Liberalism and “Neoliberalism,” and Conservatism

Welcome friends!

Have you noticed a curious trend online in which economic arguments long associated with traditional American economic conservatism are described instead as “neoliberal,” for example in phrases like the “neoliberal doctrine of free markets” and so on?  While it’s true what distinguishes so-called “neoliberals” from normal, traditional, American-style “liberals” is the former’s adoption of conservative economic reasoning, and in that sense I suppose it’s technically correct to call conservative economic ideas “neoliberal,” there’s something suspiciously odd about it to me, especially when not used as part of a hyphenated formulation like “conservative / neoliberal economic reasoning.”  To me it always sounds like the tail wagging the dog, or what I imagine that must sound like anyway.  Neoliberalism here in the USA as far as I can remember has always referred to liberals who adopted conservative economic language during the so-called Reagan Revolution of the early 1980s when conservatism and in particular economic conservatism was rampant in this country.  So, as I’m sure you can appreciate, it sounds rather jarring to the ears of anyone like me who was alive at that time to now misplace the derivative connection to what was in the past always considered mainstream conservatism and call free market ideology a neoliberal idea, as though it was something they had worked out amongst themselves and, who knows, perhaps later told conservatives about?  It raises one’s suspicions that some sort of rhetorical funny business involving words is going on, along the lines of conservatives’ attempt to redefine and broaden the meaning of “socialism” as we’ve always understood it in this country to now include the mundane fixing of market problems and addressing distributional issues that have long been considered part of the neoclassical economic orthodoxy.  However, when I raised my concerns to a fellow online the other day he pointed out the term “neoliberal” has a long of tradition in Europe going back to the 1930s of referring to the economic policies we traditionally associate with conservatism in the USA.  What the heck?  Really?  Why have I never heard about this before now?  Why is everything always so damned complicated and confusing?  Because some people like it that way?  Oh.  Yeah, probably.  Anyway, it sent me to Wikipedia to learn more about this newly strange beast called neoliberalism.

Part of what the authors had to say about neoliberalism in the Wikipedia article seemed to make sense to me.  “Neoliberalism constituted a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus that had lasted from 1945 to 1980.”  That sounds about right.  That timeframe would make the start of neoliberalism contemporaneous with the conservative revolution here in the USA.  That’s what I always understood to be the case.  Some traditional liberals, the sort who supported Keynesian and New Deal policies to confront the conservative free-market policies that arguably led to the Great Depression and initially prevented any effective response to that economic calamity, gave up their by then traditional liberal economic ideas to adopt conservative economic ideas relating to worshipping the free market as a panacea and in so doing became so-called “neoliberals.”  They were neoliberals rather than plain old conservatives at that point I suppose because they retained their interest in other non-economic parts of the traditional liberal agenda in this country, presumably things like the separation of church and state, racial equality, etc.

However, after this promising start the article promptly began to go perceptibly pear shaped.  The authors noted English-speakers have actually been using the term neoliberalism since the start of the twentieth century but with different meanings and, to make matter worse, with definitions that have changed over time.  Of course.  As the name of an “economic philosophy,” it was apparently used by European “liberals” in the 1930s (and, yes, I have no idea who we’re talking about now, maybe anyone who wasn’t a fascist?) as they attempted to revive the central economic ideas of so-called “classical liberalism,” which is an even older term for what we here in the USA have long called conservatism in the realm of economics, that is, people who view so-called “free markets” as panaceas.  So, in Europe in the 1930s, neoliberal apparently didn’t mean “new” American-style liberals who had adopted conservative economic principles in the 1980s, it basically meant proponents of a “new” or resurgent form of classical liberalism or conservatism as we call it here in the US.

But we’re not done yet.  The article also noted that at some point in the 1930s there was a time in which European “neoliberalism” apparently didn’t simply imply a return to “classical liberalism” (conservatism in American terminology) but was meant to contrast with the latter by accepting a role for the state to “intervene” in markets when necessary, which of course here in the USA is a hallmark of what we call “liberalism” rather than “neoliberalism.”  The 1930s in Europe sounds a very interesting time, doesn’t it?  I hope I never see anything like it during my lifetime.  Oh, it’s happening again?  Right now?  Damn.  Oh well, let’s just carry on, shall we?

Anyway, to continue our narrative relating to what Wikipedia had to say about the topic, the term neoliberalism apparently entered or maybe re-entered common use internationally in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet’s economic reforms in Chile and quickly took on negative connotations.  At that time it was apparently used as a pejorative term people critical of free market ideology applied to those less critical of that ideology.  In that context, it became associated with people like Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and James M. Buchanan, all considered notable “conservative” writers here in the USA.  But, then again, I guess the article didn’t say these conservatives ever referred to themselves as neoliberals, only that their critics referred to them as such.

So that cleared it up, right?  Clear as mud?  Who the heck cares, anyway?  Why am I even talking about it right now?  It’s only a word, right?  Well, I think maybe it matters a little bit here in the USA for a couple of reasons.  First, given our recent history, it raises the suspicion conservatives are starting to play funny words games in an effort to smear traditional liberalism, which in the USA has always been about using democratic government in a pragmatic and progressive and I suppose generally leftist or socialist way, by associating it with neoliberalism and hoping people won’t notice the difference.  Second, and along the same lines, it seems to make the entire economic debate of the past few centuries a debate between two schools of “liberals,” with conservatism apparently not involved at all, waiting in the wings to emerge as the new kid on the block recently arrived to save the day with bold new economic thinking rather than representing the hoary old traditional “free market” economic thinking dating back to at least the nineteenth century in opposition to which American-style liberalism was formed.

