Comments on Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism: Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine

The two previous comments (barring new additions) ...

2009-08-03T19:56:31.430-07:00

The two previous comments (barring new additions) raise an interesting point. To whit, what exactly is government, or governance?

It generally seems to be conflated with a hierarchical 'state' system. Be it communist, capitalist, neo-liberal, theist, What Have You... Just as individualism is conflated with egoism (to believe in individual rights doesn't mean you have to be a selfist)

But when you come down to it, and distil it to its essence, then government, and governance can be nothing other than the social rules and internalised memes that guide and order the individual, and his/her interrelations with others.

Once any community reaches a critical mass (probably either 2 or 3 members), then there WILL be governance and governing.

It is the best nature and structure of the 'government'--which may be ideas/guidelines/morals/ethics/rules rather than people (people with guns, people with hats) that is the question.

My primary thought was of the neighborhood as a na...

2009-08-03T18:31:40.495-07:00

My primary thought was of the neighborhood as a natural social grouping in which residents might undertake various voluntary projects at the neighborhood level. Some of them, like waste composting and disposal, power generation, water, etc., might take in a majority of the population who see the neighborhood as the natural level at which to organize such activities.

I do think, however, that if government exists, other things being equal the smaller the unit the better. I think the Jeffersonian idea of democratic self-government, as delegated power or an extension of individual sovereignty, sees it as an attempt to approximate unanimous consent as closely as possible in cases where agreement is necessary. So the smaller the number of people, the closer the approximation to unanimous consent.

"self-governing neighborhoods" - What exactly is m...

2009-08-03T16:31:18.210-07:00

"self-governing neighborhoods" - What exactly is meant by this? I do hope it is not some form of local rule. I am no fan of local tyrants or committees any more than those that rule from state or federal thrones or congresses.

Kevin, in that case I agree the ASI and Cato often...

2007-11-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

Kevin, in that case I agree the ASI and Cato often take the wrong side in "short-term" and intermediate problems. That was Friedman's main problem: He would write well and report well, and then, when it actually came to setting policy, he would make terrible alliances and damaging concessions.

In a similar vein to Klein's book, A Brief History...

2007-11-27T13:03:00.000-08:00

In a similar vein to Klein's book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey seems rather a must-read (although I'm only half way through it so far, can't comment on it in its entirety). There's a review with a brief excerpt here : http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts/neoliberalism_2917.jsp

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Gene, I understand Menger's argument against the e...

2007-11-27T11:29:00.000-08:00

Gene,

I understand Menger's argument against the equality of goods in an exchange, and it's true as far as it goes. at least in terms of perceived use-value at the point of exchange. But IMO it's one of those ingenious observations that's largely irrelevant to practical considerations.

It doesn't alter the facts that
1) people tend to carry a conception of "normal" exchange-value based on some norm of reciprocity, based on the respective disutilities of providing the goods; and
2) that over time the ratio of exchange tends toward some normal price at which the values of the goods exchanged are regarded as equalized.

What's more, marginal utility itself is a means of equalization: if the supply of goods over time is free to fluctuate in response to the market price, then supplies will rise or fall until the marginal utilities of the last goods produced results in exchange on an equal basis.

If the party to an exchange peceives what he got as a better utility than what he gave, it's no less true that the market over time tends toward a ratio of exchange in which the values exchanged are equalzed in terms of some other unit of value.

Thanks, Richard. I evaluate the long-term vision of Cato and the ASI based on their approach to actual problems in the intermediate term: who they think are the aggrieved parties and the parties at fault in any particular dispute, and what they seem to defend consistently as the "free market" and elements in the present system. And their sympathies almost always tend toward the vulgar libertarian "Them pore ole bosses need all the help they can get."

This was an excellent article, Kevin. The Rothbard...

2007-11-27T06:08:00.000-08:00

This was an excellent article, Kevin. The Rothbard method of de-nationalisation is undoubtably the preferable one, and we all know that the present world economies are not free-market in anyway.

