Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiFor the first time, the United Kingdom's consumer debt now exceeds our gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion(1). Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi(2). Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings(3). As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles.
These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.
When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its political project did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. The society's founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle for ideas would take a least a generation to win, but he knew that his intellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy, which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with the interests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would promote it.
Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state. The role of government should be confined to creating and defending markets, protecting private property and defending the realm. All other functions are better discharged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profit motive to supply essential services. By this means, enterprise is liberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from the dehumanising hand of the state.
This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top one percent, but to the top tenth of the top one per cent(4). In the United States, for example, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s(5). The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim.
So the question is this. Given that the crises I have listed are predictable effects of the dismantling of public services and the deregulation of business and financial markets, given that it damages the interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come to dominate public life?
Richard Nixon was once forced to concede that "we are all Keynesians now": even the Republicans supported the interventionist doctrines of John Maynard Keynes. But we are all neoliberals now. Mrs Thatcher kept telling us that "there is no alternative", and by implementing her programmes, Clinton, Blair, Brown and the other leaders of what were once progressive parties appear to prove her right.
The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasing fountain of money. American oligarchs and their foundations - Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others - have poured hundreds of millions into setting up thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming university economics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberal thinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in the UK were all established to promote this project. Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme - the restoration of the power of the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.
Their project was assisted by ideas which arose in a very different quarter. The revolutionary movements of 1968 also sought greater individual liberties, and many of the soixante-huitards saw the state as their oppressor. As Harvey shows, the neoliberals coopted their language and ideas. Some of the anarchists I know still voice notions almost identical to those of the neoliberals: the intent is different, but the consequences very similar.
Hayek's disciples were also able to make use of economic crises. One of their first experiments took place in New York City, which was hit by budgetary disaster in 1975. Its bankers demanded that the city follow their prescriptions: massive cuts in public services, the smashing of the unions, public subsidies for business(6). In the United Kingdom, stagflation, strikes and budgetary breakdown allowed Margaret Thatcher, whose ideas were framed by her neoliberal adviser Keith Joseph, to come to the rescue. Her programme worked, but created a new set of crises.
If these opportunities were insufficient, the neoliberals and their backers would use bribery or force. In the US the Democrats were neutered by new laws on campaign finance. To compete successfully with the Republicans, they would have to give big business what it wanted. The first neoliberal programme of all was implemented in Chile following Pinochet's coup, with the backing of the US government and economists taught by Milton Friedman, one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. Drumming up support for the project was a simple matter: if you disagreed, you got shot. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank used their power over developing nations to demand the same policies.
But the most powerful promoter of this programme was the media. Most of it is owned by multi-millionaires who use it to project the ideas that support their interests. Those which threaten their plans are either ignored or ridiculed. It is through the newspapers and television channels that the socially destructive ideas of a small group of extremists have come to look like common sense. The corporations' tame thinkers sell the project by reframing our political language (for an account of how this happens, see George Lakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant!(7)). Nowadays I hear even my progressive friends using terms like wealth creators, tax relief, big government, consumer democracy, red tape, compensation culture, job seekers and benefit cheats. These terms, all deliberately invented or promoted by neoliberals, have become so commonplace that they now seem almost neutral.
Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by the means it forbids: greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused develop, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.
References:
1. Larry Elliott, 23rd August 2007. Consumers' debt overtakes gross domestic product. The Guardian.
2. Ed Pilkington, 24th August 2007. Guano theory in bridge collapse. The Guardian.
3. Anthony Lane, 27th August 2007. New Orleans: A National Humiliation. The New Statesman.
4. David Harvey, 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
5. See the graph on p17 of Harvey's book.
6. David Harvey, ibid.
7. George Lakoff, 2004. Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. Chelsea Green.
George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.
58 Comments so far
Show AllMntgt
You still present a model of individuals as atomistic. This was an Enlightenment concept.
Newtonian physics was based on the same presupposition. The basic building block of all physical objects was the atom.
However, in physics, subatomic particles were discovered. In fact, physicists have no idea what the basic building block of the universe is.
Still, neo-liberalism, neo-classical economics and some forms of libertarian thought actually believe each human is a discrete atom in the larger social order.
This position ignores both the interior subconscious and nonrational motivation for much human behavior and it ignores the exterior historical setting and sociocultural context which strongly influences the decisions and behavior of individuals.
Now to the recent period of capitalist political economy. The state is never separate from economic actors.
Those with the most economic power usually have more input over state policy than those with less. Conceptually, this is called the "hierarchy of interest satisfaction."
Within huge economic organizations, individuals are also subjegated to private, authoritarian hierarchies. The people on top of the hierarchy have control and power over those on the bottom.
Unfortunately, the largest economic organizations have the resources to better pay many of their employees as compared to most smaller enterprises.
So, if an individual hourly or salaried worker wishes to do well, he or she usually doesn't want to work for the less remunerative smaller enterprises.
Anyway, if a smaller enterprise actually develops a more profitable, innovative product, the larger enterprise can usually take them over by using various coercive means...or by making a deal they can't refuse.
If economic coercion doesn't work, large organizations can always influence some segment of the state to change laws or policies or even start criminal procedings
against the smaller company.
Civil society is not separate from the state; one could better understand this reality if one used political economy as a theoretical position to observe and test.
Instead, economics, and political science are studied as separate concepts. This allows economic power to be ignored and it also allows neglecting the systematic influence of unequal economic power on the state.
By the way, when observing and testing social scientific theories, many times statistical tools are used. Why? To find large patterns of behavior. Why do people seem to follow similar patterns of behavior? This is the other "unconscious" contextual base of behavior. Because most times people do not know how larger social forces influence there decisions.
For example, if I could place mntgt into a tribal setting of 17th c. Native Americans (who had no relations with European settlers), mntgt would usually make his decisions based on what was considered "good" for and by the whole tribe.
He would not do much buying and selling. There would not be written are even assumed oral contracts between two individuals.