However, it may well be that in our new Age of Ignorance that ship has sailed.  The good ship Funny Terms.  My impression now is that many people who would formerly have proudly proclaimed themselves liberals now seem not entirely sure what the word really means and hence prefer alternative labels such as progressives, democratic leftists, democratic socialists, social democrats, etc.  You know, it’s fine with me if you want to call yourself that, it’s the same thing, we can still be friends, but I can’t help thinking what sort of confusion it’s going to generate down the line if ever those young people crack a history book and read about the long conflict between liberal and conservative economic ideas here in the USA.  

At the same time, “conservatism” as far as economic principles, seems to have become unmoored from what we’ve always considered conservative economic thought in this country.  Where previously economic conservatives would have agitated for the free movement of labor, they now argue for limiting immigration.  Where previously they would have agitated for the free movement of goods, they now argue for tariffs and trade wars.  Where previously they would have agitated for the free movement of capital and the principles of competitive advantage, they now tout nationalistic economic warfare.  Where previously they would have advocated reduced government spending, they now support running up the national debt like there’s no tomorrow.  Where previously they would have demanded government impartiality, they now support government doling out economic favors and treats to the president’s favorites and loyal minions.  Actually, now I think about it, I suppose that may be a rather more benign reason the economic debate in this country seems increasingly to be defined as an internal conflict between two sets of liberals.  Because conservatives no longer seem to have any coherent economic philosophy at all, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for young people to remember back to the time they did.

Oh well.  I guess words are always changing.  Let’s face it.  I’m old.  Well, older anyway.  My moniker refers to myself as a “liberal” humanist and that’s the way I’ll always think of myself.  That’s the world in which I was born.  But if you’re young and want to say it some other way that’s fine with me.  I can be a progressive humanist or a democratic leftist humanist or a democratic socialist humanist or a social democrat humanist if you like, just don’t call me a neoliberal or conservative humanist.  Good enough?

Is the Fake Essential to Conservatism?

Welcome friends!

I was reading an article the other day on the peculiar fake science American conservatives in the supremely southern state of Alabama employed recently when explaining their new anti-abortion bill.  It occurred to me conservatives and Republicans here in the USA are famous for espousing fake science in a variety of contexts including human sexuality and the climate to take two random examples.  And it’s not just science.  Our current conservative Republican president is famous for fakery in the form of stretching the truth, making things up, and basically just lying his backside off every chance he gets.  We have a vast conservative “infotainment” industry devoted to peddling fake news to a clientele with an apparently insatiable appetite for fakery.  So what is it with conservatives and fakery anyway?  Why do they love it so much or at least not seem bothered by it at all?  I’m starting to realize the conservative commitment to the unreal may be greater than I had  previously appreciated.  Indeed, they may see accepting convenient falsehoods as the fundamental and necessary basis of human society.  How did I arrive at that conclusion?  Well, that’s a funny story.

I had submitted one of my usual humble comments to the aforementioned article in which I suggested a love of fake science was central to conservatism and likely began with their fascination with the Queen of Fake Science, that fetid stew of hidden and mis-stated value premises, mathematical proofs of the obvious and unremarkable, and clueless amateur philosopher gobbledygook that is neoclassical economic theory and in particular the so-called welfare economics component of that theory.  I suggested conservatives are committed to fake science the way they’re committed to fake news and alternative facts, and that it was likely because for conservatives words are always just a means to an end, a cheap attempt to manipulate other people through rhetoric and salesmanship.  They never employ nor expect to employ words in an honest discussion of any value or issue.

In a short while a reply or really a riposte appeared from some fellow (I assume) rather drolly named Will Yum arguing what humanists like me fake is a “rationale for values” beyond the faith-based one.  (A very typical rhetorical device for conservatives over the past several years has been to not bother denying or addressing criticisms but to simply lob the same criticism back in an attempt to establish what usually turns out to be a false equivalence.  In this case Mr. Yum didn’t bother disputing the claim conservatives rely on fakery but predictably sought to establish humanists also rely on fakery thus apparently eliminating the problem in the us against them world of the conservative info warrior.)  According to Mr. Yum’s comment “a totally materialistic and naturalistic universe doesn’t provide any moral guidance at all,” with the unfortunate consequence a regime like Nazi Germany for example could not be “shown to be evil.”  This feat in Mr. Yum’s estimation can only be accomplished if one believes in “transcendent values,” which he suggested cannot possibly exist in a naturalistic universe.  

I responded of course that I found his way of thinking somewhat peculiar and delivered the usual humanist response.  I suggested the ultimate rationale for human values must be human emotion and reason.  While I understood his desire to demonstrate Nazi Germany to have been evil in some absolute and indisputable way I suggested making things up to arrive at that result really only gives one the illusion of getting where one wants to go.  It doesn’t really get one there.  I argued we should face the world as it is, not as how we would like it to be.  We may believe Nazi Germany was evil but the old Nazis clearly did not.  That was the whole problem.  We did not share certain values and emotions we each found important.  That’s why we had to fight it out, because we had no other way to connect with one another and work it out peacefully.  I suggested unfortunately that is what sometimes happens.  That’s the way the world works.  I did concede it would be nice if we could do a little science experiment or bit of math or logic or look deep into our collective conscience or whatever and get an answer we must all necessarily accept, but I pointed out that’s not how values and ethics actually work.  I disputed the idea we shouldn’t support our own values unless we can show those values to have some superhuman validity or origin, that is, unless they’re something they’re really not, as just not really making a whole lot of sense.  I urged Mr.Yum not to fake his or her way through life but to be real and face life.  And there the exchange ended, except for a little coda in which Mr. Yum characterized my reply as breathtaking in its honesty but “utterly revealing of the vapidness of the revealed worldview,” to which I responded I was sorry he found reality so vapid, I hoped he would continue trying to make life more interesting for himself by making things up if he felt so inclined, but I thought it unreasonable of him to expect other people, particularly those seeking honesty and the truth, to join him there.  After that the line as they say went dead.