This article is so good that it is easier to list bad points than the good, since doing the latter would take too long! You wrote:

"The Catoid reaction to Chavez is fairly typical of vulgar libertarianism: corporate welfare and special protections for the rich are kinda sorta bad, in principle, maybe, I guess, and we oughta possibly, maybe, get around to writing a position paper on it someday... But welfare and protections for the poor and for aid to cooperative enterprise, now--they're flaming red ruin on wheels!"

In actual fact, of course, the Cato Institute is probably the best source one could go to on the extent of corporate welfare. I know leftists that use the Cato Institute as a source on corporate welfare. Some of their material can be found here.

Secondly, you write

Quite frankly, if my only choices are corporate liberalism and social democracy, and a banana republic on the neoliberal model, I'll take the former any day.

This is, of course, treating the "banana republics" in question as being projects that neo-liberals regard as in anyway "finished" as opposed to just merely being improved. Are there really people at the Cato or Adam Smith Institutes that think, "right, things are perfect in these countries, nothing more needs to be changed"? I seriously doubt it.

"If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade:...

2007-11-27T01:28:00.000-08:00

"If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses."

Nooooo! Exchanges are never of "equal goods." That's the old Aristotelian fallacy that Menger debunked.

Kevin:Although I have to agree with most of what y...

2007-11-15T03:07:00.000-08:00

Kevin:

Although I have to agree with most of what you have to say, I am at odds with your views of latin american left wing goverments. Unlike you, I do not see them as a sign of "hope" just cause they are opposed to neoliberal policies of the Washington consensus. This, to be said, cause their own statist shifted policies for controling the economy are even more disastrous than the ones of the IMF or the world bank. They are not social democracy (which is a far more serious attemp from the state to spend on beware of the public, in health, transportation, unemployement, infraestructure etc...). Their policies are, and I hate to agree with Cato types of vulgar libertarianism and right wing media in the US, populism. Lets not even talk about their politics, which are authentically authoritarian (granted, US capitalists are a bounch of hypocrites who present Chavez as Hitlerbut turn a blind eye on countries such as China...because China is "an economic miracl", who cares if they are still an authentic totalitarian state, with one party system, no freedom of expresion etc etc....). To resume, I think this new wave of letfists goverments will HARM legitimate libertarian and leftist interets in opposing global coorporate capitalism, because:

1- They will be worse in economic terms than global capitalism is

2- Their use of authoritarian politics will leave a bad flavor in the mouth of the public, who will reinforce the myth that "global coorporativism=liberal democracy"....

It's fascinating stuff, and seems to cohere rather...

2007-11-13T13:04:00.000-08:00

It's fascinating stuff, and seems to cohere rather well for the most part.

http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/specials/cheapwars

is an article by the same authors, it covers the same basic ideas, with more currency.

And whilst I'm posting long PDFs on economics around

http://www.eco.uni-heidelberg.de/ng-oeoe/research/papers/Faber%20et%20al%20AEE%201998.pdf

Is also interesting, it suggests that (based on the principles of thermodynamics) that classical and neo-classical economics are based on a rather idealised and inaccurate basis, as all production is really joint production, and it's kinda a smoke and mirrors trick to suggest that it is production and externalities.

Thanks, Bunty. From the abstract, that looks lik...

2007-11-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks, Bunty. From the abstract, that looks like an excellent piece of analysis: the shifting of capital accumulation almost entirely to the political realm. I wish I'd had it when I was writing the chapter on imperialism for MPE.

This is a rather interesting analysis of modern da...

2007-11-12T12:19:00.000-08:00

This is a rather interesting analysis of modern day capitalism, which seems to tie in with, and perhaps act as a foundation for some of Klein's ideas.

http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/1/

Joseph Stromberg developed something very much lik...

2007-11-09T12:35:00.000-08:00

Joseph Stromberg developed something very much like the neo-Marxist treatment of overproduction and imperialism, from an Austrian standpoint, in "State Monopoly Capitalism and Imperialism."
I might have to check that out. The Leninist idea of capitalist countries depending on imperialism always struck me as an implausible patch to the failed Marxist idea that the most advanced capitalist countries would have the most immiseration of their workers, economic dysfunction and ripeness for revolution.