Rules would be both traditional and they would be adjudicated by headsmen/women who were given the role by fellow tribal members. However, the headsperson would always take into account the opinions and input of fellow tribal members...or he would quickly lose his job.
Why? Because no group or individual controls access to important material resources: weapons, tools and food resources. Because there is no social stratification based on unequal control over material resources, there is no state.
There individual inequality of talent, intelligence, and character. However, this doesn't structure a stratified society.
Back to mntgt, he would probably go on hunting expeditions in order to contribute to the benefit of the whole tribe. Of course, he might be a better hunter than other tribal members, but that individual talent would not give him power over others.
Today's modern state has both a right hand and a left hand. The left hand redistributes and directs the budget toward health, education, and welfare. In other words, social security for the economic non-elite.
The right hand of the state redistributes and directs the budget toward the military, prisons, police, spying, invasions of weaker states and the accumulation of wealth by the elite. In other words, homeland security. It functions to invade the "personhood" of the non-elite citizen as it also invades interfers with and/or invades non-elite nations.
One can actually measure how democratic a state is by how its budget is allocated relative to what the non-elite statistically, over long time periods state as their allocation priorities.
Time and time again, within the U.S., the right hand of the state has been lavishly funded (many times with little oversight) while the left hand (which large samples of non-elite have almost consistently supported) has been increasingly starved of funds. What funds have been allocated have come with strict oversight.
Where is the atomistic individual in the above analysis?
I'm reducing you to a brute because you act like one. i argue for protection of each and every individual person on this earth to a degree you hate...because it shields them from you.
i offer free and open cooperation and the ability for all to act in accordance with their own values...and you argue to use cops whereever you are not happy. you see everyone as a mass to direct towards some end...I see them as equals who share with me the right to fulfill their own goals and I refuse to treat them as ends.
I refuse to pick up the gun to get my way...and you argue for the State to take if off the table and use it for you. If you act like a brute, it's got nothing to do with me, and everything to do with your unceasing, age old reliance on force, and the fundamental unwillingness to even face that you do so.
If I bring it up all the time, it is simply because it is apparently the only tool you have in the box.
"you can only attribute my christian-humanist-socialist ideals of compassion to the same some kind of base vile motive "
I don't care about your motives. I care about your *methods*. You do indeed use people as your tools and you support it every danged day.
You sit here every day in judgement of people you don't even know doing things you don't understand for reasons you cannot possibly know, but are more than willing to insert for yourself.
You want them to do what you want, for the reasons you want, and do it under penalty of jail and misery, and you sit here and expect your noble freakin motives to excuse what you DO?
Don't tell me your motives excuse your methods. You smear shit all around you by treating people as your inferiors. Look at how you talk in these threads. this bunch is greedy. that bunch is stupid. those over there are evil.
all of this so you can justify using force into threatening them with jail and loss of their rights to fit into your social goals, because you see what they want as *provably* less important than what YOU want. if you didn't, you'd hardly support such tactics.
and here you are claiming nobility as you treat other people's lives as things to be ordered for your ends...and then you deny using them as tools because of your noble goals. you're smearing shit all overyourself with your methods and then demanding I tell you it smells like rose.
It doesn't. it smells like shit and your method is thousands of years old and ugly as hell...do what I say or we'll hurt you.
"Like you said,you and people of your convictions don't want to empirically observe, measure and test any ideas that concern unequal economic power."
That's not what I said. Let me try again...unequal economic power is not a determinant of justice...violation of rights, IS. IF you can show me where rights are violated, then the violator should be sanctioned. If not, then sanctioning people is fundamentally wrong.
Of course there are all kinds of unequal economic power. But if no rights have been violated, then those inequalites cannot justly be addressed by threatening other people.
This is why amidst all the claims of 'unequal' power requiring law to address, I insist on seeing the violation of someone's rights. The ONLY case in which the use of violence or it's threat is acceptable, is when rights have been violated. Not because you don't like someone's manners. Not because you think someone else wastes something or has 'too much' money. Not because you don't like the terms of a deal two people have freely made that does not violate anyones rights.
I argue for far, far more actual protection of rights than most on this board, and that in and of itself is what infuriates many, because they do not *want* individuals protected from them. They want their own goals imposed on people and they want to use the power of threatening people with jail to get it done.
S"omehow, you still buy into the civil society vs. state dichotomy; civil society is the bastion of individual "freedom" and rationality while the state thwarts both freedom and individual rational decision-making. In other words, it's the Big Bad Wolf."
I buy into it because it is reality. The *purpose* of the state is to thwart freedom in your conception of it. You resist my arguments because they would result in people being free from following your direction. You want to use the state *specifically* in cases where you feel your judgement is superior. Thus you provably intend to take the freedom to make decisions you don't want to be made, and thus you simultaneously and *intentionally* prevent others from making decisions you don't like.
Every day here you argue to use State power to make people things do what you value instead of what they value, for your reasons instead of theirs, to take their freedom to do so and interfere with their decisionmaking and judgement, and you do so because you have no power as an individual to do this.
Thus you meet both conditions of your statement AND inherently show the provable difference between civil and State power. You want State power because it provides the lever of threatening people with jail.
"As I've stated earlier, 18th century Enlightenment concepts such as atomistic and possessive individualism are out of touch with historical reality, social science research and philosophical developments since the 18th c".
I'd say precisely the opposite. If your conception of reality cannot handle the fact that people are discrete, then it is innately flawed and you have not only not kept up, you're ignoring the evidence all around you every day.
Let's keep it straight..rejection of the idea that some people should use others as tools for their own moral goals via law when those people violate no one's rights, has nothing to do with rejecting the fact that we all live together or that cooperation is a good thing.
If you continue to conflate the two ideas, so much the worse for your ability to argue, because I'll simply point this out again as needed.
"And such views were held, they were held, by a small intellectual elite within Northwestern Europe-especially England. Most of the world's population never bought it. These concepts didn't intellectually fit within the reality of tribal, nomadic, monarchical, city-state, and imperial societies.
