Neoliberalism and Marxism

Welcome friends!

You may recall I did a post not long ago on the curious habit in some circles of using the word “neoliberalism” to refer to the orthodox free market ideology we’ve long associated with economic “conservatism” here in the USA. I pointed out that in traditional American terminology the “neoliberals” were simply erstwhile liberals who adopted long-standing conservative free market ideology in the 1980s but retained other aspects of the broader liberal political agenda and hence were not simply called conservatives. I suggested calling conservative economic ideology “neoliberalism” seems rather comical to me, as that very same free market ideology existed in this country long before the 1980s, and even after the 1980s has been championed primarily by economic conservatives rather than neoliberals. It struck me as very much an instance of what I believe they call the tail wagging the dog. I wondered why that shift in terminology might have occurred and looked for antecedents in the various ways the term “neoliberalism” was used in Europe prior to the 1980s and so on. However, more recently I had an online exchange with a very enthusiastic fellow who gave me an entirely new perspective on what might be going on with that term, so I thought I might just do a quick update on that issue today.

My interlocutor seemed very much concerned to establish that free market economic ideology essentially began in the 1980s and was the work of liberals in the guise of neoliberals. He didn’t believe free market ideology existed prior to 1980 or if it did was related at all, nor did he associate free market ideology with “classical liberalism,” which he accepted as an older eighteenth century term for something, although I’m not entirely sure what. I’m also not too clear on what happened to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in his historical scheme, but it doesn’t really matter. Interestingly, he didn’t seem to associate any economic ideology at all with conservatism, apparently believing the term “conservatism” referred only to political and social ideas unrelated to economics. Thus, he seemed to believe all the economic debate in this country at least since the 1980s has been an internal affair between different groups of liberals. When I suggested what I believe is the more conventional use of the terms conservative, liberal, and neoliberal in the economic arena, he suggested my terminology was quaintly old-fashioned and not current at all with what he called “hardcore Marxism,” which he suggested was the more common way of discussing these issues today.

I found it all quite interesting. I had actually suspected a connection to Marxist theory given the generally foreign origin of much of the discussion of “neoliberalism” online. I’m not being nationalistic, just saying my impression is that Marxism has always been rather more popular in many foreign countries than here in the USA. He ended the discussion with the usual dismissive sort of insults one generally encounters when discussing popular economics with random people online, although I thought perhaps rather milder in tone than what I usually encounter from those with more right wing interests.  More, “you don’t seem to understand very much about economics, politics, history,” etc., rather than the more typical conservative or right wing “why don’t you go screw yourself?” sort of thing. We parted company.

One thing that crossed my mind after learning of the connection to Marxism, or at least after having gotten some confirmation of the connection, is the way that theory seems to be such fertile ground for confusion relating to terminology. A big part of the problem I think is that Marxism downplays the importance of ideas, theories, and ideologies, in favor of material relations and conditions. Thus, it tends to use words ending with “ism” not in the conventional way to refer to a collection of ideas, theories, or an ideology, but to various material conditions. “Capitalism” in traditional Marxist terminology is not a theory or collection of ideas relating to capital but a certain form of economic and social organization. A “capitalist” is someone who lives under such conditions regardless of his or her thoughts on economic or political ideas. The person can be as leftist as you like, but he or she is still a “capitalist.” This makes me suspect one fairly benign mechanism that might underlie the current confusion over the term “neoliberal” is that some Marxist writers somewhere may have decided at some time to call the economic and social conditions or arrangements since 1980 “neoliberalism,” so that anyone who has happened to live under those conditions is perforce a “neoliberal.” 

The problem, of course, is that “neoliberalism” also has a completely different definition based on ideas. In that other definition “neoliberalism” relates to the ideas or theories of a particular group of people, “neoliberals.” Under that definition, “neoliberalism” conventionally denotes conservative free market ideology combined with random other social and political ideas otherwise associated with traditional progressive liberalism. If this is what has been going on, I have to way it was all lost on my interlocutor, who despite his ostensibly hardcore Marxist leanings seemed clearly to be jumping back and forth between Marxist materialist terminology and more conventional idea based terminology in the most confusing way imaginable.