I think most people who live under Social Democracy (including the Canadian lite version) prefer it to their image of what things are like under the Reagan-Thatcher model of neoliberalism.
Ceteris paribus I would assume people who live in one area will will have a greater preference for it than those that don't.

Re Mugabe, I don't think the lesson is that rejecting the Washington Consensus and pursuing land reform leads to disaster. I think the lesson is that you should reject the Washington Consensus, engage in land reform, and eliminate privilege--and then stop. Land reform + kleptocratic looting = disaster.
But isn't that a bit like expecting a cat to bark? Mugabe initially promised that he would respect property rights after some adjustments to make amends for the past, but I don't know why any anarchist would think a state would resist the temptation to grab more and more as long as it can.

PML,Again, I can't find much to disagree with in y...

2007-11-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

PML,

Again, I can't find much to disagree with in your analysis of the ruling class. But my original point was mainly to the general spirit of the classical political economists in regard to the power structures of their time, compared to that of modern mainstream libertarianism.

On land reform, even by treating it as a "default position" I didn't mean blindly applying it under any and all circumstances. But in a fairly wide variety of circumstances, I think the levelss of net exploitation are lowest with some sort of title transfer to the present occupants. That's especially true of Latin American latifundismo. Is there any specific generalization you would support as the basis for property rights reform that would not be harmful? One size may not fit all, but I think it probably fits in a plurality of cases.

TGGP,

I was just going from a vague recollection that Milton and Rose Friedman said they'd initially supported the war, but he'd changed his mind ahd she hadn't. I'm probably wrong, though.

"Unlike you (and I think Higgs as well) Klein views neoliberalism and corporate liberalism (though I'm sure she'd hate that label) as contradictory.... Does she explain under which conditions disaster aids neoliberalism and under which it aids corporate liberalism?"

No, I don't think her political framework is well enough developed to incorporate anything near that degree of complexity. I just think Higgs' thesis and hers are logically compatible, as different ruling class behaviors under different conditions--whether she's worked it out that way or not.

> a huge state sector is necessary > to prevent depression
"Do you really believe this is the case? Sounds like you're accepting Keynesianism."

I do think aspects of Keynesianism (or J.A. Hobsonism, or neo-Marxist analyses of over-accumulation and over-production) are valid treatments of conditions under state capitalism--not the free market. Say's Law is a valid description of the Free Market. But we don't have one. Joseph Stromberg developed something very much like the neo-Marxist treatment of overproduction and imperialism, from an Austrian standpoint, in "State Monopoly Capitalism and Imperialism."

I don't think the respective levels of migration to and from Canada are large enough in an absolute sense, relative to the total population, to be a primary consideration in evaluating them. I think most people who live under Social Democracy (including the Canadian lite version) prefer it to their image of what things are like under the Reagan-Thatcher model of neoliberalism.

Re Mugabe, I don't think the lesson is that rejecting the Washington Consensus and pursuing land reform leads to disaster. I think the lesson is that you should reject the Washington Consensus, engage in land reform, and eliminate privilege--and then stop. Land reform + kleptocratic looting = disaster.

It's a minor point, but I think Friedman initially...

2007-11-06T16:08:00.000-08:00

It's a minor point, but I think Friedman initially supported the Iraq war and only turned against it when it "failed." As with most of our chattering classes of center-left and center-right, the objective itself was just fine.
What makes you think that? Here is the quote from my link:
As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression.

I don't think Higgs contradicts her generalization. It's simply another generalization that applies in other cases--much the way that New Deal-style corporate liberalism and Reaganite-Thatcherite neoliberalism are simply two alternative ruling class strategies under different conditions.
Unlike you (and I think Higgs as well) Klein views neoliberalism and corporate liberalism (though I'm sure she'd hate that label) as contradictory. She views Friedman as being part of a political campaign against the New Deal and her book is about disaster leading to gains on the part of that campaign. If New Deal corporate liberalism gains from disaster, that would seem to be contradictory to her generalization. Does she explain under which conditions disaster aids neoliberalism and under which it aids corporate liberalism?

a huge state sector is necessary to prevent depression
Do you really believe this is the case? Sounds like you're accepting Keynesianism.

