It seems a lot of people see the word liberal in neoliberal and misinterpret the meaning of neoliberal. You get this head-scratcher commentary from some attacking neoliberalism and supporting the Republican party.
Perhaps, as with the word progressive, its meaning is being changed to suit the culture war players of the moment? I'm afraid your thoughtful comment will fall on deaf ears.
It seems a lot of people see the word liberal in neoliberal and misinterpret the meaning of neoliberal. You get this head-scratcher commentary from some attacking neoliberalism and supporting the Republican party.
Perhaps, as with the word progressive, its meaning is being changed to suit the culture war players of the moment? I'm afraid your thoughtful comment will fall on deaf ears.
Philip Mirowski (academic at Notre Dame) writes about the meaning of the origins of Neoliberalism - in his book with Dieter Plewe called the Road to Mount Pelerin.
He has a few lectures as well on Youtube one could find easily.
He often cites a German colleague named Thomas Briebricher who describes the different variants of Neoliberalism as well. Anyhow these meanings have not changed in 30 years --- it is a difficult topic (Neoliberalism) precisely because the different movements across Europe and the US made a conscious decisions not identify as Neoliberals publicly or any configuration often pointing their diversity of thought - many of the original thinkers deny this label - neoliberalism. Nonetheless, they contributed to its dominance in hidden ways to the lay public.
And when you learn about the history of who they are why behave the way they do, you'll understand why no one actually claims to be a Neoliberal (it is much easier because of the policies to hide in the recesses of the two parties, pretending).
So IтАЩm coming at this from a left-libertarian perspective (LTV, free-market in the classical sense as a means to trade goods, тАЬcorporateтАЭ organization as worker cooperative or self employed, property rights to be held in common or if privately owned require occupancy and use as a requisite), but I donтАЩt understand how he is counting Hayek into the neo-liberal world, or how he thinks that somehow any of this invalidates the LTV and the critiques of Marx.
The LTV in equation form as stated by Marx is just ridiculous - valueless things donтАЩt just magically have value because someone produced them. They have value because itтАЩs a good that requires some marginal disutility to obtain and because someone wants it. Even if you agree with the marginalists (like me) and think value is subjective, you can still work backward and say the value that someone is willing to pay just determines the value of the labor once you subtract the cost of capital, and that the LTV still holds. We have all heard the arguments about making mud pies and what not... I donтАЩt really see why everyone spends so much time arguing about value theories and how those concepts are mutually exclusive; itтАЩs largely a waste of time. Profits above cost of capital and labor are exploitation because the capitalist is getting something for nothing; this doesnтАЩt require one to believe in strict LTV as Marx stated it and throw away marginalist claims of value. The right claims itтАЩs not exploitation because they think you should get rewarded for the тАЬriskтАЭ of investment. ItтАЩs simply a different definition of what profit is and I donтАЩt think neo-liberal assumptions about markets as information or something lie that changes these basic definitions.
Also, on Hayek being the start neo-liberalism, I have never been able to find any concrete evidence of this. Of all of the Hayek I have read, he seems to be honestly lassiez-faire with a new, almost post-modern style analysis of why we need a free market. It seems the defining aspect of neo-liberals is pretending to be a classical liberal caring about enlightenment values then just tweaking the market to your own ends. Yes, hayek does conclude the market is a way of moving information, but the information of prices not all value in life. ItтАЩs more a statement that nobody can fully understand the market, so we need to let it work itself out instead of doing the central planning thing. I can see how this plays into neo-liberal agenda and though process and I do know he was a big influence on people like Reagan, but all of the neo-liberals have attempted to interfere with the market in ways that are certainly not lassiez-faire, so itтАЩs hard to think that any of them actually really put much stock in his work. I suppose he is assuming they use the guise of being his follower as a cloak for what they are doing, the same as they lie about actually desiring a free market in the classical sense?
IтАЩm no expert on Marx or Hayek; IтАЩve never read their works more than once and not all of them (they both have loaaads of material and have what I find to be off-putting writing styles), so I could be off base here... Just my thoughts from watching the videos, and my understanding from reading the primary two economists being discussed.
The Road to Mount Pelerin and Never Let a Serious Crisis go to Waste are the two books you want if you want to make connections between the original founders of the MPS (Mount Pelerin Society - writers of Neoliberalism's origins) of which F Hayek was an important founding member (often cross-pollinating his ideas on classic liberalism at LSE, U of Chicago, and Freiburg).
Hayek rejects Marx and the socialist point of view, that is why he is valuable to the US empire - as a social scientist and economist for "free market" capitalism, but then we actually get into the meat of both their ideas -- and its ironic that the capture of the US governmental apparatus (corporatism led by finance) originated from the MPS (with the help Hayek).
A key defining feature here is that he and his colleagues (eventually Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys) were looked upon as outsiders for much of the 20th century (weird to the profession --- cult like and often ridiculed by the mainstream successes of Keynesian economics and the Golden period of economic growth in the US 1947-1970 or there about.
