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OK, Naomi Klein's book was stupid, but that seems a little glib. Friedman was a guy who looked pretty happy to be consider one of the spokesmen for free markets: I think that gave him some responsibility to call bullshit free market policies when he saw them, and I think he could have done more in that regard. Given his earlier associations with Chile, for example, I think strident denunciations of Pinochet's regime would have been useful, but it was a subject he chose to keep pretty quiet on.
I think the Chomsky example is actually pretty telling here, because he does a lot more than printing books that Chavez may or may not choose to read - he talks a lot about how Latin America, Venezuela included is taking some giant steps towards setting up "genuine democracy." He also says he's worried about some of the tendencies towards centralization fo authority, but he tends to make less of that. And for folks of a left libertarian persuasion, that makes Chavez more credible.
Insofar as you find what's happening in Venezuela overall objectionable, it's not unreasonable to take a swipe at Chomsky for doing the wrong thing. But the same rules apply to Friedman.
Incidentally, how many readers of this blog would have dismissed the quote above as a leftist rant had the identity (and hence the libertarian credentials) of its author not been revealed in advance?
This is akin to arguments that all wars are based on religion. Utter nonsense. Can you please think all the concepts/philosophies/things/ideas (unicorns?) that have not been used as cover for great injustices and suffer?
Now, either choose to repudiate everything not on that list or ditch this tired story.
Capitalism exists in the world of man. Along with government, democracy, love, kinship, religion, and all sorts of other "ideals" that are claimed (and indeed often believed) in cover of horrible atrocities.
Central governments have stacked up millions of bodies to their names in less than a century. Yet its "neoliberalism" that's been discredited by its implementation in the "actual?"
Too bad Friedman's ideas were there to mess up the grand plans of Deng, Pinochet, and Bush!
What exactly would have been different? I don't know! Maybe Deng would have been a little more like Mao (err...). Maybe Pinochet would have spent less time stabilizing the economy and more time doing other things he enjoyed (err....)
And we all know that ONLY if it weren't for the fierce free market ideology of Pres. George W. Bush, America would be riding high on the hog.
That is CLEARLY what has undermined his Presidency.
[climbs back out of sar-chasm]
Well, it struck me as uncontroversially and straightforwardly libertarian. If it had been written by Trotsky, I would still have appluaded it.
Oh, and some while back, you asked what book I'd recommend banning assuming I had to choose one. I don't have a book, but I hereby propose banning "neoliberalism." As near as I can tell, it doesn't actually refer to any particular doctrine or set of doctrines, but rather to non-specific dark and conspiratorial aspects of international finance. Likewise with "neoconservative" when not used to describe aging Trotskyites who came to believe in a kind of reverse capitalist Leninism and their intellectual descendants.
Micha
King George the 3rd I believe asked just that question. The American revolutionaries showed him the answer. They said we don't like your system of private property that results in ownership by a few and servitude of the many. And successful social democracies of the developed world have followed allowing a flourishing of the human condition but indeed with much refinement still needed as the Monarchs are not totally defeated.
Libertrainism WAS the state of the world... feudal systems were the obvious end result. it's an old refuted concept of stagnation and despair. And of little liberty. Social democracies do exist successfully all over the world and they maximize liberty as much as can be exppected when sharing among millions.
So then you agree that the nonexistence of a system is not an argument against the desirability of that system?
So you are saying that the American revolution was a rejection of private property in favor of social democracy? Do you have any evidence to support this peculiar view?
Which countries, specifically, are the successful social democracies you admire, and which countries, specifically, are the unsuccessful neoliberal ones you despise?
Which countries, specifically, would you describe as being libertarian, historically?
Why only millions and not billions? What makes you think it's okay to force some people to share while excluding billions of others from sharing in the system you favor?
Because policy is the realm of states, and states are generally in the millions of people, no-one suggested changing the prevailing world order.
Successful social democracies lets see, Sweden, Norway, Finland? It depends how you measure success. If you measure it as per capita GDP then maybe, If you equate it to the levels of social mobility then probably.If you measure it on happiness it depends which study you use.
Failed libertarian/ liberal/ whatever you want to call it. USA, Iceland.
But enough semantics, the point is there is a real challenge to the Neoliberal consensus with the failure of deregulated/less regulated financial systems. This article doesnt address that point, rather its just a tirade against some pop-left thinker who doesnt really know what shes talking about. Will, can you please adress the actual issue, how will liberal financial systems survive or change given the current situation? What implications does the financial meltdown have for other areas where markets have replaced government policy?
I am aware if this. My question is: why not? What makes it just to force millions to share with you while excluding billions from sharing with you? Telling me that's just the way things are isn't responsive to whether things should be that way. Surely poor people living in the undeveloped world would benefit much more from our coerced generosity than poor people living in the developed world.
Is it actually the case that Sweden, Norway, Finland have more regulated financial systems than the U.S. and Iceland? I recall them having higher taxes as a percentage of GDP, but not necessarily more regulations.
