Diagnostics
“Oh, Dr. Retardo, why are technocrat centrists such wingnut-enabling fuckwits, responsible for some of the most anti-democratic international economic policies in recent history? Dr. Atrios says he doesn’t know, though he does perfectly describe some of the symptoms.”
Well, before I give my answer, let me note that Dr. Yglesias, who himself has frequently exhibited symptoms of the TC disease, has much that’s good to say on the matter. He even utters the I-word, which is, after all, the first best word to describe the act of one or more countries (or supernational entities) altering or nullifying the (in this case, democratic) sovereignty of a given country for the former’s gain (for any combination of strategic, economic or ideological reasons). Dr. Yglesias in turn refers to Dr. Farley who (ironically, because in another connection he has disputed an expansive definition of the I-word) treads dangerously close to the truth of the matter:
Obviously, there are and always have been serious tensions between democratic governance and the liberal international economic order. A government responsive to its electorate may engage in activities that are detrimental in some sense to the economic order, even assuming (for the moment) that the structure of the international economy is basically one of cooperative amity.
Now for my answer: Technocrat Centrists do what they do because they think like libertarians — and I don’t mean good libertarians, like Thomas Jefferson, I mean Propertarians, like Uncle Miltie. Offer a libertarian a choice between democracy and free economy and he will choose the latter every time. Well, sometimes, as with the Argentine, Venezuelan and Bolivian examples everybody’s talking about, there are situations where popular soveriegnty and self-determination in a truly democratic casing conflicts with free market policy. When it does, the Technocrat Centrist is guaranteed to splutter with jingoisms. He’s also obliged to lie by saying that such democratic actions aren’t really democratic at all. Then, in lieu of a previous generation’s solution (a nifty CIA-sponsored coup: the model here is the Propertarians’ beloved Augusto Pinochet), the TCs go on an all-out PR barrage, threaten intervention of whatever kind. If this sounds like wingnuttery to you, you begin to see the point. If you begin to see that there are meaningful distinctions between social democracy and “liberal” democracy, you really begin to see the point — and, incidentally, see why TCs and wingnuts have basically hated Western Europe for 50 years just as they now begin to hate the legitimate governments of Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela.
No, really. Social democracies constitute a portion of those dreadful “illiberal democracies” that uber-TC Fareed Zakaria demonized so well a few years back. But then the typical TC, like the typical wingnut, doesn’t believe real democracy is possible without a “free economy”. Or, as Zakaria says: “Around the world, nations recognize that some variation of free-market economics is the only enduring path to growth” — this in the context of accusing his opponents of political reaction while he himself is furiously advocating 19th Century British Liberalism.
But where “classical liberals” (the old name for libertarians, which hints at the fact that at their protean beginnings, they were indeed a progressive force before they became rapidly regressive and, yes, reactionary) eventually used British sea power to enforce their ideology and will on others, TCs use the WTO and IMF — and, sometimes, force. There is a connection with wingnuttery, the Iraq War, and TC ideology here. Zakaria’s “good friend” David Frum predictably thinks the world of the TC ideology as it pertains to the world generally and to Iraq specifically:
Elections are important, Zakaria says, but even more important are human rights, free markets, and local autonomy. In the end, Zakaria concludes, the highest expression of the political culture of the west is not the ballot box: It is the impartial judge.
This may seem like a distinction without a difference, and indeed that is how Muravchik treats it. But it is in fact a distinction that makes a very big difference – not least for our mission in Iraq. If our priority in Iraq is elections first and foremost, it will be possible for the US to quit Iraq very soon. But if we are concerned to try to build a more open, more liberal society in Iraq, the United States will be obliged to oversee the regime there – directly or indirectly – for many years to come.
The latter alternative is exactly what was planned — “liberal” puppetry.
Which goes without saying: as Dr. Yglesias described it, TCism is just “smarter imperialism”, or, beautifully and woundingly (Susan Sontag would be proud), “neoconservatism with a human face”. Amen, Matty. Meanwhile, I fumble at a memory… But let Frumbag drive the geopolitical point home, if with regard to another part of the world:
South Africa is progressing pretty rapidly down the familiar African road to executive tyranny, corruption, and ethnic turmoil. Back in the 1990s, the Clinton adminstration hailed the arrival of a supposed new generation of African leadership – but they are rapidly imitating their vicious old predecessors.