Neoliberalism can be defined as a series of different theories used in conjunction to take over state power by using the purposeful rhetoric (Free markets, there is no alternative, supply side tactics to redistribute wealth), the power of the state, and corporations to seize back power for capital and away from the balance between capital-labor. This is a global phenomenon using the elite in the different world economies to work together to generate cheap labor and reduce wages.
Their strategies are:
Neoliberal Manual of how to extract wealth (home and abroad
1. Sell free markets on the front end (free market capitalism - fantasy)
2. Assess profitability or scout out new revenue streams (natural resources)
3. Align with business classes to deregulate markets (open up; change rules)
4. Align with political class to cut social supports (reduce public resources)
5. Align with industry stakeholders to privatize resources (Private Gains)
6. All losses that come from deregulation/privatization (Socialized Losses)
The central facet is that Neoliberals use every conduit to their advantage often infiltrating organizations and institutions to carry out their policies:
A. Thinktanks, NGOs
B. Large regulatory bodies or World Banks (IMF)
C. Chamber of commerce, National Association of Manufacturing
D. Political Appointees, Ambassadors, College Presidents (Ivy League)
E. Media (Operation Mockingbird) - CIA plants editors into industry
F. Wall Street - Financialization, legislation, and preferred legal status
G. Federal Reserve Policy (Greenspan put) - inflation boogyman
H. Scientists, Universities, Administrators - pay to play (rainmakers)
I. Physicians, Pharma and Patents
J. Gutting of Federal Regulators (S&L, Rating agencies, Anti-Trust abuses)
K. Key Legislation (GLB 1999, CFTC Act, ACA, CARES Act)
**** Each little piece won the group grows the base of support and more of the followers go get MBA's at Harvard or Uni of Chicago and go to NY to make their way, susceptible to being an agent for neoliberalism. And by 1990s to 2004, almost all of the levers of power were taken over by corporate hands. This allowed them to make huge changes to compensation, take huge risks in the market place and profit off of the transition to a global capitalist system (with few rules, and a militant bent to protect monopolies).
Marx is helpful to us Americans, not because of his theory for what to do next (i.e. socialism), but more so for having the singularly greatest critique of capitalism that has ever been done. There are no utopia "free market" rebranded tropes to repair capitalism here, but just the hard plain facts that capitalism eats itself -- when you factor in that all of the levers of power have succumb to corporations.
I agree with you that Marx has a spectacular critique of capitalism, and that the value is in the critique not in the solution. I do not agree with his solution or with most socialists that markets themselves are the problem. I do not believe the tool of markets requires capitalism, or that communism should be the end goal. With all of the intellectual hazard that comes with quoting dead anarchists, I will reference Proudhon on this one тАЬProperty is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.тАЭ
In the spirit of this comment on properly defining terms, I will stop rambling and take your answer on neoliberalism and HayekтАЩs part in it. Thanks for the great response; IтАЩve got a book or 2 to read.
Except that we have a long history of socialism in this US, mostly hidden from view; socialism for the wealthy and corporations, and capitalism for everyone else (TBTF 2009 Bailouts, Estate Tax Sunset Provision, Failure to prosecute Bankers/Banks responsible).
And we also have an example of FDR putting government to work for people (legislation, social security, and a whole of host of infrastructure and public good programs), which could be described as social spending. In fact, they were so wildly popular that the business class tried to have FDR killed and have spent the last 70 years after his death trying to unwind what his administrations accomplished for the people.
So, your beliefs of how things should be --- need to be informed with what works and the historical tendency for capital to erase the gains of labor.
Dave, in reading your last parts here --- you are throwing around too many things. It is a fun conversation though.
Back at it. Communism is not an experiment that would fly in this country. Plus, Marx gets unfairly blamed for the Russian & Chinese experiments. We would not blame Jesus Christ for the worst behaviors of violent Christians, so why would we blame Marx for the practitioners abroad --- which led to totalitarian regimes?
The reason this happens is because the US is a hyper-capitalist country and would rather dismantle Marx than give him credit. See Allen Dulles' work on the issue, especially Indonesia.
Back home here, even some of the most ardent socialists believe capital has a role to play in society (private industry).
The problem that exists now is not one of a teeter tottering over to communism; that is an impossibility. But at hand, the current issue is that Neoliberal capitals have captured all of the levers of power and corrupted it -- just like Marx predicted. The obvious solution is to rebuild/grow the public sector, unions, schools, and other institutions in the mould of non-neoliberal worker driven enterprises, but the TPTB are not going to let that happen. They have a monopoly on the economy/power hubs - so they make the rules just like Marx said -- its the death of democracy.