And your response on the issue of the lighter yoke of corporate liberalism, from the standpoint of the working class, consists largely of "love it or leave it" rhetoric.
I am a Stirnerite and am emotivist. I do not believe in any objective good and I do not ask for you to love anything. But I do observe things and ask how well they accord with certain assumptions. It is possible that the working class specifically fares better in Canada than America but that it is so small that the migration of the upper-class dwarfs it, and in that case my point was irrelevant. However, I don't think that's what you believe and that instead you think the majority are more screwed under neoliberalism relative to social democracy. You could adopt the position of Robert Lindsay and say that the people don't know what's good for them and will flee the worker's paradises of Cuba or the Soviet Union for the decadent and unhealthy United States (I'm not caricaturing him, that's his position here), but once we reject people's revealed preference and start searching for what is actually good for them whether they know it or not we can claim pretty much whatever we want. It might also be the case that you hate Canadian social democracy less than you hate American neoliberalism, but the difference is apparently less than the exit costs. I think the relative aspect of preference there differentiates it from typical LIOLI and since it was sparked your discussion of your relative preference for the two systems I think it is appropriate.

Mugabe also opposed the hegemony of the Washington Consensus and reclaimed illegitimate land-holdings. Things seemed okay under him for a number of years but his rule is now regarded as the textbook example of how not to run an economy. Unlike Zimbabwe, Venezuela has oil to depend on, but like Iran it has done a lousy job of maintaining its oil infrastructure. My prediction is that by the time he leaves office you will regard Chavez' rule as being worse than Yeltsin's, unless of course you attribute the relative well-being of their countries to the support they get from the Western Hegemony.

I was making the distinction between the body of e...

2007-11-06T15:32:00.000-08:00

I was making the distinction between the body of economic insight and the polemicism because otherwise they stay conflated and you can't disentangle things so you can work with them. That's what abstraction does - it leaves out unnecesary detail to make the rest clearer. Of course, you mustn't forget to pull everything together afterwards and you mustn't abstract out too much, but not doing it is like lifting with your back or using a razor to chop wood. Treating the ruling elite as a bloc without distinguishing large and small landowners and commercial interests, that's a case of abstracting out too much.

As for giving the land to the oppressed and exploited, that's also abstracting out too much. I've looked at several particular cases, and it's just too Procrustean to use even as a default to start from. I'll describe two or three.

Guyana is dominated by the descendants of indentured Indian coolie labourers. This sidelines the descendants of the slaves who were there before, apart from the descendants of escaped slaves who settled in the interior, homestead fashion - but thereby marginalised the natives. The coolies also received fair value for their indentures in the form of final payments, land grants or passage home - apart from the final ones, whose indentures were abruptly cancelled and who were left in the lurch (this didn't happen to the slaves, who received a transitional tutelage to allow them to set up for themselves). The Indians are now on top, but divided on religious lines. Where does the justice lie, also bearing in mind that simple transfers would leave new owners dependent on outside financiers to get under way, a hidden catch?

In Fiji similar coolie labour worked land which - unusually - was not taken from the original native owners but rented on fair terms. Now that the exploiters have left, there is a tension betwen the natives and the Indians since the former do not want to forfeit their land or have its benefit drained away by institutional changes, e.g. to taxes, and the latter who really were exploited (but by others). Even the natives are unusual, being mostly Melanesians who have adopted a Polynesian-style chiefly social structure with its own divisions, which is evidence of earlier dislocations, and who have a Tongan minority and have had to accept economic refugees from other parts of the Pacific (while the Indians are as usual religiously divided).

Even the Faeroe Islanders, apparently monolithic, are only that way because of this sort of thing a thousand years ago. They are Norse on their fathers' side but Celtic on their mothers', evidence of a successful genocidal displacement.

And I know many more cases. Never mind the idea of one size fitting all being wrong, it hardly fits any. You simply can't use the idea of giving the land to those who are on it as a safe starting point. Sometimes, as in the Cocos Islands, right lay with the landowners until they were dispossessed by governments a generation ago - but now there is no going back without similar harm to today's generation, now in place.