However, the connection to Marxism also made me wonder if there might be a rather more sinister reason for this apparently coincidental congruity of terms.  That notion certainly gave me reason to pause because in recent years I’ve come to associate heavy handed rhetorical and linguistic game playing mostly with conservatives and right wing sorts, who seem forever redefining and conflating terms, overgeneralizing, using misdirection, and so on. But I do believe some leftists have done that sort of thing in the past, so I suppose there’s no real reason to think they can’t be doing it again right now. Certainly the confusion relating to the term “neoliberalism” I’ve been discussing might play to their political advantage. If people feel progressive liberalism / democratic socialism / social democracy is essentially the same thing as neoliberalism and hence free market economic conservatism, then that would presumably make Marxism appear a rather more attractive alternative for those critical of our current economic arrangements. Indeed, it may make it appear the only game in town. 

It may seem farfetched, but I’ve noticed that pattern quite a lot online recently. Some leftists seem just as much or more concerned to fight against progressive liberalism as conservatism, against the relatively progressive or socially oriented and leftist Democratic Party as against the conservative and right wing Republican Party, against Mr. Biden as Mr. Trump. In a weird way contemporary Marxists seem often to be fighting on the same side as conservatives against what is apparently their common foe: reasonable liberals, progressives, social democrats, and democratic socialists. Indeed, it makes me wonder if contemporary Marxism might actually be bankrolled by wealthy conservatives specifically for that purpose. Not saying they are, but if I were a clever right wing operator and I thought Marxism itself could be easily contained for some reason, let’s say the historic antipathy of the American electorate in general to Marxist ideas, I might just throw some money their way so they could do a number on the more serious competition.

Now that I’ve come to suppose this shift in terminology is not the result of natural linguistic drift but simple terminological conflation combined possibly with purposefully misleading and manipulative rhetoric, I’m encouraged to be a little more active confronting misuse of the term “neoliberalism.” Indeed, I take back what I said earlier about not caring if I’m considered a liberal, per se. I think now I do care. I’m what you call a traditional American liberal. I support using activist democratic government to address the ethical shortcoming and failures of market systems, and in that I agree with those calling themselves progressives, social democrats, and democratic socialists. I’m fighting against simplistic conservative / “neoliberal” free market ideology.

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?

Fighting the Establishment

Welcome friends!

I know, it has been awhile.  Sorry about that.  Lots of stuff going on just now.  But I would like to register an opinion on this site now and then.  Maybe a little fewer and farther between than formerly, but still trucking as they used to say.  Or is that truckin’?  I have the old days on my mind just now, for reasons that should become clear when I get to my topic for today.  But enough tomfoolery, let’s get the ball rolling.  My topic for today is a funny little article I read in the paper the other day about how many people here in the USA are interested in fighting “the establishment,” although what and who they’re actually fighting is quite different and often contradictory, so they end up fighting one another rather more than the establishment.  How true.  And funny.  Not, of course, in a slap your knee and spurt coffee from out your mouth way, but in an ironic way.

To be a tad more specific, the article argued that for conservatives and right wing elements here in the USA “the establishment” has come to mean our democratic government, the politicians and bureaucrats who work in it and for it, regulatory agencies, and on, while for liberals and left wing elements “the establishment” means the wealthy elite of the nation they feel have long held oversized influence over our democratic government and have long tended to use it to their own advantage rather than for the commonweal.  The article also provided some historical perspective, all interesting and worthwhile, but not necessarily relevant to my thoughts on the subject.

The funny thought that occurred to me is that “back in the day,” as they say or used to say back in the day anyway, when I first started hearing about it in the 1960s (who knows how long it had been going on before that, probably decades, maybe forever), “the establishment” meant both.  It meant the wealthy elite, bankers, CEOs, denizens of Wall Street, economically powerful muckety mucks of all stripes, and the nominally democratic government and justice system they were seen as controlling behind the scenes mostly for their own benefit.  “Conservatives” were people who thought everything was working quite well and wanted to defend the establishment.  “Liberals” and progressives and leftists had some concerns and wanted to fight the establishment.  Everything made sense and had a sort of logic, at least as far as talking about the establishment went.

