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      Vivek Ramaswamy Is Confused

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      The theatrically combative presidential candidacy of Vivek Ramaswamy seems to be premised on two messages. One is his disdain for identity politics, which he argues creates a citizenry obsessed with victimhood and a corporate sector in thrall to trendy left-wing obsessions, leaving America trapped in a “cold cultural civil war,” as he put it last month in the first Republican debate. The other is his devotion to Donald Trump, whom Ramaswamy relentlessly defended in the debate, promising to support the former president, if Trump wins the Republican nomination, or to pardon him, if Ramaswamy wins the White House. He called Trump “the best president of the twenty-first century.”Both these stances, however, are complicated or contradicted by Ramaswamy’s literary trilogy: “Woke, Inc.” (2021), “Nation of Victims” (2022) and “Capitalist Punishment” (2023). In these works, Ramaswamy is more thoughtful, but also more confused, than his smiling, trolly, rapid-fire campaign persona. He can’t seem to decide if woke capitalism is a public-relations ploy or a mortal threat to the republic. And even as he lionizes Trump among his conservative heroes, he writes that Trump’s calls for American greatness degenerated into “just another tale of grievance, a persecution complex that swallowed much of the Republican Party whole.” (Swallowing much of something whole is a typical Ramaswamy hedge, one of several categorical assertions in these books that find room for a little wiggle.)In “Woke, Inc.,” published some seven months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Ramaswamy assails the rise of so-called stakeholder capitalism, the notion that companies should not solely serve the interests of shareholders but should also serve the interests of workers, the environment or society writ vague. The traditional principle of maximizing shareholder value is not just about encouraging corporate greed, he argues, but about keeping capitalists in their lane, making sure that their business judgments do not lapse into moral ones. Yet that is precisely what happens, Ramaswamy complains, when chief executives and investors conspire with activists to push for, say, racial equity audits or socially responsible investing.Here, Ramaswamy struggles to make up his mind. Stakeholder capitalism is a “farce,” he writes, an example of “corporate opportunism” and “self-interest masquerading as morality,” a “do-good smoke screen” through which businesses distract the public from their perfidy. “The social causes simply serve as a form of reputational laundering for those same companies’ profit-seeking,” Ramaswamy maintains, with businesses “performatively one-upping each other to show that they’re the good guys.”But if the whole thing is just a lucrative P.R. scam, then it is hard to see how it is also “the greatest long-run threat of all to American democracy itself,” as Ramaswamy warns readers. On one page, businesses are pushing radical agendas and imposing their elite progressive values on our democratic process; on another, they are just “feigning wokeness” to win favor with consumers, “pretending to care about justice in order to make money.” So, is stakeholder capitalism a punch in the mouth to our nation’s principles or just lip service to justice? In Ramaswamy’s writing, the answer is never quite clear.Even when he is certain that something nefarious is underway, Ramaswamy doesn’t seem quite sure who the bad guys are. He warns that Facebook and Google “have effectively assumed the role of the state itself,” censoring public discourse under the guise of fighting hate speech and misinformation. “The rise of Wokenomics consummates Silicon Valley’s coup over our democracy,” he writes ominously. Yet just a few pages later, readers learn that it is Congress that has “co-opted Silicon Valley” to restrict speech for its own purposes. So, is the tech industry the puppet or the master? Consistency seems irrelevant to Ramaswamy’s scattershot populism. In “Woke, Inc.” there are enough culprits to satisfy everyone.Ramaswamy can be hazy about his own basic tenets. “I don’t believe in ‘systemic racism,’” he declares in the third chapter of “Woke, Inc.” Yet in chapter 14, he acknowledges its reality. “My problem with woke complaints about ‘systemic racism’ isn’t that it doesn’t exist,” he writes. “It’s that too often it’s used as a vague, judgmental catchall phrase for all of America’s woes.” An author’s views can evolve over time, of course, and a politician’s are almost required to do so. It is less common to see them contradicted across the pages of the same book.I don’t know if Ramaswamy has an underlying philosophy or just an underlying shtick, but if one of these books captures it, it is probably “Nation of Victims.” In this book, Ramaswamy laments that Americans have lost their scrappy, underdog attitude and defaulted to a mentality of group identity and collective grievance — an outlook that becomes self-fulfilling. “If we divide the world into black and white, virtuous victims and evil oppressors with no shades of gray, we will create the nation that we see,” he writes.This is not a novel argument, and Ramaswamy highlights the post-Civil War Lost Cause narrative as an early example of the country’s enduring cultural resentments. “Modern America’s victim complex began as a tale of conservative white victimhood after the Civil War,” he writes, only to mutate into “an ongoing story of liberal white victimhood.”Ramaswamy concedes that “the Constitution brought justice to black Americans with the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education,” but since then virtually every possible identity group has been battling for a perch on what he derides as the “victimhood podium.” The result, he concludes, is a nation that has lost confidence in itself — a culture in decline, a less productive economy, a society that produces activists rather than engineers, a country so weakened that it “would almost certainly lose” a naval war with China over Taiwan.This could be the core of Ramaswamy’s political message: He marries anti-woke messages to pro-growth ones and links culture wars at home to shooting wars abroad. If Ramaswamy makes any contribution to the long-term electoral prospects of the Republican Party, it will be in broadening the case against identity politics from the realm of book bans and bathrooms to that of economics and national security.In “Nation of Victims,” Ramaswamy privileges the misdeeds of the progressive left, which he says is so taken by its own fantasies and slogans that it “replaces the voices of black people themselves” who, he suggests, may want more police presence in their communities rather than less. But his critique encompasses the right as well. “The worst victimhood narrative that afflicts modern conservatives,” he writes, “is their budding belief that any election they lose must have been stolen.” Aside from policy differences with Trump over tariffs and spending, Ramaswamy blasts the former president as a “sore loser,” even likening him to Stacey Abrams, the former candidate for governor of Georgia who refused to concede her 2018 defeat — and to be clear, in conservative politics, that’s a serious burn. Ramaswamy also writes that the events of Jan. 6 shook his faith in the United States: “Rome fell to invading barbarians, but us Americans have become our own barbarians, sacking ourselves.”These books are not the sanitized autobiographies one usually gets from self-congratulatory business executives or aspirants to high office. Ramaswamy offers some family background to animate his political and cultural awakenings — he was drawn to the expansiveness of capitalism, he reports, in contrast to the rigidity of caste he witnessed in his parents’ India, and his youthful conservatism was in part an “emotive choice” to counter the liberal convictions of his father — but these volumes are far more about principled arguments than personal stories, and he includes an eclectic mix of policy wonkery and moral maxims.Ramaswamy proposes mandatory national service for American high schoolers — he cites Pete Buttigieg’s similar call during his 2020 presidential campaign — and calls for “a hefty inheritance tax with no gaping loopholes” to prevent America’s meritocratic winners from morphing into aristocratic ones. He emphasizes the need for stronger job retraining programs for displaced blue-collar workers, the deregulation of housing markets and the easing of professional licensing requirements. He urges companies to prioritize “diversity of thought” among their employees rather than a diversity “crudely measured by appearance or accent.” And he longs for a “Manhattan Project” (an obligatory reference for policy mavens) for the national semiconductor industry to raise America’s economic and military competitiveness.Particularly striking are Ramaswamy’s thoughts on how to move the country beyond the identity conflicts that, in his view, erode our sense of nationhood. “The only way to break free of this vicious cycle is to find a way to forgive each other instead of trying to win at the game of playing the victim,” he writes. Our true selves do not equal our superficial identities, Ramaswamy insists, and we become better people when we see ourselves and others as individuals with the power to direct their own lives. “When you free yourself from the illusion that you’re a mere victim, you simultaneously free yourself from seeing others as mere oppressors,” he writes. This plea for collective forgiveness is a welcome break from the hyper-pugilism of Ramaswamy’s campaign appearances, even if his harsh exchanges on the Republican debate stage suggest that his conciliatory side has not yet taken hold.“Capitalist Punishment,” the latest and slimmest of his books, is something of an outlier in the Ramaswamy canon. It is narrowly cast, focusing on his criticism of investment funds that adopt E.S.G. (environmental, social and governance) principles to guide their strategies. Here, Ramaswamy’s transgressors are the investment firms BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard. “The Big Three are becoming a threat to democracy,” he contends, because they impose social-activist values onto the industries in which they hold significant positions, including the oil and banking sectors, and because pension fund managers adopt E.S.G. investing even if individual pensioners may be ignorant of (or hostile to) such principles. “When elites force their values onto everyone else,” he writes, ordinary people lose trust in important institutions. “And that, in turn, makes society fall apart.”As in his other works, some tensions emerge in “Capitalist Punishment.” When Ramaswamy complains that E.S.G. investing is radically transforming corporate America but also revels in the fact that E.S.G. funds are “underperforming” and “dropping like flies,” it’s hard to tell if E.S.G. investing is pervasive or in decline. Yet, near the end of the book, readers gain some clarity on Ramaswamy’s own interests and motives.He calls for antitrust lawsuits against the big three and suggests that Black Rock break itself into two smaller firms. Ever helpful, he also offers an alternative for investors — an investment firm called Strive, co-founded in 2022 by Ramaswamy himself. And here the book reads almost like a fund prospectus:Strive’s mandate to underlying companies is simple: focus on excellence over politics; provide excellent products and services to your customers; and maximize value for your shareholders by doing that rather than advancing any particular social or political agenda.Though he retains a multimillion-dollar stake in the company, Ramaswamy resigned from the board and relinquished his day-to-day responsibilities at Strive earlier this year because he was running for president. Even so, depending on the standards to which one holds politicians, Ramaswamy’s self-serving approach in “Capitalist Punishment” may be disheartening or pedestrian. At the very least, encountering it does persuade me, as Ramaswamy argues in these books, that there are plenty of business people out there “pretending to care about justice in order to make money.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ramaswamy Investments Seem at Odds With His Position on ‘Woke’ Culture