PML: Although your historical observations are va...

2007-11-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

PML: Although your historical observations are valid, I'm not sure they contradict what I wrote. Adam Smith did explicitly denounce mercantilist interests. And while the classical political economists may not have moralized while wearing their economist hats, as you point out they could wear more than one hat. Smith, in particular, probably wore more than one hat most of the time. Your observations about the large and small landlords and the mercantilists relate to the perverse ways that theory interacts with politics, and class interests pick up only selected parts of theory and run with it. But the import of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill was anti-landlord and anti-mercantilist. And a considerable segment of radical political economists were taking the radical implications of Smith and Ricardo and running with them. Of course at the same time, the "vulgar political economist" segment was being coopted by the landlord-mercantilist alliance you write of.

My focus in making that generalization in the review was entirely on intention, not objective effect.

Re Rothbardian privatization, I agree that there are many thorny issues when one unjust appropriation follows upon others. But in an imperfect world, I think treating current occupiers as owners would create the best approximation to justice that's available.

Re IP, the benefits of eliminating it have less to do with the current owners of rentier income, than with its cartelizing effect on the market.

Thanks, Anglonoel.

Dan Clore: Friedman publicly identified with Pinochet's economic program in ways that made it difficult for him to weasel out of afterward. As as I said before, 1) it's hard to separate the "purely economic" aspects of his program from the rest when so much of the terror was directly to the benefit of capital and the detriment of labor; and 2) so much of the "purely economic" agenda was vulgar libertarian and opposed to genuine free market principles (e.g., restoring the latifundistas to their illegitimate property).

TGGP: Thanks for reading my review and posting a reply.

I don't think Higgs contradicts her generalization. It's simply another generalization that applies in other cases--much the way that New Deal-style corporate liberalism and Reaganite-Thatcherite neoliberalism are simply two alternative ruling class strategies under different conditions. In addition, as I've argued before, genuine small-government, free market reform is impossible from the standpoint of corporate capitalism. Its underlying tendency is overaccumulation and underconsumption, which means a huge state sector is necessary to prevent depression (e.g. "Defense" under Reagan and Pinochet). So it's really not a dichotomy between Higgs' statism and an anti-statist alternative. The neoliberal model is just as statist in its own way, with huge state interventions required to absorb the surplus output of an overaccumulated economy.

But in any case, her book is written to describe one particular trend--the Washington Consensus imposed in the Third World by "structural adjustment" and in the aftermath of assorted disasters. And that trend is a real and valid one, even if it does not exhaust reality.

It's a minor point, but I think Friedman initially supported the Iraq war and only turned against it when it "failed." As with most of our chattering classes of center-left and center-right, the objective itself was just fine.

Re my "equivocation," you do not actually challenge my argument regarding neoliberalism and corporate liberalism as two alternative versions of state capitalism, intended to promote the interests of the owning classes in different ways. And your response on the issue of the lighter yoke of corporate liberalism, from the standpoint of the working class, consists largely of "love it or leave it" rhetoric.

And your references to Cuba and Venezuela, and comparison to the U.S., are confusing two separate arguments: my only direct comparison involving the U.S. was to European-style social democracies and to New Deal-style corporate liberalism. My comparison of Chavez, on the other hand, was to alleged patron saints of "democracy," like Boris Yeltsin. You're mixing apples and oranges. My point about Chavez was that, 1) despite his resemblance to the caudillo pattern and his thuggishness, his thuggishness is relatively mild, and the economic effects of his policies are far better for the people living under them than were those of neoliberal stooges like Yeltsin; and 2) it's good to have a coalition capable of resisting U.S. hegemony and the Washington Consensus.

Thanks for the info, Buermann. What I recall reading, though, was some sort of dumbed-down press release or speech regarding the general policy of the CPA.

That was terrific.Regarding Bremer, I think you're...

2007-11-06T02:49:00.000-08:00

That was terrific.

Regarding Bremer, I think you're looking for his CPA orders regarding intellectual regulations, 80, 81, and 83:

http://www.export.gov/iraq/pdf/cpa_order_80.pdf
http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents_Law.pdf
http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/20040501_CPAORD_83_Amendment_to_the_Copyright_Law.pdf

I have a response here.