I donтАЩt disagree with anything you said, actually. I would simply like to add to the discussion of why I agree with that, but still consider myself a libertarian and think that market as the tool for trade is fine; and also why I use that term instead of simply anarchist. Libertarian has come to mean (didnтАЩt mean originally) that you are a classical liberal. The defining difference between an individualist anarchist, or anarcho-capitalist, and a classical liberal/libertarian is that between a weak state and no state. As you said above about communism; I am a realist, and I know that functional anarchy is not realistic at least in the near future. It may be if society collapsed, as the rojava are trying with the bookchin philosophy, but luckily the US is not to that point. Those who now say тАЬleft-libertarianтАЭ are typically very close to agreeing with the economics of Proudhon and the mutualists. I would be an anarchist if it was feasible, and I might be a communist, but I understand that anything other than gradualism requires revolution. Revolution seems too costly at this point. Of course the тАЬleftтАЭ when I say left-libertarian means socialist, and even though I donтАЩt believe in shooting for a stateless society now I generally agree with the economics of the movement.
Why do I say markets, yet consider myself a socialist? First off, my background is in mathematics so everything in my head comes down to calculation or system abstraction usually. When you look at optimization of resources in an economic system, you need a way to weight each good; a relative value if you will. You might as well have money since you have to do this anyways. In a purely planned economy, this becomes speculative by the planners and is not easily updated with the changing conditions of real life. In the Soviet economy, the math used for optimization was linear programming. In this system, they often copied capitalist market economies to find starting points for value (prices) for the optimization process. This process works well at times, but it is linear, and chooses static conditions; real life is dynamic and non-linear. In a (functional, non-monopolistic) market, the combination of consumer preference and production cost combines to find the equilibrium price, so you donтАЩt have to plan the entire system based on a speculation of how much you think people value an item. The other problem is that linear programming is great at dividing inputs to allocate resources to predetermined outputs, but it does nothing to solve logistics (IтАЩll get to this in particular later, as it also applies to markets and capitalism and public infrastructure) and needs recalculated whenever an input or output unexpectedly changes. For example, everyone wanted a toaster when we allocated steel, but now everyone has decided they prefer a toaster oven. This problem is two fold; first, it stems from large instead of small scale production (this is also endemic in markets and will be discussed), and second it stems from the lack of using supply/demand data and prices to determine what people actually want. Surveys all have bias; people (who can afford to choose) donтАЩt lie with their money; they buy what they want/need.
A voluntary (this is key) market exchange for a good at a price I am willing to pay, for a price you are willing to sell, is a positive sum game and is a good thing, as long as there are no negative externalities. Pareto optimality is a great way to decide if this is happening, and generally seems to be the tool that all market socialists propose to ensure positive interactions in the system. Why do we care about optimizing efficiency in the first place? Reduced working hours and the environment.
The primary differences between socialist and capitalism are of course in social organization and property rights. The goal should be worker ownership of all business, or self employment (functionally the same thing). In reality, this probably looks like labor unions pushing for a percentage of pay as stock. Obviously, there are thousands of successful worker cooperatives and you know this, so unlike when I explain myself to a right winger I will leave out any more details here. There also needs to be a form of common ownership of natural resources. I think in a nation the size of the US, and in a market coming from the current situation, it makes sense to implement this by simply taxing them at тАЬvalueтАЭ (market price - labor costs) and providing this tax revenue to the people as a citizens dividend. As an aside, citizens dividend is such a satisfying term; it sounds so much better than UBI. For property that is owned privately (like productive capital for businesses or homes), occupancy and use should be a requirement to maintain private property. Intellectual property rights should just be abolished, flat out. Patents are quite possibly the most ridiculous of the capitalist privileges (besides to big to fail).
Now here is where I start to differ from what you expect from most people who support either socialism or markets. Large scale production is actually less efficient than small scale production for most things. Large operations require immense costs for marketing (propaganda if government), bureaucracy (managers galore), and most of all transportation and logistics. This critique is not unique to any specific type of economy, or public vs private, itтАЩs simply a reality of large scale production. When you produce goods on a massive scale, you end up using extremely expensive, specialized equipment. The expensive nature of the equipment and specially trained workforce require this equipment to be run at full productive capacity constantly, just to break even. Furthermore, if consumer preferences change you are stuck with a huge investment that is now worthless. This causes one of the many crises of capitalist, which is over production, and this leads to our need to constantly secure new markets or convince people to buy stuff they donтАЩt need. In small scale, less specific production, the equipment is much less expensive per unit of production and is generic enough it can produce many goods or be a part of many stages in the same productive process. This agility and lower cost of idling letтАЩs the productive process be both more efficient in terms of capital invested per product produced and in its ability to more quickly adapt to dynamic situations. Likewise; the smaller scale production requires less bureaucracy which cuts costs and aimproves speed of adaptation. The final elephant in the room here is transportation and logistics. Large scale capital investment requires a large market, and hence requires massive shipping costs compared to localized production. Rather than spend resources trucking crap across the country, or shipping from overseas, you can just do more factory production and keep things more localized. Additionally, centralized production with decentralized logistics leads to an incredibly difficult to solve math problem called the traveling salesman problem - this is where the logistics aspect of central planning comes in. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem Now, why do we do everything on a large scale if small is actually more efficient? I believe this is very multifaceted; but without great detail I will say top down managerial culture, political desire for change from the federal level, belief that the working class was too stupid for skilled labor, the fact that cars and suburban housing are very central to our American brand of capitalism, and the fact that itтАЩs one of the easiest costs for capitalists to externalize on the middle class taxpayer and federal debt. Murray bookchin and his book post scarcity anarchism has some good evidence of this phenomenon, as does libertarian Karl
Hess in his book community technology.
