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The indispensable Christopher Hayes, now Washington editor of the Nation, puts an old book and a new one in perspective at In These Times:
"Written in exile, while Europe burned, The Road to Serfdom’s simple but powerful thesis was that the encroachment of the state into economic affairs inevitably leads to an encroachment in all spheres. For Hayek and his intellectual descendants -- from Friedman (Milton) to Friedman (Thomas) -- political freedom and economic freedom were inseparable and mutually reinforcing. And over the last 30 years, the adherents of the Friedman/Hayek School have pointed to two coincidental trends in global political economy to back this grand claim: First, the fall of command-and-control economies and the dismantling of welfare states. The second, the rise of democratic governance. With cunning aplomb, neoliberal writers and historians have packaged these two distinct phenomena together as one single story of progress and development. Look: Freedom’s on the march!
"[Naomi] Klein resurrects Hayek’s argument and inverts it, showing how time and again, the 'economic freedom' envisioned by Hayek and his ilk has been imposed at the expense of political freedom, often, Klein writes, 'midwifed by the most brutal forms of coercion.' From Chile to Iraq, majorities empowered to choose their own government don’t start clamoring for flat taxes, privatized post offices and an end to controls on foreign capital. Instead, they often form unions or call for increased social spending. The Shock Doctrine is an encyclopedic catalog of the tactics that governments, corporations and economists have used to impose -- usually over popular opposition -- what Klein calls the 'policy trinity' of the Chicago-School program: 'the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending.'"
Read the whole thing, because Hayes doesn't stop thinking when he finds a good book he agrees with, and he doesn't hesitate to explain how Klein's book overreaches -- a quality too rare at all ends of the political spectrum. The comments are intelligent too.
and otherwise. Recently updated blogs are in bold text.
It seemed pretty silly to invade Iraq to impose price controls. It is a real stretch to call this privatization.
May read the book.
JBP
I mean, duh -- when are human communities ever open to any big changes in thought or structure except during such times? People have inertia, comfort breeds stability for good or ill, etc. OF COURSE the spread of free-market economics has been enabled primarily due to crisis and disruption, as was true of roughly every other big new idea for the organizing of human beings going back way before the son of a Jewish carpenter was born in the midst of local civil wars. Are we going to label universal public pensions for the elderly bogus because it took the Great Depression to make the Social Security idea acceptable to enough people? Shall we delegitimize the concept of inalienable civil rights because it required enormous social crisis and chaos in order for the French Revolution to get going and serious economic/political rupture to spark the American one?
Of course deeply-shitty ideas spread in the same manner, e.g. fascism and communism, as well as plenty about which reasonable people can disagree (e.g. basically every monotheistic religion). Point being just that the basic universal condition for the spread of big new ideas has nothing in particular to say about their value or legitimacy.
"The fashionable concentration on democracy as the main value threatened is not without danger. It is largely responsible for the misleading and unfounded belief that, so long as the ultimate source of power is the will of the majority, the power cannot be arbitrary...it is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary. Democratic control may prevent power from becoming arbitrary, but it does not do so by its mere existence." FA Hayek
Thumbing through Klein's book, it is certainly nuts, but one point remains valid, Hayek and his "ilk" (Hayes 'words) were not proponents of Democracy as a cure-all.
As Hayek's experience with the Nazi's showed, Democracy can also mean mob rule.
JBP
'Just because I'm rich, you shouldn't be able to TAX me.'
'I should be able to hire people at the market rate, even if it's 3 cents per day and they can't survive on it'
'I want to smoke dope'
John, I agree that democracy is a bad system if it lacks structural limitations on the power of majorities. By far the worst thing that George W. Bush and his cronies have done to this country is to try to sweep many of these limitations aside, with warrantless wiretapping, signing statements, the theory of the "unitary executive," countenancing torture, dissing international law, and more.
I am agreeing with you again...Yes, violating civil liberties is the worst thing that Bush has done. The economy is pretty good, foreign policy is on a high note, Iraq is more stable than anyone expected, Medicare Plan D came in 30% under budget...
If Bush would show more respect for human rights and stop spending so much money, he may go down in history as one of our greatest presidents.
JBP
Aren't the populations in Eastern Europe choosing free markets? If not, who is imposing these reforms on them?
George Soros.
;D
Bush's offenses against the American form of government and civil liberties are far more significant than his specific policies. The fact that most of these specific policies have been awful causes people to splatter outrage everywhere. But his botched war and botched prescription plan and environmental ignorance will pass. Damage to the framework of our government affects everything.
It's not just one more issue.
That said, of course Iraq is not "more stable than anyone expected." That's a flat-out lie. It is still far less stable than the Bushies themselves predicted. Remember "Mission Accomplished"? Good grief.
I should rephrase, after the latest troop surge, Iraq is more stable than anyone expected. In the whole time, Iraq is more stable than I expected, but I was pessimistic. In general, the US casualties have been small, compared to past wars.
Bush civil rights record needs serious improvement, but he is an amateur when compared to Wilson or FDR, both in wholesale (rather than isolated) violation of civil liberties. The country survived the "damage to the framework" and some people even think Wilson and FDR were Liberal. Go figure.
JBP
McCain is calling for importing drugs from Canada.