2007-11-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

I have a response here.

Milton Friedman went to Chile and gave speeches an...

2007-11-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

Milton Friedman went to Chile and gave speeches and interviews on television promoting the "shock treatment" economic program, and he met with Pinochet himself.

When he was was asked if he had any reservations about the "shock treatment" he said his "only concern" was "whether it would be pushed long enough and hard enough."

Superb article, Kevin: deserves as wide a circulat...

2007-11-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

Superb article, Kevin: deserves as wide a circulation as possible!

As promised, but not so much in a coherent order a...

2007-11-03T02:06:00.000-07:00

As promised, but not so much in a coherent order as tracking the sequence of the post.

"From Smith to Ricardo and Mill, classical liberalism was a revolutionary doctrine that attacked the privileges of the great landlords and the mercantile interests." No, there are two errors here. The authors cited worked in the economics area, which didn't really attack privileges but was somewhat more value neutral, but then classical liberals (sometimes the same people wearing another hat, like Mill) used that to show that the old order wasn't in some sense "natural" and necessary, part of their own attack. The second error is in putting in the mercantile interests; these actually tapped into and co-opted that stream of thought, emancipating themselves from the old order. The great landlords (Whig grandees) and the mercantile interests did go together in this, but separated from the lesser landlords (the Tory "knights of the shires"). Whatever the classical liberals intended, they wound up "objectively" promoting the former over the latter.

It's worth reminding people of the parallels between modern privatisation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries together with the first (Tudor) round of English Enclosures. There were analogues in Spain and in eastern Europe too (church funds were diverted by Henry the Navigator, and the Prussian Junkers came from privatising the Teutonic Order).

The point here is that it doesn't stop. There is actually a lot of justification for not reversing out one off privatisations, since - post hoc - they then start functioning in optimal free market ways; the justice issue of making adequate compensation does not necessarily imply reversing out, particularly considering the incidental harm of drastic sustained change itself, even towards sound destinations. More on this below.

'Rothbard... argued that state property should simply be treated as "unowned," and then homesteaded by those currently occupying and using it... State-owned industry should be handed over to its workers... private industry that got the majority of its profits from the state should be treated as state property and homesteaded by its workers.' While not quite as bad as reversing out (which is like bending a lid back and forth until it snaps off, since you get repeated large adjustment costs in each direction analogous to metal fatigue), this has a couple of problems. It may not always give compensation to the deserving (and, they may not have enough other resources like working capital to benefit adequately), and it may not always take it from those who morally owe it (and, it may be too harmfully concentrated as a one off burden too, from the point of view of productivity). For the first point, consider how The Prince Edward Islanders gained when their landlords were bought out - but the dispossessed Acadians and the Indians before them didn't. Homesteading has been elevated too far, into a principle that conflates the rights to moral sunk effort with rights to the property itself (I may work this up in a guest post). And, the people being dispossessed may themselves have given fair value in good faith, with any guilty parties somewhere else after selling up (as in P.E.I., Prince Edward Island, where luckily for the absentee landlords of the day they were not expropriated without compensation). We can easily look at Zionist and Palestinian rights in this light. Anyhow, we can't take a priori justice issues any further than deciding that someone owes someone something; to get specific we have to look into the cases, and there may be no just response - particularly if new generations have come in. In particular, "And every time a left-leaning Third World government nullifies the illegitimate titles of such feudal elites, and gives the land to its rightful owners--the peasants working it--the predictable squeals of outrage start among the Catoids" goes too far in assigning rights and wrongs (emphasis added). Furthermore, they aren't complementary rights and wrongs either - third parties were often involved (feudal titles were in return for military service and administration; the owners usually had given fair value, only - unlike in the best cases during the Middle Ages - not to those on the land; and, those on the land might have been - indeed, quite often were - themselves there improperly in the first place, e.g. the Incas and Aztecs were no saints). So "there is absolutely no legitimate basis in free market principle for the artificial property rights of feudal landlords" is wrong, though one should look to see whether the special cases for it do apply.