In other words, concepts based on 18th century Enlightenment ideas were both irrelevant to most people and very ethnocentric."
It doesn't matter who buys what. I am not a moral relativist. Moral law is as subject to logic as mathematics or physics. it it real, testable, objective and universal.
Pi has it's objective, provable, independent value regardless of who knows of it or accepts it, regardless of the fact that is abstract it is still real.
Similarly, all people own negative rights and the right to pursue their own lives free of the interference from others who want them to serve their own values, even if they don't agree or have never heard of the idea, every single person on the entire earth included.
"Today, these concepts are mostly found in neo-classical economics departments in universities. And many people consider this form of economics ahistorical, non-contextual, and non-empirical."
What many people think is irrelevant. What matters is what is objective and provable when you intend to apply it to the real world.
"Moreover, this type of economic analysis increasingly resorts to mathematics. The mathematics is used to extend and refine usually untested economic models and concepts."
What is tested or not has no bearing on what is possible or true. You can be making an entirely correct statement with that argument, and yet any untested idea can still be both correct and achievable.
"So, neo-classical economics is built on a faith based foundation; as a discipline, it is still stuck in the ethnocentric and metaphysical world of the 18th century enlightment. "
Your ideas by similar definition are thus also faith based. thus what we devolve to given your argument is a religious difference. You keep your religion off of me and I'll keep mine off of you. This is essentially my position all along...and one the left cannot accept. It is your own need to control people who make judgements you don't like that leads to these conflicts.
"It refuses to introduce economic coercion, intrinsic individualism, political economy, historical empiricism, social class, economic imperialism, ecology, anthropology, psycology and systematic criticisms of its 18th century theoretical model."
Not true. These have all been dealt with extensively. I refer you to the Von Mises Institute which has treatises from a heck of a lot of authors on nearly every one of these topics. Do not mistake dismissal of these arguments as a state in which they have not been dealth with.
"The basic problem within the capitalist political economy is as follows: Those with the most needs have the least power while those with the least needs have the most power (Parenti)."
I fundamentally disagree with this, since only each person is competent to decide what they need. This is a prime example of the 'progressive' tendency to devalue the human mind and it's role in determining and ranking needs and values, in favor of the judgements of some third party.
"Social and economic stratification is based
on unequal control over access to important material resources (Sanders)."
Undoutedly true. And action on this must be proceeded by the elemental, first test applied in any consideration of the use of threat...in the case in question, was someone's rights violated. If no, then no govt action is just.
"Welcome to the realities of the 21st century!"
We've been there for a while, I'm less certain of those whose views remain founded in the idea of people as unable to think for themselves.
I am through arguing to a brick wall.
I argue for humanity.
MtntGoat is dead-set on a philosophy that, through the vast power afforded to the wealthy throuth the capitalist mass media, has brainwashed the masses in accepting a system that throughout past centuries has only led to misery, and may now lead to our extinction.
mtGoat:
you response is just so much logical and rhetorical straw-grasping. i'll resopnd to your three points that are the heart of the matter.
"...they cannot violate the power of those who can say yes or no to any deal. No rich person or poor person owns the right to force other people to engage in a deal they do not want. When I want that cell phone, or that tomato, and AT&T won't come down on price…I walk away and forgo the phone..Safeway won't come down…I leave sans tomato….rights on both sides preserved..."
but, for Billions on this planet - including tens of millions here in the US, the only alternative to saying "no deal" to even the rawest of deals - I'm talking about employment - is homelessness, hunger and misery! So where are your "rights" here? The "right" to starve? You libertarians talk a lot about a system being "non-coercive". Is not such a grim choice the very heart of coersion? Is this not the same freedom of someone with a gun at his head - they also have the freedom to not comply with the gun wielder, don't they?
"This is *precisely* why I CONTINUALLY and unceasingly argue to take this power from govt. Yet you continue to support doling it out, regardless of the fact that it is the very existence of this power that results in it's misuse. My system solves this. Your's creates it."
No. Government power is at least minimally accountable to the people, by constitution, ballot box and petetion. The power of rich individuals and corporations is unaccountable and absolute. And no, your solution would not fix the problem of corporattions buying out government because the corporations would simply use private armed forces - recall (or in your case, probably not) the Pinkertons - who were employed to smash organized labor.
"We are not here to be your tools."
Your arguments are so disfunctionally locked on this model of humanity as utterly atomistic, utterly selfish individuals, that, like some kind of poor piece or robotic programming, you can only attribute my christian-humanist-socialist ideals of compassion to the same some kind of base vile motive - you allow NO other possible explanation for noble human behavior. Thus you SMEAR SHIT on the finest aspects of waht it means to be a human - reducing us all to brutes. Please don't level such an insult at me, or humanity, again!
I am a secure middle class man who is morally sickened by massive reversals in world justice and equality that have occurred since the vile Reagan. I would give it all up, perhaps my life itself, if it could move humanity back on the path of social progress we saw from the 193o's to the 1970's.
I recall your hero, Milton Friedman, posited, from his high irory Chicago School tower, that (roughly quoted) "Every human motivation is based on a universal desire to be master over a world of slaves."
Anyone who buys this is a sociopath.
HERE'S ANOTHER THING -AS DISPOSABLE INCOME PLUMMETS, INDUSTRY MUST REDUCE QUALITY TO MAKE PRODUCTS AFORDABLE AT THE NEW LEVELS-IT'S THEIR ONLY WAY TO SELL A QUANTITY THAT GIVES THEM PROFIT. WE ARE ENTERING THE ORWELLIAN STATE OF STEADY REDUCTION OF THE VALUES OF LIFE. THE VERY THINGS THAT SUSTAIN OUR VITALITY ARE BECOMING LESS DESIRABLE, LESS PLEASING- EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE STILL JUST AS NECESSARY. WE WILL ONLY SEE AVAILABLE A LIST OF GOODS THAT ARE LABELED "OUR NEEDS", BUT SATISFY OUR NEEDS LESS AND LESS ,PROGRESSIVELY. AND THAT LIST WILL BE ALL WE HAVE THE POWER TO BUY.-BUT FOR THAT TOP PERCENTAGE WHO HAVE UNIMAGINABLE DISPOSABLE INCOME.