The “vicious old predecessors” that NR, neocons, Ronnie and Maggie preferred. But that’s beside the point, which is that now that the black South Africans are truly represented by their government, and their wishes are made policy — in other words, now that genuine democracy and self-determination is a fact — they are somehow “regressing”. What’s this all about?
Throughout history, populist movements, no matter what their ideological origins, ineluctably devolve into socialist enterprises—and most of them start out that way. Right now, we’re witnessing the growth of classically populist movements across Latin America. The president of Bolivia just last week essentially appropriated the nation’s oil and gas reserves. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has been posing as the voice-of-the-people-made-flesh for years now as he systematically dismantles the market economy in explicit homage to Fidel Castro. In America, Populists have invariably championed socialistic policies. The Populist Party—also called the People’s Party—pushed for the nationalization of railroads and other industries, and demanded “popular� control over natural resources.
[snip]
In the last decade or so, leading intellectuals within the Democratic party have been desperate to revive “economic populismâ€? in order to get “the peopleâ€? back on their side (see, for example, “Why Democrats Must Be Populists: And what populist-phobes don’t understand about Americaâ€?). Bill Clinton’s manifesto “Putting People Firstâ€? was just one small example of this ongoing project. Al Gore’s attempt to frame the 2000 campaign as the “people versus the powerfulâ€? was another. John Edwards’ podium thumping about “two Americasâ€? was relentlessly cheered by self-described progressives as the best articulation of their cause in 2004.
This is about domestic populism, and is indistinguishable from typical TC blather (though Pantload overestimates Clinton’s rhetoric; he’s apparently too stupid to realise that an army of TCs were on hand to sabotage any populist impulses of the time) — this could have come from a half-drunken Sebastian Mallaby. But it is also about the idea of democracy — that democratic entities which engage in an economic self-determination that does not fit the Propertarian model are automatically illegitimate. But then it all depends on how you define legitimate democracy; and if your idea of a proper democracy puts free markets and federalism as morally equivalent to human rights (as Frum quotes Zakaria as advocating), then I submit that your idea of proper democracy is fucked in the head.*
*Pure economic “liberty” is not a human right. Moreover, because pure economic “liberty” can and does conflict with genuine human rights, any attempt to establish moral and political equivalence between them results as a diminishing of real human rights. This is the crux of the problem with Propertarianism, and the origin of all the evil it has wrought in the world, including several genocides (the Plains Indians could not have been exterminated with such alacrity without the Gilded Age values of that day and age, nor could the Irish have been left to starve with such Spencerian indifference had there been less ideological certitude along the lines that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”) and various de facto and outright dictatorships.
In other words, “some things are too important to leave to voters” as a Bush administration knob (I forget who) once said.
Excellent post Retardo.
Was it Katherine Harris, Mr. Notorious? Or perhaps, Ken Blackwell?
Amen. Technocrat centrists are called in to white wash and sugar coat the class warfare that they are paid to rationalize. They win their arguments not with clarity but with their ability to create piles of techno-babble designed to induce catatonia in otherwise interested participants. They do it not only for the money but it is the only time anyone will pretend to listen to them.
Dude! You rule! Turtle suit 18th and H!
Dude, You speak for the Laotion subsistence farmer, the Vietnamese cab driver, the Cambodian duck merchant. Without your powerful voice they would have no say. Without your overeducated rant they would just be all, “‘domestic populism, and is indistinguishable from typical TC blath’? WTF? hey, could you get me internet access?”
A system that benefits more than 5% of the population? Sacriledge!
Technocrat Centrists do what they do because they think like libertarians — and I don’t mean good libertarians, like Thomas Jefferson, I mean Propertarians, like Uncle Miltie. Offer a libertarian a choice between democracy and free economy and he will choose the latter every time.
Hammer, meet head. Simple economic freedom (I “earned” it, I’ll spend it on whatever I damn well please!) is not the sine qua non of a free society.
I believe these folks hold free markets equivalent to human rights (federalism aside) for convenience and the need for proper public relations. Dr. Atrios was right to opine that TC sorts are quick to whine about Bolivia’s economic moves, but are silent on Dafur. But then again, perhaps they make the argument that genocide is free market.
Mudge, come off it. Nobody is silent on Darfur. Darfur is the goddamned swiss army knife of rhetorical cudgels. There are no ideologues left who have not used Darfur to beat up on their enemy ideologues.