However, in the early 1980s or there about enterprising conservative and Republican ideologues started working on ways to peel off some liberals to their side.  That’s the distinctive thing about the establishment: they have the time, money, and power to try all manner of tactics and strategies to maintain and enhance their situation.  They’re always trying to come up something.  They’re always a worthy adversary.  In this instance, they ended up using a slippery con game of misinterpreting neoclassical welfare economics to successfully convince many Americans all their problems would be solved by the magic of “the free market” (not any particular market structure mind you, just any old free one), if only what they started to call “activist” democratic government could be taken out of the picture.  I suppose they felt democratic government was fine as long as it didn’t actually do anything.  It all worked out quite well for them because of course the “free market” does indeed tend to work out quite well for the wealthy elite who made their money on whatever the market happened to be freely doing at the time, although how much it did and does in general for anyone else is a matter of dispute.  According to this new theory, “the establishment” was redefined as the elected officials and government employees who were ostensibly determined to use democratic government for their own nefarious purposes, and who were opposed by freedom loving people trying valiantly to throw off the yoke of democratic government, with the people being led, of course, by some very wealthy and powerful people indeed.  Their goal became minimizing the role of democratic government, or I suppose in the best case scenario eliminating it entirely.  Thus, when enormously wealthy and corrupt as hell Donald Trump tries now to do everything he can to undermine democratic government, rank and file conservatives and Republicans in this country are right there with him, fighting the good fight against the establishment as they see it.  Meanwhile, many liberals never fell for the bad economics of the conservative ideologues.  Some did to varying degrees, of course, the so-called “neo-liberals.”  But others just kept on being concerned about fighting the establishment in the form of the wealthy elite who they still saw as dominating democratic government and using it for their own purposes.  Their notion of fighting the establishment was to make democratic government stronger, not weaker, more representative of what average people wanted, and just in general reducing the influence of big money in politics and government.  From their perspective, the advent of Donald Trump simply made a long-standing bad situation much, much worse, handing the establishment much greater power than it ever had before.  Bernie Sanders is very much in this tradition of what we might call unbowed traditional American political liberalism also known as progressivism.

So that’s where we are today.  Lots of people fighting “the establishment,” but the establishment doing just fine and indeed better than it ever has before.  Oh well.  Life goes on.  We can always fight the establishment another day and most likely will, and the day after that, and the day after that, and …. well, you get the picture.  But if you really want to fight the establishment, you might consider taking a few moments to understand the root of conservatives’ 1980s anti-democracy claptrap in bad economics.  (See Hansel Krankepantzen if you don't know how that works.)  But you know, if you’re too busy fighting, just carry on.  Don’t let me get in your way.

References

Both Republicans and Democrats hate the establishment, but they hate very different things.  Jon Ward. Washington Post.   February 11, 2020.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/11/both-republicans-democrats-hate-establishment-they-hate-very-different-things/#comments-wrapper

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.

On Love And Money

Welcome friends!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!  Ah yes, good old Valentine’s Day.  One of my favorite holidays.  What’s not to like?  A holiday celebrating romantic love or I suppose more broadly any sort of love, surely one of the noblest of human emotions.  Or is that a matter of debate?  How sad to read in the papers today an opinion piece lamenting what the author of the article suggested was an increasing absence of romantic love here in the USA particularly among young people, formerly and traditionally most susceptible to such things.  Searching for answers the article touched on our addiction to the mind numbing plague of social media and our possibly consequent ignorant and ill-tempered public discourse before settling on what the author felt was the most likely culprit: an increasingly fear-based culture in which the goal of all parents is to shield their very special progeny from any potential setback or harm be it physical, psychological, or emotional.  Seems somewhat plausible to me.  People do seem to fret and worry about things a lot more than I remember from my own childhood but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.  Has been known to happen now and then.  And of course under the still dominant conservative perspective the prevailing attitude for several decades now has been everyone is very, very special indeed and the main goal in life is to prevent other people interfering with the majestic display of one’s own remarkable ego.  Not exactly the sort of attitude that would make one sympathetic to romantic love, which inevitably involves allowing someone else to play such a prominent role in the story of one’s own life.  However, I would like to throw my hat in the ring and suggest another likely culprit also emanating from the same conservative cultural currents: greed.