EVEN TOP EXECUTIVES IN THE MORE MODEST AND EMPLOYEE ORIENTED INDUSTRY CENTEERS HAVE BEEN FEELING THIS PINCH FOR A LONG TIME. ALCOHOLISM IS A TERRIBLE PROBLEM FOR THESE WHO ESPOUSE- AN HONEST DAY'S WAGE FOR AN HONEST DAY'S WORK- THE SADNESS OF OUR ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE ENCOMPASSES ALL WALKS OF LIFE. BUT WHO CAN CHANGE. IT'S BEEN SAID ABOVE- PRACTICLE AND HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE -AND HUMANITARIAN PHILOSOPHY -I WANT MORE FOR MYSELF, I CAN GET MORE HERE `THANX
Mtn Git -You are a diservice to the Great Semantisists that are the Corporate Executives of our Country. your reasoning is Circular. You are mirely Creating Obscurations. The Value of YOur Words is the Value you Place on Your Life. forget your posturing, as I Say , You know NOTHING about Capitalism but WHat i have just Told You. forget your coddled Allegiances and Join us. Let's have Commerce without Capitalism's Universal Predation. Join in the egalitarian Mission you Profess in Your Commaradery. Your Beating you Head against a Brick-Wall--THEY DON'T CARE
The Free-Market isn't about market at all. Capitalism is about competition.
In all this high-minded dissertation and historical analyses and emphatic declaration of rights and responsibilities, i read only once -COMPETITION.
Consider everything you have observed of Competition. Sports, Quiz Shows, Shell Games- Each favours the Agressor. Competition is inately rigged for the Agressor. Labour is About Quality -whether you're a Craftsman, Professional or those I admire most as they are so vertically versatile, the Service Industry~their success and remuneration comes from Quality Work. Capitalism is solely determined by competition - The more Agressive the greater the Remuneration
Please -Commerce Industry -GOOD. We all agree on that But Free-Market Capitalism is PREDATORY. And Predatory is Humanities Adversary.
Many of you do not understand Me, but it can't be denied. Therre is nothing Self-Regulating of a Free-Market. Ask any Capitalist, Bold face ask an Executive "isn't the Free-Market based on Competition?" Say No More
But Listen to Them. And considering my words all this will become Very Clear to You. Try It-He Won't Deny it
Mtn Goat thinks very clearly, and I'm glad he remains part of the discussion, even when seriously reviled. I take exception to some of his reasoning, however.
His ethic of choice is admirable, but unrealistic, because our economic regime has reduced so many to subsistence level, and every classical economist draws the line there. When you hit that line, transactions are no longer a matter choice.
Another problem is that our current regime is highly monopolistic, which is anti-libertarian, so Mtn Goat is advocating a system which does not obtain, as if it were the system we live under. He is describing a free market that exists only in fantasy. Our system is no more "capitalist" in the classical sense than the Soviet Union's.
Also, though he mentioned economic rent, he hasn't accounted for its effects. This is a biggie, and explains a lot more than the pseudo-conflict between labor and capital. Someone in another CD forum mentioned Henry George, and I spent a couple of days reading his work. I think we'd all benefit from doing the same; it makes a lot of things much clearer than we tend to in these CD debates. George's understanding of the relations among labor, capital and land, show that progressives and libertarians have a lot of common ground and can be reconciled easily by returning to some basic concepts.
Mntgoat
Like you said,you and people of your convictions don't want to empirically observe, measure and test any ideas that concern unequal economic power.
Somehow, you still buy into the civil society vs. state dichotomy; civil society is the bastion of individual "freedom" and rationality while the state thwarts both freedom and individual rational decision-making. In other words, it's the Big Bad Wolf.
Of course, the only response you can give to any observations concerning unequal economic power is "No they aren't" and "no it doesn't."
As I've stated earlier, 18th century Enlightenment concepts such as atomistic and possessive individualism are out of touch with historical reality, social science research and philosophical developments since the 18th c.
And such views were held, they were held, by a small intellectual elite within Northwestern Europe-especially England. Most of the world's population never bought it. These concepts didn't intellectually fit within the reality of tribal, nomadic, monarchical, city-state, and imperial societies.
In other words, concepts based on 18th century Enlightenment ideas were both irrelevant to most people and very ethnocentric.
Today, these concepts are mostly found in neo-classical economics departments in universities. And many people consider this form of economics ahistorical, non-contextual, and non-empirical.
Moreover, this type of economic analysis increasingly resorts to mathematics. The mathematics is used to extend and refine usually untested economic models and concepts.
(In fact, economics -especially the neo-classical form -has an awful history when it comes to economic forecasting. Many joke about this reality by saying, economic forecasters are statistically less reliable than people who just make guesses.)
So, neo-classical economics is built on a faith based foundation; as a discipline, it is still stuck in the ethnocentric and metaphysical world of the 18th century enlightment.
It refuses to introduce economic coercion, intrinsic individualism, political economy, historical empiricism, social class, economic imperialism, ecology, anthropology, psycology and systematic criticisms of its 18th century theoretical model.
Hey, mntgoat. I'll end with two observations.
The basic problem within the capitalist political economy is as follows: Those with the most needs have the least power while those with the least needs have the most power (Parenti).
Social and economic stratification is based
on unequal control over access to important material resources (Sanders).
Welcome to the realities of the 21st century!
"Whay seems to be always entirely lacking in your arguments and those of US "libertarians" is a huge, probably deliberate blind spot regarding the dynamics of wealth and power."