Pretty much everyone holds one of the following views on Darfur:
The UN should invade Darfur to stop The Killing*
The AU should invade Darfur to stop The Killing
We should invade Darfur ourselves, unilaterally, to stop The Killing
Nobody should invade Darfur because invading is mean, and they should stop The Killing because The Killing is mean
It should be noted that an attempt was made at #2, which recently failed for reasons that pundits seem to enjoy arguing about. Before that attempt, the League of Concerned Newspaper Readers tried #4, but it didn’t seem to work.
* Please substitute the word “genocide” for the phrase “The Killing” if it is more in keeping with your ideological outlook, or more convenient to your rhetorical requirements.
Dagnabbit. The <ol> tag worked just fine in the preview.
Yeah, ‘tardo. How dare you be educated? And use that education to make “overeducated rants”?
Don’t you know Bill Kristol will make fun of you know?
Besides, everybody knows that the only way to be a populist of any stripe is to be a blithering moron.
Grampaw,
Show me a TC commentary that is in fact creative of policy in Dafur, that is ahead of the curve, as opposed to climbing on a bandwagon driven by human rights activists. Not sure one exists. Contrast that with the continual early warning system regarding Venezuela or Ecuador. If moral equivalency existed, you’d expect equivalent outrage at equivalent stages. TC followers do not do any of the spade work on human rights issues, but courageously man the constructed earthworks.
Fucking Calvinists!
Fucking Aristotelians!
It bothers me that most folks I talk to take it for granted that “free market economy” is assumed to be an extremely good thing. Without constraints by populist movements, such an economy naturally leads to poor working conditions, a society with widely disparate incomes, and, as you put it, human rights violations. If progressives could successfully battle this misconception, I would have a bit more faith in the future than I do right now. As an example, it frustrates me that most people I talk to think that unions are outdated concepts that are more corrupt than the businesses they serve. Or, in the absence of affirmative action or laws on hiring practices, this country would be a better place for all.
As much as I appreciate posts like this (and I do), you seriously (i.e. not jokingly) need to cut down on the quantity (if not the quality) of the paranthetical statements – and maybe the hyphenated clauses. You have some very good points in here, but it’s a little difficult to follow.
Great post!
Nice post for the most part, but it is flatly wrong to describe the situation in Venezuela as “popular soveriegnty and self-determination in a truly democratic casing”; that sort of sloppiness makes you and those of us who like where you’re coming from look bad, and makes it that much easier for the sensibles to write us off. Any chance of a correction?
Wonderful post. Thank you.
Bubba, I’ve been thinking about your first paragraph’s point a lot lately. “Free-market capitalism is the best economic system” is taken as a given, so self-evident it need never be tested or even questioned, and any alternative can be discarded without discussion, hell, without even a moment’s thought. Jonah’s first sentence illustates this perfectly: “populist movements … ineluctably devolve into socialist enterprises…” as if all possible socialist enterprises were *objectively* degenerate, and not just in the foggy wasteland of his mind. Why this assumption, and can debate be reopened in this country?
dear careful:
i would not say it is flatly wrong to describe
maybe to describe it as more “complex” than Retardo states would be accurate. My impression is that Chavez is more a caudillo in the mold of Peron, or possibly Franco but having more in common economically with lets say Getulio Vargas. I wouldnt say “truly democratic” to describe Chavez but maybe thats cuz I like reading the Economist…..
yea and Retardo’s post is a wee bit pedantic – where is teh funny?
*but the post is appreciated – thank you retardo
Hey, wait, I’ve got a disease named after me?
Where are my frickin royalty checks?
If we’re going to call Chavez undemocratic, where’s that leave Li’l George Bush? Where’s that leave Mexico?
Doc, don’tcha read the papers? Iraq is the modern ideal of a functional democracy…
mikey
Apart from misspelling “sovereignty,” please tell me what is so flatly wrong about Retardo’s statement. Better yet, please give even one example from all of history when an elected leader more fully reflected the will of the people he represented than does Chavez in Venezuela.
If the right to strive for the accumulation of unlimited wealth is placed above all other rights, all other rights will cease to be rights. If your right to be rich supersedes my right to live, I shall die. In what way were Retardo’s points difficult to follow? I cannot imagine anyone articulating them more brilliantly; would you like to try?