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      The billionaire biotech mogul has railed against socially conscious companies. But his financial disclosure shows he has a stake in some of the leaders in the field.Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate who made a fortune in the biotech industry, has caught the interest of primary voters with fiery critiques of the socially conscious practices of U.S. corporations, which he laid out in a book, “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”But Mr. Ramaswamy himself owns valuable investments in many companies that have embraced environmental, social and governance principles, known as E.S.G. — the kinds of “woke” corporate practices he decries — according to a financial disclosure filed with the Federal Election Commission that was released on Friday.While many of the companies in which Mr. Ramaswamy holds an interest are household names, they are also leaders in the corporate movement to address social and environmental issues.Among the companies that Mr. Ramaswamy is invested in are Microsoft (his holdings are valued from $1 million to $5 million), Home Depot ($250,000 to $500,000), Lockheed Martin ($500,000 to $1 million) and Waste Management ($500,000 to $1 million). All adhere to various E.S.G. principles, according to reports posted on their websites.Mr. Ramaswamy has argued that such goals are a distraction from earning a profit, and that social objectives should be left to elected officials.Tricia McLaughlin, a senior adviser to Mr. Ramaswamy, said that he did not manage his own stock portfolio. “The first time Vivek learned of these positions was when he saw this financial disclosure report,” Ms. McLaughlin said on Friday. “Vivek’s stock portfolio is independently managed by a third party. The filer has authority to make trades and invest in stocks without his expressed consent or knowledge.”Mr. Ramaswamy, a long-shot candidate who has said that he would go further than the Republican front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, on conservative issues, has been unusually transparent about his wealth, earlier releasing 20 years of his tax returns.But until he filed his financial disclosure with election officials, there were few details. The filing reported that Mr. Ramaswamy owned up to a $25 million investment in Rumble, the video platform that styles itself a refuge for right-wing commentators shunned elsewhere. He owns up to $300,000 in cryptocurrency, primarily Bitcoin, and an investment worth up to $100,000 in a cryptocurrency app named MoonPay. He also has interests in three private planes.Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, is a Cincinnati native who holds degrees from Harvard and Yale. He founded Roivant Sciences in 2014, a company that develops and markets drugs, and that is the primary source of his wealth. Though he stepped down as chairman in February when he announced his candidacy, earlier reporting showed that he remained one of the largest shareholders. On the federal disclosure, the value of his Roivant holdings is listed as “over $50 million,” which is the largest category used on the form.According to Ms. McLaughlin, Mr. Ramaswamy’s total worth is more than $1 billion.Besides Roivant, Mr. Ramaswamy’s portfolio has diversified into investments in major U.S. companies that many Americans would recognize from their own retirement accounts. These holdings are valued between $39.6 million and $125 million. (The amounts on the form are reported within a range.) In addition, he reported over $50 million in holdings in Strive Enterprises, an investment company he created to manage funds that invest in companies without regard to social objectives.Sales of Mr. Ramaswamy’s book “Woke, Inc.,” which lays out his case against corporations attempting to factor in social goals, earned its author $203,860 in royalties.The report suggests one area in which Mr. Ramaswamy is more modest than other members of his ultrawealthy cohort: He owns just a single residence, in Columbus, Ohio. Its value was pegged between $1 million and $5 million. More