Why makes me think that?  A night at the theater.  A little while ago now I was watching a play entitled The Heiress by Ruth and Augustus Goetz based on the short novel Washington Square by Henry James.  It’s been around a while.  A revival of a play from 1947 based on a novel from 1880.  A sort of classic I suppose, but I don’t meant that in the stodgy negative way.  Sometimes classics become so for very sound reasons, don’t you find?  Well, I thought so in this case anyway.  It made me think, which I suppose must be one of the few acceptable reasons to spend a night at the theater.  The story involved a plain and socially awkward but very rich young lady who could not or would not reconcile herself to the fact that her wealth was one of her most attractive assets and indeed perhaps her only asset as far as prospective suitors are concerned.  She turns on her father when he basically tells her so rather too bluntly perhaps while trying to protect her or her fortune at least from a probable gold digger of a suitor and then turns on the suitor who left abruptly when he thought she might not get a large chunk of her inheritance but returns to pick up where he left off when it turns out she does.  After repudiating both father and suitor the young woman apparently resolves to fulfill her own prophecy that she will never find or indeed apparently again even seek true love.  The chilling ending has her rejecting the suitor in no uncertain terms and comfortably ensconced in her mansion ascending the stairs to her bedroom alone, pausing at the top flight to bid her aunt (and the audience) good night, then blowing out the candle leaving herself (and the theater) in utter darkness. I found it tragic but also thought provoking.  Was the young lady right to renounce romantic love unless entirely free from material considerations?  Or was she as her aunt suggested unnecessarily consigning herself to a life without romance by simply expecting too much of other people?  Was consideration of her fortune really any more egregious than consideration of another’s ephemeral good looks or unreliable popularity or what have you?  Was she right to hate her father because he told her what he believed to be the truth?  That she had little to attract suitors beyond her fortune?  Or was she too easily convinced by her father and this one suitor no love would ever be proffered were it not for her fortune?  Or is that wishful thinking on my part?  Grasping for straws? 

Seemed to me some pretty serious stuff going on at the denouement but to my surprise a good portion of the audience burst into laughter.  It took a while but eventually it dawned on me what they saw was probably a simple revenge story with a timely girl power twist.  Some men were mean to a young woman and she got mean in return.  She told men to take a hike.  Get outta here!  And she kept all the money.  A happy ending for all.  Seems the question of true love never entered the equation or if it did then in the age old battle of money or love money won handily this time around.  No contest really.  Was it always so?  Certainly seems a traditional theme, right?  That material wealth is real.  It’s tangible.  It’s what any sensible person wants.  Love is a fantasy.  It’s not real.  It’s  ephemeral.  It’s strictly for fools or simpletons.  According to the old song a diamond, not another person, is a girl’s best friend.  I guess I’m just an old softy at heart because I don’t think so.  Indeed, I’d put it the other way round.  For me, love is ultimately what’s most important and valuable in life.  Receiving love is always nice to be sure but what’s more crucial by far in terms of bringing meaning to life is the bestowing of love.  And when you give your love to another person you inevitably give up something, you put something in jeopardy, you can no longer live as though you were the only person in the world.  Your finances may take a hit.  In direct contradiction to the conservative credo greed no longer appears so good.  But it’s not only that.  Your waistline may take a hit.  Your busy schedule may take a hit.  Your habits of a lifetime may take a hit.  That’s what must happen when you attach significance to another person.  It’s no longer all about the Great I but the Great We.  Love strikes me as the true basis of human society and inevitably the first casualty when one adopts the inhuman anti-social egotism and greed of conservative ideology.

So going back to the play and funny reactions it occurs to me now perhaps all I was witnessing was a difference in perspectives between the conservatives and the liberals in the audience.  Between those doggedly devoted to their own financial situation and those who while perhaps having their share of self regard also appreciated the power and beauty of true love.  Don’t really know for sure.  Just some random thoughts on this most romantic of holidays.  I suppose we could investigate.  I could hardly ask anyone to repudiate love; that would be immoral.  But we could try the other tack.  So let me throw down a challenge.  If you consider yourself a conservative declare your love for another and really mean it.  Act accordingly.  See if it changes your perspective at all.  I’m banking it will.  Let’s see the play again next year.  Will you laugh and cheer at the amusing spectacle of a young woman renouncing love to protect her fortune?  Or will you see a horrible human tragedy instead?  Will you perhaps detect the ultimate basis of liberalism and leftism in a concern for others, or will you remain forever obsessed with your own situation and view others as only a threat to one’s fortune?  Devoted to the unfettered freedom of the Great I?  Greed as the ultimate good?  Only time will tell.  But I like my chances.  