Large size organizations, whether private or public, also have inherent problems. The larger the size of organization, the further from real life the leadership is. The effect democracy can even have is diluted as the system gets larger; in a 330 million person elected position, like POTUS, the actual say that each of us has on what he does is nonexistent, even if we had perfectly fair elections. It is not possible for the POTUS to possibly understand the individual needs of every American or even every group of Americans. He must rely on imperfect statistics and surveys to make decisions about our lives. This problem leads to large organizations making plans based on meeting metrics, and then they become the sole measure of success, not any qualitative reality about how life is for the average citizen, worker, or customer. This issue is formalized as goodhartтАЩs law, and its abuse is one of the primary ways that well-meaning leaders cause more harm than good.
The solution to the scope of production and organization is subsidiary; always do everything at the most local level possible, from producing goods, to legislating, to provisioning public services. The best use of the federal government from this organizational standpoint is to provision a progressive income tax and the natural resource tax, and use the proceeds for wealth distribution through the citizens dividend and payments directly to municipalities. The individual and municipalities can then decide more effectively how to use those resources for the people. The federal government should also at a minimum maintain national defense and the constitution.
Sorry for the long response, but I wanted to explain my views in a bit more depth.
Yeah, pretty infuriating. IтАЩve read a lot on wealth taxes and it seems the implementation has had mixed results. Billionaires start fleeing nations and buying really strange shit like art collections that are hard to gauge the value for. Overall I agree with the premise though, and some of them have worked well. WarrenтАЩs plan seems to have some built in protection for the nation fleeing which is good.
Video with naom Chomsky they pretty much acts as a source for everything I said. Failure of democracy against centralization, Pareto efficiency in free exchange with appropriate property rights, crisis of over production from large firms
Also the impossibility to accurately model an economy is mentioned in the video when you have to make assumptions of black box firms with internal unequal exchange. Top down systems like government and large scale manufacturing always produce these unequal expanded, which is why I believe in any large system market exchange is crucial rather than expecting to accurately control and predict. Additionally, this is why worker ownership is such a crucial piece of the puzzle to me, but throwing away markets is not.
тАЬLiberalism and classтАЭ [Interfluidity]. тАЬI think it makes perfect sense that liberalism has become a kind of upper-class creed. So long as it is, liberalism is in peril, and should be. There are illiberal currents on both the left and right that would exploit popular dissatisfaction to remake society in ways that I would very much dislike, whether by restoring a тАЬtraditionalтАЭ hierarchy of implicit caste, or by granting diverse professionals even more prescriptive authority than they already have at the expense of liberty for the less enlightened. My strong preference is that we do neither of these things, and instead restore the broad appeal of liberalism by тАЬleveling upтАЭ. We should ensure that everyone has the means to rely upon some mix of the market and the state to see to their material welfare, reducing the economic role of networks of personal reciprocity and history. This would render the good parts of liberalism more broadly and ethically accessible. Reducing economic stratification makes liberal proceduralism more credible pretty automatically. When economic and institutional power are dispersed and broadly shared, no one has a built-in edge, and aspirations of neutrality and fairness become plausible. Once we view society less through a lens of domination and oppression тАФ because in a more materially equal society that will be a less credible lens тАФ it will become possible to agree on a common, stable set of commercial and professional mores rather than extend deference to myriad communitiesтАЩ evolving sensibilities.тАЭ тАв This is very good, and the anatomization of liberal values (not in the excerpt) is excellent. Note that it would be easier to тАЬlevel upтАЭ if liberals didnтАЩt hate the working class (see Thomas Frank) and didnтАЩt believe they deserve their fate." - Taken from a link in Naked Capitalism (Lambert Strether)
It seems a lot of people see the word liberal in neoliberal and misinterpret the meaning of neoliberal. You get this head-scratcher commentary from some attacking neoliberalism and supporting the Republican party.
Perhaps, as with the word progressive, its meaning is being changed to suit the culture war players of the moment? I'm afraid your thoughtful comment will fall on deaf ears.
Philip Mirowski (academic at Notre Dame) writes about the meaning of the origins of Neoliberalism - in his book with Dieter Plewe called the Road to Mount Pelerin.