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      in US Politics

      Rightwing war on ‘woke capitalism’ partly driven by fossil fuel interests and allies

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      The American right wing’s widening fight against what it calls “woke capitalism” is partly driven by fossil fuel interests or industry allies, according to a new report published on Thursday.Conservatives often use the term “woke capitalism” to refer to environmental, social and corporate governance – or ESG – criteria used to screen investments based on their environmental and social implications.Just this year, Republican lawmakers in 37 states introduced a stunning 165 pieces of anti-ESG legislation, according to the new report from the strategic research and advisory firm Pleiades Strategy.“The trend has been rampant,” said Connor Gibson, who co-authored the report.The 165 proposals sought to employ a variety of tactics, ranging from imposing limits on public contracts and restricting pension managers to forcing disclosures and combatting federal investment rules.The researchers examined news articles, fiscal notes and statehouse testimony related to each bill. They found that the majority of them bear strong resemblances to model bills crafted or circulated by four influential rightwing thinktanks: the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute and the Foundation for Government Accountability.Each of the four organizations is affiliated with the far-right thinktank coalition State Policy Network, whose members have also fought to pass punitive anti-pipeline protest laws and which has received funding from groups linked to fossil fuel billionaires Charles and the late David Koch.Advocacy for many of the bills was also led by fossil fuel-tied groups, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which has accepted at least $8.8m from organizations linked to the Kochs since 2012, and has also received funding from ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. The TPPF began attacking ESG as far back as 2020 and says it was behind a pioneering anti-ESG bill passed in Texas in 2021.The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas lobbying organization, has also worked to shape anti-ESG policies. And representatives from several other fossil fuel interest groups have supported the efforts as well, the researchers say.Despite their well-connected champions, just 22 of the 165 proposed anti-ESG bills progressed through statehouses, the report says.“The dark-money-funded attacks on the freedom to invest responsibly hit deep opposition from business, labor and environmental advocates in statehouses across the country this year,” said Frances Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy and co-author of the report. “Our report shows that the effort to weaponize government funds, contracts and pensions to prevent companies and investors from considering real financial risks is not a winning platform.”Many of the bills that did pass were watered down before they became law, the report says. But that doesn’t mean they won’t have real negative consequences.Opponents of the successful pieces of legislation fear they could cost taxpayers millions, collectively. And the implications for climate policy could be even larger, because the legislation could have a chilling effect on future climate policy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe laws could create an environment that discourages support for shareholder resolutions that aim to lower emissions, said Sawyer. It could also make it harder for states to take advantage of the clean energy investments offered by the Inflation Reduction Act, she said, due to fears that those funds would drive competition with the industries the bills favor.“The full extent of those costs, we don’t know,” she said.Anti-ESG legislation has increasingly popped up in statehouses over the past two years. In 2021, North Dakota lawmakers passed a law calling for a study of the implications of state funds making investments “for the purpose of obtaining an effect other than a maximized return to the state”.The same year, Texas lawmakers passed a law prohibiting state funds from contracting with or investing in companies that “boycott” fossil fuel stocks, based on a policy passed four years earlier that aimed to prevent Texas from doing business with entities that support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement, for Palestine.Similar legislation began to appear in statehouses across the country. Last year, Idaho, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Kentucky all passed various forms of anti-ESG legislation.The legislation is unpopular, the authors say, but they still expect to see more of it in the coming years as more policymakers take the energy transition more seriously.“We think this is the latest iteration of climate denial and obstruction and delay,” said Gibson. More