But you know the larger issue for me was how did we get from fake science to fake religion and fake ethics anyway?  It’s a funny sort of segue, although when I thought about it a bit I did seem to remember hearing a somewhat similar argument from some religious conservatives to the effect that if religion were not true we’d still have to pretend it is in order to have some basis for ethical reasoning.  It occurred to me although Mr. Yum didn’t explicitly say so and indeed was ostensibly interested in establishing just the opposite, that non-religious people pretend to have a basis for ethics when they really don’t, perhaps the comment was in the order of a Freudian slip.  Perhaps he was alluding in some way to the argument about the supposed necessity of religion.  Perhaps what got him thinking about religion was the suspicion the conservative attachment to convenient fakery started not with the Queen of Fake Science, economics, as I had suggested but with religion and hence in their view the foundation of ethics.  In a sense I wondered if he meant the conservative attachment or at least acceptance of convenient fakery was integral to their theory of the formation and continuation of human society.  I mean, it would explain a lot wouldn’t it?  Coming from that perspective, with society based on the Greatest Convenient Lie Every Told, who would bat an eye at the sort of falsehood and fakery we see in politics and economics?  Could conservatism really be such a sad and inhuman creed?  Could it really be eternally committed to the false and unreal?  From what I’ve seen of it I think so.  All the more reason for those who believe in the power of human reason and the truth to fight the anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, and indeed anti-social doctrine of conservatism.  Vincit omnia veritas.  

References

Conservatives’ junk science is having real consequences.  Dana Milbank.  May 17, 2019.  The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-states-are-laboratories--run-right-now-by-mad-scientists/2019/05/17/94da1a72-78aa-11e9-bd25-c989555e7766_story.html?utm_term=.b5f86bd3146f

American Conservatives and Republicans Not Big Believers In Democracy

Welcome friends!

Looks like I’ve focused on the religious head of the multi-headed monster of contemporary conservatism the last couple of times out so maybe this time I’ll take another swipe at the economic head.  You may recall one of the themes I’ve returned to time and time again is the inherent conflict between the increasingly concentrated economic power structure generated by our current formulation of a market system and our at least theoretically broader based democratic political power structure and how economic conservatives are basically big on the former but not the latter, that is to say, they tend to be all for rich folk being able to exercise their economic power but generally suspicious or downright aghast at the prospect of poor folk being able to exercise their democratic political power.  (See my post Democracy and Leftism, March 21, 2019, for a recent discussion of that issue.)  Shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone given that Americans, predominantly conservatives, have recently elected corrupt billionaire Donald Trump to the White House with the mandate he shrink the power of democratic government and expand the power of wealthy folk such as CEOs, stock brokers, bankers, and of course the hereditarily wealthy class.  I’ve expressed this a number of times in rather blunt terms by suggesting American conservatives have become ever more forthright in their disdain for or sometimes intense hatred of political democracy.  The conservatives’ great champion, President Trump, is famous for attacking our democratic political institutions, attempting to obstruct justice, attacking the free press, making “jokes” about becoming president for life, and openly admiring or as he says “falling in love” with anti-democratic despots all across the globe.  However, my vote for the most conclusive example of contemporary American conservatism’s antipathy toward political democracy would have to be President Trump’s recent nominee for the Federal Reserve Board, a conservative gasbag named Stephen Moore who formerly worked for the Wall Street Journal (of course) and CNN (rather surprisingly) and currently works at a so-called conservative “think tank” called the Heritage Foundation (of course).

According to the CNN story on his nomination Mr. Moore has said repeatedly he believes “capitalism” rather more important than political democracy.  (I’m putting the quotes around the word “capitalism” because as I’ve explained a number of times in the past I view the word sufficiently ill-defined that it has no place in serious economic thinking or writing and belongs only to the field of political rhetoric.  All modern democracies including the USA in particular have had primarily market based economies with government regulation and intervention for some time and all reasonable debate for years has been about the level and type of government involvement, an issue which the notion of “capitalism” leaves entirely unaddressed and hence open to subjective interpretation.  Indeed, according to conservative pundits we’ve ended “capitalism” in favor of “socialism” any number of times in this country in the past through such unmitigated horrors as the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage laws, etc., and yet miraculously it seems always available to be destroyed anew by whatever social policy may be on the table.)  He clarified his views on the relative importance and validity of the economic power structure and political power structure in an interview for Michael Moore’s 2009 file “Capitalism: A Love Story” by saying, “I’m not even a big believer in democracy.”  Of course, it must be noted he later presented his views rather differently by basically punting on the issue and saying, “I believe in free market capitalism and representative government.”  Assuming he wasn’t playing games with the phrase “representative government” and accepts it equates to political democracy one suspects he may have submitted to that much feared social force conservatives call “political correctness,” which ostensibly requires them to lie about their true values to avoid censure by other people.  Or maybe he just doesn’t really have any strong views on the subject and flip flops this way and that like the proverbial silk hanky of legend.  Conservatives do have a reputation in this country for simple mindedness.  