He has a few lectures as well on Youtube one could find easily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I (Life & Debt)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBB4POvcH18 (Neoliberalism)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsiT9P87J4g (How NL survived)
He often cites a German colleague named Thomas Briebricher who describes the different variants of Neoliberalism as well. Anyhow these meanings have not changed in 30 years --- it is a difficult topic (Neoliberalism) precisely because the different movements across Europe and the US made a conscious decisions not identify as Neoliberals publicly or any configuration often pointing their diversity of thought - many of the original thinkers deny this label - neoliberalism. Nonetheless, they contributed to its dominance in hidden ways to the lay public.
And when you learn about the history of who they are why behave the way they do, you'll understand why no one actually claims to be a Neoliberal (it is much easier because of the policies to hide in the recesses of the two parties, pretending).
So IтАЩm coming at this from a left-libertarian perspective (LTV, free-market in the classical sense as a means to trade goods, тАЬcorporateтАЭ organization as worker cooperative or self employed, property rights to be held in common or if privately owned require occupancy and use as a requisite), but I donтАЩt understand how he is counting Hayek into the neo-liberal world, or how he thinks that somehow any of this invalidates the LTV and the critiques of Marx.
The LTV in equation form as stated by Marx is just ridiculous - valueless things donтАЩt just magically have value because someone produced them. They have value because itтАЩs a good that requires some marginal disutility to obtain and because someone wants it. Even if you agree with the marginalists (like me) and think value is subjective, you can still work backward and say the value that someone is willing to pay just determines the value of the labor once you subtract the cost of capital, and that the LTV still holds. We have all heard the arguments about making mud pies and what not... I donтАЩt really see why everyone spends so much time arguing about value theories and how those concepts are mutually exclusive; itтАЩs largely a waste of time. Profits above cost of capital and labor are exploitation because the capitalist is getting something for nothing; this doesnтАЩt require one to believe in strict LTV as Marx stated it and throw away marginalist claims of value. The right claims itтАЩs not exploitation because they think you should get rewarded for the тАЬriskтАЭ of investment. ItтАЩs simply a different definition of what profit is and I donтАЩt think neo-liberal assumptions about markets as information or something lie that changes these basic definitions.
Also, on Hayek being the start neo-liberalism, I have never been able to find any concrete evidence of this. Of all of the Hayek I have read, he seems to be honestly lassiez-faire with a new, almost post-modern style analysis of why we need a free market. It seems the defining aspect of neo-liberals is pretending to be a classical liberal caring about enlightenment values then just tweaking the market to your own ends. Yes, hayek does conclude the market is a way of moving information, but the information of prices not all value in life. ItтАЩs more a statement that nobody can fully understand the market, so we need to let it work itself out instead of doing the central planning thing. I can see how this plays into neo-liberal agenda and though process and I do know he was a big influence on people like Reagan, but all of the neo-liberals have attempted to interfere with the market in ways that are certainly not lassiez-faire, so itтАЩs hard to think that any of them actually really put much stock in his work. I suppose he is assuming they use the guise of being his follower as a cloak for what they are doing, the same as they lie about actually desiring a free market in the classical sense?
IтАЩm no expert on Marx or Hayek; IтАЩve never read their works more than once and not all of them (they both have loaaads of material and have what I find to be off-putting writing styles), so I could be off base here... Just my thoughts from watching the videos, and my understanding from reading the primary two economists being discussed.
Is there something IтАЩm missing here?
The Road to Mount Pelerin and Never Let a Serious Crisis go to Waste are the two books you want if you want to make connections between the original founders of the MPS (Mount Pelerin Society - writers of Neoliberalism's origins) of which F Hayek was an important founding member (often cross-pollinating his ideas on classic liberalism at LSE, U of Chicago, and Freiburg).
Hayek rejects Marx and the socialist point of view, that is why he is valuable to the US empire - as a social scientist and economist for "free market" capitalism, but then we actually get into the meat of both their ideas -- and its ironic that the capture of the US governmental apparatus (corporatism led by finance) originated from the MPS (with the help Hayek).
A key defining feature here is that he and his colleagues (eventually Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys) were looked upon as outsiders for much of the 20th century (weird to the profession --- cult like and often ridiculed by the mainstream successes of Keynesian economics and the Golden period of economic growth in the US 1947-1970 or there about.
Neoliberalism can be defined as a series of different theories used in conjunction to take over state power by using the purposeful rhetoric (Free markets, there is no alternative, supply side tactics to redistribute wealth), the power of the state, and corporations to seize back power for capital and away from the balance between capital-labor. This is a global phenomenon using the elite in the different world economies to work together to generate cheap labor and reduce wages.
