Conservatives Should Reject the McKinsey Mindset | National Review
The ubiquitous presence of McKinsey in the exigencies and vicissitudes of modern global capitalism has given critics of markets plenty of ammunition. Their criticism is hard to dispute concerning the behavior of the company itself. But it is at least worth noting that McKinsey s technocratic conceit its presumption of omniscience, entitling it to rule may both predispose it to arrangements with governments, so often of similar mindsets, and encourage its employees to go into government themselves, where, in the modern bureaucratic state, the work is not all that dissimilar from that of a consulting firm. One might observe a meeting between McKinsey partners and government officials, looking from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, and find that already it was impossible to say which was which.
For a company so successful, so omnipresent, it might be too much to expect a comeuppance. But one can at least take consolation from its bad press, which has indeed been bad enough that company head Kevin Sneader was ousted in February. Getting rid of one man on top, however, won t do much to cancel out the company s mistakes in recent years. Nor will it lessen the almost comical attempt to shore up its reputation by throwing in its lot with the Left: Working with authoritarian governments is fine, but reform of democratic voting procedures is a no-go. This is hardly the company s only woke window-dressing; its newsletter and website are littered with the latest trendy left-wing bromides. It s hard to believe that Sneader s replacement will be significantly different, and those interested in seeing McKinsey further humbled shouldn t expect much.
A commitment to free markets in the abstract does not oblige conservatives to defend McKinsey in particular, given what it has done. And much of what it has done proceeds from a technocratic mindset that can be hard to distinguish from government itself. So as the Right attempts to figure out what to do about woke capital, it should remember that the trouble with capitalism remains capitalists especially the kind from McKinsey.