If you review the rest of Mr. Moore’s sophomoric economic stylings you’ll understand the basis of his love for “capitalism” and his possibly on again off again hatred of political democracy.  Basically, he’s an advocate of the hoary notion that an ill-defined unregulated “free market” or, yes, “capitalism,” is a panacea for all of society’s ills and in particular does away with any distributional concerns one might have.  As such he appears to have spent a good deal of time and effort on the standard litany of complaints economic conservatives have with “activist” government “interfering” with the “free market” by addressing market failures and distributional concerns.  So for example, he has questioned the existence of the Department of Labor, Energy, and Commerce; the IRS; the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau; the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and the Department of Education.  He has suggested eliminating Social Security, Medicaid, minimum wage laws, and personal as well as corporate taxes.  Of course, along with this standard conservative claptrap he’s also had a few ideas that must be classified as a bit odd even for conservatives.  In 2015 for example he advocated abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard although since that time he’s apparently thought it through again and now reports he doesn’t support that.  So let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt and set that one aside.  The point is that in general Mr. Moore can be taken as a fairly standard representative of the common economic conservative themes of free markets as miraculous and ethically infallible panaceas and the importance of shrinking the role of democratic government.  As such his views relating to not being a big believer in democracy, despite being half-heartedly and rather unconvincingly walked back later, is a very good example of the way in which mainstream conservatives tend to favor the concentrated economic power derived from the market however construed over the theoretically at least much broader based and more egalitarian political power derived from voting power in a political democracy.

Some articles have suggested Mr. Moore might not end up on the Fed after all although interestingly not because of his clear animus toward political democracy, which supports my contention that that view is now accepted as perfectly representative of the conservative viewpoint, but because of some combination of the typical social conservative mix of racism and sexism in some of his previous commentary.  Well, that plus plain old economic incompetence. As an example of what some people probably fear in that area Paul Waldman, opinion writer for the Washington Post, suggested Mr. Moore has the curious tendency whenever a Republican is in office to view the economy at risk of deflation and needing the Fed to give it a little boost and whenever a Democrat is in office to view the economy at risk of hyperinflation and needing the Fed to slow things down a bit.  That pressure to use the Fed for short term political gain is of course why we have an independent Fed in the first place, although given Mr. Moore’s apparent inability to grasp the rationale for a great many other government programs and institutions, and given his waffling on the legitimacy and necessity of the Fed itself, one would hardly expect him to appreciate the point.  On the other hand Mr. Moore’s views are perfectly consistent with Mr. Trump’s own views on the Fed, which led one former chair of the Fed, Janet Yellen, to suggest Mr. Trump doesn’t really understand national economics and the role of the Fed.  Ironic of course because in the minds of economic conservatives and the relatively educated part of the conservative Republican base the laughably simplistic claptrap expressed by Mr. Moore is evidence of their ostensibly superior grasp of economics.  The relatively less educated part of the conservative base of course doesn’t even understand the simplistic claptrap instead attributing to Mr. Trump a superior knowledge of economics because he’s rich and at least poses as a successful businessman.

Lest there be any confusion on this issue in the future let me explain that for many decades now conservative thinkers have been espousing a simplistic and really just flat out incorrect interpretation of economic theory that implies something called “the free market” necessarily runs to or approximates a perfectly competitive market structure, that fails to acknowledge other market structures or market failures, and that fails to acknowledge the distributional issues that must be addressed and are addressed but lie entirely outside the scope of economic theory.  That rhetorical nonsense has led them to excoriate democratic government as a dire threat that unscrupulous people in the form of the voting public can use to “interfere” with the black box panacea of “the free market.” As a result we now have a president, very popular with conservatives indeed, who clearly questions the fundamental basis of political democracy, openly admires foreign anti-democratic despots, and nominates to top government posts people like Mr. Moore who state flatly they’re not big believers in political democracy.  After many years fretting about the threat of anti-democratic authoritarian communism and other foreign enemies it seems the true threat to American democracy is the intellectually vacuous and amoral rot of conservative ideology.

Addendum:

Mr. Moore announced today he has withdrawn his name from consideration to sit on the Fed.  Apparently and rather surprisingly some Senate Republicans took issue with some of Mr. Moore’s more sexist and racist statements, although I see no indication his views on political democracy or the role of the Fed played any role.  I guess one might say we dodged a bullet that time, but of course one presumes conservative Republicans have a great stockpile of bullets beyond just this one man.  We’re not out of the woods yet.  Not by a long shot.

References

Trump’s Fed pick Stephen Moore is a self-described ‘radical’ who said he’s not a ‘big believe in democracy.’  Andrew Kaczynski and Paul LeBlanc.  April 13, 2019.  CNN.  https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/politics/stephen-moore-kfile/index.html

The Stephen Moor farce reveals the depths of GOP cynicism.  Paul Waldman.  May 1, 2019.  The Washington Post.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/01/stephen-moore-farce-reveals-depths-gop-cynicism/?utm_term=.f1387e55c33a.

Trump doesn’t understand economics, says former Fed chair Janet Yellen.   February 26, 2019.  BBC.  https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47369123

Stephen Moore, Trump’s Federal Reserve choice, bows out amid scrutiny of past remarks about women, other topics.  Felicia Sonmez and Damian Paletta.  May 2, 2019.  The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/stephen-moore-trumps-choice-for-federal-reserve-seat-bows-out-amid-scrutiny-of-past-remarks-about-women-other-topics/2019/05/02/0eb33cba-6c45-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html?utm_term=.013d98865a47

Democracy And Leftism

Welcome friends!