No, we just do not accept the ideas concerning power that you espouse. Yes, that non acceptance is deliberate, just as I deliberately do not accept it when someone tells me that one plus one is three. Non acceptance of flawed ideas is not only acceptable, but vital.
"One who aquires wealth acquires power, specifically the power to acquire more wealth, which leads to more power, more wealth, more power etc. Just like the runaway chemical reaction of a high explosive, but in slow-motion."
Problem number one...not all 'power' is the same. The 'power' that comes from ones own property and profit is completely and entirely legitimate as a human right, and is only wrong, or sanctionable, when it takes someone elses rights. In as much as trade yields wealth, wealth yields the ability to create more trade, and that trade yields more wealth in a 'runaway'..
SO WHAT? There is not a fixed amount of money in the world and all that wealth comes from trade, which means it is innately shared as goods and services. If someone trading manages to increasingly expand the economy, just what is the problem?
"This power also gives the wealthy the ability to impose harsh bargaining terms, to his advantage, in any market interaction on the less wealthy - and under the capitalist system, he is practically compelled to."
There is no compulsion to do so, that is your straw man addition in order to oppose it.
In any case, even if they do...they cannot violate the power of those who can say yes or no to any deal. No rich person or poor person owns the right to force other people to engage in a deal they do not want. When I want that cell phone, or that tomato, and AT&T won't come down on price...I walk away and forgo the phone..Safeway won't come down...I leave sans tomato....rights on both sides preserved.
Your rights as a person do not presuppose the right to threaten other people with loss of liberty or property because you don't like the deal they offer. You seem to have the idea you are literally entitled to force other people to offer you deals to your terms. You refuse to treat others as fully human with their own rights to their own production.
"The rich capitalist can bide his time; his refirgerator is full, his bank account full of money. The worker without power must accept the raw deal offered or become homeless and starve."
No, there is no "must". The worker without power is not forced by the power company to want power, he is not forced by the power company to value power. Acting as if people's wants are the responsibility of someone else is ludicrous. The power company offers power to whoever decides that they wish to buy it..that is the sum total extent of their 'power'.
"Workers, of course, can orgnize and collectively bargain, with threat to withhold their labor, too, but unavoidably do so from a much weaker position, because the power held by the capitalists gives them virtual ownership of governments, law-enforcement, armies, private armed thugs. Governments pass anti-worker laws, law enforcement and even armies violently supress labor action, through threat or actual force."
This is *precisely* why I CONTINUALLY and unceasingly argue to take this power from govt. Yet you continue to support doling it out, regardless of the fact that it is the very existence of this power that results in it's misuse. My system solves this. Your's creates it.
"So, how can you find such a situation morally acceptable?"
Because number one, your morality does not hold each person morally responsible for their own choices and valuations. You persist in accruing responsibility to parties who have nothing to do with what you apply to them, so that you can then justify threatening them into submission using the tools of the State.
Number two, you believe in treating other people as if they are yours to direct, and make dichotomies on people's rights based on situations and wealth. Thirdly, you see other people's lives and property as tools to serve your goals, and you violate those lives and rights with full intent by replacing their choices and freedoms with your ideas.
I don't see how you can consider a system of what you propose moral at all, regardless of the nobility of your goals, it is completely backwards and disrespectful of each person as unique and sovereign within their rights. We are not here to be your tools.
"And, there is no way even more doses of the same would help the situation - market transactions among unequal parties are inherently antagonistic,"
No they aren't.
"and capitalism assures gross inequality and the enrichment of the few and poverty for billions."
no it doesn't.
"When the "white collar" elite intentionally destroy the lives of others because they can, they deserve the same sentence as any other person who commits a crime and gets thrown in prison. "
Can you show us what you mean by 'intentionally destroying' the lives of others?
"an efficiently-working free market system presupposes there will be NO concentrations of economic power."
No Smith doesn't. He supposes they will not be concentrated and backed by State power to protect markets, create rent seeking profits, and create monopolies.
minitru,
I enjoyed reading your comment. I have always marveled at the success of some in convincing large numbers of Americans that a society organized into large, impersonal, heartless automata that mindlessly seek to maximize profit, i.e. corporations, is somehow required by the laws of nature. WTF? I had thought humans evolved their natural inclinations in small hunter-gatherer groups which depended on compassion and sharing for survival.
And I would second Siouxrose in complimenting balakirev and PJD for well-written comments.
Why should governments create and defend markets for corporations? ? ?
Anyone interested in understanding how European civilization was transformed from the preindustrial world to the era of industrialization and how free market ideology came to dominate British and continental economics (to say nothing of the US) should read "THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION" by Karl Polanyi. (Paperback, Beacon Press, 2001)
The effectiveness of the neoliberal PR machine (as George Monbiot points out)is also demonstrated by the fact that most people know Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, etc. but only a few have heard of Polanyi, whose book was published in the same year (1944)as von Hayek´s famous work "The Road to Serfdom".
Polanyi shows that the absurd concept of self-regulating markets will never work and that markets have always been embedded in society. The creation of "free" markets requires that human beings and nature be turned into pure commodities which ultimately results in the destruction of the fabrics of society and the natural environment (we have come pretty far, haven`t we?).....
To ensure "stability" and increase profits for investors and corporations people and the environment have to bear increasing risk and "casualties", which sooner or later should lead to protest and a counter-movement. However, perhaps the greatest achievement of the free-market / globalization ideologists is, that they have succeeded in convincing the public that there is no alternative, that their insane ideology is a kind of natural force, so resistance is pointless. In fact, "market forces" are man-made and can be changed but ecological laws cannot.In the long run the boomerang comes back and there is no escape... (climate change, distruction of biodiversity, etc.)
The irony is that while capital now enjoys the greatest freedom human beings are more and more subjected to surveillance and civil rights are undermined in the name of "security."
Orwell and Huxley must be turning in their graves.....
BALIKIREV: Bravo!
PDJ: Excellent analysis. Thanks for relating it.