OK, mudge, let’s play this way. First you give me a list of people you consider “TC,” then you get to make blanket assertions about their lack of interest in Darfur. Hell, I’ll make it even easier for you— just list three of these “TC”s whose position on Darfur constitutes “climbing on a bandwagon driven by human rights activists.”
And to all of you free-market bashers:
The “free market” is indeed a good thing, despite what you command-economy commies seem to think. The problem is that the inevitable end state of a completely unregulated market is a monopoly or cartel system, i.e. a system that is no longer “free” in the sense of “open” or “competitive,” So you need to have some rules and regulations, and some enforcement of them. (As an aside, freedom of labor to organize can, and I think should, be regarded as a an essential component of market freedom, with aforementioned caveats regarding monopolies and cartels.)
There are plenty of proponents of The Free Market who do not use the phrase as a convenient mask to cover naked deregulationism with the aim of consolidating corporate power. There is some nuace involved in distinguishing the various weilders of the phrase and discerning their motives, but it is nuance worth learning, because genuinely open, competitive economies really do benefit the little people of the world.
sorta in response to the good Doctor Amazing:
im not calling Chavez “undemocratic” but I wouldnt call him “democratic” either – the guy attempted a military coup fer chrissakes.
now I will say yes, he was democratically elected. Bush, erm maybe not so much. In both cases they are more concerned about holding and wielding power. They both shake their respective boogeymen at the populace to keep the power – for Chavez that is the Bushista regime (and MNCs and LatinAm elites) which I am more likely to buy as a “consumer” than Bush’s brand of bullshit. I dont doubt the threats to Western Civ coming from radical Islamists but the GOP are waaay more interested in keeping power than dealing effectively with that threat (as well as lots of other pressing issues)
I just dont see Chavez as a shining example of a democratic leader effectively “expressing the will of the people” I think of him as a leftwing populist caudillo – to be fair I dont know that much about his domestic policies they may be wonderful – I am just familiar with his bombastic rhetoric and his recent elections and thwarted coup against him
Simple economic freedom (I “earned� it, I’ll spend it on whatever I damn well please!) is not the sine qua non of a free society.
Tangentially, wobblie (and everyone else who’s interested in keeping his or her eye on several sparrows), how many of them have truly “earned” it?
Grandpaw,
Typical right wing avoidance method..ignore my request by posing a parallel question. I asked a simple question and you avoid it by throwing the shuttlecock back to me.
You state uncategorically that “free market” is a good thing. Evidence, Grandpaw..evidence ..otherwise just an opinion from a, shall I say it TC proponent. Please note, I have not said “free market” was a bad thing. I have not criticized “free market” at all. I have said the Technocrat Centrists do not have human rights as a moral equivalence. I presume that if, in an emerging or nascent government, “free markets” ever run counter to human rights, the TC adherents will opt to advance “free markets”. They will suffer no angst.
Dispute that.
Regardless of whether the “free market” is a good thing, strictly speaking, the libertarian vision is internally inconsistent and therefore impossible to bring about. George Stigler won a Nobel prize in economics in part for proving that government regulation is a market good like any other; the obvious implication is that “libertarians” who want a “free market” really just want to ban a particular category of services from the marketplace, i.e., government regulation. Which makes them no different than anyone else who wants to ban certain forms of economic activity, e.g., prostitution, drug use, … And Amartya Sen won a Nobel prize in economics in part for the Sen Paradox, which shows that you can’t have a libertarian marketplace that is efficient, defined as one in which nobody can be made better off without someone else being made worse off, if you have more than two people in the economy. So the “free market” however defined is not efficient, or it is not “liberal”, and either way there exist unfree markets in which everybody is at least as well off as in the free market, either in an economic or libertarian sense (or both.)
Sorry, Mudge, but if you want me to answer your question, you have to provide me with a list of “TC followers,” because frankly, I have no idea what you are talking about when you use the shiny new “TC” label you’ve just discovered.
You don’t have to list all of them, just a few, so that I can look them up and then show you that there are no more “TC followers” who are “silent on Darfur” than there are Democrats who think the US shouldn’t be spying on terrorists.
As to proof that (real) free trade benefits the poor, just go take a couple years of quant econ, and then read every issue of The Economist ever published. I don’t have time for dreary little people who want me to teach them undergraduate economics and then read 50 years of research aloud to them before they’ll accept an argument as valid.