Their strategies are:
Neoliberal Manual of how to extract wealth (home and abroad
1. Sell free markets on the front end (free market capitalism - fantasy)
2. Assess profitability or scout out new revenue streams (natural resources)
3. Align with business classes to deregulate markets (open up; change rules)
4. Align with political class to cut social supports (reduce public resources)
5. Align with industry stakeholders to privatize resources (Private Gains)
6. All losses that come from deregulation/privatization (Socialized Losses)
7. Protectionism (thin layer of free market rhetoric) (Oligopoly & Monopoly)
The central facet is that Neoliberals use every conduit to their advantage often infiltrating organizations and institutions to carry out their policies:
A. Thinktanks, NGOs
B. Large regulatory bodies or World Banks (IMF)
C. Chamber of commerce, National Association of Manufacturing
D. Political Appointees, Ambassadors, College Presidents (Ivy League)
E. Media (Operation Mockingbird) - CIA plants editors into industry
F. Wall Street - Financialization, legislation, and preferred legal status
G. Federal Reserve Policy (Greenspan put) - inflation boogyman
H. Scientists, Universities, Administrators - pay to play (rainmakers)
I. Physicians, Pharma and Patents
J. Gutting of Federal Regulators (S&L, Rating agencies, Anti-Trust abuses)
K. Key Legislation (GLB 1999, CFTC Act, ACA, CARES Act)
**** Each little piece won the group grows the base of support and more of the followers go get MBA's at Harvard or Uni of Chicago and go to NY to make their way, susceptible to being an agent for neoliberalism. And by 1990s to 2004, almost all of the levers of power were taken over by corporate hands. This allowed them to make huge changes to compensation, take huge risks in the market place and profit off of the transition to a global capitalist system (with few rules, and a militant bent to protect monopolies).
Marx is helpful to us Americans, not because of his theory for what to do next (i.e. socialism), but more so for having the singularly greatest critique of capitalism that has ever been done. There are no utopia "free market" rebranded tropes to repair capitalism here, but just the hard plain facts that capitalism eats itself -- when you factor in that all of the levers of power have succumb to corporations.
I agree with you that Marx has a spectacular critique of capitalism, and that the value is in the critique not in the solution. I do not agree with his solution or with most socialists that markets themselves are the problem. I do not believe the tool of markets requires capitalism, or that communism should be the end goal. With all of the intellectual hazard that comes with quoting dead anarchists, I will reference Proudhon on this one тАЬProperty is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.тАЭ
In the spirit of this comment on properly defining terms, I will stop rambling and take your answer on neoliberalism and HayekтАЩs part in it. Thanks for the great response; IтАЩve got a book or 2 to read.
Except that we have a long history of socialism in this US, mostly hidden from view; socialism for the wealthy and corporations, and capitalism for everyone else (TBTF 2009 Bailouts, Estate Tax Sunset Provision, Failure to prosecute Bankers/Banks responsible).
And we also have an example of FDR putting government to work for people (legislation, social security, and a whole of host of infrastructure and public good programs), which could be described as social spending. In fact, they were so wildly popular that the business class tried to have FDR killed and have spent the last 70 years after his death trying to unwind what his administrations accomplished for the people.
So, your beliefs of how things should be --- need to be informed with what works and the historical tendency for capital to erase the gains of labor.
Dave, in reading your last parts here --- you are throwing around too many things. It is a fun conversation though.
Back at it. Communism is not an experiment that would fly in this country. Plus, Marx gets unfairly blamed for the Russian & Chinese experiments. We would not blame Jesus Christ for the worst behaviors of violent Christians, so why would we blame Marx for the practitioners abroad --- which led to totalitarian regimes?
The reason this happens is because the US is a hyper-capitalist country and would rather dismantle Marx than give him credit. See Allen Dulles' work on the issue, especially Indonesia.
Back home here, even some of the most ardent socialists believe capital has a role to play in society (private industry).
The problem that exists now is not one of a teeter tottering over to communism; that is an impossibility. But at hand, the current issue is that Neoliberal capitals have captured all of the levers of power and corrupted it -- just like Marx predicted. The obvious solution is to rebuild/grow the public sector, unions, schools, and other institutions in the mould of non-neoliberal worker driven enterprises, but the TPTB are not going to let that happen. They have a monopoly on the economy/power hubs - so they make the rules just like Marx said -- its the death of democracy.
Cheers
I donтАЩt disagree with anything you said, actually. I would simply like to add to the discussion of why I agree with that, but still consider myself a libertarian and think that market as the tool for trade is fine; and also why I use that term instead of simply anarchist. Libertarian has come to mean (didnтАЩt mean originally) that you are a classical liberal. The defining difference between an individualist anarchist, or anarcho-capitalist, and a classical liberal/libertarian is that between a weak state and no state. As you said above about communism; I am a realist, and I know that functional anarchy is not realistic at least in the near future. It may be if society collapsed, as the rojava are trying with the bookchin philosophy, but luckily the US is not to that point. Those who now say тАЬleft-libertarianтАЭ are typically very close to agreeing with the economics of Proudhon and the mutualists. I would be an anarchist if it was feasible, and I might be a communist, but I understand that anything other than gradualism requires revolution. Revolution seems too costly at this point. Of course the тАЬleftтАЭ when I say left-libertarian means socialist, and even though I donтАЩt believe in shooting for a stateless society now I generally agree with the economics of the movement.