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      in Elections

      Vivek Ramaswamy’s Long Shot Run at the Republican Nomination

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      GOOSE LAKE, Iowa — “We’re like a bunch of blind bats. We human beings are, we millennials are, we Americans are,” Vivek Ramaswamy riffed. “We can’t see where we are.”Bats send sonar signals, which bounce off objects and allow the mammal to navigate. “So we do that, we send out our signals, and it bounces off something that is true, something that is real, like family. The two parents who brought me into this world, my mother and father. The two children who I brought into this world,” he went on. “That is real. That is true. That means something to me.”In person, Mr. Ramaswamy’s presentation is a lot more intense; it is also about a bleaker landscape of American life than the bright version of Trumpism he’s trying to project.“We’re hungry for a cause,” he said of millennials when he spoke on a recent Friday night in Iowa, in a navy suit and white dress shirt, not pausing too often for applause and walking the stage. “We’re hungry for purpose and meaning. And identity. At a point in our national history when the things that used to fill that void — things like faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared.” Instead, he said, “poison” and “secular cults” had taken their place.All of this — the bats and the void and the disappearance of our families from the collective American identity — was delivered to a county committee dinner in a friendly ballroom with an open bar, a buffet, patriotic decorations and a fun local musician playing country hits from the past.This is what a pro-capitalism candidate looks like in post-Trump Republican politics, in which the emphasis is on the creation of a national identity in the face of spiritual emptiness and the idea that big business and the customer aren’t always right.The next morning, at campaign events held at one of those cool digital driving ranges and at a pizza place with a beautiful old tin ceiling, the American identity crisis talk continued. “There’s more to life than just the aimless passage of time, going through the motions,” he said standing in front of what looked like a floor-to-ceiling image of a Pebble Beach fairway. “You’re more than the genetic attributes you inherited on the day you were born,” he went on to say. “You are you.”He is technically the business candidate, but not really. This is the elite corporate executive as culture warrior. Mr. Ramaswamy’s pitch in Iowa was not about the application of free-market principles to the federal government, at least not in the way you might expect from a pre-Trump Republican business candidate. Nor was it economic populism, either, not really, because his idea isn’t so much that corporations are ripping you off; it’s that they’re in bad-faith league with one another to advance liberal pieties.Thalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesTheoretically, he could be doing a business pitch. Mr. Ramaswamy started a pharmaceutical investment and drug development company that picked up pharmaceutical projects abandoned by other companies and aimed to bring the drugs to market. In 2020, as C.E.O., he refused to support Black Lives Matter and in 2021 was an author of a Wall Street Journal opinion essay arguing that online platforms were censoring people when they blocked accounts in the chaotic aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021. He has published three books critiquing the environmental, social and governance practices of BlackRock and other fund managers and started an anti-E.S.G. asset management firm.As Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review pointed out, Mr. Ramaswamy has chosen to “download and internalize” MAGA moods — shutting down the F.B.I., replacing the A.T.F., raising the voting age to 25 unless you pass a civics test or serve in the military or as an emergency worker. These are the kind of proposals that are drafted to please and anger the right people and never happen. He’s given $10,000 to the defense fund of Daniel Penny, the man accused of second-degree manslaughter in the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely, and his campaign is selling a coffee mug that reads “truth,” with the words “wokeism,” “climatism” and “transgenderism” crossed out above. He has repeatedly portrayed trans people as mentally ill.As a Ramaswamy campaign memo recently said, “The mistake every other campaign is making is that they see their path to the nomination through Trump, when our path is alongside Trump.” In reality, many Republican politicians have seen their path alongside Mr. Trump as they wait for someone else to break him like a big piñata.Mr. Ramaswamy wants to restore an American identity that, in speeches, involves a lot of concepts but rarely anecdotes. That identity would involve the pursuit of excellence, which he described in an interview along vague, traditional lines — people achieving their maximal potential, free of societal hindrance. He contended this ethic is absent from corporate life. “I think that part of this is psychological, that in the moment people feel compelled to apologize for excellence,” he told me. To “be accepted as cool,” the most successful “have to apologize for the system that got them there by sticking the word ‘stakeholder’ in front of it,” he said, and called “the racial equity agenda” an “example of prioritizing a different value.”Mr. Ramaswamy came up in an elite world where some people employ the idea of charity or progressive impulses to get ahead, first in admissions, then in business, and they sometimes become deluded or self-interested ethical consumers. “Whatever justice is, surely it can’t be attained so incidentally, by just picking the right shirts, the right burgers and the right bankers,” he writes in the book “Woke, Inc.” He’s bothered by that thing many also dislike, which is a hedge fund putting in place a superficial diversity effort intended to disrupt as little as possible to prevent a lawsuit or make money, or a corporation with an aspirational brand made of cotton produced in the Xinjiang region of China.This is the world summarized by Sam Bankman-Fried last year in a DM he later claimed he thought was off the record: “this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”In “Woke, Inc.,” Mr. Ramaswamy’s solution is to separate politics and business. He argues that both stakeholder capitalists and Milton Friedman devotees miss something in the corporate system we have: A sole focus on fiduciary duty and profit maximization keeps corporations from becoming extragovernmental bodies like Dutch colonial trading companies.But it’s also not as if the only time anyone cares about racism in America is to sell Pepsi or to get into Columbia. The practical implications of keeping business and politics separate become complicated quickly for this reason; the economy is made up of millions of individuals who live in the larger world. “This is a business,” as Dolly Parton said of her decision to remove “Dixie,” the nickname for the South often associated with the Confederacy, from the Stampede, two dinner show attractions she owns. She didn’t want to offend prospective customers. What if Chick-fil-A wants to stay closed on Sundays? What if a company wants to market fratty beer to trans people and supporters as customers in and of themselves? What counts as maximizing profit or respecting the employees, and what counts as politics? What is politics?Over the past decade, many presidential candidates — especially the long-shot, unconventional kind in both parties — have talked in secular-spiritual ways about voids in American life and the corruption among elites. There are different theories of the case (technological change, inequality, institutional decline, loneliness), including the omnipresence of corporations and the emptiness of material goods for justice. The vision that markets and capitalism would liberalize the world and accelerate the realization of a pluralistic America, full of choice and privacy and respect, has begun to dim.Mr. Ramaswamy has isolated a problem in that vision (the hollowness of so much of corporate social policy). His national-identity-based explanation for the void is winning with some post-Trump conservative politicians who see the “power, dominion, control and punishment” that Mr. Ramaswamy said he believes are behind climate activism in much of American elite life. It’s a lean time for the sunnier version of a capitalist pitch — in which climate change is a problem but also a business opportunity, just like the valued employees and customers in a pluralistic, ever-changing American society.Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Vivek Ramaswamy, the Wealthy Republican Who Thinks Trump Didn’t Go Far Enough