Or, if you prefer blogging as evidence, go read Brad Delong and Greg Mankiw for a while, and come back when your understanding of the debate has grown more sophisticated than “STARBUCKS SUXX0RS.”
The “free market� is indeed a good thing, despite what you command-economy commies seem to think.
Uhh. Okay. And now for the punchline?
There are plenty of proponents of The Free Market who do not use the phrase as a convenient mask to cover naked deregulationism with the aim of consolidating corporate power. There is some nuace involved in distinguishing the various weilders of the phrase and discerning their motives, but it is nuance worth learning, because genuinely open, competitive economies really do benefit the little people of the world.
Tee hee!
As to proof that (real) free trade benefits the poor, just go take a couple years of quant econ, and then read every issue of The Economist ever published. I don’t have time for dreary little people who want me to teach them undergraduate economics and then read 50 years of research aloud to them before they’ll accept an argument as valid.
Which is explains why Dr. Duncan Black, economist, has been saying shit that is way closer to my side than to Brad DeLong’s?
Sorry, Mudge, but if you want me to answer your question, you have to provide me with a list of “TC followers,� because frankly, I have no idea what you are talking about when you use the shiny new “TC� label you’ve just discovered.
It’s not a new label at all, which you well know. “Liberal Technocrats” was the operative phrase to describe JFK’s advisors and cabinet, the centrism of whom is understood on many levels, but for just one I’ll mention how they advised JFK to attack Nixon from the right in 1960. Oliver Stone, et al. , have had some success mythologizing JFK’s liberalism, but many people know better.
Clinton’s team took the JFK team’s mindset and applied it to economics. Which is apropos because what JFK’s and his successor’s technocrats did with Vietnam, Clinton’s did to economics — ideologues, ideologues, ideologues. Which is funny because people like you call people like me communists when we’re actually economic pragmatists who have higher allegiances (like a fucntioning, legitimate democracy) than unbeautiful abstractions or mere corporate whoring.
P.S. Love how you reference The Economist as super-authority and then in the same breath, as it were, insist that free trade apologists are so not all corporate whores! Subtle, that: a lesser hack would have surely picked the WSJ.
Dear Ricardo:
Citing the old JFK “Liberal Technocrats” does not retroactively give the neologism “Technocratic Centrist” some sort of respectable pedigree. Face it, someone coined the stupid term to describe Tom Friedman and Nicholas Kristof (neither of whom is indifferent to Darfur), and now the Dittoheads of the Left, newly engorged with a sense of historical destiny, are trying to stick it onto any non-leftist-radical who passes within arm’s reach.
Clinton did not apply the JFK mindset to economics. JFK applied the JFK mindset to economics. Or did you not learn anything about his domestic policy in your poli sci classes?
Clearly, you are completely unaware of the founding principles of The Economist— if you had a clue, you would not even attempt to conflate their editorial outlook with that of The Wall Street Journal.
So please, Retardo, give me a list of “Technocratic Centrists.” Just three little names, to start with. I’ve already spotted you two; how hard can it be?
My contention is that there is no more evidence demonstrating that (as yet not even named) “TCs” don’t give a rat’s ass about Darfur than there is evidence demonstrating that Democrats don’t give a rat’s ass about stopping terrorists.
Good luck refuting that one, Retardo.
Look, I do realize Marxism seems really righteous when you’re 22 years old, but at some point, you’ve got to start looking at actual quantitative economic evidence. And when you do that, Marx scores somewhere below Ayn Rand. And I mean that as an insult.
So please, Retardo, give me a list of “Technocratic Centrists.� Just three little names, to start with. I’ve already spotted you two; how hard can it be?
My contention is that there is no more evidence demonstrating that (as yet not even named) “TCs� don’t give a rat’s ass about Darfur than there is evidence demonstrating that Democrats don’t give a rat’s ass about stopping terrorists.
Good luck refuting that one, Retardo.
I have no truck with the Darfur example. However, if you want a list of sometime or fulltime Technocrat Centrists or their pundit equivalents (“Sensible Liberals”), here goes:
Brad DeLong
Sebastian Mallaby
Fareed Zakaria
Michael Kinsley
Mickey Kaus
Richard Cohen
Peter Beinart
Matthew Miller
Mark A. Kleiman
Kevin Drum
Jonathan Chait
Jacob Weisberg
Matthew Yglesias
Kenneth Baer
Joe Klein
Josh Marshall
Robert Reich
Now some of those people have come around. But some haven’t. Atrios has begun to notice who has not, and has said something about it. Don’t think that it hasn’t given me pleasure to see the same trolls show up in his threads as those who show up in mine.