MtnGoat,
Whay seems to be always entirely lacking in your arguments and those of US "libertarians" is a huge, probably deliberate blind spot regarding the dynamics of wealth and power. One who aquires wealth acquires power, specifically the power to acquire more wealth, which leads to more power, more wealth, more power etc. Just like the runaway chemical reaction of a high explosive, but in slow-motion.
This power also gives the wealthy the ability to impose harsh bargaining terms, to his advantage, in any market interaction on the less wealthy - and under the capitalist system, he is practically compelled to. The rich capitalist can bide his time; his refirgerator is full, his bank account full of money. The worker without power must accept the raw deal offered or become homeless and starve. And, the deal will will become more raw as the rich man accmulates more power.
No, "competetion" does little to help. Profit demands extracting ever more added value on a worker's labor, so the capitalists collaborate to keep wages low. Workers, of course, can orgnize and collectively bargain, with threat to withhold their labor, too, but unavoidably do so from a much weaker position, because the power held by the capitalists gives them virtual ownership of governments, law-enforcement, armies, private armed thugs. Governments pass anti-worker laws, law enforcement and even armies violently supress labor action, through threat or actual force.
Of course, externalities - the maximization of profit even to the point of rendering the planet uninhabitable is a totally separate, compelling issue.
So, how can you find such a situation morally acceptable?
And, there is no way even more doses of the same would help the situation - market transactions among unequal parties are inherently antagonistic, and capitalism assures gross inequality and the enrichment of the few and poverty for billions. So, sorry to say, Adam Smith's notion of "free markets" is a fantasy. It was developed by a man sitting in his library without actually-observing the messy world. In contrast, Marx developed his theories entirely from actual observations of economic activity in all it's messiness.
Bill for saginaw wrote:
If this be neo-liberalism, then what is neo-conservatism?
Neoliberalism is the widely used and widely understood term meaning the resurgent global system of lazzez-faire capitalism. For example, the Australian party closest to the US Republican party is the "Liberal Party". The "neo" referrs to the fact that it is in many ways a reincarnation of teh robber-baron era.
That so many USAns have no familiarity with this term is very telling. Everywhere else it is a household word.
MtnGoat:
Not only do you appear ignorant of the article's main thrust, you also appear ignorant of Adam Smith's writings: an efficiently-working free market system presupposes there will be NO concentrations of economic power. Any system of regulation/de-regulation that allows such concentrations to exist is by definition anti-free market.
Don't worry about Republicans, they will survive and prosper from all their corruption, lies and scandals. Americans have reached a saturation point with corruption and no matter what happens now, it's like water off a Sponge Bob's back. There's only so much insanity we can absorb, before we all go insane. Our economic system, government and society are so perversely insane, we will likely elect another madman or woman for president.
Bush wants Fifty Billion more to fight the war, and he'll get it. That might get us through another month, but what if the war lasts for years? Will he force us to buy War Bonds?
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad."
Euripides.
.
Why is anybody surprised at the real results of capitalism? Its sacred word---profit---comes from origins meaning "advantage." You cannot corrupt an even trade into an "advantage" for yourself without "DISadvantaging" somebody else. Everywhere capitalism went it "discovered" self-sufficient peoples only to rape them. The "disadvantaged" are now most of the world, and it seems the only reason we hear about it now is that, oh my, it's affecting WHITE people. There is not going to be any real change until we deconstruct PROFIT itself and find a new reason to be alive. And when we do, the "primitives" will be waiting on the hill...
Mr. Monbiot provides the answer to the question in his title. We got into this mess by opposition parties deciding not to oppose. Of course a political apparatus devoted to unceasing expansion of power and control for the powerful and controlling will advance policies that help the few and harm the many. The trouble comes when Labour and Democrats uncritically accept Thatcher's "no alternative."
Why should governments create and defend markets for corporations?
balakirev
Your post is better than the article. Thanks.
MtnGoat August 28th, 2007 11:16 pm
"No, they'll become prisoners of those who think it's just to kill them, apparently one of whom is you. You're not a robot, you own the responsibility for your choices. No matter what they have done, what you do is on your own hands.
Now that's commitment to human values for you."
MtnGoat:
When the "white collar" elite intentionally destroy the lives of others because they can, they deserve the same sentence as any other person who commits a crime and gets thrown in prison.
I'm not advocating death, but imprisonment for crime. It's not just to kill an escapee from a state prison, but somehow the killing of those people is justified.
Let those who would destroy the lives of others "own the responsibility for their choices" as well. If it means having to spend the rest of their lives behind their luxurious compound walls, then so be it. The criminals in state prison cells are much worse off.
senior mtngoat
It is so frustrating to take my time and attempt to answer your posts. As I have noticed in other discussions, you do not seem to carefully read other people's arguments.
Many times I have noticed that you, instead, set up strawmen to demolish. However, these raggedy scarecrows have little relation to the ideas presented.
Moreover, you want to argue for the ideology of possessive and atomistic individualism, but you tend to not to do so either systematically and factually.
Of course, you also tend to repeatedly introduce other related concepts such as individual choice, individual rationality and individual responsibility.
However, the above concepts you base your arguments upon have been empirically and philosophically tested or critically analyzed and they have been found wanting by Freud, Skinner,Marx, Durkheim, Foucault, Nietzche, Heidegger and many other social scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In fact, the history of the 20th century has empirically decimated all of the 18th c. Enlightment foundation of your ideas.
And that is the problem of neo-liberalism. It can only work if the general population has very little knowledge of the great thinkers of the 19th and 2oth centuries; additionally, the general population has to have almost historical consciousness.
If the ruling elite can destroy the pursuit of critical and analytical knowledge and replace it with ideological slogans, religious metaphysics and narrow forms of technical education, they've got it made.