I'm not 100% sure on the banking regulations, but there tends to be a correlation between social democracy and increased regulation on the whole. And its not just the levels of regulation but the impact of the whole system on the wider society. Eg. more equitable incomes may increase poorer households abiltiy to repay loans, it may lead to a smaller subprime market, socialised health costs means that there less costs on households, we need to look at the impacts things like this may have on economic and social outcomes.
Personally I would attribute this more to Keynes than Friedman.
Neoliberalism is simply a return to the belief that laissez faire economies are some how better, more efficient or stable when in fact they are not and you should have known thaat by a brief study of past history. That's the main reason for the "Neo" label. How many times are we going to have to repeat this experiment?
Losing your ideology is hard... I know... I used to vote Republican and Libertarian. But I worked my way through it. It's a difficult process but once you break through you feel liberated. You become a Free-thinker again. I think some one could make a lot of money opening up a 12 step reform program for neoliberals. But remember the first step is to admit you have a problem.
You say, " Hi I'm Joe Schmoe and I'm a Neoliberal....
You mock yourself with your answers.
Now once again Friedmanism has brought the economy to it's knees and everyone is a Keyensian again.
This comment shows how uninformed you are. You simply have no way of coherently explaining what this means. Considering how entrenched Keynesianism is in so much of economic policy making, your statement is right off the bat incredibly preposterous. Keynesianism abounds.
A glance at “Capitalism and Human Nature” demonstrates typical moves of the Wilkinsonian mode. In a short article meant to dismiss one hundred fifty years of complex discussion, Wilkinson begins by contrasting a single line from the “Theses on Feuerbach” with a preposterous (and criminally negligent) statement from Kim Jong Il. The purpose? To argue that “Marx's theory of human nature, like Kim Jong Il's theory of pine needle tea, is a biological fantasy, and we have the corpses to prove it.” Wilkinson, by bringing together disparate information in a nearly Surrealist juxtaposition—dramatic but rationally meaningless—seeks to make claims about capitalism’s compatibility with human nature. The only problem is that his areas of focus (theories of hierarchy, evolution, territoriality and exchange) are not without their ambiguities. For each terrain he manages to cross, there are countless counterarguments—coming from figures as diverse as Pierre Clastres, Niklas Luhmann, Marcel Mauss, Jacques Derrida, Heinz von Foerster, Theodor Adorno, Georges Bataille, Gregory Bateson, Gilles Deleuze, Wilhelm Reich, Felix Guattari, Victor Turner, etc. And this is only in the past fifty years. To cite just one example, Pierre Clastres’s studies of the Guayaki Indians in Paraguay demonstrate a political economy quite distinct from capitalist organization, one much closer to a kind of “mystical Marxism,” where accumulations of power are halted in advance via a series of complex social mechanisms (including tribal war), and in which the sharing of game—in a manner that helps cement communal relations—is dictated by an existing taboo. The Guayaki lived out this human experiment for hundreds, if not thousands of years (when Clastres lived with them in the late 1960s, they were much the same as they had been described by Jesuits in the 16th century). It would be pathological to say their way of life was not “natural.”
Wilkinson however does make liberal use of philosophers in the course of his argument, deploying their names mainly as signatures, rather than engaging seriously with their thought. We manage to bounce from Marx to Kant (a backward revolution if there ever was one) on to Denis Dutton, in a series of moves seemingly culled, in their utter banality, from a calendar of daily quotations.
But maybe the most problematic of Wilkinson’s propositions is contained in the section titled, “Mutually Beneficial Exchange is Natural.” This assumes that exchange within the capitalist system is always equal. If that were the case, Marx would never have found it necessary to write one sentence of economic philosophy. (Unequal exchange is a specter haunting much of Western literature and thought—you need only look at the opening of the Iliad, whose narrative begins with this very issue.) But somehow in Wilkinson’s free market fantasy, exchange is both natural and equal.
This short account of the naturalness of capitalist systems, bolstered mainly by a superficial engagement with evolutionary biology (and every other discipline to which Wilkinson turns his hand), runs completely counter to the narrative presented by Naomi Klein, who can produce her own corpses. No wonder Wilkinson takes such issue with it.
"These features of human nature—that we are coalitional, hierarchical, and envious zero-sum thinkers—would seem to make liberal capitalism extremely unlikely. And it is."
But it is possible, and so evidently not inconsistent with human nature.
"Once we appreciate the improbability and fragility of our wealth and freedom, it becomes clear just how much respect and gratitude we owe to the belief systems, social institutions, and personal virtues that allowed for the emergence of our "wider civilization"."
If you think I was saying that capitalism is especially natural, you really need to read it again. I think it's pretty unnatural, and requires the cultivation and encouragement of a few weak natural tendencies, and the discouragement of a few strong ones. Do you disagree?