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      Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican wunderkind running for his party’s presidential nomination, would like potential supporters to know he believes in the rule of law and the Constitution’s separation of powers — though his applications of such principles can seem selective.After intense study of the Constitution, Mr. Ramaswamy says he believes that the awesome powers of the presidency would allow him to abolish the Education Department “on Day 1,” part of an assault on the “administrative state” that his 2024 rival, Donald J. Trump, fell short on during Days 1 through 1,461 of his presidency. Never mind that the Constitution confers the power of the purse on Congress, and a subsequent law makes it illegal for the president not to spend that money.Mr. Ramaswamy also wants to eradicate teachers’ unions, though he concedes that they are governed by contracts with state and local governments.And he says he would unleash the military to stamp out the scourge of fentanyl coming across the Southern border, unworried by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the military for civil law enforcement.In short, Mr. Ramaswamy, a lavishly wealthy 37-year-old entrepreneur and author pitching himself as a new face of intellectual conservatism, is promising to go farther down the road of ruling by fiat than Mr. Trump would or could.Mr. Ramaswamy has already lent his well-appointed campaign more than $10 million, and he has said he will spend over $100 million if necessary. John Tully for The New York Times“I respect what Donald Trump did, I do, with the America First agenda, but I think he went as far as he was going to go,” Mr. Ramaswamy told a crowd of about 100 on Tuesday night at Murphy’s Tap Room in Bedford, N.H. “I’m in this race to take the America First agenda far further than Donald Trump ever did.”Mr. Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, would seem to be the longest of long shots: He has never held elective office and has vanishingly low name recognition. But he is playing to sizable crowds and exudes a confidence that can be infectious. He has already lent his well-appointed campaign more than $10 million and has said he will spend over $100 million if necessary. Recent polling, both nationally and in New Hampshire, shows him on the rise in the Republican field, though at no more than 5 percent.His overt shots at Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom he labels a visionless “implementer” without the courage to venture into the hostile territories of college campuses or NBC News, are intended to clear what he sees as an eventual showdown with Mr. Trump. His brashest criticism of the former president is over Mr. Trump’s suggestion that he might skip primary debates, depriving Mr. Ramaswamy of the stage he says he needs to catch his rival.Mr. Ramaswamy sees a simple path to the White House: score respectably in the Iowa caucuses, win New Hampshire, vault to the nomination — and then triumph in a landslide that would exceed Ronald Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980.“Even as a freshman, he had a similar voice, confident, articulate, very sure of himself,” said Anson Frericks, a high school friend of Mr. Ramaswamy’s and a business partner at the asset management firm they founded to give investors financial options untethered to socially conscious corporations. “Confidence builds with success. It’s a virtuous cycle.”And though his promises may be legally problematic, they sound correct to many Republicans — or at least authoritative. Mr. Ramaswamy at Linda’s Breakfast Place in Seabrook, N.H., on Thursday. Recent polling, both nationally and in New Hampshire, shows him on the rise in the Republican field, though at no more than 5 percent.John Tully for The New York Times“He seems like he knows what he’s talking about,” said Bob Willis, a self-described “Ultra-MAGA Trump person” who was waiting for Mr. Ramaswamy to arrive on Wednesday in Keene, N.H.Confidence is Mr. Ramaswamy’s gift. His father, an engineer and a patent lawyer at General Electric, is, the candidate says, far more liberal than his son. His mother is a physician. He attributes his strict vegetarianism to his Indian roots. A piano teacher began Mr. Ramaswamy’s political journey with long asides on the evils of government and the wrongs of Hillary Clinton. At Harvard, he majored in biology and developed a brash libertarianism complete with a political rapper alter ego, “Da Vek.”Between graduation and Yale Law School, he worked in finance, investing in pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Before getting his law degree, he was already worth around $15 million, he said in an interview, during which he worried about wealth inequality.“I think it fuels a social hierarchy in our country that rejects the premise that we’re all coequal citizens,” he said.Mr. Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, has never held elective office and has low name recognition.John Tully for The New York TimesIndeed, Mr. Ramaswamy’s promises have an overarching theme that the nation — especially his generation and younger — has lost its spiritual center, creating what the mathematician Blaise Pascal called “a God-shaped vacuum in the heart.” That hole is being filled, Mr. Ramaswamy says, by “secular cults” — racial “wokeism,” sexual and gender fluidity, and the “climate cult” — which can be “diluted to oblivion” only with the rediscovery of the American ideals of patriotism, meritocracy and sacrifice. Mr. Ramaswamy can say things that stretch credulity or undermine his seriousness. He boasts on the campaign trail of his recent star turn jousting with Don Lemon just before Mr. Lemon was fired by CNN. But his statement in that exchange that Black Americans did not secure their civil rights until they secured their right to bear arms made little historical sense, since the civil rights movement was predicated on nonviolence. Indeed, the arming of the Black Panthers led to a deadly government crackdown.Mr. Ramaswamy accepts the established science that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but his answer is to “drill, frack, burn coal” and use more fossil fuels. That will supposedly unleash economic growth that will pay for mitigation efforts to shield everyone from climate change.He also says he is the first presidential candidate to promise to end race-based affirmative action, ignoring that this was the centerpiece of Ben Carson’s presidential run in 2016. Mr. Ramaswamy would end affirmative action by executive order, he says.He would not spend another dollar on aid to Ukraine but would use military force to “annihilate” Mexican drug cartels.Gregg Dumont, wearing a T-shirt picturing Mr. Trump in jail as a political prisoner, said Mr. Ramaswamy had his vote over the man on his shirt. John Tully for The New York TimesOn Wednesday night in Windham, N.H., Mr. Ramaswamy suggested he would name Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Democratic vaccine skeptic challenging President Biden, as his running mate. On Tuesday in Bedford, he was asked by a woman with a Black son-in-law and a mixed-race grandson to clarify the meaning of “anti-woke.”Mr. Ramaswamy — the author of “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” — answered, “I’ve never used that word to actually describe myself,” as aides handed out stickers reading: “Stop Wokeism. Vote Vivek.”All of this can be somewhat mystifying to prominent people who worked with him. Mr. Ramaswamy’s real fortune comes from the pharmaceutical investment and drug development firm Roivant Sciences, founded after the entrepreneur had a “brilliant” idea, said Donald M. Berwick, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Barack Obama.Pharmaceutical giants often abandon research efforts after concluding that even if they are successful, the medicinal product might not be profitable. Roivant would then pick up such ventures and bring them to market. Roivant’s advisory board eventually included Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator and Senate majority leader; Dr. Berwick; and Kathleen Sebelius, a health and human services secretary in the Obama administration.Part of the appeal, Mr. Daschle said, was Mr. Ramaswamy’s commitment to bringing prescription drugs to market at affordable prices.“I just assumed that because he was so interested in doing as much as he was to lower costs, social responsibility and corporate responsibility was part of his thinking,” Mr. Daschle said.Then, after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Mr. Ramaswamy began publicly castigating corporations for speaking out on social issues like Black Lives Matter, voting rights and “E.S.G.” — environmental, social and governance investing. Opinion columns in The Wall Street Journal were followed by appearances on Tucker Carlson’s now-canceled Fox News show.“I was rather shocked,” said Dr. Berwick, who resigned from Roivant on Jan. 12, 2021. Within days, Mr. Daschle and Ms. Sebelius quit. Mr. Ramaswamy soon followed, to write three books, help start the asset management company with Mr. Frericks and run for president.Mr. Ramaswamy says he would not spend another dollar on aid to Ukraine but would use military force to “annihilate” Mexican drug cartels.John Tully for The New York TimesAt this very early stage of the campaign, Mr. Ramaswamy is open about the limits of his appeal. Evangelical Christians who dominate the Republican caucuses in Iowa will need to be brought along to his Hindu faith. His “war with Mexico” may go over well in South Carolina, but faces resistance among more libertarian voters in New Hampshire, he said.And New Hampshire cynics don’t quite know how seriously to take him. Victoria Gulla, 50, of Spofford, N.H., questioned whether he was part of a back-room deal with Mr. Trump to help take out Mr. DeSantis in exchange for a position in the next Trump administration, in the way she thinks Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, helped take down Senator Marco Rubio in New Hampshire in 2016.In a statement on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump fueled that kind of speculation, saying he was “pleased to see that Vivek Ramaswamy is doing so well” in a recent poll and “seems to be on his way to catching Ron DeSanctimonious.”A hundred million dollars in self-funding could keep Mr. Ramaswamy in the race for a long time, and some voters were clearly persuaded by Mr. Ramaswamy’s nearly messianic appeal for a spiritual and social renewal.Gregg Dumont, 45, of Manchester, broke into tears in Windham as he praised the candidate for daring to save his children from moral decay and what he called the “racism” of identity politics.Mr. Dumont, wearing a T-shirt picturing Mr. Trump in jail as a political prisoner, said Mr. Ramaswamy had his vote over the man on his shirt: “All the policies with an upgrade, and none of the personality,” he said. “I’m sick of the narcissism.” More