Why do I say markets, yet consider myself a socialist? First off, my background is in mathematics so everything in my head comes down to calculation or system abstraction usually. When you look at optimization of resources in an economic system, you need a way to weight each good; a relative value if you will. You might as well have money since you have to do this anyways. In a purely planned economy, this becomes speculative by the planners and is not easily updated with the changing conditions of real life. In the Soviet economy, the math used for optimization was linear programming. In this system, they often copied capitalist market economies to find starting points for value (prices) for the optimization process. This process works well at times, but it is linear, and chooses static conditions; real life is dynamic and non-linear. In a (functional, non-monopolistic) market, the combination of consumer preference and production cost combines to find the equilibrium price, so you donтАЩt have to plan the entire system based on a speculation of how much you think people value an item. The other problem is that linear programming is great at dividing inputs to allocate resources to predetermined outputs, but it does nothing to solve logistics (IтАЩll get to this in particular later, as it also applies to markets and capitalism and public infrastructure) and needs recalculated whenever an input or output unexpectedly changes. For example, everyone wanted a toaster when we allocated steel, but now everyone has decided they prefer a toaster oven. This problem is two fold; first, it stems from large instead of small scale production (this is also endemic in markets and will be discussed), and second it stems from the lack of using supply/demand data and prices to determine what people actually want. Surveys all have bias; people (who can afford to choose) donтАЩt lie with their money; they buy what they want/need.
A voluntary (this is key) market exchange for a good at a price I am willing to pay, for a price you are willing to sell, is a positive sum game and is a good thing, as long as there are no negative externalities. Pareto optimality is a great way to decide if this is happening, and generally seems to be the tool that all market socialists propose to ensure positive interactions in the system. Why do we care about optimizing efficiency in the first place? Reduced working hours and the environment.
The primary differences between socialist and capitalism are of course in social organization and property rights. The goal should be worker ownership of all business, or self employment (functionally the same thing). In reality, this probably looks like labor unions pushing for a percentage of pay as stock. Obviously, there are thousands of successful worker cooperatives and you know this, so unlike when I explain myself to a right winger I will leave out any more details here. There also needs to be a form of common ownership of natural resources. I think in a nation the size of the US, and in a market coming from the current situation, it makes sense to implement this by simply taxing them at тАЬvalueтАЭ (market price - labor costs) and providing this tax revenue to the people as a citizens dividend. As an aside, citizens dividend is such a satisfying term; it sounds so much better than UBI. For property that is owned privately (like productive capital for businesses or homes), occupancy and use should be a requirement to maintain private property. Intellectual property rights should just be abolished, flat out. Patents are quite possibly the most ridiculous of the capitalist privileges (besides to big to fail).
Now here is where I start to differ from what you expect from most people who support either socialism or markets. Large scale production is actually less efficient than small scale production for most things. Large operations require immense costs for marketing (propaganda if government), bureaucracy (managers galore), and most of all transportation and logistics. This critique is not unique to any specific type of economy, or public vs private, itтАЩs simply a reality of large scale production. When you produce goods on a massive scale, you end up using extremely expensive, specialized equipment. The expensive nature of the equipment and specially trained workforce require this equipment to be run at full productive capacity constantly, just to break even. Furthermore, if consumer preferences change you are stuck with a huge investment that is now worthless. This causes one of the many crises of capitalist, which is over production, and this leads to our need to constantly secure new markets or convince people to buy stuff they donтАЩt need. In small scale, less specific production, the equipment is much less expensive per unit of production and is generic enough it can produce many goods or be a part of many stages in the same productive process. This agility and lower cost of idling letтАЩs the productive process be both more efficient in terms of capital invested per product produced and in its ability to more quickly adapt to dynamic situations. Likewise; the smaller scale production requires less bureaucracy which cuts costs and aimproves speed of adaptation. The final elephant in the room here is transportation and logistics. Large scale capital investment requires a large market, and hence requires massive shipping costs compared to localized production. Rather than spend resources trucking crap across the country, or shipping from overseas, you can just do more factory production and keep things more localized. Additionally, centralized production with decentralized logistics leads to an incredibly difficult to solve math problem called the traveling salesman problem - this is where the logistics aspect of central planning comes in. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem Now, why do we do everything on a large scale if small is actually more efficient? I believe this is very multifaceted; but without great detail I will say top down managerial culture, political desire for change from the federal level, belief that the working class was too stupid for skilled labor, the fact that cars and suburban housing are very central to our American brand of capitalism, and the fact that itтАЩs one of the easiest costs for capitalists to externalize on the middle class taxpayer and federal debt. Murray bookchin and his book post scarcity anarchism has some good evidence of this phenomenon, as does libertarian Karl
Hess in his book community technology.