References

The U.S. is in a crisis of love.  Arthur Brooks.  The Washington Post.  February 13, 2019.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-is-in-a-crisis-of-love/2019/02/13/06b92e3e-2ef1-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html?utm_term=.5dcfdba5a3cb.

Conservative Economic Ideology and Socialism

Welcome friends!

I know I was supposed to stop talking about economic issues for a little while but I wanted to follow up a bit on a point I mentioned last time (and most likely any number of times previously): the intellectual relationship between “socialism” broadly conceived and neoclassical economic theory on the one hand and the conservative “free market” economic ideology sometimes associated with economic theory or anyway with certain flawed interpretations of economic theory on the other hand.  Hey, what can I say?  It’s my thing or one of my things anyway.  I think it’s interesting.  I might be the only one, but still.  Allow me to indulge myself once again and I’ll be back with some non-economic content next time.  Maybe.  Or maybe the time after that.  Let’s just say soon to be on the safe side.  That’s the thing about the multi-headed monster of contemporary conservative: spend too long staring into the empty unblinking eyes of any one head and next thing you know one of the other heads might just take a bite out of your backside.

Let’s do neoclassical economic theory first.  I know I’ve done a couple of posts about how President Trump and the Republican Party have diverged recently from conservative economic orthodoxy in the direction of national something or other, not national socialism per se but something very much like.  What were they calling it?  Economic nationalism?  Something like that?  Anyway, that’s not what I’m talking about this time out.  I’m talking about the supposed basis of conservative economic ideology in it’s purest and most traditional form: neoclassical economic theory.  If you’re familiar with economic theory you’ll know it talks or purports to talk an awful lot about what is best for society at large.  The ostensible endpoints of interest are presented correctly or incorrectly as “socially optimal outcomes” or “social optimums.”  If one considers accepting the objective of attending to the overall welfare of society the hallmark of “socialism” at it’s most fundamental level, which I think is really the only sensible way to interpret the word, then neoclassical economic theory must I think be classified as a form or variant of socialism.  As I (and even more eloquently Mr. Kranekpantzen) have pointed out repeatedly the funny thing of course is that economic theory doesn’t really work as advertised.  It attempts to derive recommendations for socially optimal economic arrangements without considering the distributional aspects of those arrangements; however, it doesn’t and logically never could.  Everyone has beliefs relating to fair or optimal distributions or mechanisms of distribution and hence there’s really no way to talk about social optimality in any meaningful way without getting into those types of issues.  And economic systems inevitably distribute goods one way or another whether we like it or not.  We can’t set up an economic system that is agnostic between all possible distributions.  So really there’s no way to support particular economic arrangements without also supporting particular distributions unless one breaks out those economic arrangements that relate to distributions, which is a bit awkward to say the least since those represent a pretty big chunk of what we consider economic arrangements in the first place (most notably the labor market but also taxes, inheritance laws, etc.)  The notion that economic theory can establish the case for perfectly competitive markets without taking up distributional issues is all a big misunderstanding or if you’re of a more conspiratorial frame of mind a load of purposefully misleading claptrap, which provides a convenient segue to the slow-witted cousin of economic theory: conservative "free market" economic ideology.