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      DeSantis’s Efforts to Make Education in Florida Less ‘Woke’

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      More from our inbox:‘The Carnage Must Be Stopped’Trump, Still FormidableThe Danger of Anti-Boycott BillsLiving Without Plastic Marta Lavandier/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Under Pressure, Board Revises A.P. African American Course” (front page, Feb. 2):It is, of course, sadly ironic that your article about the stripped-down African American course curriculum ran online on the first day of Black History Month.Either Gov. Ron DeSantis genuinely believes that critical thinking, a foundational understanding of how the United States came to be, and the reading of books that deepen kids’ sympathy for other kids will actually mess kids up, or he’s just pandering to the masses.Whether the governor likes it or not, our country’s history, like that of all empires, isn’t wholly pretty. Is it upsetting to learn that the land you live on was taken brutally from its original occupants and that the house you live in was bought with a loan that was denied to another person because of the color of his skin? I would hope so.But the purpose of teaching kids their country’s history isn’t to make them feel bad about themselves personally. If a kid, any kid, comes away from a classroom feeling lousy about themselves, that’s just poor teaching. They should, though, understand that not everyone has had those advantages, be grateful for their good fortune and work to make sure everyone else’s path is equally opportune.Teachers have a tough enough time helping children become empathetic and engaged citizens with the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in the global community without becoming shuttlecocks in a soulless game of political and cultural badminton.Kevin BarrBethesda, Md.The writer was an English teacher and administrator for over 40 years at Georgetown Day School in Washington.To the Editor:I’m a current high school junior who has taken a number of Advanced Placement courses. The College Board is absolutely spineless for bending to demands from the likes of Gov. Ron DeSantis. As much as he — or anyone else for that matter — might not like the Black Lives Matter movement, there is no way to neglect it in a course that studies the contemporary history and culture of African American people.And, of course, being presented with information doesn’t mean that it will be “indoctrination.”The blatant erasure of Black, queer and feminist scholars from the course is egregious. Nobody deserves to have their experience or perspective left out.At the center of this debate is the student’s right to learn, and I believe that the student’s right to learn trumps all. History isn’t meant to be watered down.Charles YaleOmahaTo the Editor:Gov. Ron DeSantis revealed one of the reasons for his rejection of the A.P. Black history course. “This course on Black history,” he said during a press conference. “What’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory. Now, who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory?”Who would say that? How about the lesbian poet Audre Lorde? The author James Baldwin? The trans activist Marsha P. Johnson? Barbara Jordan, Bayard Rustin, Alvin Ailey and countless others?These layers of disenfranchisement have a detrimental effect on health equity, justice and more.Donna L. TapelliniLambertville, N.J.‘The Carnage Must Be Stopped’ Pool photo by Andrew NellesTo the Editor:As a Black man and a retired police officer, I have been crying quite a bit lately. Crying from a deep sense of outrage, grief, shame and fear.Outrage, because yet another unarmed Black man has been brutally killed by police officers. In communities of color throughout the United States, police use of deadly force and acts of misconduct and abuse have seemingly grown to epidemic proportions. People of color may now feel victimized by the very people who are supposed to protect them, worrying that they will become one of the ever-growing statistics.Grief, because of the pain that I know Tyre Nichols’s family and friends must now be going through.Shame, because the officers who killed Tyre looked exactly like me. They swore the same oaths that I did to protect and serve the community. They debased and dishonored the badge that they carried.But most of all, fear, because I worry that my grandsons, great-grandsons and sons-in-law may one day become victims of this insanity. I can only pray that they will remember the things I have taught them about how to survive a police encounter, and that they are able to live to fight another day.I know in my heart that Tyre Nichols will not be the last death of a Black man at the hands of police this year.There must be change. There must be accountability. The carnage must be stopped.Charles P. WilsonBeltsville, Md.The writer is webmaster and immediate past chairman of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers.Trump, Still Formidable Eva Marie Uzcategui/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Trump in ’24? G.O.P. Leaders Aren’t So Sure” (front page, Jan. 27):Lately there have been many reports of Donald Trump’s imminent political demise, but despite the predictions he remains a dangerous opponent and a formidable campaigner.His power has always come not from politicians but from ordinary people who see him as a bigger, more successful version of themselves. However inarticulate he sounds to the rest of us, the message his base hears is always clear.Many of his handpicked candidates lost in 2022 because of their own failings; his appeal to the MAGA base appears undimmed.He is a fighter, with the constitution and mentality of an alligator, striking back ferociously when attacked. He has no regard for the truth, but he has realized that millions of voters don’t either.Certainly none of the sorry bunch of Republicans mentioned in your article have anything like his power on the campaign trail.Tim ShawCambridge, Mass.The Danger of Anti-Boycott Bills Robert NeubeckerTo the Editor:Re “Politicians Push Back on Having E.S.G. Funds,” by Ron Lieber (“Your Money,” Jan. 30):The fight between red states and the asset manager BlackRock is a symptom of a much larger danger facing American democracy today: the attempt by state legislators to take away the right to boycott as a tool for social and political change.The first anti-boycott bill introduced in 2015 to punish Americans boycotting Israel has since been passed in 28 other states. Starting in 2021, Republicans used it as a template to punish companies engaged in environmental, social and governance investing in several states, leading to the current face-off with BlackRock in Texas.Bills introduced earlier this year in South Carolina, Iowa and Missouri follow the same template as the original anti-boycott law punishing boycotts of Israel, but expand the target to punish state contractors that may be engaged in boycotts of companies that do not offer reproductive health care or gender-affirming care and companies that do not meet workplace diversity criteria.From civil rights leaders to farm workers and anti-apartheid activists, Americans have relied on boycotts throughout the country’s history. We are currently at a crossroads where such a crucial tool may no longer be available for future generations.Julia BachaNew YorkThe writer is a filmmaker and director of “Boycott.”Living Without PlasticMust avoid: All of these items, which are part of the reporter’s everyday life, contain plastic.Photographs by Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Plastic Surgery: No Phone, No Credit Cards, No Bed” (Sunday Styles, Jan. 15):I enjoyed reading your report about living without plastic for 24 hours after taking out my home-delivered Times from its plastic wrapper.David ElsilaGrosse Pointe Park, Mich. More

