory in the guise of intellectual history"[43][2] and wrote that "while we do not share Buchanan’s ideology ... we think the broad thrust of the criticism is right. MacLean is not only wrong in detail but mistaken in the fundamentals of her account."[43][2] Similarly, Noah Smith agreed that MacLean had taken Tyler Cowen, whom he called "a staunch defender of democracy," out of context.[44] Heather Boushey wrote that MacLean had shone "a light on important truths" but cautioned that "her overt moral revulsion at her subject can sometimes make it seem as if we’re getting only part of the picture."[45] Jack Rakove wrote that "should be a thorough scholarly review of these points [raised by critics], and one suspects that MacLean will have to make a more concerted effort to justify her argument than she has yet provided," while concluding that "her questions remain important and well worth pondering."[46] Katherine Timpf of the National Review criticized MacLean for remarks she made during a February 7, 2018 talk in New York City. MacLean was asked to explain James Buchanan's motivations. MacLean answered, "As an author, I have struggled with this, and I could explain it in different ways. I didn’t put this in the book, but I will say it here. It’s striking to me how many of the architects of this cause seem to be on the autism spectrum—you know, people who don’t feel solidarity or empathy with others, and who have difficult human relationships sometimes."[47] In 2022, George Leef, writing in the National Review, called it "a screed" and "a brazenly dishonest book".[48]

In her review for the academic journal History of Political Economy, Jennifer Burns wrote that "the narrative of American history [that Democracy in Chains] presents is insular and highly politicized, laying out a drama of good versus evil with little attention paid to the larger worlds—global, economic, or intellectual—in which the story nests."[49] Ben Sorensen, in a review for the academic journal International Social Science Review, wrote that "the leftist bias and the assertions of conspiracy render the book questionably credible, at best".[50]

Democracy in Chains was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for nonfiction,[51] a finalist for the "Los Angeles Times Book Award in Current Interest",[52] and the winner of the Lannar Foundation Cultural Freedom Award.[53] The book was also named "Most Valuable Book of 2017" by The Nation.[54] In 2018, Democracy in Chains won the Lillian Smith Book Award, for "books that are outstanding creative achievements, worthy of recognition because of their literary merit, moral vision, and honest representation of the South, its people, problems, and promises."[55]

• Green, Kristen (2015). Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle. Harper. ISBN 978-0062268693.
• Lassiter, Matthew D. Lewis, Andrew B. Michael D. Lassiter (1998). The Moderates' Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0813918174.
• Leonard, Christopher (2019). Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1476775388.
• Mayer, Jane (2016). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday. ISBN 0385535597.