I’ve probably mentioned before but I suspect the essentially ambiguous feelings most or perhaps all American conservatives and most likely world conservatives hold toward political democracy is closely related to their apparent inability to maintain a clear and consistent definition of what they mean by “liberalism,” “leftism,” and “socialism.”  They’re two sides of the same coin.  The essential issue is that the political power arrangements generated by democracy are fundamentally inconsistent or at least potentially inconsistent with the economic power arrangements generated by our current distributional system including the labor market and inheritance laws for example.  Let’s discuss.

Political democracy as commonly conceived today with every adult having a single vote is an inherently egalitarian affair.  It distributes political power equally at the level of voting at least regardless of the voter’s wealth, credentials, or merits however specified.  One may be socially responsible or a selfish jerk, a genius or a clod, wise or foolish, rich or poor; it just doesn’t matter as far as voting goes.  Everyone gets one vote and one vote only.  Well, there may be some exceptions for people convicted of certain serious crimes or residing in prison and so on but let’s not get bogged down in details and absolutes, shall we?  For the most part our interpretation of political democracy is quite egalitarian in spirit at least when it comes to voting.

The distributional mechanisms we have in place for allocating economic power, that is to say inheritance laws, labor markets, investment markets, lotteries, and so on, are of course not similarly egalitarian in spirit or practice.  They distribute power based on various considerations some arguably under an individual’s control at least to some degree and some arguably not, and these mechanisms famously lead to very unequal results.  When it comes to economic power some people have quite a bit indeed; others don’t have much or in some cases any at all.  That’s especially the case here in the USA but it’s also true albeit to a lesser extent for other democracies having more-or-less market-based economies.  Discussions relating to the distribution of economic power here in the USA tends always to be fraught and characterized by profound and rancorous disagreements about not only value or ethical issue of what ought to be involved but factual issues relating to what is currently involved.  

There is a fundamental conflict or at least potential conflict between these two varieties of social power.  Economically powerful fat cats rule our economic system in the sense their every passing whims take precedence via their superior purchasing power in the marketplace over even life and death matters of less economically powerful people.  When it comes to productive resources going toward building a third vacation home for Mr. Moneybags or lunch for the guy under the bridge there’s no question where those resources will go.  However, when it comes to the realm of political power we don’t take the necessary steps to ensure the same results.  If left to our democratic political system with one person one vote some of the passing whims of the economic elite may go unfilled and the life and death matters of the less economically powerful, the hoi polloi if you will, may end up being addressed possibly with tax dollars from the wealthy elite.  Anger and resentment on the part of these exalted personages are all but inevitable.

Clearly I’m simplifying the situation quite a bit.  Although voting may be a one person one vote affair it’s surely no secret we’ve set up our democratic political system to include various mechanisms by which the wealthy can convert economic power to political power.  We have an in-built bias in the sense taking time out of one’s career to run for political office is largely the prerogative of people one might generally describe as at least moderately wealthy.  In 2014 for example more than half the members of Congress had a net worth of one million dollars or more, which may not seem all that much these days until one considers the median net worth of adults here in the USA is only about forty-five thousand dollars.  Thus, if one considers self-interest to play any role at all in what our politicians are up to or even if one thinks one’s perceptions of life are perforce molded in some way by one’s own life experiences then the interests of the wealthy elite must be more than proportionately represented by our elected representatives.  Of course, raising funds is a major part of any political campaign in this country and that relies very directly and heavily on catering to the wishes of the economically powerful.  Wealthy CEOs and banking and investment types also wield some degree of non-democratic political power because there is a feedback between general economic performance and the political fortunes of those in office so if those business leaders feel a candidate is not doing them right they may just put off a few investments or slow things down a bit.  Indeed, every politician here in the USA is expected to be “pro-business” or “business friendly,” which in practical terms means catering to the desires of wealthy CEOs and the other economically powerful people who make decisions for those businesses.  Political lobbying of course is also something one associates mostly with economically powerful industries and professions.  One expects lobbying efforts on behalf of let’s say relatively wealthy medical doctors to be significantly more politically potent than lobbying on behalf of fry cooks or what have you.  Moving back a step from the front lines money obviously plays a great role in convincing and cajoling potential voters into falling in line.  A great army of people have ridden the conservative money train over the years ranging from academic economists and political scientists and historians to the clown army that daily disseminates false and misleading conservative rhetoric on internet, radio, and TV.  Indeed, the entire conservative discourse involving “minimizing” government, government not “interfering” with the “free market,” “drowning government in a bathtub,” fighting so-called “activist”government, and stressing the ostensibly inherent futility and counter-productive nature of government attempts to address distributive issues in the form of helping out struggling people or indeed government attempts to address any social problem or issue at all are most reasonably seen as simply elaborate rhetorical exercises, marketing campaigns if you will, designed to support the primacy of the economic power of the wealthy elite expressed through their market power against the egalitarian democratic political power expressed through the voting power of the hoi polloi.  To put in a nutshell, in our particular formulation of political democracy money talks.  Money talks a lot.  Indeed, it can sometimes be hard for anyone else to get a word in edgewise.

