Love American Style was a comedy show that ended a couple of years before I was born. But as kid growing up in a time of re-runs with way too much unsupervised time in front of the box, I knew that theme song by heart. To this day I occasionally come across something and <boom> it’s suddenly blasting in my head.
News that British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca was doubling down on trade in China was a recent moment. My brain put this announcement to music, bringing together my love of re-runs with my hatred of Britain's rentier economy. I’ve been humming for days now.
First off, kudos to AZ. I mean, in a world of empty statements and incremental plans, they’ve landed with a STRATEGY. In an age of “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to US-China “derisking”, with most companies, if they dare to take a position, try to play both sides against the middle. AZ is out here taking a stand!1 No mealymouthed both sides arguments. No siree bob, they are so committed to China that their local president / global EVP, Wang Lei, was recorded proclaiming, that AZ “will seek to be a patriotic company in China that ‘loves the Communist Party’.” Corporate commitments don’t get much stronger than that!
The more I read, the louder the Love American Style theme tune got in my head. But as I listened in, I realize the refrain had changed. All I could here was “Decline, decline British style…”. And what a decline! This unbridled sycophancy to the Chinese regime is largely made possible by a uniquely “British national character” - rentier brain.
Arguments about “national character” are broadly bullshit but I’m willing to suspend a little incredulity about the concept when it comes to the UK. Having emerged from World War II broken but unconquered a pervasive national myth emerged, among the contemporary elite at least, that the country was somehow special. This belief in British exceptionalism was baked into the country’s political-economy with the neo-liberal revolution kicked off by Thatcher and followed by more or less every government since. The disastrous industrial policy of the 1960s and 70s could be overcome by simply freeing animal spirits. Waves of privatization of state owned enterprises, the sell-off public housing, liberalization of capital gains taxes, and related shifts supercharged and expanded Britain’s existing rentier class.2 The unholy matrimony of a narrative of national exceptionalism and newly opened avenues for wealth extraction birthed a distinctly British “national character”.
Suddenly the wealth of the nation was open for extraction. Mixed with the myth of uniqueness and suddenly we got ourselves a convoy. Just as the landed gentry had used the leasehold system to liquefy their otherwise illiquid assets, rentier capitalism provided an opportunity for the UK to transition away from its poorly organized “real” economy to focus on serving as a site of extraction as well as playing “butler to the world”. Rents rule everything around me.
And we’re back to AZ. Pharma is one of the more rentier rent seekers. Monetizing state sponsored science, capturing state regulatory mechanisms, demanding state-sponsored enforcement of its position via IP laws, and then selling the resulting products back to state - you kinda have to admire it.
Recent prostration to the CCP is the perfect encapsulation of rentier brain. A UK- HQ’ed and listed company so convinced of its unquestionable uniqueness that it does whatever suits its short-term needs to keep the rents flowing. And much like the hubris that drove domestic rentiers to champion Brexit and subsequently cry betrayal, AZ’s assumption that it can somehow cozy up with the CCP unscathed is laying the foundations for future unpleasantness.
𝄞 Decline, decline British style…
Brett Christophers provides an excellent background on this developed. See “The Rentierization of the UK Economy”.