Look, I do realize Marxism seems really righteous when you’re 22 years old, but at some point, you’ve got to start looking at actual quantitative economic evidence. And when you do that, Marx scores somewhere below Ayn Rand. And I mean that as an insult.
This is just stupid. Do I have to re-explain the joke? Jeez, you people and humor! You demand nuance, yet call the people not in love with neoliberalism “commies”. I’m no Commie; I’m a garden variety Social Democrat — apparently, most people in Europe are dunderheaded 22 year olds, too! Still, when someone is stupid enough to think that Marx has less value than Ayn Rand, I too begin to wonder if nuance is worth it, and if there really is a difference between wingnuts and neoliberals at all.
Retardo ecrite:
Still, when someone is stupid enough to think that Marx has less value than Ayn Rand, I too begin to wonder if nuance is worth it, and if there really is a difference between wingnuts and neoliberals at all.
Yup, that about sums it up. And grandpaw definitely needs to go back on his meds.
See, when you get right down to it, grandpaw perfectly illustrates the end of democracy as a citizen institution in the US. He and all his ilk will vote for the GOP or for neo-liberals only. They would sooner live under an authoritarian corporitism (and certainly would turn a blind eye to Montt style murders of democrats of a social flavor) because they loathe and despise those who embrace even the mildest form of social democracy as ‘commies.’
Enjoy the many deaths of 22 year old idealists around the world at the hands of authoritarian death squads, grandpaw. They are on your head.
They would sooner live under an authoritarian corporitism (and certainly would turn a blind eye to Montt style murders of democrats of a social flavor)
I’m not exactly sure what “authoritarian corporitism [sic] ” is and I certainly have got no idea how you managed to jump to the conclusion that grampaw would “turn a blind eye” to murder.
Enjoy the many deaths of 22 year old idealists around the world at the hands of authoritarian death squads, grandpaw. They are on your head.
No, they’re not on his head, you stupid tosser.
[…] In comments to this post, a neoliberal troll tells me that: The “free marketâ€? is indeed a good thing, despite what you command-economy commies seem to think. […]
Retardo, from what I understand, you don’t disagree with my characterization of your “TCs” positions on Darfur, and you don’t understand that I was comparing Rand to Marx as economists, not as philosophers. I actually don’t think we’re disagreeing with each other much, if at all.
But as to the dimwit radicals in the peanut gallery…
OK, let’s start with a total ban on international trade. That would kind of suck for the less industrialized and the resource-poor parts of the world, don’t you think? Now, from that starting point, what sort of scheme do you have in mind for letting the little people drive pickup trucks and use lightbulbs? Or do you honestly think that a) those things (and all other trade goods) are merely fetishized bourgeois luxuries, and b) the decision as to whether or not the little people should be exposed to the corruping influence of imports should be yours to make, and not theirs?
Look, I do realize that some of the policies and practices of bodies like the WTO and the IMF unfairly favor nations that are already wealthy, but in my book, those flaws are hindering free trade, while it seems that to a lot of stoned radicals, those flaws are free trade, which is why I don’t have any respect for the turtle-costumed anti-starbucks brigade, even if they do vote the same way I do, at least when Ralph Nader isn’t running.
Oh, and incidentally, now that we do have a list of “TCs”, let’s go through it and decide which of the people on it we’re ready to accuse of not giving a shit about Darfur, shall we?
Retardo, from what I understand, you don’t disagree with my characterization of your “TCs� positions on Darfur
No, I’m saying that I have no opinion on the matter. My concern with Technocrat Centrists’ opinions concern their stance on economics, general domestic policiy, and the war on Iraq.
Marx’s and Rand’s economics, I wasn’t aware, were so divisible from their philosophies. Oh do pardon me for misunderstanding. I’m just too stoned.
Retardo, you’re not stoned, and you know damned well that the general philosophies of Rand and Marx can indeed be distinguished from their purely economic arguments.