The apparent ease with which the wealthy elite of the nation are able to dominate and manipulate our democracy for their own benefit is probably the main reason so many conservatives feel ambivalent about political democracy rather than actively opposed to it.  Basically, it all seems to have been working out rather well for them these past several decades.  The economic power of the wealthy elite has grown by leaps and bounds while the economic power of pretty much everyone else and in particular the so-called middle-class has stagnated.  So political democracy is not seen as an imminent threat by most conservatives but more of a perpetual annoyance and potentially serious future threat; something to be concerned about to be sure, but not the sort of thing that would cause one to fly into a panic and throw the baby out with the bathwater.   Not yet anyway.  Besides, they’ve given it a go in the past and the results have been less impressive than they might have hoped.  The wealthy elite of mid-twentieth century Germany assuredly thought they had it made in the shade when they helped install authoritarian despot Adolph Hitler to keep democracy at bay, but they underestimated his megalomania, murderous racism, war mongering, general moral depravity, and rank ineptitude on matters social, political, and military.  On the other hand, conservatives in some other nations have had rather better results.  Nominally “communist” China is a politically authoritarian state with a robust market economy very much along the lines of what elite supporters of the old German fascist movement probably had in mind.  In short, it would be a mistake to suppose conservatives have any sincere commitment to political democracy at the level of principle or value.  However, they appear to recognize that eliminating it is a dangerous game to play and one that can very easily although not necessarily end rather badly for them.  Taking everything into consideration conservatives here in the USA appear to prefer the relative stability of a democratic system as long as they can control it and use it to further their own interests and only their own interests; democracy as plutocracy if you will.

Historically, of course, conservatives were much more forward about grafting a plutocratic ethos onto political democracy.  In the early days of American democracy for example we restricted voting in most jurisdiction to male land owners of European descent (i.e., “whites”), in other words, the wealthy elite of the day.  Nor have conservatives necessarily been bashful about putting forth similar proposals today.  I don’t have any references but I do seem to recall a few years back reading about some academic economists (of course) and conservative political scientists recommending various schemes by which political voting power might be made more consistent with economic power such as combining voting with willingness and ability to pay or equivalently just giving rich people more votes than poor people.  Indeed, American conservatives’ present hero, President Donald Trump, has been openly flirting with rather blatant anti-democratic ideas by attacking our democratic institutions and separations of powers, attacking the free press, attacking higher education, lauding the Chinese model of authoritarian government combined with market based economy, and most recently making thinly veiled threats of political violence involving the army, the police, and I believe some sort of biker gang.  Don’t ask me; that’s just what I read.

Acknowledging the fundamental conflict between political democracy and our current distributional mechanisms so important to conservative economic ideology can feel awkward if like many others of my vintage one was weaned on the belief conservative economic ideology and political democracy are natural complements and as a unit opposed to the ostensibly equally natural complements of leftist state socialism or communism with anti-democratic authoritarian government.  Feels a bit odd to split the pair and discuss the anti-democratic ethos lying at the heart of conservative economic ideology, or to consider authoritarian political systems committed to market economies such as contemporary China, or indeed to take up the pros and cons of that strange beast democratic socialism.  It can take a bit of mental effort to see the earlier story was essentially incorrect and indeed misleading, which brings up an interesting question: was it all a bit of Cold War rhetoric purposefully designed to get everyone on the same page fighting International Communism, or was there some reasonable basis for honest and sincere writers and intellectuals getting the wrong end of the stick?

Historically the association of political democracy with what we now know as conservative economic ideology may have made a bit more sense than now.  For example, consider the earlier iteration of the conservative leftist split in which the role of the wealthy elite was played by the hereditary aristocracy (i.e., kings and queens, nobles, and all their various courtly hangers on).  In its heyday the aristocrats held both economic and political power and in that sense their society was in a sort of balance although whether salutary or not depended no doubt upon one’s situation.  As market economies developed the so-called commoners began to develop some economic power of their own very much upsetting the power balance of old medieval society.  The eventual move toward political democracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, initially consisting largely of the restricted plutocratic version of democracy I just mentioned, was very much addressed to bringing the political power of these financially successful commoners more into line with their newfound economic powerful against the traditional and hereditary political and economic power of the old land-owning elite of the ancient feudal order.  So, yes, at that moment political democracy was aligned with the development of the market economies that feature so significantly in conservative economic ideology albeit typically in misleading or incorrect ways.  

However, that was clearly by no means an essential relationship.  Already by the nineteenth century and especially now in the twenty-first century the conservative versus leftist split is largely a struggle between the wealthy elite of existing market economies playing the role formerly played by the old aristocratic elite and wielding both political and economic power facing off against the hoi polloi playing the role formerly played by the commoners with the twist that rather than the conflict being triggered by the hoi polloi obtaining some measure of economic power without commensurate political power our current conflict has been triggered by just the opposite: the hoi polloi have some measure of political power without commensurate economic power.  As a result, these latter day commoners threaten always to take steps to bring their economic power more into line with their political power at the expense of the political and economic power of the wealthy elite by using their voting power to force democratic government to “interfere” with existing market systems and distributional arrangements to increase their own share in the proceeds.  Hence political democracy, at one time instrumental in establishing the political power of the wealthy elite, has in some ways proved to be a double-edged sword.

Given this state of affairs it is perhaps not surprising some people find it difficult to bring their thinking up to speed on the differences between left and right.  Some people seem to have their heads stuck firmly in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century struggles of commoners against the feudal aristocracy.  Other people seem mired in the various anti-democratic authoritarian movements of both right and left in mid-twentieth century Europe and Asia.  The debate in this country between the left and right often has a surreal quality as people talk passionately past one another using inconsistent terms and frames of reference.  It’s all a bit comical really.  Let me bring some order to the chaos.  