I see it as a contradiction in the sense that pure laisez affaire capitalists claim that it leads to the best society, yet IMO a society where 1 in 6 have no access to health care, and many people are living in the street, our mentally ill aren't taken care of, and we are wrecking our environment seems like no utopia to me. Economically in terms of providing a humane, and sustainable society the Europeans are far ahead of us IMO.
"Economic booms and busts for one, sub prime mortgage bubble ring a bell? How about dot com boom? How about 70s economic malaise? How about great depression? "
How can you lay these at the feet of capitalism when State intervention is also at work distorting markets?
"How about 1 in 6 Americans with no health insurance?"
What does this contradict? Capitalism has never claimed it will supply everything to everyone based on someone's social views.
Helix said: "So while the elite may kill the goose that lays the golden egg, it is of no consequence. The gold has already been laid up. Now all that remains is the end game: bleeding the rest of the country dry."
I am afraid you are right, I heard Cheney was investing in Euros, it seems they intend to squeeze the U.S. dry and then move on to the next victim. Chomsky said once that you don't understand them until you understand they want it ALL, and to leave you with NOTHING.
Mtn Goat asked: "Which contradictions would those be?"
Economic booms and busts for one, sub prime mortgage bubble ring a bell? How about dot com boom? How about 70s economic malaise? How about great depression? yes there is a gap in the 403, 50, and 60s, while the U.S. surfed the windfall of government investment in WWII and being the only undamaged industrial economy left in the world. How about 1 in 6 Americans with no health insurance? How about tens of thousands crumbling bridges and roads. A few Americans have a lot of bling while society crumbles before our eyes.
No, they'll become prisoners of those who think it's just to kill them, apparently one of whom is you. You're not a robot, you own the responsibility for your choices. No matter what they have done, what you do is on your own hands.
Now that's commitment to human values for you.
"But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top one percent, but to the top tenth of the top one per cent(4). In the United States, for example, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s(5)."
Well, let's accentuate the positive! When the global economy collapses and 99.90% of the people are living in poverty or close to it, it shouldn't take the majority a great deal of time to find these predators and lynch them.
"Civilian holdings of weapons worldwide are much larger than we previously believed," .......according to another article on this site by Laura McInnis.
If these uncivilized miscreants allow the world economy to collapse, they will never leave their compounds and return to them alive; they will undoubtedly become prisoners of their own pathological greed.
Ok I get it now. Thanks.
NeoLiberal would be the Thomas Friedman and his world is flat crowd/drink the globalization koolaid and Neocon would be Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz.
I'd almost settle for just knowing that more of us realized we've been mislead.
Neoliberals are conservatives disguised as liberals. Neoconservatives are fascists disguised as conservatives.
zazmo-I think we're on the same track here.
Call me a dummy, but what the heck is the difference between a neoliberal or a neocon? It seems like they're just used interchangeably. Help me out here. :)
MtnGoat: It is true that many can publish on the web. But, many people have no practical capability to so, due to poor internet access or lack of time. The rich have a huge advantage in the public debate, because they can and do shout louder, and control such a huge fraction of the media most viewed by the public. They control access to all of Congress as a practical matter; the limited time members have to listen to the public is dwarfed by the amount of time they listen to the spokesman for the wealthy. They is why the practical consequence of the campaign finance system and K Street is to deny free speech of people in favor of paid speech of non-people (i.e. corporations). Thus, it is a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
Nice note from Balakirev. We could all stand a little more economic history.
Also from PJB: "From it's school classrooms, to John Stossel, USAns have been so successfully propagandized to a state of utter cluelessness. They will be literally starving and freezing as the hypercapitalist neoliberal edifice collapsed under it's own weight of contradictions, unable to find the exit door."
I would only add something about the television keeping their minds off their stomachs.
No class. Anyone who wants to can produce images, distribution of ideas, and this website proves it. There are numerous publishers, websites, and all kinds of media run by all kinds of people. I am not aware of anyone who attempts to limit public discussion by law..except for those who back threatening people who place campaign ads when they do not want them run, with jail or sanction.
I do not see the contradiction in the example you provide either. There is a set of competing goals yes, but this is not a contradiction, it's merely two elements each vying for that they want...competition.
Hola Mntgoat
I can see you're at it again. If you wish to understand the lack of any historical basis behind neo-liberal "theories", read my earlier post expanding upon Monbiot's excellent analysis.
Second, the capitalist system is full of contradictions. I'll give you an example.
The capitalist class, as a whole, wants workers to buy all the goods and services that workers produce. However, capitalists, as individual owners, want to keep labor costs low as possible.
Eventually, because capitalists attempt to compete by keeping labor costs low, many workers cannot afford to buy the goods and services they produced.
So, if you are a CEO or VP of a company and you declare, "I think the company should raise wages, cut back on hours and slow levels of production", your fellow managers and the dominant stockholders would think you were nuts.
However, if you are a worker and you openly state, "I think the company should lower wages, add more hours, and raise production levels", your fellow workers would think you were nuts.
What Rightwing movements attempt to promote and put into place are policies that reflect the interests of CEOs and the ownership class at the expense of the working majority. How do they do this?
Look around you. Which class controls the design, production and distribution of ideas, images, and imposes the limits of permissable public discussion?
Neo-WHAT? There's no such thing.
tecullinan,
Re: The Elite ... are certain to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Well, maybe. But the attitudes of the neo-aristocrats remind me of Edward I of England, who, in a battle with an overmatched opponent, ordered his archers to fire into the melee. When the inevitable protest "but we'll kill our own soldiers too" was voiced, he replied, "Yes, but we have reserves, and they don't."
So while the elite may kill the goose that lays the golden egg, it is of no consequence. The gold has already been laid up. Now all that remains is the end game: bleeding the rest of the country dry.
The only problem I have with Monbiot's analysis is his labeling (or rather, his framing, as Lakoff would term it).
If this be neo-liberalism, then what is neo- conservatism?