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      What Exxon Knew, but Concealed, About Climate Change

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      More from our inbox:The U.S. Embassy in IsraelPaying Off Our DebtsWhy Use Real Guns on Movie Sets?Election Deniers Wasting Taxpayer FundsDarren Woods, ExxonMobil’s C.E.O., appeared before the House Oversight Committee via video link in 2021.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Exxon Scientists Saw Global Warming, as Oil Giant Cast Doubt, Study Says” (Business, Jan. 13):Exxon knew that its fuels would contribute to overheating the planet, yet it chose to deceive the public. It’s the very definition of fraud. Fossil fuel interests and their political allies are carrying out a fraud on humanity. They enjoy massive profits while their products are causing disease, death and disruption around the world.More than eight million people die annually from fossil fuel pollution. Societies are burdened by billions of dollars in damages from climate-fueled heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods and sea rise.How can we hold them accountable? Many cities and states have filed lawsuits against fossil fuel companies seeking damages.We citizens can demand congressional action to end fossil fuel subsidies, enact carbon pricing to make the polluters pay, subsidize clean energy, speed electrification, reform the permitting process for renewable energy, and sequester carbon through healthier forests and better agricultural practices.Robert TaylorSanta Barbara, Calif.To the Editor:The revelation that Exxon scientists in the 1970s correctly projected the long-term climate impacts of burning fossil fuels, while publicly claiming ignorance, is both unsurprising and infuriating. Rising profits beat rising sea levels every time.Communities on the front lines of the climate crisis have long felt the environmental, economic and health consequences of burning oil, gas and coal. It stands to reason that scientists employed by big polluters would reach the same conclusions.When lead paint and tobacco companies were found to have known the negative health effects of their products, but spent decades concealing them, a public reckoning — with significant monetary damages — followed. It is long past time for the fossil fuel industry to face the same kind of accountability.Zellnor Y. MyrieBrooklynThe writer is a New York State senator for the 20th District.To the Editor:It is indeed unfortunate that Exxon was not forthcoming about its studies and its scientifically accurate projections of global warming. We can use this information to vilify Exxon Mobil, and certainly it deserves criticism, or we can use the information to acknowledge that a great deal of untapped expertise resides in the private energy industry that can be harnessed to address climate change.It would be highly productive if the federal government worked with energy corporations, where so much energy expertise resides, helping them make the socially beneficial decisions that are required to move toward nonpolluting and climate-friendly sources of energy.The government could help fund research and provide economic assistance to construct new infrastructure, which would ease the monetary challenges in transitions.Make the oil and energy industry part of the solution, as opposed to the problem.Ken LefkowitzMedford, N.J.The writer is a former employee of PECO Energy, an electric and gas utility.To the Editor:Thank you for this article, but this is not news. We have known for some time that the oil companies have been deliberately misrepresenting the facts regarding global warming, when they knew better.The Union of Concerned Scientists published “The Climate Deception Dossiers” in 2015. This document is a compilation of evidence that the oil companies knew what greenhouse gases would do to the Earth.In addition, the magazine Scientific American published an article in 2015 that stated that Exxon knew about global warming in 1977.Joseph MilsteinBrookline, Mass.The U.S. Embassy in IsraelThe lot in Jerusalem that is a candidate for a new U.S. embassy.Ofir Berman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Don’t Build the Jerusalem Embassy Here,” by Rashid Khalidi (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 17):Dr. Khalidi’s view of international law, history and politics demands a response.When the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948, the Jewish organizations had embraced the 1947 U.N. General Assembly resolution recommending partition into predominantly Jewish and Arab states. Arabs rejected the recommendation and attacked. If there was a “nakba” (catastrophe), it was of their making.Second, Israel did not wake up one day and decide to march into East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Egypt, Syria and Jordan engaged in armed aggression in 1967 with the stated objective of pushing the Jews into the sea. Israel exercised its inherent right of self-defense under the U.N. Charter.There is not an international right of return law. That argument is an excuse for destroying Israel as a Jewish state.Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem recognized the location of Israel’s capital and sent an important signal to those who advocate the destruction of Israel. Real peace between Israel and the Palestinians will happen when both sides recognize a need to compromise.Nicholas RostowNew YorkThe writer is a former legal adviser to the National Security Council and general counsel and senior policy adviser to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.Paying Off Our DebtsThe Treasury Department is using so-called extraordinary measures to allow the federal government to keep paying its bills.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “U.S. Hits Debt Cap, Heightening Risk of Economic Pain” (front page, Jan. 20):If the debt limit is not raised, then the U.S. will be unable to make payments to some of its creditors, employees and entitlement programs that it is legally obligated to make.How nifty! My wife and I have a mortgage and a car loan. We have decided that our personal debt level is too high. So, we plan to send our bank a letter today saying that we will no longer make our mortgage or car payments.On second thought, scratch that. I know what our bank would say. And it would be right.If we need to reduce our debt as a nation, then — like my wife and me — let’s do it by reducing future spending commitments, not by failing to make current payments that we have already legally committed ourselves to make.Craig DuncanIthaca, N.Y.Why Use Real Guns on Movie Sets?Alec Baldwin on set of the film “Rust” in near Santa Fe, N.M., after the death of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021.Agence France-Presse, via Santa Fe County Sheriff’s OfficeTo the Editor:Re “Baldwin to Face Pair of Charges in Movie Death” (front page, Jan. 20):Why do actors need to use real guns? They use fake props for everything else!If we can send people to the moon and create self-driving cars, you would think that we could create realistic-looking guns, instead of real ones, that actors could use in movies and theaters.If they had done that on the set of “Rust,” the western that Alec Baldwin was filming, no one would have died. It’s a simple solution to prevent anything like this from happening again.Ellen EttingerNew YorkElection Deniers Wasting Taxpayer FundsA ballot cast for former President Donald J. Trump that was part of the county’s recount.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Despite Recount of 2020 Ballots, County’s Deniers Cling to Doubts” (front page, Jan. 16):Sensible taxpayers have the right to ask why their tax funds and the time of civil servants are spent on a request for an additional recount or audit of a verified and certified vote absent any evidence of fraud or irregularity.Where no reasonable probable cause exists for any such recount or audit, then any re-examination should be completely at the expense and time of the party that initiated it, especially when these beliefs are conjured up by conspiratorial fantasies or motivated by bad faith.Government officials and civil servants need to be free to focus on the needs of all, and not just the aims of a divisive and selfish minority.Jim CochranDallas More