At this point in our history the economic debate between left and right is no longer about abolishing market structures.  The issue is whether and if so how to regulate those markets and associated legal institutions and to revise the distributional results of those market systems to bring them more into line with what our ethics recommend.  The view that democratic government has the right and duty to regulate markets to improve their performance and also to potentially revise market results to address popular values relating to distributional issues corresponds here in the USA anyway to what people call variously liberalism / leftism / democratic socialism.  This view is entirely consistent with neoclassical economic theory in the sense that theoretical rationales exist for regulating many real-world markets and of course distributional issues are outside the scope of economic theory and hence logically must be addressed another way such as for example via democratic government.  (See my post Economic Theory And Then Some, April 12, 2018, or my tab on Economics with Hansel if you’re stuck on this very common point of confusion relating to what economic theory says and doesn’t say about distributional issues.)  The opposing view that democratic government must be prevented from “interfering” with real world markets and other existing distributional mechanism such as inheritance laws and in particular has no business redistributing resources to address voters’ beliefs and values relating to distributional issues corresponds here in the USA to what people call conservatism or sometimes as in my case economic conservatism to differentiate it from the rather different religious form of conservatism, which is based more on adherents of certain religions carving out legal exceptions for themselves or forcing others to adhere to their beliefs.  

Liberalism and leftism supports the primacy of political democracy and the egalitarian distribution of political power expressed in our voting system and is prepared to revise our economic system and the results of our economic system on that basis and indeed to strengthen the egalitarian quality of our political system by reducing the role of economic power in politics.  Conservatism and right-wing ideology in general supports the primacy of our existing mechanisms for distributing economic power and the unequal distribution of economic power that governs activity in the marketplace and is increasingly prepared to revise our democratic political system to defend those social power arrangements including eliminating or undermining the egalitarian components of our political system by strengthening the role of money in politics.  These two perspectives are locked in a fundamental and inescapable conflict.  Only time will tell which will eventually emerge victorious.  You know where I stand on the subject.  Not much question about that.  Long live American democracy!

References

Congress Is Now Mostly A Millionaire’s Club.  Andrew Katz.  January 9, 2014.  Time.  http://time.com/373/congress-is-now-mostly-a-millionaires-club/.

America’s Middle Class: Poorer Than You Think.  Tami Luhby.  CNN.  https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/11/news/economy/middle-class-wealth/index.html.

Libertarianism: The Crazytown Where Far Right And Far Left Meet

Welcome friends!

I know I’ve commented upon the hopelessly confused and unhelpful doctrine of “libertarianism” a number of times now but I recently saw another article in the paper touching on that unfortunate ideology so I thought that might be a good excuse to spend a few more minutes on the issue.  Not the sort of thing I want to do very often mind you.  Once in a blue moon seems more than sufficient.  But good to cover all the bases every once in a while.

The article in question involved a young American man going by the name John Galton, which is apparently also the name of a character in some old Ayn Rand novel.  You remember Ayn Rand don’t you?  The anti-social novelist, folk philosopher, and enabler and cheerleader of the egocentric and self obsessed?  Darling of conservative Republican politicians such as Rand Paul from the great state of Kentucky?  Yes, Mr. Paul once said he was so enthralled by Ms. Rand’s writings as a young man they were the main reason he got into politics in the first place.  More recently he was in the papers walking that back as they say.  Of course, Republican politicians are famously dishonest so who knows what his story may be next week.  Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.  He’s not the only one by any means.  But to return to our story, it seems Mr. Galton (the real one; not the fictitious one) had recently fled drug charges here in the USA along with his girlfriend to set up house in Acapulco, Mexico and was shortly thereafter shot and killed by what one can only presume were members of some rival Mexican drug operation.  According to the article, Mr. Galton envisioned himself as a sort of prophet of entrepreneurship freed from the constraints of the nation-state.  He opined in an interview taxation was theft and bristled at the notion of obeying the law.  As far as the nature of his entrepreneurial business activities, he apparently ran what the papers described as a “marijuana laboratory.”  However, he also taught classes on “cryptocurrencies,” which I read somewhere is the preferred means of exchange among such people.  He noted in an interview “he had always had libertarian leanings” but got excited about anarchism per se while in prison, which suggests he at least had some sort of distinction in his mind between the two philosophies although what it may have been is anyone’s guess as I’ll discuss a little later.  His girlfriend on the other hand was described in the article as having been raised by anti-government “hippie” parents ironically dependent on food stamps.  She became interested in politics while in college but realized politics “weren’t changing anything,” so she dropped out and took up with Mr. Galton.  Young people are funny that way, aren’t they?  I wonder what her timeline for politics to change things was anyway?  Sometime between the summer and fall semesters? After the beach weekend but before the big campus beer bash?  Some of us have been trying to change things for decades and still haven’t given up.  Anyway, that was the whole story really.  Not all that unique if you think about it.  Basically some people wanted to live outside the law and got their wish but ended up being what law-abiding citizens would call murdered by criminals.  Happens all the time.  But I suppose these people talked it up a bit more than usual, so maybe that’s why it’s a little more interesting than when a local teen from the wrong side of the tracks joins a drug gang and ends up getting shot behind the old liquor store or something like that.

So let me just deliver my customary commentary on this so-called “libertarianism.”  It seems to me there are two forms of libertarianism or maybe three if one wants to count the indistinct region between the two separately.  First, we have the libertarianism that is really just plain old economic conservatism just not explained very well.  Economic conservatism of course is the notion that government should only do certain things, address certain functions, and if it does those things and those things only then everyone and everything will be just fine.  These functions turn out to be the things that benefit people who make out well under our current version of a market system, so things like property rights, law enforcement, national defense, and maybe a few other things.  The idea comes from either the conviction our existing distributional system is ideal and any potential departure immoral or the notion that all manner of unfortunate unintended consequences will occur if anyone tampers with our existing system so even though it may have a few flaws we need to maintain it as though our lives depended upon it.  It’s fine as far as it goes.  I consider it hopelessly simplistic and indeed ignorant in the sense that it is sometimes presented as following from or implied by economic theory, which if one looks into it is not the case at all.  (Check out my tab on Economics with Hansel if you’re interested in how that happens.)  But that’s not my issue here today.  If you’re an out and proud conservative you’re ahead of the game as far as my thesis in this post goes.  No, what I’m interested in here is what happens when people who don’t really understand the basis of economic conservatism take the extra step of proclaiming themselves “libertarians.”