Large size organizations, whether private or public, also have inherent problems. The larger the size of organization, the further from real life the leadership is. The effect democracy can even have is diluted as the system gets larger; in a 330 million person elected position, like POTUS, the actual say that each of us has on what he does is nonexistent, even if we had perfectly fair elections. It is not possible for the POTUS to possibly understand the individual needs of every American or even every group of Americans. He must rely on imperfect statistics and surveys to make decisions about our lives. This problem leads to large organizations making plans based on meeting metrics, and then they become the sole measure of success, not any qualitative reality about how life is for the average citizen, worker, or customer. This issue is formalized as goodhartтАЩs law, and its abuse is one of the primary ways that well-meaning leaders cause more harm than good.
The solution to the scope of production and organization is subsidiary; always do everything at the most local level possible, from producing goods, to legislating, to provisioning public services. The best use of the federal government from this organizational standpoint is to provision a progressive income tax and the natural resource tax, and use the proceeds for wealth distribution through the citizens dividend and payments directly to municipalities. The individual and municipalities can then decide more effectively how to use those resources for the people. The federal government should also at a minimum maintain national defense and the constitution.
Sorry for the long response, but I wanted to explain my views in a bit more depth.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/04/02/global-billionaire-wealth-surges-4-trillion-over-pandemic-while-the-cost-of-vaccinating-the-world-is-estimated-at-141-2-billion/
Yeah, pretty infuriating. IтАЩve read a lot on wealth taxes and it seems the implementation has had mixed results. Billionaires start fleeing nations and buying really strange shit like art collections that are hard to gauge the value for. Overall I agree with the premise though, and some of them have worked well. WarrenтАЩs plan seems to have some built in protection for the nation fleeing which is good.
Have you seen what Harvard said about covid testing and how cheaply we could have prevented most of the crisis? (Starting last april). https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/09/covid-tests-cheap-home-tests-stop-pandemic-harvard-doc-says/3325446001/ ItтАЩs funny... when had a Republican president and regulation stopped this from happening. They only fail to deregulate when it might actually help the people... there must have been more money in vaccines and тАШMurica testing.
We had* god this site needs edit...
Video with naom Chomsky they pretty much acts as a source for everything I said. Failure of democracy against centralization, Pareto efficiency in free exchange with appropriate property rights, crisis of over production from large firms
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=szIGZVrSAyc&pp=QACIAgE%3D
Also the impossibility to accurately model an economy is mentioned in the video when you have to make assumptions of black box firms with internal unequal exchange. Top down systems like government and large scale manufacturing always produce these unequal expanded, which is why I believe in any large system market exchange is crucial rather than expecting to accurately control and predict. Additionally, this is why worker ownership is such a crucial piece of the puzzle to me, but throwing away markets is not.
DidnтАЩt have a chance to cite more sources, but I may do that tomorrow.
тАЬLiberalism and classтАЭ [Interfluidity]. тАЬI think it makes perfect sense that liberalism has become a kind of upper-class creed. So long as it is, liberalism is in peril, and should be. There are illiberal currents on both the left and right that would exploit popular dissatisfaction to remake society in ways that I would very much dislike, whether by restoring a тАЬtraditionalтАЭ hierarchy of implicit caste, or by granting diverse professionals even more prescriptive authority than they already have at the expense of liberty for the less enlightened. My strong preference is that we do neither of these things, and instead restore the broad appeal of liberalism by тАЬleveling upтАЭ. We should ensure that everyone has the means to rely upon some mix of the market and the state to see to their material welfare, reducing the economic role of networks of personal reciprocity and history. This would render the good parts of liberalism more broadly and ethically accessible. Reducing economic stratification makes liberal proceduralism more credible pretty automatically. When economic and institutional power are dispersed and broadly shared, no one has a built-in edge, and aspirations of neutrality and fairness become plausible. Once we view society less through a lens of domination and oppression тАФ because in a more materially equal society that will be a less credible lens тАФ it will become possible to agree on a common, stable set of commercial and professional mores rather than extend deference to myriad communitiesтАЩ evolving sensibilities.тАЭ тАв This is very good, and the anatomization of liberal values (not in the excerpt) is excellent. Note that it would be easier to тАЬlevel upтАЭ if liberals didnтАЩt hate the working class (see Thomas Frank) and didnтАЩt believe they deserve their fate." - Taken from a link in Naked Capitalism (Lambert Strether)
https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/8392.html
Check this out -- came out today https://www.businessinsider.com/minimum-wage-would-be-44-per-hour-if-it-grew-at-wall-street-bonus-rate-2021-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rURGjAjNQq4&t=1s
Matt Stoller on Useful Idiots - ("No such thing as free unregulated markets")