As one might suppose based on flawed economic theory or at least certain conventional but flawed interpretations of that theory one can find conservatives (of the economic variety) who seem a little confused by that theory and honestly feel not only that a “free market” equates to a perfectly competitive market but that a perfectly competitive market equates to the best we can do as a society.  From a liberal perspective these conservatives may be considered the “good” or at least better sort of economic conservatives in the sense they agree with liberals on the ends although obviously not the means.  This is the type of economic conservative who tends to have a superficial knowledge of neoclassical economic theory from sources like the ubiquitous Econ 101 and to take it very, very seriously albeit entirely uncritically.  In the vernacular, they accept the theory or anyway the conventional flawed interpretations of that theory hook, line, and sinker.  These particular conservatives tend to have a condescending air toward liberals and leftists because they view them as basically rather silly uneducated or irrational people whose hearts may be in the right place but who just can’t or don’t understand the mathematical and geometric intricacies of economic theory.  It makes them a little annoying particularly for liberals who have studied economics in a rather more serious way but not usually insufferably so.  This type of economic conservative tends to take a relatively narrow view of “socialism” that equates it to particular economic arrangements such as government ownership or shared ownership of businesses and so on.  One assumes they would generally take umbrage at the notion their own ideology is based on what must ultimately be considered a particular formulation of the socialist ethos because it suggests the welfare of society at large in fact matters.  However, it’s not all relative goodness and light even with this lot.  These conservatives like their less wholesome brothers and sisters have a dark side.  In particular, they tend to harbor a profound fear, distrust, and sometimes even abject hatred for democratic government because they believe ignorant people, such as liberals or progressives or leftists of all sorts, may use their democratic voting power to force government to “interfere” with existing market arrangements to make them more stable or equitable thereby unwittingly harming society by shifting it off its supposed optimum.

The bad type of economic conservative from a liberal or leftist perspective rejects the goal of attending to the welfare of society at large in favor of viewing the world as a vicious dog eat dog affair in which the only ethically acceptable objective is to do the best one can for oneself and perhaps one’s loved ones and let everyone else fare as they may.  These are the conservatives of the Ayn Randian, ubermensch, Me Generation, greed is good, unbridled egotism variety.  If they appear to support the findings of economic theory it’s because they understand perfectly well it doesn’t really work as advertised and in particular don’t take the flawed arguments in that theory about “social optimums” seriously even for a moment.  No, they believe there are inevitably winners and losers in human society and they’re doing everything they can to ensure they’re one of the former.  They don’t see the point of worrying about the fate of the “losers.”  They don’t harbor any romantic notions that market economies work out well for everyone or even that one should speak honestly and seriously about political or economic or philosophical matters so we can work together collectively and collaboratively toward common ends like what’s best for society at large but instead view communication as a rhetorical tool to obtain or maintain power of both the economic and political variety.  This is the sort of conservative that has recently taken center stage with all the Trumpian double-talk and fake news and “alternative facts.”  They sometimes espouse a rather mangled or cherry picked version of economic theory not because they believe it has any intellectual merit but because they think it might muddy the water enough to keep the better sort of more civic-minded economic conservative on board while providing them with what they want themselves: an attractive rhetorical defense of their own economic power.  These conservatives tend to view liberals and leftists in general as not just silly uneducated people who may mean well but simply don’t understand economics but rather as wily and quite often overly educated people who understand economic theory rather better than they ought but who are essentially evil people with flawed ethics and in particular adherents of “socialism” defined as the incorrect and dangerous ethical proposition what happens to one’s fellows matters.  Their relatively broad view of socialism means they tend to see the dangers of socialism everywhere because of course socialism broadly defined as a concern for one’s fellows is everywhere in most functioning societies including our own.  These conservatives are intensely and blatantly opposed to democratic government unless they have an effective way to control it and use it to their own personal advantage, as they do currently with the Trump administration.  This group’s shifting positions on practical economic issues like tariffs and deficits and so on can take the well-meaning but relatively slow-witted “good” economic conservatives by surprise and has led to a lot of hand-wringing among the latter tribe about what it means to be a “real” economic conservative.

So what’s my point for today?  Difficult to say.  People who believe in democratic government and have certain beliefs relating to social welfare or economic justice need to fight economic conservatism in both forms but perhaps there’s something to be gained by keeping in mind it’s not always about one’s values; sometimes it’s about ignorance.  Liberals and leftists need to fight the economic head of the multi-headed monster of contemporary conservatism on both fronts.  We need to keep banging on about the shortcomings and illogical bits of neoclassical economic theory as well as pointing out the errors in the flawed interpretations of that theory one finds in popular conservative economic ideology on the one hand, and we need to argue the case for our ethical beliefs regarding one’s responsibilities toward one’s fellows against the stylings of the conservative anti-social disciples of personal greed and all consuming egotism on the other.  So let’s get to it!