One thing that tends to happen when people start talking in terms of libertarianism rather than conservatism is they begin to have difficulty perceiving the nature of distributional issues, that is, in the issue of how to resolve conflicts of desires between different people.  The way a sensible person looks at such things is to say if two people have conflicting wants or needs or desires then we need some way to resolve that conflict so we make laws that govern distributions: property rights, market institutions, etc.  If someone comes along and points out what he or she feels are ethical issues then of course we’re certainly willing to entertain their ideas and potentially revise the rules.  What happens when so-called libertarians look at these issues is that they are so thoroughly committed or convinced of the rectitude of existing distributional arrangements they see the issue as whether whoever currently has the legal right to do something should have the “liberty” to carry on or whether some scoundrel will interfere with their liberty to do so.  For example if we imagine a little two person world where let’s say we distribute all resources by who is shorter and the taller of the two consequently kicks the bucket from want most of us would sit down and say maybe we need to rethink that particular distributional system.  We wouldn’t think of it in terms of liberty per se.  When a libertarian looks at this issue he or she will think something like look we’ve already decided the shorter person gets all the resources so the only thing left to talk about is whether the shorter person will have the liberty to use those resources as he or she feels fit or whether the taller person or his or her agents will be able to unfairly interfere with the short person’s liberty.  Basically it does something akin to assuming the conclusion of the discussion we’re meant to be having.  In other words, this form of libertarianism is intellectually empty.  It doesn’t actually add anything to the conversation.  It just passes issues along.  The justification for the underlying distribution assumed as a given within the libertarian system isn’t being derived within libertarianism.  The justification has nothing to do with liberty in the abstract.  They don’t present arguments showing we would have more total liberty if one person got the resources than if the other person got those resources.  To discuss the underlying distributional issues sensibly you’d have to ignore the “libertarian” red herring entirely and move on to the conventionally conservative element, that is, what’s so great about the distributional mechanism we have right now anyway?  Why is the claim of one person for whatever it is ethically stronger than the other fellow’s?  How do markets really distribute goods and services and does it really correspond to what we consider ethical?

Where libertarianism as confused conservatism begins to devolve into anarchism is when libertarians sidestep not only the moral issues involved in addressing and resolving distributional issues but also the role of government power in enforcing those arrangements.  In some ways this might again be thought of as a confused or not very well explained form of conservatism.  Conservatives after all are famous for saying things like they want to “minimize government” despite the fact they want government to fulfill certain important functions they find important such as enforcing property rights.  It’s an inherently confusing way of talking.  What they should say is they feel government should be restricted to those functions they support.  Because when one says minimize of course there’s no real reason we can’t minimize government entirely and create anarchy.  Indeed, the essential difference in this context between conventional conservatives and libertarians is that conservatives recognize when they talk about “minimizing” government they’re simply talking rhetorically and what they really mean is minimize to the extent consistent with government fulfilling the functions they want it to fulfill.  And those aren’t small or minor functions by any measure.  Having government power enforcing property rights implies government involvement of a sort in every transaction and of course the entire mechanism of enforcing those relationships: police, judicial systems, prisons, etc.  With libertarianism these important government functions recede so far into the background and become so invisible and taken for granted and unrecognized and so immune to discussion that many libertarians lose sight of them altogether and start talking about really minimizing government to the greatest extent possible, that is, eliminating it.  In other words they become indistinguishable from anarchists.  Why don’t conservatives express the notion of “minimizing government” differently to avoid the sort of confusion that leads to the sort of libertarianism that equates to anarchism?  Probably because everyone thinks government should be “minimized” to those functions they think are important.  Liberals and leftists think that every bit as much as conservatives.  It’s not really a distinctive position.  All the substance, the contentious bit, is a step back from that and involves what those functions are and why one thinks or doesn’t think government has a role.  The whole libertarian canard appears most likely the result of a rhetorical ploy meant to exaggerate the differences between conservatives and liberals, avoid discussing the real issues, and avoid drawing attention to the role of government power in the conservative view of the ideal society.  Libertarianism is basically the unholy offspring of the unfortunate underhanded way some conservatives choose to disguise and defend their values.

And what’s the inevitable and entirely predictable result of some conservatives’ inability to talk straight and possibly even to think straight about distributional issues and the resulting bit of confusion known as libertarianism?  We get people like the recently deceased John Galton: conservatives who become attracted to “libertarian” claptrap and from there are drawn inexorably into the anti-social pie-in-the-sky nonsense of anarchism formerly associated mainly with the most unrealistic and utopian of what in the past anyway was conventionally considered leftist hippiedom.  Sad to think how much harm mainstream conservatives are willing to inflict on other people rather than do what liberals and leftists have always done: argue honestly and transparently for their values.

References

An American ‘crypto-anarchist’ fled the country.  He was just killed in Mexico’s ‘Murder Capital.’  Isaac Stanley-Becker.  The Washington Post.  February 4, 2019.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/04/an-american-crypto-anarchist-fled-country-he-was-just-killed-mexicos-murder-capital/?utm_term=.0fa91cdafd3a.