Economics is a field that attempts to find laws describing the behavior of groups of people, and then use those laws to make predictions. The latter is then used to guage the success of the endeavor, and that is why Marx, who predicted that capitalism would inevitably be swept away in a worldwide proletarian revolution, is a lesser economists than Rand, who predicted that capitalism would continue to encourage some people to be monumentally selfish pricks. She also thought that was a good thing, but that’s a matter of her philosophy, not her economics. See? That wasn’t hard at all, was it?
Oh, and incidentally, if you don’t have an opinion about my assertion that your “TCs” do indeed care about Darfur, then it is entirely correct to say that you don’t disagree with me.
Back in my day, we taught our children a thing called Rhetoric.
Boy, grampaw don’ like me. I cry a little.
Look, tebbit, you sorry toad, running around extolling Rand as ‘better’ than Marx, and ‘meaning it’ as an insult, etc., blah blah, is a classic projection of ‘better (someone else) dead than red’ variety.
And scum of your sort, and that of grandpaw, have indeed supported murderers like Montt, et. seq., precisely to preserve your little neo-liberal world view.
Remarkable that grandpaw can blather on and on about ‘turtle costumed’ something or others, but I bet money he would never actually speak to one of his colleagues inclined to social democracy in this manner in the real world. Because there are millions of people who don’t buy grandpaw’s schtick but are neither ‘commies’ (what an ass) or Black Block idiots.
You and grandpaw are the children here.
Max:
OK, then.
Tell us what sort of economic system you do favor. If you are a Marxist, then you’d better learn to be a lot less thin-skinned about being called a “command-economy commie.”
Grampaw–
You didn’t really suggest that people that believe in brakes on capitalism would call for a ban on international trade, do you? I mean, I’d hate to think you were that stupid…
…but your rhetoric about turtle costumes does suggest it.
And you don’t seem any too familiar with the founding principles of The Economist, either. I read it frequently, but I recognize that it’s slant (and it is a very pronounced slant) is classically liberal (in the laissez-faire sense). It really isn’t that far from the WSJ; it just has its drooling under control.
By the way, Randroids use Marxian terminilogy and concepts; Marxists have never used Randian terminology. Randroids toss out Marxian phrases hourly. Which one was the economist, and which one the hack novelist, the L. Ron Hubbard of her day?
Look, tebbit, you sorry toad, running around extolling Rand as ‘better’ than Marx, and ‘meaning it’ as an insult, etc., blah blah, is a classic projection of ‘better (someone else) dead than red’ variety.
No. If someone deems Rand’s economics better than Marx’s (which I’m not in a position to do because I haven’t read Rand and don’t have any intention of doing so) then that doesn’t allow you to jump to shit like this: “And scum of your sort, and that of grandpaw, have indeed supported murderers like Montt, et. seq., precisely to preserve your little neo-liberal world view.”
You and grandpaw are the children here.
Yet, strangely, I’m not the one launching infantile personal attacks on anyone who disagrees with me.
Doc, The Economist was founded to promote free trade, regardless of right or left leanings, at a time when the opponents of free trade were to be found primarily on the right. There are still people on the right who oppose free trade, even today, a fact which seems to be lost on a lot of people debating the matter here.
And no, I don’t think the anti-free-trade-in-any-form folks here are total isolationists, but neither do I have even an inkling as to what sort of international exchange of goods and services they do favor, and it was in an effort to find out that I proposed we start from no trade at all, and work forward, rather than start with completely unregulated trade, and work, well, forward.
Grampaw–
Surely you’ve actually read the stuff about fair trade put out by the turtle-costumed people you like to make fun of. If you can’t be bothered to actually read their proposals, consider not commenting on their outfits–it makes you sound kinda , well, uninformed. No one ever advocated abolition of international trade–but trade that benefits small producers as well as big consumers has been a hot topic for a long time. Google “Puerto Alegre” if you haven’t already read fair trade proposals.
“Left” and “right” are rather unimportant characterizations. “Owner” and “tenant”, “exploiter” and “exploited”, and the old-fashioned “”bourgeois” and “proletarian” have more real-world meaning. The Economist loves them some polluters and union-busters, and that hardly seems a left-wing position, but what do I know?
Doc:
Again, The Economist is neither right-wing nor left-wing, it is pro-free-trade. They may “loves them polluters and union-busters,” but they also come down strongly in favor of, e.g., drugs legalization, gay marriage, abortion rights, and gun control. I’m beginning to doubt you when you say you’re familiar with the magazine.