Bill from Saginaw
The term "trickle-down theory" should have been enough to wake up the majority. Not pour-down theory, not rain-down theory, or drizzle-down theory, or even spring-shower theory. Trickle. The rich might, just might, allow a few drops to trickle from their wealth-overstuffed clouds. Please, sir, can I have another.
The brainwashing has also included creating such a desire for wealth generally, "the people" are willing to be screwed and suckered at will because of the false belief their time will come if they just hang in there long enough. If not, there's always international humiliation for dollars on any number of FOX "reality" shows, or the local state numbers racket, AKA the lottery. And because we want a piece of what "they" got, we allow a corrupt, rigged system to flourish.
"They will be literally starving and freezing as the hypercapitalist neoliberal edifice collapsed under it's own weight of contradictions, unable to find the exit door."
Which contradictions would those be?
Here we go again with another article which looks at one half of trade and concludes that 'wealth' is only money, not goods and services, despite the fact that people decide that goods and services are worth more to them than the money they trade for these items.
Until an article, or a poster, actually deals with the fact that wealth is also goods and services, these critiques remain mired in inherently flawed, strawman analyses.
It is easy to understand how the capitalistic-fascist segment of our society got into power.
They simply appealed to the greed in all of us and told everyone to forget the idea that we are our brother's keeper or that we should unite behind a government of for and by the people. Forget the preamble to the constitution where it mandates that we "promote the general welfare….."
These "greed is good" charlatans skillfully explained that if we eliminate the social safety net and transform this country into an ideology of everyone for himself or herself we could all prosper beyond our wildest dreams. To hell with the few who cannot make it, they only weaken the herd anyway and should be starved off.
Unfortunately the true majority of this country are still being controlled by a minority of oligarchs who are thoughtless, inhumane, avaricious warmongers and are profiting from war and carnage, Haliburton comes to mind.
btw, I don't think that I ever read anything by Mr. Monbiot that isn't thorough, reasonable and persuasive. Needs a bigger megaphone.
I agree with jbs, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" is a pretty good book...extremely easy reading, goes by as I imagine a spy novel would (I haven't yet read one). Unfortunately I also agree with PDJ. Between the educational "system" and the media (and many other institutions in between) it appears that the population has been thoroughly programmed to believe, like Dr. Pangloss, that this-the capitalist world, is the best of all possible worlds . Social crises and collapses seem to shake people to their senses, BUT, only for a moment. Then it's back to business as usual, that is: "This is the system we have, how can I get ahead. I too can be rich one day. All I have to do is work hard. Or play the lottery. Or if they cut taxes." It's difficult for me not to be (what my friends consider) bleak.
Excellent, succinct piece.
However, unfortunately his conclusion: "as the disasters they have caused develop, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled" will not apply to the US.
From it's school classrooms, to John Stossel, USAns have been so successfully propagandized to a state of utter cluelessness. They will be literally starving and freezing as the hypercapitalist neoliberal edifice collapsed under it's own weight of contradictions, unable to find the exit door.
After Otto von Bismark listened to (neo-)liberal arguments presented by a Free Trade delegation from England, he stated, "The free market is the weapon of the economically powerful."
Of course, he made the above statement within an historical context. Imperial Germany was successfully attempting to protect its state- initiated infant industries from the onslaught of industrially produced goods from England.
(At the time, Germany possessed a small, timorous middle class. They they were not organized enough nor did they own enough capital needed to launch Germany's industrialization.)
Also, most German economic historians knew that Britain's free trade posture was another example of its penchant for"cant" (i.e., hypocracy).
Educated Germans knew that England's ruling class started its "primitive accumulation" through piracy, the slave trade and the related goods and services that such endeavors required (insurance, shipping, steel production, weaponry, agricultural products, etc.)
They also knew how England's Navigation Acts and the consequent Anglo-Dutch Wars contributed toward breaking the worldwide Dutch shipping monopoly which opened the way for English's dominance of worldwide commerce.
The German "Socialists of the Chair" knew how the British government constantly bailed out major corporations like the East India Company. For example, the Company needed to expand its markets into China.
The average Chinese didn't want anything the Company had to offer. What better way of manufacturing demand than getting millions of Chinese hooked onto Indian Opium. And if that product was destructive and not desired by the Chinese elite, the English Crown protected and expanded the drug market via the Opium Wars.
And when the Company demonstrated that it couldn't govern India itself after the Sepoy Rebellions, the state "nationalized" the enterprise while fully compensating the Company's shareholders.
Last, the military spending and the Continental blockade (that set back European industrialisation)necessitated by the Napoleonic Wars, helped spark England's Industrial Revolution.
Very little of the above were products of Free Markets.
In fact, Ricardo's comparative advantage argument for free trade described the benefits supposedly accrued by free trade agreements between Portugal and Britain.
Portugal efficiently grew grapes for wine for English export; in return, Portugal imported England's industrial products.
However, these trade treaties actually de-industrialized Portugal and completed its economic subordination to England. In turn, the English Navy protected the Portuguese elite's commercial empire.
The above comparative advantage argument is still reproduced in introductory macro-economic texts.
Economic history is usually not a subject taught in business and economic courses.
As a result, most "educated" citizens of the U.S. know...nothing?
'confessions of an economic hit man' by john perkins is a good example of how policies are put into action.
Yeah, but their narrative get broadcast with million's of watts of power, while our's get's shouted from a cheap bullhorn with half-dead batteries.
Monbiot does something very crucial here which most commentators neglect: he relates the story of how our culture's current philosophy developed. Good and bad ideas have lineage; it's always intellectually liberating to know something about where they come from. Predatory forces always seek to bury the narrative of ideas - because when we realize that our ways of thinking are not laws of nature, but an artificially constructed framework, then we know that we are capable of tearing the framework down and building another one.
(By the way, thanks much for including the citations. In a previous comment I promised to donate 50 bucks to Common Dreams if you would do this, so now I will.)
The Elite could take over everything and rule forever, except for one thing. They, like the people in that story, are certain to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The only problem is that, in the meanwhile, we get to suffer along with them.