Roslyn Fuller reviews Woke, Inc. by Vivek Ramaswamy
In 2016, Forbes placed Vivek Ramaswamy at No24 on its rich list of young American entrepreneurs, estimating his worth at $600million.
But Ramaswamy, a former pharma CEO and hedge-fund manager, is not resting on his riches. He is now interrogating the world in which his riches were made, with his new book, Woke, Inc.: Inside the Social Justice Scam.
Unsurprisingly, given Ramaswamy’s background, Woke, Inc. does not take issue with capitalism per se. Instead, its critique focuses on ‘stakeholder capitalism’ – the idea that companies are not just responsible to their shareholders, but also, in some nebulous manner, to various other groups and causes. In fact, he argues, it has become fashionable to demand that commercial enterprises take an active role in shaping and supporting political causes. This demand means that corporations, which once had to deny they were interfering in politics, now actively celebrate such interference, and are praised by others for doing so.
So, how exactly did a business world that only a few short years ago was knee-deep in strippers, dwarf-tossing and blow, not to mention funnelling its finances through the Bahamas, come to reinvent itself as the puritanical spearhead of social justice? And, more importantly, why?
Read the full review at Spiked here.