But more importantly, let’s assume for the sake of argument, and for others reading here, that I haven’t read about these alternatives to free trade proposed by the people in the funny outfits.
What are those proposals? Could you summarize a few of them for us, please?
Grampaw:
I’ve read the Economist every few months for the past twenty-five years. My mother’s an economist; I read her old issues. Capitalist propaganda. Always has been. They spread Thatcherite crap for years, until Tony Blair sang his New Labor pro-corporate siren song to them.
As to the Puerto Alegre position: what, I should do all your work for you? You made the uninformed commentary about turtle costumes, you do the reading. Fair trade policies aren’t anything new, nor anything particularly obscure.
Doc:
Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t be able to summarize a not-free-trade trade system, either.
It’s really hard when they don’t make a damned bit of sense to begin with, though, isn’t it? Personally, I can’t get past the frankfurt schoolish jargon and neo-Marxist (we are not the Marxists you are looking for) code-phrases, but I figured you might have more patience navigating those waters than I do.
Oh well.
Lord knows, I love a good mealy mouthed rejoinder as much as the next person, but, Granpaw, you have got it down to a science. (Right up there with astrology, in terms of content.)
You know the funny thing about economy? Read any magazines you want, paint any economic system you want, and any age you like, and they all fall afoul of one thing. Simple human greed. Why else would an International Monetary Fund, coincidentally based in the US, loan stupendous amounts of money to countries they have absolutely no doubt can’t pay them back? When the interest payments exceed the GNP of a nation, what is the net gain to the IMF? Aside from the money they make off the nations that can afford to strip mine their “less fortunate” targets.
It’s a pretty interesting little scam, right? Wealthier countries control the price of poorer countries commodities, like the Belgians with cocoa, and the US with pharmaceuticals, and then hold out the carrot of development to help them get “back on their feet”. Once you’ve paid off the officials, and ground down the populace (courtesy of well funded “security services”), you can develop the absolute shit out them. Not that they’ll see a pittance of the profit, or anything. And once they’ve borrowed as much as they can, mortgaged all they have, the IMF can step in and auction of the pieces of its infrastructure that will net a profit, and collect on those lovely interest payments.
And this travesty is supposed to have anything to do with free trade? Or is free trade about bailing out the railroads, the airlines, the savings and loans, and the car industry? Maybe its about working out lucrative little deals with US “protectorates” where they can import children for slave labor. Maybe its about a company thinking it was good business to buy the rights to water, even rainwater, from a government who sold them on the advice of the World Bank (obviously looking out for the interests of Bolivia, right?).
Maybe its about you throwing around words and phrases like capitalism, free trade, and free markets, thinking they actually exist and without having the foggiest fucking clue what they actually mean.
Wait, did I say that out loud? Um, never mind.
Shit! Sorry, it’s the World Bank that does the strip mining. It’s the IMF that makes it possible.
[…] For a long time there we were told not to attack the fake centrists because at least they attacked Bush, too. But that position is now untenable because it became obvious that fake centrists only attacked Bush’s means, not his ends. Fake centrist economic schemes, which were and are merely slight variances on the corporate-whoring of wingnut policies, used to only be attacked by lonely cranks like General Glut. Now Duncan Black and Thomas Frank and others attack economic Technocrat ‘Centrism’ on grounds of principle as well as on the obvious point that such policies have lost the working class for the Democrats. Fake centrist foriegn policy schemes, which were and are slight variances on wingnut schemes (’a more responsible imperialism, please! Cut the looting, wingnuts, it’s so crass! But carry on with the war by all means!’), used to only be attacked by lonely cranks like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky. Now everyone who’s not an idiot — which is another way of saying anyone not Jonathan Chait or the godawful asshelmets at TNR or the wingnut/glibertarian fuckfaces of the WingNet — has fallen out of love with the Iraq debacle and the intentionally perpetual War on Terra. Fake centrist argumentative techniques, which were and are nothing like those of the wingnuts whom such techniques ultimately served, used to only be attacked by moonbat bloggers and commenters who were rarely if ever cited (unless desparagingly) by the gatekeepers of “Sensible Liberalism” like TAP, Washington Monthly, TNR. Now such former “Sensible Liberals” in those magazines’ employ as Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein and Kevin Drum are, if belatedly, shrill-as-real-moonbats. […]