I'd suggest that if you think Derrida or Deleuze are relevant to this debate, you're reading the wrong people. Try Herb Gintis for a man of the left who takes work in recent behavioral science seriously. http://people.umass.edu/gintis/ And check out his Amazon review of the Shock Doctrine, while you're at it. Very unfriendly to free market economics, but also sees that Klein doesn't know what she's talking about. http://www.amazon.com/review/R2NEWPETGH4KPV/ref...
I'd like to see what you think of my paper on happiness. The empirical evidence is very clear that liberal capitalist democracies with high levels of wealth and economic freedom are the ones in which humans tend to flourish best. Do you suppose Klein is aware of this evidence?
I would argue that, even if the emergence of capitalism represents a certain human improbability (though Horkheimer and Adorno’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment” is persuasive in arguing the opposite), your approach to its emergence seeks to free it, not only from negative political consequence, but political consequence entirely. What else explains the urge to sever Milton Friedman from the terror practiced in the Southern Cone? Marx, you remember, never sent letters to Kim Jong Il. Yet, if we compare your reflections on Klein with the text of “Capitalism and Human Nature,” we come away imagining that while communism mainly produced suffering, capitalism has, in its mystical self-showing, mobilized some of our essential (politically neutral) human traits, and has caused no suffering worthy of mention. It’s like history without history.
Let me read through the text on happiness. I’ll respond via email.
Really, back in the day I would have just eviscerated your use of Derrida and Delueze both here with a scathing feminist critique, but now we're all sooo over that.
A better use of time would be just watching Dita von Teese strip. Drop the dead po-mo and consider developing a healthier interest in burlesque.
But seriously Harlan, real thought involves more than tying together some Large French Names with their respective dull jargon. That does not intellectual work make.
In France itself, people don't really talk about most of these folks anymore. Po-mo is in fact fading fast, faced with the onslaught of the actual contemporary world.
I know people in France don't talk about these writers--they barely ever did. But my criticism of Wilkinson's approach is that it severs capitalism from a set of historical realities that are embarrassing for free marketers to consider. There's nothing particularly French about my observation. In this article and others posted at this site he presents a caricature of Klein's argument in order to dispense with it more effectively. This would not be allowed in a freshman class on composition, much less be tolerated from a public thinker. Wilkinson seems genuinely baffled by her accusations when, in actuality, Friedman had been dealing with these questions since the time he advised the Pinochet regime. They are not new. What is new is the way Klein assembles her particular narrative.
Now, what I find telling is, whether or not you believe The Shock Doctrine, Wilkinson, in his essay on human nature, dramatically links Marx to the domination of totalitarian regimes (as if Marx had been there to advise them), while the rest of his output manages to inoculate Friedman against any viral attack. One might go so far as to say that the excesses of Klein's narrative are meant to counterbalance this kind of silence. And rather than focus on ethics--essentially the heart of the matter--Wilkinson, in another study, turns the discussion to happiness. In that forty page essay, the word "history" appears a total of three times. In my book, such moves annul "the onslaught of the actual contemporary world."
Well, can you please point out what this baleful inheritance is, and in particular what these outcomes are? Then we can make up our minds whether these outcomes and the baleful inheritance are better or worse than those outcomes and the baleful inheritance of face-to-face exchanges.
Marx, you remember, never sent letters to Kim Jong Il.
Marx and Engel did however, in The Communist Manifesto, advocate, inter-alia:
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
...
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
These strike me as ample justification for government control over the labour force - after all armies in Marx's time relied greatly on conscription. And the centralisation of the means of communication in the hand of the state - what a receipe for censorship!
I think a big point Klein makes and you all miss is not that Freidman's ideas weren't truly tried so you can't say they failed. The point is that whenever they are tried they devolve into cronyism and all the crap we've seen ever since this.
Neoliberalism is not a foundation on which to build either democracy or competitive markets. It's radioactive as a political philosophy and will always decay into a Great Depression or whatever it is we have before us now.
You guys are like little kids standing over a broken vase with a baseball bat in your hands trying quickly to think of an excuse as you hear mothers footsteps coming nearer.
And most importantly, what would you say to a monarchist who asked, two to three hundred years ago, where democracy exists (successfully or not) in the world? Would you consider this a decisive argument against democracy?
Are you conflating the economic term (aka "liberalism") with the foreign policy term, which has no actual relation to the economics?
The idea that liberal economics (in the classical sense of liberal, not "progressive") somehow is not a basis for competitive markets and always leads to a Great Depression or equivalent is not one that stands automatically without support.
(Free markets with no government-made monopolies (that is, the sort prescribed by liberal economics) are not "competitive"? Really? That's going to be tough, isn't it? Purely from the theoretical level, hasn't that idea had holes below its waterline since before 1950?)
Please to make any sort of argument for your claim. (I'd especially like an explanation of how a liberal economy is one that's not a foundation on which to build democracy. Is this a novel redefinition of the terms?)
(Especially given your example of the US since Reagan, since the US is not exactly an unbridled free market economy and never has been.)