Between corporate values and grandstanding: The compatibility of corporate activism with democracy

Does corporate sociopolitical activism violate democratic principles? Critics argue that “woke capitalism” distorts public discourse and politicizes market life. This article focuses on a specific form of corporate sociopolitical activism: expressive activism, where businesses intervene in political discourse through social media posts, advertising campaigns, branding decisions, and the like. I argue that concerns with expressive corporate activism are overstated. To make this argument, I distinguish between integral activism, which reflects the core identity of a business, and incidental activism, which is opportunistic or disconnected from a firm's core values. For the former, such activism has expressive and potential epistemic benefits that can evade the worries surrounding equality and politicization. For the latter, such activism is often a form of grandstanding and is either ignored or generates backlash. The upshot is that complaints about corporate activism focus on symptoms rather than causes of our democratic ills. Our complaints are better directed towards the mechanisms that produce political monocultures at the corporate level, damaging polarization, and excessive politicization.