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      Before He Takes On ‘Woke Capitalism,’ Ron DeSantis Should Read His Karl Marx

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      With their new majority, House Republicans are planning to take on “woke capitalism.”“Republicans and their longtime corporate allies are going through a messy breakup as companies’ equality and climate goals run headlong into a G.O.P. movement exploiting social and cultural issues to fire up conservatives,” Bloomberg reports. “Most directly in the G.O.P. cross hairs is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is under pressure from the likely House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to replace its leadership after the nation’s biggest business lobby backed some Democratic candidates.”I wrote last year about this notion of “woke capitalism” and the degree to which I think this “conflict” is little more than a performance meant to sell an illusion of serious disagreement between owners of capital and the Republican Party. As I wrote then, “the entire Republican Party is united in support of an anti-labor politics that puts ordinary workers at the mercy of capital.” Republicans don’t have a problem with corporate speech or corporate prerogatives as a matter of principle; they have a problem with them as a matter of narrow partisan politics.That the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, railed this week against the “raw exercise of monopolistic power” by Apple, for example, has much more to do with the cultural politics of Twitter and its new owner, Elon Musk, than any real interest in the power of government to regulate markets and curb abuse. (In fact, DeSantis argued in his book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” that the Constitution was designed to “prevent the redistribution of wealth through the political process” and stop any popular effort to “undermine the rights of property.”)Nonetheless, there is something of substance behind this facade of conflict. It is true that the largest players in the corporate world, compelled to seek profit by the competitive pressures of the market, have mostly ceased catering to the particular tastes and preferences of the more conservative and reactionary parts of the American public. To borrow from and paraphrase the basketball legend Michael Jordan: Queer families buy shoes, too.Republicans have discovered, to their apparent chagrin, that their total devotion to the interests of concentrated, corporate capital does not buy them support for a cultural agenda that sometimes cuts against those very same interests.Here it’s worth noting, as the sociologist Melinda Cooper has argued, that what we’re seeing in this cultural dispute is something of a conflict between two different segments of capital. What’s at stake in the “growing militancy” of the right wing of the Republican Party, Cooper writes, “is less an alliance of the small against the big than it is an insurrection of one form of capitalism against another: the private, unincorporated, and family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned.” It is the patriarchal and dynastic capitalism of Donald Trump against the more impersonal and managerial capitalism of, for example, Mitt Romney.To the extent that cultural reactionaries within the Republican Party have been caught unaware by the friction between their interests and those of the more powerful part of the capitalist class, they would do well to take a lesson from one of the boogeymen of conservative rhetoric and ideology: Karl Marx.Throughout his work, Marx emphasized the revolutionary character of capitalism in its relation to existing social arrangements. It annihilates the “old social organization” that fetters and keeps down “the new forces and new passions” that spring up in the “bosom of society.” It decomposes the old society from “top to bottom.” It “drives beyond national barriers and prejudices” as well as “all traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproduction of old ways of life.”Or, as Marx observed in one of his most famous passages, the “bourgeois epoch” is distinguished by the “uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions.” Under capitalism, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at least compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”In context, Marx is writing about precapitalist social and economic arrangements, like feudalism. But I think you can understand this dynamic as a general tendency under capitalism as well. The interests and demands of capital are sometimes in sync with traditional hierarchies. There are even two competing impulses within the larger system: a drive to dissolve and erode the barriers between wage earners until they form a single, undifferentiated mass and a drive to preserve and reinforce those same barriers to divide workers and stymie the development of class consciousness on their part.But that’s a subject for another day and a different column.For now, I’ll simply say that the problem of “woke capitalism” for social and political conservatives is the problem of capitalism for anyone who hopes to preserve anything in the face of the ceaseless drive of capital to dominate the entire society.You could restrain the power of capital by strengthening the power of labor to act for itself, in its own interests. But as conservatives are well aware, the prerogatives of workers can also undermine received hierarchies and traditional social arrangements. The working class, after all, is not just one thing, and what it seeks to preserve — its autonomy, its independence, its own ways of living — does not often jibe with the interests of reactionaries.Conservatives, if their policy priorities are any indication, want to both unleash the free market and reserve a space for hierarchy and domination. But this will not happen on its own. The state must be brought to bear, not to restrain capital per se but to make it as subordinate as possible to the political right’s preferred social agenda. Play within those restraints, goes the bargain, and you can do whatever you want. Put differently, the right doesn’t have a problem with capitalism; it has a problem with who appears to be in charge of it.There is even a clear strategy at work. If you can stamp out alternative ways of being, if you can weaken labor to the point of desperation, then perhaps you can force people back into traditional families and traditional households. But no matter how hard you try, you cannot stop the dynamic movement of society. It will churn and churn and churn, until eventually the dam breaks.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More