In a similar way, "The first order of business of any genuine free market regime would be to repudiate--totally--the IP accords of the Uruguay Round of GATT" might be wrong - about the repudiation, that is. I'm not saying that it should be "reformed", rather repudiation tout simple doesn't sheet home the consequences to the right targets; the perpetrators long since sold stock to pension funds and so on, leaving muddy trails to wind back. Repudiation on its own is a two wrongs thing.

There are more things in the post I could cite, but they really only bring out the same points. In sum, apart from not making a few material distinctions, the flaw in this analysis is not so much that it is wrong as that it is incomplete - in ways that suggest wrong prescriptions. Of course, the post doesn't really go into destinations and ends, transitions and means, anyway - nor should it. In fact it is probably trying to cover too much for one sitting anyway, as does this comment of mine in response.

Bunty,I like William Gillis' term "freed market." ...

2007-11-03T00:14:00.000-07:00

Bunty,

I like William Gillis' term "freed market." FWIW, I'd guess that in a decentralized society of small-scale production, with stabler demographic patterns, and so forth, local markets would tend to be governed more by the kinds of social conventions and community mores that prevailed in the days of artisan production. I like the "Where is your John Galt now?" bit, BTW. I'd kind of like to put Ayn Rand through the Clockwork Orange treatment, forcing her to watch the Care Bears movie while Mozart played in the background.

PML,

Thanks for catching the errors. I think FDR is pretty well-known to most people, but I'll incorporate several of your recommendations. The "southern cone" wasn't a misprint, but a geographical term.

Adam,

I wasn't interested so much in her personal treatment of Friedman, in terms of culpability, as in the ways his ideas were institutionalized through the interaction of vulgar "free market" think tanks and authoritarian political regimes. Klein was probably wrong to blame Friedman personally for the authoritarian political outcome in Chile or China. But he did have a vulgar libertarian streak a mile wide, and his ideas did lend themselves to such use. That seems especially true, given the quote from Iain that implies virtually unqualified endorsement of Pinochet's "free market" policies in the economic realm. Leaving aside whether terrorizing unions fell under the "political" or "economic" category, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Friedman viewed the Chilean model of crony capitalist "privatization" and the restoration of land to feudal elites as perfectly good examples of "free market reform."

Iain,

One reason I bother is that theirs are far from being the only free market libertarian voices out there. Another is that the stated principles of Rothbard, despite his unfortunate personal cultural sympathies, work against the kinds of policies Klein describes. Rothbard's principles, if not his personal sympathies, if consistently applied lead IMO to Roderick Long, Brad Spangler and Charles Johnson--not to Reisman. And using Austrian principles to critique the kind of corporatism Klein describes from a left-wing perspective, is a classic example of using the master's tools to tear down the master's house.

Re the German question, Adam and quasibill, my reference was really more of a throwaway line than anything. But remember they do call it the "Austrian school," so apparently there was some liberalism over there (such as it was).

Dain,

I agree that Chavez can be thuggish. But I think it's only marginal to his political success, compared to the degree of genuine popular support. And I guess I tend to dig in my heels in response to the demonization in the U.S. media precisely because this "dictator," this "Hitler of the week," is so much *less* thuggish than (say) that neocon patron saint of "democracy," Boris Yeltsin.

Anon @2:40, thank *you* for the very kind words.

Adam,

I haven't heard of the Michigan story. I'll check it out at Freedom Democrats.

As long as we're talking about the effect of "auct...

2007-11-02T16:08:00.000-07:00

As long as we're talking about the effect of "auctioning off of state assets", I'd love to hear any thoughts that ya'll have regarding the Flint, Michigan land bank. I heard on the radio that they are transferring abandoned properties to neighbors and community organizations, rather than auctioning them off to speculators/investors.

I hope to write about it soon at Freedom Democrats.

Iain, thanks for that info regarding Friedman's pr...

2007-11-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

Iain, thanks for that info regarding Friedman's praise for Pinochet. He definitely stepped outside of the role of scientist, and seems to have been an apologist for that regime.

Quasibill: good point regarding the germans.